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June 24, 2024 - 7:00am
J.K. Rowling has encouraged Britons to vote for the Communist Party, a day after writing an article for the Times in which she suggested that she cannot vote for Labour given its current position on women’s rights.
“If you were going to spoil your ballot paper, why not check this list to see whether there’s a [Communist Party] candidate in your constituency,” the Harry Potter author tweeted, in response to a statement from Communist Party (CP) candidate and University of Edinburgh academic Richard Shillcock. In it, Shillcock pledged support for “recognising the nature of biological sex, defending sex-based rights and signle-sex services [sic] and sports, changing the Equality Act such that ‘sex’ means ‘biological sex’, and for calm, comprehensive discussion of these issues”.
He added of the CP: “We oppose gender self-identification and the new gender ideology. We oppose all forms of conversion therapy applied to lesbian and gay people and we oppose including trans identities in such a ban.” Shillcock also referred to the Cass Report as “authoritative”, weeks after Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie claimed he could not support Hilary Cass’s review as a “valid scientific document”.
The CP is fielding 14 candidates across Britain for the general election 4 July. The party, formed in 1988 following a split within the Communist Party of Great Britain, has a membership of under 1,800 people and has never achieved more than 1,300 votes in a general election. This year is the first time it has stood candidates since 2015, having supported Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in 2017 and 2019.
Rowling was previously a major Labour donor, giving £1 million in 2008 alone, yet in this weekend’s article she detailed her despair at a party that “not merely saw the rights of women as disposable, but struggled to say what a woman was at all”. She accused Sir Keir Starmer of “dismissing women like me”, and of failing to provide support for Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who has previously been the target of online death threats and who this month was forced to pull out of a hustings event, citing fears for her safety.
Last year the Communist Party criticised Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill, referring to “serious problems […] raised by a range of women’s and other civil society groups” which were then “denied and dismissed” by Scottish Government ministers. It added that the party “supports the right of trans people to live free from discrimination and prejudice”, and that “gender as an ideological construct should not be confused or conflated with the material reality of biological sex”. At the time, Rowling joked: “Can’t wait for the Guardian columns denouncing the British Communist Party [sic] as far-right.”
“For left-leaning women like us, this isn’t, and never has been, about trans people enjoying the rights of every other citizen,” the author wrote in her Times article. “This is about the right of women and girls to assert their boundaries. It’s about freedom of speech and observable truth.” Further, she claimed, “it’s about waiting, with dwindling hope, for the left to wake up to the fact that its lazy embrace of a quasi-religious ideology is having calamitous consequences.”
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SubscribePoliticians lazy embrace. A three word summary of the current political malaise besetting the UK.
Oh dear. All that inspired campaigning and she ends up looking like a complete Muppet by endorsing a Communist academic. Does beg the question if the Scottish Commies would accept a donation of filthy lucre from someone who made a fortune from publishing children’s books before developing them into a worldwide film and merchandising enterprise. I mean, how capitalist can you get? Still, as Sir Kier excused himself: I didn’t think he would win.
I doubt she has any belief that a Cmmunist candidate would win a seat in the UK, let alone form a government, so it was probably an election “joke”.
The only one who could frighten the idiots in our Parliament is Farage, as is shown by the amount of opprobium the MSM showers on hi at every opportunity.
Even with Reform, some of the pundits are saying that they may be ‘lucky’ enough to get seven seats.
But for a lot of the electorate, we’re voting not to get our preferred candidate, but to scare the rest.
That seven will become twenty seven next time, maybe.
I don’t think JKR was entirely serious when she posted this tweet. Effectively, she’s endorsing a protest vote.
Basically, this isn’t a general election. It’s 650 by elections, held simultaneously. So turnout will be low, and millions will cast protest votes – LibDem, Farage, etc. I predict the Monster Raving Loonies and Count Binface will have their best ever election.
Of course she wasn’t serious in wishing for a Communist candidate to get elected or for the Communist Party to form a government. Nobody that rich would vote for all their wealth and property to be misappropriated if they thought it might happen, whatever the long history of privileged idiots like Jessica Mitford. But she was clearly endorsing a protest vote for an utterly ghastly ideology on the basis of a single issue.
Rowling might be rich, but she’s the only FORMER billionaire who’s given away enough money to charities to take her out of the category of billionaires.
Yes. Anyone who follows RJK’s tweets will know that she is a master of irony.
When the far-left goes to far, go even further to the left…
J.K. Rowling doesn’t seem to understand that there is such a thing as the fascist left. If she is on the liberal left, then promoting left fascism ( communism ) is a sign that she pandering or buckling under pressure, unfortunately.
For God’s sakes, she’s joking. She’s pointing out that the absurdity that to find a party that can actually identify a woman, one must resort to the Communists.
Good move. It underlines the point that old-school leftists, the who still believe in universalism before the identity tribes took over, are disaffected and disenfranchised. Just as conservatives will never be eliminated under a rainbow regime totalitarian state even with reeducation camps and disappearances, left-leaners too will never be eliminated. These are dispositions, and ultimately we all have to learn to live with them. Actually, the only solution is classical liberal live-and-let-live democracy. Unfortunately the elites now are hellbent on their illiberal one-party identity politics state, and if you don’t bow down to their unicause groupthink, you have virtually no options. Slightly right of centre, you’re driven to fusty old conservatism; slightly left of centre, you’re driven to raving bonkers communism. Rowling makes the point, from a leftist perspective, that all sensible leftish options have been eliminated. Just as common or garden Tories, due to cognitive impairment of their party by Woke, are being driven to the dillettante idealists at Reform.
Isn’t that the whole point made by the “classical liberalism is a failure” crowd? (At least, the ones I have seen online who are millennials and GenZ, and are moving right) That it “inevitably fails because people always break down into rigid groups,” thus “the solution is to join THIS rigid group because it’s the correct one and the Bible endorses it”.
I agree.There must be a huge part of the electorate who feel they are stranded,including me.Always been on the left,went through the usual nutter phase as a youngster and am now firmly soft left but identity politics has poisoned every party to the left of the right of the Tory party (keep up) so what to do?
Nonsense.
Commies are enemies of democracy.
Pretending otherwise is denying historical evidence.
The only good commie is dead one.
Well proven by Franco and Pinochet.
Commies should be banned from elections in the West.
Arrested and eliminated, is my preferred option.
Harry Potter and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Harry Potter and the Order of the
PhoenixOctober RevolutionHarry Potter and the Prisoner of the Transcult.
Fantastic Beasts and How to Vote for Them.
Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Starmerbore.
To Platform 9 3/4 of the Finland Station.
Marxism-Menckenism/JKRowling Thought.
Yes, I always laughed at stupid titles of Rowling output.
I tried to rename them every time when books came out.
The only one I remember is
“Harry Potter and the goblet of piss”.
Still, I admire her fight against usual woke crowd for women’s rights.
I wish her success.
Yeah, but maybe fighting fire with fire is a bad idea. That’s how my home town lost its train station.
Well, she can’t always be right…
Pretty humourous she ever supported Labour. I guess until their insanity targets you it’s all ok.
I like the way the CP has 1,800 members, but has only ever got 1,300 votes.
I had to read that twice. Surely there’s a zero missing from the second number?
The 1,800 members will be spread across the UK but they will only have stood candidates in a tiny number of seats.
Even party members can’t vote for candidates who aren’t standing in their constituency.
Stop it now.
They always get 99.99% in any fair elections.
Or was it erections (over pictures of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and CheGeuvara)?
I mean, China has a 100% voter turn out rate in their party elections. Pretty easy when the entire electorate can fit in a single room and the ballot only has a yes/no question on it. The armed guards probably help, too.
And as for the photos, hey, whatever floats your boat. Not all psychopaths prefer the classics like victim’s undergarments.
I guess people don’t like sarcasm. Or my joke is considered more crass than Rowling’s. I wouldn’t have thought so, but it’s hard for me to see suggesting people vote for would-be murderous tyrants sociopathicly simping for Soviet-style socialism just because they made the right noises on the trans debate as anything but extremely crass *at best*.
Either that or the down votes are from all the CCP nationalists offended by my clumsy joke about their party’s ‘elections’.
I like the way their party’s acronym is the same as that other thing that mere possession of is a federal crime.
I love it! A membership of 1800 people but never more than 1300 votes. Even its own membership won’t for it.
The Communists don’t run candidates in all constituencies, that’s why.
We have one in ours so my vote will either go to her, or to Reform. Whichever is more likely to give a scare to the local Labour slouch.
I think Reform is more likely to give a scare.
Real, actual communists aren’t members of the Communist Party nor are they voting for it. The Communist Party brings unnecessary exposure, is an impediment to one’s political progress, and is forever a million miles from power in a democratic system.
If belief in Marxism is the measure of being a communist, then the Labour Party still is the largest political group of communists, and the UK civil service is the largest communist organisation.
For the avoidance of doubt, I’m deadly serious. The last Labour leader firmly believed Marx’s criticism of capitalism was accurate and Marxist economics remain popular amongst a large minority of members. Only political reality acts as a brake on the socialist utopian thinking within the party, a brake that every now and again comes loose (as it did in the early 1980s and mid 2010s).
Even with low expectations, back in 2015-17 I was genuinely surprised by how many people who told me they were all-in for Corbyn seemed to know almost nothing about Marxism, its real-world history, or its influence on his and John McDonnell’s politics.
They seemed convinced he was some genial old Scandinavian-style social democrat grandpa who just thought if people were nicer to each other the trains would run on time.
In Soviet Pioneer Camps (think Boy Scouts with Marxism), by the parade ground was a child-friendly piccie of Lenin, saluting like a kindly gramps figure – not a million miles away from Jezza himself
“Shillcock pledged support for “recognising the nature of biological sex, defending sex-based rights and signle-sex services [sic] and sports, changing the Equality Act such that ‘sex’ means ‘biological sex’”
Nobody could confuse me for a communist, but I will say: when you’re right, you’re right.
To be honest this article is a bit unworthy. JKR is just being a little mischievous.
She leads with the qualifier, “If you were going to spoil your ballot paper”, because she’s not seriously endorsing this party. She’s suggesting it’s an alternative way for women on the political left to register their anger at how Labour is selling them out.
Would I be given such a charitable reaction if I were to do the same and proclaim my dissatisfaction as a conservative man by jokingly endorsing the National Socialist Worker’s Party?
Or would that get me on some kind of watch list and/or fired from my job? Asking for a friend…
Thank you for pointing this out and highlighting this. In this political scrum, people are all too quick to select and read what they will instead of seeing whats the actual intent really is. She is being mischievous and speaks to send a message. So many other doors and outlets have been slammed shut. Perhaps a large texta mark on the ballot paper stating ‘Women are Women” to drive the point home. Avenues of true dissent are being swallowed up. Women are being completely erased.
Without women there is nobody – there are no men either.
Or we all decide to become robots and incubated in a tube – an artificial womb – be nursed by a robot – totally give ourselves over to the trans-humanism movement. That alone should be enough to scare us all.
We have to all wake up.
We need each other. Men and women.
I am surely not alone amongst the myriad who read Unherd, who feel it wasn’t them that changed so much, but it has been the ideological changes on the Left which has disillusioned them from what is now loosely referred. to as “the Left”. The fore-runner of the CPB, the old CPGB, were in fairness historically more rooted in the organised labour movement than the rest of the British left, and despite it’s small size wielded a significant degree of respect and influence in the organised labour movement. It does not entirely surprise me, indeed rather encourages me, to discover that the CPB is distancing itself from the bizarre kaleidoscope of notions spawned by the malign ideological influence of identiarianism, the greatest retrograde development in the thinking of the Left in the past 50 years. I am old enough to remember when the thought of Guardian readers and Labour members cheering on NATO policy towards Ukraine and Israel would have been unthinkable. I hope the position of the CPB is a straw in the wind indicating a dawning realisation that identitarian based ideology and policies are divisive, and are not taken seriously anywhere much, save within the ranks of the University educated, middle class elites.
Communism is evil. That’s been well established. If evil can seduce us by simply stating obvious facts then that is really quite scary.
Right, and Labour is bigger government than most communist regimes. Course they all seem to be.
Talk about luxury beliefs!
Communism is for the ruled, not the rulers, after all.
Sometimes, comments are designed for shock value. Other times, they reveal stupidity. Under a communist party, views toward gender would be the least of Rowling’s problems. While it is amusing to watch the left turn on itself, going to the extreme end of the spectrum is not a productive exercise. Her money helped shape what Labour has become. There is an alternative regarding gender, but I suspect Rowling would do almost anything to avoid that.
Those passing the smelling salts at the idea of JKR supposedly endorsing the CP are having a serious sense of humour failure.
She’s a heroine TERF – but this shows the limits of her thinking. Like most lefty TERFs and feminists, she simply won’t accept that ALL Of this stuff comes from the project of feminism in the 1960s – the sexual revolution, the separation of sex from marriage and child conception/rearing; and before that to Rousseau’s chaotic mass politics of the ‘general will’ and the spirit of iconoclasm; and ultimately to the original gnostic heresy that utopia/heaven can be made by human beings on earth (the attempt as Voegelin put it to ‘immanentize the eschaton’ – ok esoteric but I think that’s funny). The path goes Rousseau, Marx, feminism, trans – and next stop is transhumanism. We are about to abolish what it is to be human all together – gene editing, surrogacy, industrial birth machines, AI, technologically enhanced consciousness – eugenics on steroids. It’s a sort of Faustian techno-paganism. Promethean idolatry directed at faux human powers and capabilities. And it all comes from abandoning natural law and Christianity. Human beings who think they can act like Gods, eliminate suffering….decide what is good and bad, for themselves. And as God told Adam and Eve, if we eat from this tree, we don’t become Gods….we die.
There is a reason that religions persist.
By Golly you’re right General Store.
Rowling has objected to certian trans concepts. But this can surely be no more than a transitional insight.
From here, it can only be a matter of time before her current position collapses under the weight of it’s own contradictions and she realises that her own second wave feminism was, itself, a collossal mistake. From there, this spectaucularly rich woman will no doubt renounce her transparent Marxism, disavow Rousseau and so on and so on back to the primordial ooze.
Here we go again. Blame feminism (women) for everything.
Feminism is not women. That’s a grossly offensive idea. Like saying BLM is all black people. And the blame lies not with women but a thread of ideological hubris, that does indeed go back to genesis – but most recently left wing secular humanism in all its variants
There are many different threads of feminism though. You think you are right that one of them was stepmother to trans ideology, but the mainstream was not. Surely it’s the French gang of three, the post-modernist Marxists, who are the direct precursors.
If you want to throw all feminism out then you will have to remove the vote and property rights and so on from women.
“The 19th Amendment was a mistake” is a popular quote on the Internet these days, amongst the younger rightists and “anti-woke” crowd.
Personally I say that’s a red herring and the real solution is ending universal suffrage to return to increased criteria for voting.
I agree that mainstream feminism wasn’t that, however much like gay rights and the civil rights movement before it the main mission accomplished most of its goals and any reasonable activists laid down their crusades, swords-to-plowshares style, and got on with their lives. But, in similar fashion, that left those who had no other identities but the crusade, as well as the genuine post-modern neo-marxists who had been masquerading in plain sight the whole time, now with a ready-made campaign complete with tools and messaging all ripe for subversion.
In these terrible games of ideological purity we’re forced to play, accuracy in charting the evolution of these ideas is paramount. So far mainstream feminists have stubbornly refused to acknowledge the influence their ideas have had on those now trying to usurp them, believing them to be just another disguise worn by their now long-defeated enemies, misogyny, when in many ways what this is is a monster birthed in part from their own philosophical wombs. Acknowledging that is not ‘admitting blame’ any more than acknowledging Marxist Socialism was in fact an outgrowth of classical Western Liberalism is accepting blame for the atrocities that stain the history of the 20th century. But a cursory glance at recent discourse shows Left-wing Liberals are having a hard time doing that, too.
These ‘successor ideologies’ claim to be better, more improved versions that solve the innate contradictions of what they grew out of. But just because they say it doesn’t make it true, any more than a cancerous tumor can claim to be a more improved version of the organ it’s cannibalizing to fuel it’s growth. In this way, mainstream feminists and gay rights activists are actually natural allies with liberal conservatives like myself. And we really need to realize that and band together before it’s too late for all of us.
That doesn’t follow at all. Yea to suffragettes…but those principles are accepted by every single political movement across the spectrum. It’s like saying if you reject the Green Party (of Hamas, trans extremism, global ecological modernization, transhumanism) you must reject CITES and the 1950s clean air acts. I’m happy to endorse Mary Harrington’s reactionary feminism. But feminists HAVE to start by owning to the problem of gender. The rejection of the body, of natural law, of marriage of communitarian self-regulation. The sexual free for all imagined into existence by those 20th century liberated sexual nomads – luxury beliefs if ever there were – led directly to Andrew Tate. Simple as
For God’s sakes, she’s joking. She’s pointing out that the absurdity that to find a party that can actually identify a woman, one must resort to the Communists.
Well she did support Labour.
Maybe it’s a matter of differences in national perspective, but I don’t find her ‘joke’ even remotely funny. The Royal Canadian Armed Forces openly spout Marxist dogma, and I seem to find my fellow Canucks simping for the Soviets at an alarming rate. Since it’s clear many people are taking her at face value, maybe she should work on her satire.
Communism is just as evil as Facism and Nazism, so if you can’t joke about the latter than you shouldn’t joke about the former.
She has never renounced her support for the Labour Party – and is broadly speaking a socialist-feminist (old school). It’s like Jeremy Clarkson endorsing the Ford Capri but then claiming he’s joking (because it’s crap – but look at this Ferrari)
“and ultimately to the original gnostic heresy that utopia/heaven can be made by human beings on earth”
I’m not so sure that’s a heresy in and of itself, as much as it’s a corruption of the principles that “The Kingdom of Heaven is within” and “Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”
It’s been heretical since the 3rd century. Trying to achieve sainthood individually and working to build the city of God within the city of man, is what we are called to do – but knowing that we can’t succeed in the here and now, and without God’s grace. The hubris and will to power to go it alone and insist that success is inevitable leads quickly to Jahr Null, the Killing Fields and trans-ing the kids
Just when I thought Rowling was an otherwise sane person with differing but reasonable political views. I don’t care if this is supposed to be a protest vote. Can you imagine a world where someone, let alone a famous celebrity, endorsing the National Socialist Worker’s Party on the grounds of their sensible economic policy could possibly provoke a response even approximately close to ‘well, I’m sure they have a valid reason’?
The fact that in today’s world Facists are (rightfully) shunned but Marxists and their ilk are *not* considered just as vile and evil will forever boil my blood and curdle my soul. Their body count may be ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE HIGHER, but oh, they have *good intentions* so it’s OK!
“The fact that in today’s world Facists are (rightfully) shunned but Marxists and their ilk are *not* considered just as vile and evil will forever boil my blood and curdle my soul.”
I’m starting to wonder if perhaps some in TPTB* actually want it that way because it avoids “uncomfortable questions” like “Well, if communism is so evil, why did you ally with Russia in WW2?? You’re just as evil!!”.
*In the years just after WW2, I could certainly see something like this. In modern times, maybe those who are old and want to adhere to the “old mythologies” while they’re still alive.
I can see your point. But if someone today would critize the Allies for that very obvious alliance of convenience, that says more about them then it does the Allies. Germany was a much more immediate and pressing threat. Remember that France and the Commonwealth were at war with Germany before Germany was at war with the Soviets. In fact the two autocratic countries were allies in everything but name, despite the certainty that they would’ve betrayed each other eventually. Adolph was just quicker on the draw than Stalin. And no one was under any illusions, from London to Washington to Moscow, that the moment the current war ended the next one would start, thankfully it was a cold war rather than a hot one.
At the same time, sympathetic western intellectuals running interference for the Reds long predates WW2. The glowing, flowery write-ups of the ‘Worker’s Utopia’ being built in the East was a dime a dozen among the intellectual cliques, while reports of mass famines and genocides in Ukraine were dismissed out of hand so routinely that one reporter risked his life to get into the country and find proof. Even when he did he was called a ‘traitor’ and a ‘conspiracy theorist’ when he got back. They made a movie about him a few years ago starring Tom Hardy. The lack of coverage about it really goes to show some things never change.
With the confiscation of the means of production, power transfers from the common person to the regime. For her to believe that capitalism (i.e. free production and free markets) bears no relation to liberal democracy just goes to show her illiteracy in stuff that matters, such as political philosophy. Another feminist loser – albeit a capitalist loser.
Schadenfreude! Politics in Britain seem even more head over heels than in France…
I don’t think she is seriously recommending people vote communist. What she is doing is pointing out that sane, middle left voters who support science, common sense and minimal protections for women, are now politically homeless.
Theresa May was the first British politician to advocate “self ID”, not the sort of thing you would expect from the Conservatives, but now that Kemi Badenoch has restored sanity on this matter, habitual Labour party supporters who are female, have a dilemma.
I do believe the brilliant Ms. Rowling is pointing out the absurdity that to find a party that can still identify a woman, one must resort to the communists. She is very witty, you know.
Well, assuming Rowling claims are fairly reported, it is really disappointing from author fighting for women rights.
Commies are vile enemies of the West, whatever their claims about women.
The only rights women had under Communism, was to queue for food scraps for hours.
Or having their daughters raped by Beria or Mao.
Apart from that, all great.
I went to the Soviet Union in 1977. They made great pains to show how rich and civilized they were. They had an ideal market in Moscow they showed off. Perfectly coiffed and peasant dressed women with their daughters cued for a couple blocks to get in. Their children bartered their heirloom coins to me for 5-6 bubble gums apiece and ran if the authorities showed up. Tells you everything you need to know about communism.
Unheard seems to be not posting any of my comments that include the dreaded ‘N’ word (you know, the one that ends with an ‘I” and has an ‘A’ and a ‘Z’ in the middle). I’m sure it’s probably some automated algorithm designed to filter out certain keywords rather than any active censoring, but that inadvertently highlights the main crux of my issue with this whole situation. And in a rather ironic fashion, to boot. After all what annoys me to no end is the double standard we apply to the two great, monstrous ideologies that plagued the 20th century and drenched the pages of its history with the blood of millions. One is seen as a flawed but otherwise well-intentioned set of ideas that were never *really* given a fair try, while the other is so taboo that simply uttering the name of its most famous variant gets you silenced and blacklisted like you just uttered the true name of the Dark Lord, even though the former arguably killed *more* people and left more lasting scars on a global scale.
Rowling was clearly ahead of her time. ‘They-who-shall-not-be-named’, indeed.
This is why I prefer Melonie Mac’s approach to the ‘men’s rights to their fetish’ stuff. Because these wealthy celebrities are clearly not Christian and always revert to their bourgeois liberalism.
Galloway is also a staunch opponent of the alphabet ideology.
When has the left ever been interested in “observable truth”? Or freedom of speech for that matter.
There is a certain ironic justice in Rowling’s predicament. It was feminism, after all, that started all this denial of sex differences and malleability of identity business.
As ye sow, and all that…
JKR is valuably pointing out two things: that the CPB’s position on gender ideology is well thought through and admirably expressed, and IF you happened to be in one of the rare constituencies where they are standing they might be worth supporting because of that because (secondly) as well as being thinly spread, they are most likely to lose their deposit because, the most popular of them has only ever garnered just over a thousand votes.to To reassure you that there would be no chance you would be electing a British Communist MP. Good grief it seemed obvious enough to me.
She is also adding to the anomaly and dismay that to support such sense you have to support either the Right or the extreme Left. That is the point.
Unfortunately there is not one candidate in my constituency who doesn’t follow the gender woo woo and being in a Labour stronghold university town they have just shoe-horned in an unknown, not even a photo, conservative who in her intro endorses another county where she had just lost in a local election. No intellectual. If any of the candidates had mentioned women as a sex worth defending I would consider voting for them, in fact my sitting and standing Labour MP Alex Sobel, publicly condemns women critical of gender stereotypes and self ID ideology as bigots. I will have to return a blank voting paper.
It would seem that the CP is orthodox Marxist rather than being subject to the infantile delusions common today. They might be congratulated for their ideological conservatism.