Gorilla Dicks Are Absolutely Tiny. The Reason Why Is Fascinating

We knew all that chest beating was just overcompensating for something.

Dr. Katie Spalding

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Freelance Writer

EditedbyFrancesca Benson

"Laugh, i dare you".

Gorillas talk a big game, what with all their chest thumping and basically continuous farting. But there’s one very specific, very human metric by which they come up humiliatingly short – literally. That’s right: it’s dic

Your basic silverback gorilla, whether Eastern or Western, will be up to 1.8 meters tall and 200 kilograms in weight. For Americans, that’s the equivalent of a 5.9-foot-tall, 441-pound dude, built of so much pure muscle that it can lift more than 800 kilos (1,763 pounds, or around two grand pianos) without breaking a sweat.

“It's hard to measure how strong a gorilla really is, but estimates range from around 4x – 10x stronger than your average human,” notes BBC Wildlife Magazine’s Gorilla Guide. “A silverback gorilla's strength is certainly formidable. All gorillas can tear down banana trees without trying too hard, they've escaped from cages by bending the iron bars, and they have a bite force of around 1300 psi [9 MPa], double that of a lion.”

It’s all very intimidating, and seemingly at odds with another fun gorilla fact that you may not be aware of: that gorillas, as mighty as they are, have the smallest penises in the entire ape family. In fact, it’s the smallest relative to body size of any mammal.

Now, we’re all about equal opportunity dick sizes here at IFLScience, but the miniature nature of the gorilla phallus really is noteworthy. At around 3 centimeters (1.1 inches) long, it’s shorter than the average for a newborn baby in humans, and far smaller than the cut-off for a human micro-penis.

Not only are they the least well-endowed of the family in terms of the, uh, length of their equipment, but they’re also pretty lacking in the ball department too. Their testes are small, their sperm count is low, and even those little swimmers they do shoot out are pretty poor at their actual job: “gorilla sperm [has] extremely low mitochondrial function[...] slow swimming speed and weak swimming force,” explained one study, published earlier this year in the journal eLife. 

“Gorillas also have […] a large proportion of immotile and morphologically abnormal sperm,” the authors continued. “Gorilla sperm also bind the egg’s zona pellucida more weakly than other species.”

In fact, so baked-in to the gorilla genome are these underwhelming features that they could now helping our own species to multiply. In that same study, researchers were able to match up certain genes in gorillas with their equivalent in humans, finding that many were markedly enriched in men with low-to-no sperm counts. 

Basically, gorillas are nature’s one-shot argument against “big dick energy” having anything to do with actual physiology – and a big “suck it, idiots” to the entire manosphere crowd. 

Which is great and all, but it does make us wonder: why?

Why are gorilla penises so tiny?

It may strike you as odd that a silverback gorilla – literally the hugest, most powerful, most literally “alpha” primate there is – would have such minute genitalia. As counterintuitive as it may seem, though, the two facts are actually intrinsically linked: “the male gorilla’s huge stature is in fact the reason why he has such a small penis,” explained Suzanne Harvey, now Head of Schools, Impact, and National Partnerships at the Royal Institution, in a 2012 article for UCL.

Why? It’s simple, really: gorilla societies are both strictly hierarchical and almost always polygynous – that is, there is a single dominant male, and he has sole mating rights with all the females in the group. Basically, their genitals are small because they have no need to be big: “when competition between males occurs through physical aggression, an alpha male may fight off rivals and control his own mating success without the need for sperm competition,” Harvey wrote. “Other physically smaller males have little access to females in the group.” 

Compare gorillas to their big-balled chimpanzee cousins, and the picture becomes even clearer. Chimps, unlike gorillas, “live in large multi-male, multi-female groups, where females are able to mate with many males,” Harvey explained. “Sperm can live for up to four days after ejaculation, and consequently when females mate with two males in close succession, sperm from two males can be in direct competition.”

If you’re a male chimp hoping to spurt your DNA into the next generation, then, it’s in your best interest to produce powerful, efficient sperm – and lots of it. The result: a pair of massive testes, more than a third the weight of the chimp’s brain – humans’ come in at less than three percent, for comparison – capable of producing vast amounts of sperm, many times a day.

And yes, we know exactly what you’re thinking…

How do humans measure up?

So, on the scale from “gorilla” to “chimp”, where do humans come? Well, weirdly, it’s kind of a paradox.

“Humans have a much longer and wider penis than the other great apes,” wrote Mark Maslin, a professor of Palaeoclimatology at UCL (a hotspot for this area of research, apparently), in a 2017 article for The Conversation. However, "our testicles are rather small […] and produce a relatively small amount of sperm.”

Other mating characteristics are equally mismatched in our species. While the human penis may be big, Maslin noted, it’s also “extremely dull – it does not have lumps, ridges, flanges, kinks or any other exciting feature that other primates have.” 

That’s not just empty negging: in primates, a boring dick usually a sign that a species is monogamous – and it’s therefore strange to find on humans, Maslin explained. “[It] clashes with the fact that men are significantly larger than women,” he wrote, since that “suggests our evolutionary background involved a significant degree of polygynous, rather than exclusively monogamous, mating.”

There have been many attempts to reconcile these two competing impressions of our species – perhaps men are bigger than women to help protect our laughably pathetic offspring; maybe the supposedly “dull” human penis has a secret weapon in its coronal ridge. But in the end, Maslin suggests, trying to explain humans’ weird genitalia through the lens of wider great ape biology may be the wrong tactic entirely.

“If we view the evolution of monogamy mating systems in humans through the lens of human society it is clear that it takes a huge amount of social effort to maintain and protect more than one mate at a time,” he wrote. “It is only when males have access to additional resources and power that they can protect multiple females, usually by ensuring other males protect them.”

Basically, he explained, it takes a lot of resources and prestige to be able to take on multiple partners as a human – so the solution for most on an individual level has become to simply not. Monogamy becomes culturally endorsed, save for a select few who can afford – or get away with – supporting more.

In other words, Maslin concluded, “in complex human societies the largest and most important sexual organ is the brain.” While gorillas may beat their chests to prove their dominance, male humans might flaunt their cash or wit or good looks; whereas chimps must rely on buckets of spunk to further their family, humans tend to couple up long-term based on personal or social factors.

“Somewhere in our evolutionary past how smart and social we are became the major control on our access to sexual partners,” Maslin wrote. “Not how big or fancy a male’s penis is.”

When Do Kids Start Playing Pretend?

It’s complicated.

By Elena Renken
September 18, 2024


When a kid imitates a cat, or pretends to fly a rocket ship through space, they’re doing something that’s pretty complex: acting as though one thing is actually something else. Learning to pretend is a critical skill and an important stage in a child’s development.

But new research suggests that pretend play comes in many distinct varieties that emerge at different ages. Elena Hoicka, a professor of education at the University of Bristol, divided play types into 18 different categories—such as pretending one object is another and having an imaginary friend—and then surveyed about 900 parents of kids aged 4 months to just under 4 years old (47 months) about when they noticed their kids engaging in these behaviors.

Hoicka wanted to know, do certain kinds of play emerge as we learn specific skills, such as representation, language, cultural knowledge, and socialization? Earlier theorists had suggested that children’s play may reflect their increasing ability to manipulate symbols, for instance. First, they might represent situations that are closely aligned with reality—such as pretending to sleep. Then they could move on to ones that treat inanimate objects as animate—pretending that a doll is sleeping. Older children would be able to make more abstract representations, such as imagining one object is another—a frisbee as a spaceship zooming through the cosmos. But most investigations of these hypotheses had been done in the lab, which can be cumbersome, and typically only addressed a fraction of the variety of play types.

Hoicka says her study was meant, in part, to provide a look at how children play in a natural environment, and to gather large-scale data on a comprehensive number of play types for the first time. Her analysis found that, by 13 months, half of kids will pretend with empty objects; by 15 months, they will pretend with their own bodies: to sleep, or sneeze, or be an animal. By 17 months, they move onto object substitution—the frisbee as a spaceship.

More complex pretend play, the kind that relies on advanced language skills, tends to start later. By the age of 2, she found, most kids will make up elaborate stories with characters and drama, and by the age of 3, they will begin to engage in complete make believe, inventing things that do not exist in the real world, such as Pegasus men who can fly. Hoicka also found that children may begin pretending as early as 4 months, whereas earlier studies suggested pretending does not begin until 8 months of age.

Hoicka began the play-age project nine years ago, before she had her own children and watched them start to pretend. “I can categorize what they’re doing as they go,” she says. Hoicka’s 2-year-old likes pretending with dolls, for example, and her 5-year-old makes up real-world scenarios, like inventing a pretend store with pretend money.

“It’s a really nicely done study,” says Thalia Goldstein, who studies kids’ social and emotional development at George Mason University. She likes that the survey traced the development of so many different “fine-grained” pretend play behaviors. Researchers only began to take the study of child play behavior seriously during the 1950s and ’60s, Goldstein says. Ensuing decades of research have linked pretend play to creativity, social skills, emotional control, and imagining others’ thoughts, among other abilities.

Around age 9 or 10, kids typically let go of pretend play, says Sandra Russ, who researches play therapy at Case Western Reserve University. But the element of fantasy often reappears in hobbies like writing, art, and other creative pursuits, which extend into adulthood.

Hoicka wants her findings to help scientists answer questions about whether pretending actually helps us learn certain skills. One school of thought holds that it is a precursor to understanding that others can have different thoughts, or theory of mind, Hoicka says. Holding two ideas in your head—like that a plate can also be a hat!—could serve as practice for taking on different perspectives. Perhaps imagining another outcome, or different characters, could train that muscle in young kids.

 

Long-term outcomes good for face transplant recipients, study finds

by Ernie Mundell

There have been 50 face transplants performed in 11 countries since the surgery was pioneered back in 2005, and long-term outcomes have been favorable, a new review finds.

In total, 85% of people receiving these complex surgeries survived five years, and 74% were still alive a decade after transplant completion, researchers report.

When the numbers focused on deaths linked to transplants per se, five- and ten-year survival rose to 96% and 83%, respectively.

That's significantly better than survival for other types of transplant, said the team of Finnish researchers. For example, at 10 years post-surgery, survival for liver transplants reaches 61% and for heart transplants the number is 65%, they noted.

"The first 50 face transplants in the world during a period of 18 years demonstrate a promising survival rate of the grafts, exceeding several solid organ transplants," concluded a team led by Dr. Pauliina Homsy, from the department of plastic surgery at the University of Helsinki.

Her team published their report Sept. 18 in the journal JAMA Surgery.

Homsy's team collected data on all 50 face transplants conducted in 48 patients, carried out at 18 centers in 11 countries. Two of the patients required a second transplant, which in each case proved successful, the researchers noted.

Nineteen patients were operated on in North America (18 in the United States), 29 in Europe, 1 in China and 1 in Russia, the review found.

Most (81%) of patients were male. In 58% of cases, some kind of injury/trauma resulted in disfigurement that necessitated the face transplant. Burns were the cause of another 22% of face transplants.

In 52% of cases, a full-face transplant was required and in 48% the transplant restored only a part of the face.

As with every transplant, the body's immune system can attack the new tissue, and patients often must take anti-rejection medicines long-term.

Among the six face transplants deemed to have failed (over an average of about nine years of follow-up), immune system rejection was to blame in four cases.

Homsy's team stressed that there has been a lack of research into other outcomes. Those outcomes include how well the new face might function over time; whether there are long-term risks for illness (such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer) and the mental health implications of navigating the world with a new face.

Drs. Kristen Stephen and Scott Hollenbeck, plastic surgeons at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, wrote an editorial accompanying the new review. They note that the world's first face transplant was performed in 2005 in France, after a 46-year-old woman living in Lyon was severely injured in a dog attack.

Surgeons "re-established" her nose and mouth, which had been lost in the attack, and the patient went on to recover. She died in 2016 from lung cancer.

"The Lyon patient's remarkable recovery showcased the potential for restoring both form and function through such transplants," the experts said.

Face transplants have only gained in sophistication since then, Stephen and Hollenbeck noted.

"Most of these patients initially sustained a catastrophic trauma and have exhausted traditional reconstructive options," they wrote. "As this specialty has evolved, more patients have received bone constructs and larger skin surfaces within their transplants."

Indeed, there's been a kind of "global learning curve for face transplant," they say, with survival improving across all centers where these delicate operations are performed.

But the two experts also point to one barrier: the cost of these very expensive surgeries and their follow-up. They note that after a peak in facial transplants in 2011-2014, their numbers have dropped.

"In an era of value-based care and cost containment, starting or maintaining" programs that include face transplants is a challenge for many hospitals, Stephen and Hollenbeck concluded.

More information: Find out more about face transplants at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Pauliina Homsy et al, An Update on the Survival of the First 50 Face Transplants Worldwide, JAMA Surgery (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamasurg.2024.3748

Journal information: 

JAMA Surgery 

2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Many think the internet has become a cesspool — How do we fix it?


By The Conversation
Research led by Marc Cheong and Wonsun Shin, University of Melbourne
Sep 18, 2024

(Credit: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock)

When it comes to our experience of the internet, “the times, they are a-changin’”, as Bob Dylan would say. You can’t quite recall how, but the internet certainly feels different these days.

To some, it is “less fun and less informative” than it used to be. To others, online searches are made up of “cookie cutter” pages that drown out useful information and are saturated with scams, spam, and content generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

Your social media feeds are full of eye-catching, provocative, hyper-targeted, or anger-inducing content, from bizarre AI-generated imagery to robot-like comments. You’re lucky if your video feeds are not solely made up of exhortations to “subscribe”.

How did we get here? And can we claw our way back?

Commercial interests rule

One major factor contributing to the current state of the internet is its over-commercialization: financial motives drive much of the content. This has arguably led to the prevalence of sensationalism, prioritizing virality over information quality.

Covert and deceptive advertising is widespread, blurring the line between commercial and non-commercial content to attract more attention and engagement.

Another driving force is the dominance of tech giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon. They reach billions worldwide and wield immense power over the content we consume.

Their platforms use advanced tracking technologies and opaque algorithms to generate hyper-targeted media content powered by extensive user data. This creates filter bubbles, where users are exposed to limited content that reinforces their existing beliefs and biases, and echo chambers, where other viewpoints are actively discredited.

Bad actors like cybercriminals and scammers have been an enduring problem online. However, evolving technology like generative AI has further empowered them, enabling them to create highly realistic fake images, deepfake videos and voice cloning.

AI’s ability to automate content creation has also flooded the internet with low-quality, misleading, and harmful material at an unprecedented scale.

In sum, the accelerated commercialization of the internet, the dominance of media tech giants, and the presence of bad actors have infiltrated content on the Internet. The rise of AI further intensifies this, making the internet more chaotic than ever.

Some of the ‘good’ internet remains

So, what was the “good internet” some of us long for with nostalgia?

At the outset, the internet was meant to be a free egalitarian space people were meant to “surf” and “browse”. Knowledge was meant to be shared: sites such as Wikipedia and The Internet Archive are continuing bastions of knowledge.

Before the advent of filter bubbles, the internet was a creative playground where people explored different ideas, discussed varying perspectives, and collaborated with individuals from “outgroups” – those outside their social circles who may hold opposing views.

Early social media platforms were built on the ethos of reconnecting with long-lost classmates and family members. Many of us have community groups, acquaintances and family we reach out to via the internet. The “connection” aspect of the internet remains as important as ever – as we all saw during the COVID pandemic.

What else do we want to preserve? Privacy. A New Yorker cartoon joke in 1993 stated that “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. Now everyone – especially advertisers – wants to know who you are. To quote the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, one of the tenets of privacy is “to be able to control who can see or use information about you”.

At the very least, we want to control what big tech knows about us, especially if they could stand to profit from it.

Can we ever go back?

We can’t control “a changin’” times, but we can keep as much of the good parts as we can.

For starters, we can vote with our feet. Users can enact change and bring awareness to problems on existing platforms. In recent times, we have seen this with the exodus of users from X (formerly Twitter) to other platforms, and the platform-wide protest against Reddit for changing its third-party data access policies.

However, voting with our feet is only possible when there’s competition. In the case of X, various other platforms – from Mastodon to Threads to Bluesky – enable users to pick one that aligns with their preferences, values and social circles. Search engines have alternatives, too, such as DuckDuckGo or Ecosia.

But competition can only be created by moving to decentralized systems and removing monopolies. This actually happened in the early days of the internet during the 1990s “browser wars”, when Microsoft was eventually accused of illegally monopolizing the web browser market in a landmark court case.

As users of technology, all of us must remain vigilant about threats to our privacy and knowledge. With cheap and ubiquitous generative AI, misleading content and scams are more realistic as ever.

We must exercise healthy scepticism and ensure those most at risk from online threats – such as children and older people – are educated about potential harms.

Remember, the internet is not optimized for your best interests. It’s up to you to decide how much power you give to the tech giants who are fueling theirs.


Marc Cheong is a senior lecturer of Information Systems in the School of Computing and Information Systems and an honorary senior fellow at Melbourne Law School at The University of Melbourne, and Wonsun Shin is an associate professor in Media and Communications at The University of Melbourne.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

UK

Richard Burgon: Party leadership needs to ‘listen to members’ on two-child cap and winter fuel

James Moules    

22nd September, 2024

© David Woolfall/CC BY 3.0

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Left wing MP Richard Burgon has said the Labour Party leadership needs to “listen to the party members” on issues including the two-child cap, the winter fuel allowance and Gaza.

Speaking before a Campaign for Labour Party Democracy fringe event at this year’s Labour Party Conference, the Leeds East MP acknowledged the government had made a “positive start” on issues including workers’ rights, renters’ rights and railway nationalisation while urging against a return to austerity.

Burgon lost the Labour whip in July along with six other MPs after voting in favour of an SNP-tabled King’s Speech amendment urging the two-child benefit limit to be abolished.

He said: “If you look through our history, whenever the leadership in government or in opposition, has got it wrong, if it listened to the party members, perhaps it wouldn’t have.

“Whether that be on Iraq, whether it be on PFI, whether it be on that 75 pence increase in the pension, whether it be – I’m afraid – of the two-child limit, whether it be – I’m afraid – on the winter fuel allowance, whether it be taking so long to support a ceasefire in Gaza.”

The two-child cap and winter fuel allowance have been topics of heated debate since the party’s return to government this summer – with votes on both issues seeing both open rebellion and quieter disgruntlement in the Labour ranks.

READ MORE: ‘People didn’t vote for doom and gloom’: USDAW’s Paddy Lillis on winter fuel, two-child cap and the PM outdoing Attlee

Keir Starmer has indicated previously he is open to scrapping the two-child benefit limit – a policy which critics say pushes families into poverty – but  Rachel Reeves has also warned there would be no “unfunded” pledge to remove it.

The Prime Minister has defended means-testing the winter fuel allowance as a necessary “unpopular” measure to deal with the fiscal black hole, despite concerns over its impact on poorer pensioners.

Burgon added: “I don’t want to see the party take the choice to continue the failed economic orthodoxy of the last 14 years, or indeed the failed economic orthodoxy that’s ruled the roost since 1979. We must make sure that we don’t pursue a policy of austerity.

“Austerity is always a political choice, not an economic necessity, especially in this one of the richest economies on Earth, and that’s why I was one of the MPs who voted against the cut to winter fuel allowance, because pensioners in my constituency asked me to vote that way.”

The other six MPs who lost the whip in July alongside Burgon were Apsana Begum, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell and Zarah Sultana – with their position set to be reviewed six months later.

Inside America’s prisons: latter-day slavery

 

SEPTEMBER 22, 2024

Mike Phipps reviews Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery, by Andrew Ross, Tommaso Bardelli, And Aiyuba Thomas, published by OR Books.

In February 2016, President Obama signed a bill that banned goods made by certain prisoners and other workers who toil under conditions of forced labour overseas – but not in the US, which holds 20% of the world’s prison population.

Later that year on September 9th, as if in response, the biggest prison strike ever broke out, in large part as a protest against domestic “prison slavery.”  Masterminded by the Free Alabama Movement, it was observed in 24 states. An estimated 57,000 prisoners participated in as many as 46 facilities. 

Alabama

Alabama is worthy of special mention: conditions in its prisons, where the death rate is four times the national average, are arguably the worst in the country. The state is facing a Department of Justice lawsuit over the “violent, cruel and unconstitutional” condition of its prisons. Typically two hundred men might sleep in one dormitory, where fights, stabbings, rats and cockroaches are a daily fact of life. The general lawlessness is exacerbated by the shortage of guards. Serious malpractices include parole being systematically denied, inhumanely long sentences for nonviolent offences and widespread sexual abuse. In this particular state, it was difficult for the authors to find any evidence that “meaningful work” was even a consideration in the administration of the state’s prisons.

The authors explore Alabama’s history of ‘convict leasing’ – forced penal labour that effectively substituted for slavery after the Civil War, which laid the basis for the levels of inhumane treatment today. As possibly the worst state in terms of its treatment of prisoners by just about every yardstick, there is a lot about Alabama in this book.

Across the US, forced labour continues as before, and wages have not budged.  Men and women still face punishment, including beatings, lockdowns, sexual assault, loss of family visitation rights, elimination of good time credit, and solitary confinement for refusing to work.

Mass incarceration

Mass incarceration in the US began with the Rockefeller Drug Laws (mandating 15 year minimum terms for the possession of four ounces of narcotics—the same as for second-degree murder) two years after Governor Rockefeller had drowned the Attica prison uprising in a bloody massacre. Soon tough-on-crime policies would be rolled out nationally.

At the height of mass incarceration, more than two million people had effectively been pulled out of the labour market and incapacitated, while most of them were doing work that would generate a great deal of income if performed by free-world workers.  In any other context, this would be classified as wage theft on a grand scale. According to one national estimate, the disparity between the local minimum wage and the penny wages paid in prison amounts to $14 billion annually.

Conditions of work

Donna Fairchild, a native Texan who worked as a manager in a manufacturing plant before she was incarcerated, describes in the book what it meant to be assigned to work in the fields:   

“We worked year round, during the coldest and the hottest. There was one time we were harvesting cabbage in February and some rows were even flooded and it was 31 degrees [Fahrenheit, so below zero C… Everyone was wet from the knees down, and I remember thinking that they don’t really care what happens to me. I felt like I could have died and they would not have cared.”

Meanwhile in the summer, there is no air-conditioning in most of the prisons, and a dozen or more fatalities were attributed to the heatwaves of 2023.   Outside in the fields, conditions can be much worse:

“We were out there in 104 degrees weather… We were made to pull weeds down a row, and the ground would be hard and dry from the sun. And we would have to stand up and bend over at the waist to pick weeds, because you weren’t allowed to squat. If we were picking corn, and you’ve missed an ear of corn, or stand up for too long, that’s a disciplinary case too– it’s a refusal to work. You get an incomplete work assignment, and you go to disciplinary court inside of prison. Punishments for one infraction can range from no phone calls home for 30 days or no outside rec. For three refusals to work, I lost my contact visits for four months, 45 days of no commissary purchases or rec.”

The pressure to keep going comes from other inmates, fearful of being singled out by the guards. It leads to fights among prisoners, which the guards often encourage. As in true slave labour, violence is used to drive productivity. Prisoners report being made to move huge boulders from the bottom to the top of a hill – then back again. Some would deliberately injure themselves – badly – to escape these torments.

During the pandemic, prisoners were making hand sanitizer – which they were not allowed to use themselves. The hazardous nature of prison labour under ‘normal’ circumstances means inmates are forced to handle toxic materials, not regulated by federal occupational safety standards – fumes from which also impact on the health of guards.

Other prisoners are pressurised to sacrifice health and safety to make quotas to earn a little more. Rarely does work done in prison lead to a job in the outside world on release.

A labour movement issue

Prison work is a labour movement issue too. It undercuts outside rates of pay and allows companies to make vast profits. In the past, strong unions opposed some forms of prison work. Today, in a world of privatised prisons and precarious jobs outside, that’s more difficult, with companies using prison work as a union-busting tactic.

Hourly pay in many prisons varies from 15 to 65 cents, the same as it was 30 years ago. Exiting prison with little more than a bus ticket and $40, means ex-prisoners go straight back to the ‘street’, with harmful consequences for their own safety and that of the general public.

Even getting a symbolic change in the law to abolish this latter-day slavery is an uphill battle against lawmakers who are scared of looking ‘soft on crime’. Yet, as with the restoration of ex-prisoners’ voting rights, there have been some significant victories  – including in Alabama. That’s thanks in no small part to the prisoners’ rights movement and the use of strike action by prison labourers, notwithstanding the fierce repression meted out to its organisers.

Quite a lot of this book is about that movement. It’s a story that needs to be shared widely, not least because it displays the underlying humanity of the prisoners, despite all the efforts the system makes to brutalise them. It’s also a significant contribution to the contemporary debate on prison abolitionism.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

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Palestine – What Should the UK Government Do?

18th September 2024Leave a Commenton Palestine – What Should the UK Government Do?

“An arms embargo, leading to a total cessation of the two-way arms trade – and military and intelligence co-operation – with Israel, would be a seismic shift in Israel’s global standing.”

Hugh Lanning, Labour & Palestine, outlines the actions we must now demand from the Labour Government.

Israel’s reputation is in tatters Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has highlighted to millions the significance of the decades-long struggle for Palestinian rights and statehood, and has also put the issue at centre stage for the new Labour Government.

Through its actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and its continual refusal to take heed of the United Nations (UN), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and many other calls for a ceasefire, Israel has totally isolated itself internationally, including amongst many former supporters. Apparently, this is even stretching the patience of Joe Biden – although not enough to result in any meaningful action or pressure. All in all, Israel has torn to shreds its much-cultivated image as the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East. And, nearly a year later, any pretence at ‘self-defence’ has long since passed.

An issue that matters to voters

Meanwhile the UK has been increasingly isolated – under the Tory Government, and now Labour. Despite latter-day statements in favour of a ceasefire from Labour’s front-bench, these came far too late to assuage the anger of the millions who were watching the carnage on their televisions. Not only did Keir Starmer and David Lammy not speak up for Palestine, but at times they even endorsed Israel’s murderous actions.

Both the local elections and the General Election (GE) showed that Palestine is a significant political issue for many voters. Not just the Muslim population, not just the hundreds of thousands demonstrating, but for the millions of young, old, progressive, trade union, and many other voters who would normally be expected to have voted Labour.

This impact has seen Labour spokespeople admitting the need to rebuild confidence with those alienated by the Party’s stance on Palestine and the ceasefire. And during the GE campaign Keir Starmer even briefed the press on his willingness to recognise a Palestinian state at some indeterminate point in the future, a belated and inadequate fig leaf, and an insult to the tens of thousands of innocent people who’ve died.

The litmus test for Labour’s ethical foreign policy

So what should supporters of Palestine now demand from the Labour Government?

Our impressive mass and longstanding movement for Palestine must demand a change of UK Government policy. The UK must become a public advocate of Palestinian freedom from Israeli oppression and occupation. And we must follow the lead of Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others in immediately recognising a Palestinian state, in line with the overwhelming vote of the UN General Assembly.

Israel is now a rogue nation out of control, and recognition of Palestine must be coupled with action to bring it within the framework of international law. Words are not enough – as has been demonstrated by Israel’s contemptuous response to the rulings of the ICJ and International Criminal Court (ICC), based on its continuing belief in its impunity.

Words are not enough

It is its military might that gives Israel its arrogance, but it is also its Achilles heel. The UK is not its largest arms dealer – the US has that tainted honour – but an arms embargo, leading to a total cessation of the two-way arms trade and military and intelligence co-operation with Israel, would be a seismic shift in Israel’s global standing, coming as it would from the country largely responsible for the creation of the modern Israeli state.

UK funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has now been restored, but there are many others demands that can and should be made: withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, plus the reconstruction and independent development of Gaza are all just a start, with Palestinian self-determination the objective.

It is only actions such as the destruction of the Wall, the removal of settlements and settlers, the end of the military occupation and, critically, giving Palestinians back their land together with a return to the internationally-recognised borders of 1967 that a just peace and self-determination can be secured.

These huge steps would also represent a dramatic shift in both Labour and the UK’s policy and practice.

The new Government is an opportunity we must not waste to get Labour to reset its ethical, moral, and political stance on Palestine. It is not an issue that will go away. If Labour fails this challenge, a whole generation of people – not just those on marches, in encampments, or organising local protests – are not going to go away or forget.

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• Hugh Lanning is Co-founder of Labour & Palestine – follow on X here and Facebook here
• LIVERPOOL EVENT: Palestine – What should the new UK Government do? Central Liverpool venue. Saturday September 21st, 16.30. Register here. With the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK: H.E Husam Zomlot. Plus: Richard Burgon MP, Kim Johnson MP, John McDonnell MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, Hugh Lanning (Labour & Palestine), Fraser McGuire (‘Arise’), Jess Barnard (Labour NEC member), Maryam Eslamdoust (TSSA General Secretary), Mick Whelan (ASLEF General Secretary) & Matt Wrack.(FBU General Secretary).
• You can add you name to the petition calling for the new Government to impose an arms embargo on Israel here.
• This article was originally published in CLPD’s Campaign Briefing Newsletter. Read it in full here.
• You can also read Labour Outlook’s 2024 Autumn Conference bulletin here.

 UK

Starmer aims to preserve the status quo – prepare for battles ahead, Martin Cavanagh, PCS

18th September 2024Leave a Commenton Starmer aims to preserve the status quo – prepare for battles ahead, Martin Cavanagh, PCS

“Now is the time for us to keep on the front foot, and demand of a Labour Government the decent pay, jobs, rights, and public services we deserve.”

By Martin Cavanagh, PCS President

If there was any thought that the challenges our movement faced under fourteen years of Tory rule would disappear under Starmer’s Labour government, last week exposed the reality.  

As we headed to Brighton for the annual TUC Congress, many observers were speaking of a “mixed bag” so far from the new administration.  

Their promise to repeal the anti-union laws of 2016, remove the Minimum Service Levels legislation, and to bury the Rwanda Deportation Plan, of course are to be welcomed. And following on from their election manifesto pledge to introduce the greatest package of improvements to workers’ rights since the 1970’s, you can see why it is tempting for some to declare the dawning of a new age of industrial relations. 

This impression was further enhanced with the Chancellor’s early announcements about public sector pay and her willingness to “settle industrial disputes” to kick start the economy. 

Many of us, however, were not fooled and were right to be cautious. If anyone had followed Starmer’s political career and seen the witch-hunt of socialists within the party under his leadership, it was obvious what to expect from him in leading government; decision after decision aimed at preserving the status quo, protecting big business and the political elite, and doubling down on those he sees as a threat. 

This new administration has not only refused to lift the reviled Two Child Benefit Cap, which overnight would help over half a million vulnerable children, but the Prime Minister had also set about making an example of those “rebels” who dared vote against the whip.  

This, allied with Labour’s abhorrent refusal to demand a complete ban on arms sales to Israel, were to be expected.  

However, despite these obvious warning signs, many Trade Union delegates headed to Brighton last week with a sense of hope and optimism. While it is true that the PM delivered a positive narrative on the New Deal for Workers and repealing the 2016 anti-trade union laws, in the space of just a few days, we also saw the harsh reality we face as a movement.  

The breaking news going into the week was the scandalous decision made to remove the Winter Fuel Payments for all pensioners not in receipt of Pension Credit, and the attempt to brush it off as just one of a number of “tough decisions” the government would have to make. 

The PM then delivered the most uninspiring of addresses to Congress itself. The first Premier in 14 years to address TUC Congress should have been a big deal. It should have seen a rousing ovation from delegates, similar to that given to Jeremy Corbyn in 2017, instead nearly half the delegates remained seated and there was no tangible buzz of anticipation.  

In addressing a fringe last Tuesday evening, I said I had been “underwhelmed”, to be kind. Just a week on, I find myself prepared for the battles ahead our movement will inevitably face. 

While the word austerity was not used by the PM, the warnings he gave, “tough decisions”, future pay awards being “shaped” by those decisions, and the threat of things getting “worse before they get better”, are a precursor to austerity. They also tell us that once again a Labour Government will squander the opportunity they have been given to deliver genuine change for the working class of this country. 

Economic growth, the new Government’s stated number one priority, cannot be achieved by suppressing workers wages and impoverishing millions of pensioners and benefit claimants. 

If this wasn’t depressing enough, we have seen all too vividly in recent months what can happen when our communities lose faith, and hope of a better society. As the economy stagnates, and further cuts are made to services to our most vulnerable, the far-right will gladly seek to fill the void, not just on the streets but politically, through Reform; the Party of the far-tight who has found its way into the House of Commons. 

This summer has seen racists, Islamophobes, and fascists emboldened more than at any time in years. Our movement has responded yet again, it has to be said with varying degrees of success, to try and quell the politics of hate. The reality, however, is that with the gloomy forecast given by the PM, far-right rhetoric will again be spread amongst the poorest in our communities and our job of educating the disenfranchised remains as urgent as ever.  

The immediate task has to be one of mass mobilisation. Both at the Reform Party Conference in Birmingham later this week, and on the 26th October, to counter the Tommy Robinson led demonstration in London. 

My union, PCS, has a proud record of not only campaigning for and defending our members interests, but also for looking outwards and standing up for the most vulnerable. 

It is why we campaign for a fairer social security system and tax justice, while at the same time being prepared to challenge the government of the day on issues such as immigration and asylum. I am immensely proud of the role our union played alongside others in defeating both the Channel Push Back Policy and the Rwanda Deportation Plan, and the formulation of our Safe Passage Policy which we will continue to pursue politically. 

Equally, I and other PCS activists, have been honoured to stand on platforms in front of hundreds of thousands of people, demanding an end to the genocide and an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Palestine. We have called for an end to all arms sales to Israel, and for the illegal occupation of Palestine to cease. Our voices will continue to be heard loudly as we seek an end to the killing of innocent children, women, and men, and our members will not be silenced. 

We in the movement had every right to hope for better following the demise of the Tories’ 14-year assault on our class. But the struggle remains.  

Now is the time for us to keep on the front foot, and demand of a Labour Government the decent pay, jobs, rights, and public services we deserve. If unions and other activists co-ordinate our campaigns, we can show this Government that we will hold them to account every bit as much as we did the Conservatives.  

Workers, the unemployed, the sick and disabled, our pensioners and children, asylum seekers, and the oppressed across the globe, also have every right to expect better from a Labour Government than we had from the Tories. It is still our role to fight for that, and I know we can build the biggest coalition yet and rise to the challenge. 

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• Martin Cavanagh is President of the PCS union. Follow Martin on x/Twitter and follow the PCS on Facebook, x/Twitter and Instagram.
• If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.