Debates about the status of feminism and gender within British left politics are longstanding. However, they have recently taken on renewed significance in the context of a resurgent feminist movement, as well as a number of controversies concerning left-wing responses to sexual violence (in relation to, among others, Julian Assange, Dominique Strauss Kahn and the British Socialist Workers’ Party). Against this backdrop, the paper offers an analysis of varying forms of support for, and resistance to, feminism in various strands of British Marxism and socialism. The paper’s argument has four main parts. In the first instance, I argue that there has been a recent resurgence of interest in, and discourse about, feminism in much of the British left, reflecting a widespread aspiration (particularly amongst younger activists) to cultivate more “feminist friendly” left spaces and practices. This, to some extent, calls into question recent claims that feminism and left politics have, in an age of neoliberalism, parted company. Secondly, however, we contend that this new found interest in feminism functions primarily at the level of spoken and written discourse, and becomes less easy to locate when one examines the concrete practices of the contemporary left. Third, these absences or ambivalences in part reflect continued resistance to, and unease about, feminism across much of the British socialist left. And finally, we argue that cleavages between broadly pro-feminist and anti-feminist positions constitute a central line of debate about what it means to be “on the left” in contemporary Britain.
