WHILE the baking sun outside made London’s tourists wilt, activists gathered in the elegant Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church brought the fire to some of the most pressing — and challenging — issues facing the movement today.

The Morning Star’s annual conference this year had the theme of “Race, Sex and Class Liberation,” where sisters in particular spoke out strongly about how sexism and misogyny are obstacles to building socialism — not just in the wider world but within the labour movement itself.

“If you’re looking for … hard evidence,” said long-standing teaching trade unionist Philipa Harvey, “you can turn to the Monaghan report into sexism and misogyny in the GMB that was published in 2020 or the Kennedy report on the same issue in the TSSA, which was published in 2023.”

Harvey, who is an activist with the charity FiLiA and its trade union group, added: “We must also recognise that this movement has let women down on the issue around sex and gender, and that this must be confronted and dealt with practically and seriously,” she said, pointing out that it had led to “a crisis of faith in the wider labour movement, including those of us who are still here. We have seen some women walk away, others have been disciplined or ostracised or sidelined. This is a colossal loss to the reputation and power of the movement.”

The issue of prostitution also provided a focus of debate — especially relevant given a motion earlier this year at TUC women’s conference which proposed endorsing the decriminalisation of the industry. Although the motion was defeated, it has led to many activists seeking to furthur their knowledge about the realities of the sex trade.

Jenna, a prositution survivor, held the audience captivated, if also disturbed, as she described her experiences: “I personally have had various jobs in my life, but the only one that still gives me nightmares over seven years later is selling sex,” she said.

She explained: “I was told that I was the perfect type to do it because I had no baggage. I’m just a normal girl next door.

“But I did have baggage. And if you don’t have it when you start, you’ll have it when you leave. I can tell you that I’ve worked with plenty of other women during my time in it. And I can tell you that they don’t do it for pleasure.”

Now Jenna speaks out, despite it being “uncomfortable” to do so, “because I don’t want any woman to end up like me. Someone who has pushed away trauma to the point where I lied to myself that having multiple men abuse me was OK or even what I wanted.”

Her underlining message?

“There is no special class of women who should be allowed to be abused.”

Comrades in the audience — male and female — saluted Jenna’s words and her courage.

“The importance of understanding the difference between producing a commodity and being a commodity, I think, is the key point that we need to get across to those people on the left who think sex work is work and think that it is a matter of choice for women,” said one speaker from the floor.

While another pointed out that “the history of the left, of the communist and socialist movement, was always in opposition to prostitution — but in recent years with all this pushing of personal narrative and individualism became the culture in imperialist countries. A lot of the left has now been cheerleaders for prostitution, self-ID, all these kind of individualistic postmodern studies … It’s important for activists in the working-class movement to fight an ideological struggle against the personal individualistic narrative and expose it for what it is.”

Trade unionist Helen O’Connor, who organises some of the lowest-paid workers in the country — hospital cleaners, bin workers, teaching assistants — linked the rise in liberal, non-materialist politics with the potential for huge dangers ahead: “Anger is building amongst working-class people, which can sometimes be expressed as demoralisation and disorientation. It’s real, it’s substantial, and it will find an outlet one way or another, and if that outlet is not the trade union movement and the left, it will be organisations like Reform, who will offer populist solutions. The hateful rhetoric of Reform politicians can sound appealing to the ears of workers in the absence of any socialist alternative.

“Workers aren’t just stupid, and neither are they automatic racists. They know when they’re being excluded, fobbed off or lied to by mainstream politicians. Liberal politics that sounds radical, but ultimately reinforces the status quo and will not engage the working class in politics. But socialist demands rooted in their class interests would.”

O’Connor, who was speaking in a personal capacity, warned that, when it comes to women’s rights, “the recent response of some of the trade unions to the Supreme Court ruling, which did nothing else but legally define biological sex under the Equality Act whilst also protecting the rights of trans people has been absolutely self-defeating.

“Let’s make this point very simply. You defend the rights of everyone — men, women, children, disabled, ethnic minorities, and yes, trans people, too. But if we’re telling our members that it’s the job of trade unions to defend the right of biological males to enter women’s spaces, no matter how they identify, then we are on the road to defeat.”

She added that if we “embrace an identity politics based on the liberal idea that the individual comes before the collective, and that class is just another identity rather than what it is — the existence of the conditions of life for the majority of people — then we are not embracing radicalism, we are embracing neoliberal reaction.”

Unsurprisingly for a Morning Star conference, the concept of class was the recurring theme — and how sexism and racism are used to maintain oppression in class society was elucidated by Marxist feminist historian Mary Davis: “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there seems to be a great reluctance to use the term class any more — and certainly never to use the term working class,” she said.

“Why are they so afraid of class? I think the answer is because they’re afraid of Marxism because Marx really did have the definition that we should all use in relation to class … the class you’re in is your relationship to the means of production.”

Davis continued: “No-one exists outside class and class society and if we deny that we don’t therefore challenge what I think is one of the biggest dangers that face us as socialists, and that is identity politics.

“That’s not to deny the importance of autonomy and self-organisation as a necessary complement of class politics — that’s why we’ve got the women’s movement, that’s why there’s a black liberation movement — but the connection between those movements cannot continue to be separate spheres. These must be part of the understanding of a class conscious socialist movement.”

For more information visit www.filia.org.uk and nordicmodelnow.org.