Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • A view from the left

    Paul Knaggs at Labour Heartland – Sandie Peggie and the Institutional Madness That Chose Ideology Over Women:

    A 318-page tribunal judgment confirms what working women already knew: Britain’s public institutions will sacrifice them on the altar of fashionable nonsense

    Ask yourself a simple question. What kind of health service suspends an experienced nurse for objecting to undressing beside a man in a women’s changing room? What kind of organisation spends over £250,000 of public money defending that suspension? And what kind of political class watches this unfold and calls it progress?

    The answer arrived in 318 pages: the kind captured by ideology so completely that biological reality, women’s dignity, and basic safeguarding all became negotiable. The kind where a working-class woman’s right to privacy matters less than institutional compliance with fashionable doctrine.

    And yes, this is a Labour activist writing, but he can still see how badly Peggie was let down by the unions:

    Where were the unions while Peggie was suspended and investigated for defending women’s spaces?

    The deafening silence from organised labour throughout this case speaks to a deeper rot. Trade unions that once existed to protect working people from arbitrary management power have been captured by the same middle-class activists who run HR departments and diversity committees.

    Peggie needed a union to tell NHS Fife that suspending a nurse for safeguarding concerns was outrageous. She needed collective bargaining power to push back against ideological management. She needed solidarity from fellow workers.

    Instead, she got lawyers and crowdfunding. The institutions that should have defended her were either complicit or absent.

    This is not an accident. It is the result of decades of middle-class graduate activists colonising labour movement structures and redefining “progressive” to mean whatever makes them feel virtuous. Class struggle becomes secondary to policing language and enforcing fashionable doctrines.

    The working-class women who need unions most now find themselves abandoned by organisations more interested in corporate diversity initiatives than defending shop-floor workers from management harassment.

    Can’t argue with that.

    Added: there is an amusing touch of the “no true Scotsman” here, though. No true working class unionist would bow their knee to this gender ideology nonsense over the rights of hard-working women – so the unions must have been taken over by the middle class…

  • The made-up quote

  • Teesside 1968–1999

    Photographer Peter Benson, at Cafe Royal Books,

    These black and white images were taken between 1968 and 1999, initially as a result of my interest in the demolition and clearance of the built environment between the Newport Bridge and the Transporter Bridge in Middlesbrough. From here, this body of work expanded to include Port Clarence, High Clarence, Haverton Hill, Seaton Carew and Hartlepool, all of which were to become parts of what is now Teesside.

    [Photos © Cafe Royal Books/Peter Benson]

  • At the University of Kentucky

    A very American problem. A professor at the University of Kentucky has said that the state of Israel needs to be destroyed militarily by international force. He was suspended, and is now suing the university for reinstatement, with civil liberties groups taking his side.

    Professor Ramsi Woodcock really, really hates Israel. And he doesn’t just hate the Netanyahu government, or the war in Gaza, or the violent assaults by West Bank settlers. Those are just symptoms, which even many Israelis oppose.

    Woodcock’s hatred goes so much deeper — to the very survival of Israel itself — that he has demanded the forcible elimination of the Jewish state, with scant regard for the consequences. 

    A tenured professor at Kentucky’s J. David Rosenberg College of Law, Woodcock asserts that the “State of Israel,” which he confines in scare quotes, has no right to exist. 

    For him, the “destruction of Israel” is a moral imperative, and he has called upon the international community to launch a war to “end Israel.” 

    On behalf of his self-initiated Antizionist Legal Studies Movement, Woodcock circulated a petition earlier this year for an international war against Israel. He posted it on various sites, including multiple discussion groups sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools. 

    The petition’s seeming call for violence, demanding “that every country in the world make war on Israel immediately,” drew complaints from law professors and others who saw the posts, including the Majority Caucus of the Kentucky state senate.  

    The article, by another law professor, suggests that the university’s suspension of Woodcock was “a drastic overreaction”, but admits that Woodcock is indeed antisemitic. Well yes…

  • Littered with the language of trans activism

    Yes, an appeal looks likely in the Sandie Peggie case.

    In public, at least, her supporters claimed victory. Sandie Peggie had, after all, been found to have been harassed by her employer, NHS Fife, in four different ways.

    But the veteran nurse’s win was a relatively narrow one. It was far from the slamdunk gender-critical campaigners had hoped for and had, in truth, expected after their landmark Supreme Court win in April.

    “A load of sexist shite,” was how one leading activist privately described the 312-page ruling. “I didn’t think the judge would fall for his [Beth Upton’s] schtick. I was wrong.”

    It means an employment tribunal which has divided opinion for the best part of a year is unlikely to be the end of the case. An appeal, well-informed sources said, is now a “near certainty”….

    “This ruling just shows the reason we need the guidance from Westminster to be published urgently,” Trina Budge, a director of For Women Scotland, said. She noted that the Supreme Court ruling stated that provisions required for the protection of women “necessarily exclude men”, yet this appeared not to have been considered.

    “Unfortunately, this judgment is all over the place and, in parts, littered with nonsense and the language of trans activism,” Budge added. “This is a perfect example of how in the absence of any leadership from the UK government, the water has been muddied further.

    “Public bodies are still being allowed to cling to the ridiculous notion that putting on make up and wearing a dress is what defines a woman.”

  • Citing safety concerns

    “…to “help mitigate the placement of students in their class who come from families that do not support LGBTQIA+ identities.”

    The whole byzantine tale is laid out here.

  • Matching gender stereotypes

  • Islamic expansion

    Following on from that earlier post about Islamic supremacy – Islam did not come to exist with other religions – here’s Armin Navabi on Facebook:

  • A partial victory

    The employment tribunal examining the Sandie Peggie case has found that, yes, she was harassed by NHS Fife – but her other claims were dismissed. Only a partial victory, then.

    First thoughts from Sex Matters:

    We are pleased that Sandie Peggie has won her claim of harassment against NHS Fife, and that the hospital trust was criticised for its terrible handling of the complaint against her.

    We are disappointed the tribunal sought to reach a spurious “balance” between a woman’s right to undress with privacy & dignity, and the right of an employee w the PC of gender reassignment not to be discriminated against in employment.

    The idea that a woman finding herself unexpectedly or unwantedly with a man in a “female” changing room must consider questions of human rights or protected characteristics is ridiculous and unworkable.

    The way an employer should protect both of their rights is to set clear rules about whether spaces are single sex or mixed sex.

    The case demonstrates that employers with ambiguous policies are putting themselves in legal jeopardy. But the tribunal has failed to provide them with the clarity they need in order to be confident that they can simply and clearly say No to men who want to use women’s spaces.

    It is a travesty that a woman can be judged as having expressed herself in the wrong way when she objects to finding a man in the women’s changing room because the employer gave him permission to be there.

    Sandie Peggie has said: “I am beyond relieved and delighted that the Tribunal has found that my employer Fife Health Board harassed me after I complained about having to share a female only changing room with a male colleague”.

    Sandie’s bravery is an inspiration, but it shouldn’t require bravery for women to be able to say to their employers, clearly and in natural language, that male colleagues – men, in other words – have no place in spaces that exist for the safety, dignity and privacy of women.

    There are thousands of women like Sandie all over the country. The only way to break the pattern of harassment of women who object to men in women-only spaces is to have clear rules and expect everyone to follow them.

    This problem cannot be solved by leaving individual women to upend their lives, fundraise to take court cases and then endure cross-examination and public scrutiny – all simply to win back what was a right that was beyond question until recently, and which most people still support.

    It is now urgent that the Health and Safety Executive steps up and provides clear guidance to employers on workplace toilets and changing rooms. Employers cannot be expected to make complex human-rights determinations about whether particular men are allowed into women’s changing rooms, and then to wait and see if any individual women complain.

    Room for an appeal?

    Added: the language of the judgement is the language of trans activists.

    “Assigned female at birth”; the man dresses and speaks in a feminine style….and therefore is a woman?

    And doesn’t this fly in the face of the Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces?

  • World Cup “Pride Match”

    That worked out well.

    A 2026 World Cup fixture designated by organisers as an LGBTQ+ ‘Pride Match’ will feature two countries where homosexuality is illegal.

    The local organising committee in Seattle, one of the host cities for the Fifa tournament next summer, have said the match at the city’s Lumen Field on 26 June will feature celebrations of the LGBTQ+ community.

    The plans were put in place before the teams involved in the fixture were selected or the draw for the 2026 World Cup was made.

    And following Friday’s draw and Saturday’s fixture allocation, it has been confirmed that the game on 26 June in Seattle will be the Group G match between Egypt and Iran.