Labour’s new intolerance of the pro-life cause

I didn’t want to write this piece. I supposed I always hoped that Labour would come back to its roots; back to being a broad-church drawn from diverse backgrounds and cultures united in solidarity with workers and the poor, standing up for free speech and the weakest, most vulnerable in society. But as time has passed the drumbeat of intolerance has only grown louder.

Labour used to be a party where conscience and difference were respected. A party where Jim Dobbin (of fond memory) and Harriet Harman could link arms against economic injustice while being diametrically opposed on matters of social policy. It is a sad irony that, while so many orthodoxies of the Labour tradition fell away in pursuit of electability, certain new dogmas have emerged that never had anything to do with the Labour movement. Dogmas that are policed much more ruthlessly than the principles of economic justice ever were.