Reading Time: 10 minutes

Party politics is something that we’d normally steer away from here. But when a major political party is stacking itself up against the human rights of a section of the public, it becomes our duty to point it out.

I’ve just looked through the manifesto the Labour Party has published in advance of the UK general election on 12 December 2019.

First, some simple statistics. These don’t prove anything but they are indicative:

The number of times ‘women’ is mentioned: 35

The number of times ‘men’ is mentioned: 2

The number of times ‘girl’ is mentioned: 3

The number of times ‘boy’ is mentioned: 0

Despite this, the number of times ‘equality’ is mentioned: 17

Lest you fall into the trap of thinking “at least they did mention men twice”, here are the extracts of those mentions:

…black and Asian men are still more likely to be stopped and searched, poisoning relations between the police…

The only men to be covered there are a minority in Britain and the point isn’t really about the men, it’s about how the police behave.

…women still earn 13% less than men. Labour will take action to close the gender pay gap by 2030.

Men get an implied complaint: they are still working too many hours, they are still willing to commute further than women, they are still willing to take on nasty jobs if they pay better. Women under 40 earn more on average than men, yet Labour is not promising to do anything for the younger generations of men and boys, who are suffering with worse education than women and girls.

Let’s come back to that ‘equality’ thing, OK?

You know .. I hope you know .. that men are the main victims of crime; they suffer from a worse education; they are roughly half the people to suffer from domestic violence; they are the only ones whose genitals are not specifically protected by law; they receive less health care attention — to the extent that they die on average more than 3½ years earlier than women; men are the only ones discriminated against for standing for Parliament; as fathers they don’t get anywhere near the same parental leave as women; indeed as fathers they have virtually no rights, only responsibilities; that they have had to work longer than women for 60 years and now are having their retirement age increased further; that they receive greater insults and threats both in the real world and online; that… well, you know some of this stuff, probably. If not, you do now unless you don’t believe it, in which case comment below on which you want more information on and we will provide it. Tons of it. Much of which applies in any Western nation: it’s not just Britain where men suffer.

So, equality is something that men really need. It’s great that it is in the Labour manifesto, yes? Well .. sadly equality doesn’t work like that according to this political party. Let’s look at some more quotes (the highlighting is mine):

Labour will create a new Department for Women and Equalities, with a full-time Secretary of State, responsible for ensuring all our policies and laws are equality-impact assessed in order to deliver a fairer society for women and all under-represented groups. We will establish a modernised National Women’s Commission as an independent advisory body to contribute to a Labour government.

There’s nothing new about a Department for Women and Equalities, with a full-time Secretary of State. Past governments have already had that. Labour know it: they created the position initially, a Conservative government made it into a ministerial role. ]

So women, already with stacked advantage and no legal discrimination against them, get more protection (from what?) while men, who are legally discriminated against get .. more discrimination against them. Equality. Hmm.

But Labour do say they care about the Human Rights Act. Only they go and spoil that idea, too:

We are guided by our firm commitment to the Human Rights Act and Convention on Human Rights that have been consistently attacked by the Conservatives. We will ratify both the Istanbul Convention on preventing domestic abuse and the ILO Convention on Violence and Harassment at work.

Have you read the ‘Istanbul Convention’? We have. Not many MPs have, nor did the idiot who signed the UK up to it, either, but they all support it because they are told it will help women. Not much it won’t, even in the short term. in the long term, it will do far more harm than good. Oh, it will also bring in the first legislation that restricts women’s rights: they don’t tell you that in the summary, though, you have to actually study it.

But the big point to remember about the Istanbul Convention is that it doesn’t protect men. Or boys, particularly. Only the half of victims who are female are protected. ‘Equality’ again, Labour Party style.

A quick scan of the ILO Convention shows that it is similarly skewed.:

Acknowledging [Pretending] that gender-based violence and harassment disproportionately affects women and girls…

If they cared what they were talking about, they would know the facts. But it’s an ideological document, not one really intended to help people, least of all men.

Back to the manifesto:

Labour will put women at the heart of our government and programme.

Women have a place in government, when they do a better job than a man can do. And some of them are very good. The ones in Parliament by quota are statistically more lazy, more corrupt, and more incompetent. An employer, and especially the government, should not care what gonads someone has: just whether they are the best for the job.

And Labour have ruled out many men, since many more men than women are interested in a political career.

Now I was silly enough to start getting interested when I read this next bit, since men in the UK are so far behind women with parental leave, and way behind most other countries in Europe. Then I kept reading 🙁

…Revolutionise parents’ rights by increasing paid maternity leave from nine to 12 months, doubling paternity leave to four weeks.

Yup. You read it right. Men getting one twelfth of women’s leave is Labour’s concept of ‘equality’.

Create a safer society for women.

You know that men are far less safe in society than women are, don’t you? Do you suppose the Labour Party know? Of course they know: they get the same statistical data from the ministries that we do. They just don’t care about the male half of the voters.

…ensure women’s refuges receive the long-term sustainable funding they need.

Did you know there is not a single place for a male victim of domestic abuse in the whole of Britain’s capital? Not one. There’s only a few in the rest of the country. Women’s refuges are having to get by on only £1400 per person/week : tough, eh? Men’s refuges don’t even get as much as the increase in salary of the CEO of the women’s refuge business (yes, it’s a business; the charity side is just there for more money). Read that bit again if you’re not gobsmacked: all men’s shelters in Britain do not even get as much in a year as last year’s increase in one person’s salary at the top of one of the women’s refuge businesses.

And men’s refuges don’t get any more from Labour. That’s someone’s idea of equality. It’s nobody’s idea of caring about men and boys in need.

In the UK, old folk get a state pension. The age at which men have been able to get this has been 5 years older than women, for over forty years since equal pay legislation came into force. Men weren’t allowed to be paid more but couldn’t get a pension for five years longer. Men’s pension age is now increasing, as is women’s.

…a generation of women born in the 1950s have had their pension age changed without fair notification.

No mention of the men who were born in the 1950s and who also had their pension age changed on the same notice (a mere fifteen years). Just pandering to women. No care about men at all.

And I probably shouldn’t but I’ll have a political dig at Labour, since they are being so nasty to half the country:

The Conservatives have repeatedly raised the state pension age…

It was a Labour government that first instituted a planned rise in the state pension age.

Misogyny and violence against women and girls will become hate crimes.

But misandry and violence against men and boys is apparently fine. Just adding to the amount of legislation that specifically favours females.

The biggest problem with this sort of apartheid is not that it protects half the population but that, in doing so, it sets up a situation where that half can be nasty to the other half, knowing that retaliation would be illegal. We all want to protect women and girls: it’s in our natures. But not at the cost of further fracturing society and the relationship between the sexes.

When Labour wins, the nurse wins, the pensioner wins, the student wins, the office worker wins, the engineer wins. We all win.

The nurse wins if they are female: nobody has ever suggested quotas to help more men into nursing, a heavily female workforce. The pensioner who is female wins. Men, who have been missing out all their lives, will miss out more. Only the female student wins: there is no promise to sort out the anti-male discrimination in education, from primary school to university. Only female office workers win, with twelve months maternity leave and protection from being fired for being a parent: another titbit missing for fathers. Only the female engineer wins, since despite there being more women in STEMM now than men, there are only special efforts to get yet more women into these fields (where half of them will leave within 20 years). We all win .. so long as we are female.

It’s time for real change – for the many, not the few.

We agree that the UK needs to change. The problem is that women and girls are 52% of Britain and they — the many — get things while the few — the men and boys — get kicked in the guts. Again.

If you are male, or love males, or love the idea of genuine equality, you should not be voting for a political party with a manifesto like this.