Dawn Butler talks about her inspirational memoir A Purposeful Life: What I’ve Learned About Breaking Barriers and Inspiring Change to Birkbeck students.
The blurby bit
Politics Week Events 23rd-29th June 2023
In-conversation with Dawn Butler MP – A Joint Psychosocial and British Politics Centre Event: 23/06/23 6pm In-person and Online
As part of our Politics Week celebrations, this is an in-conversation event with Dawn Butler MP, followed by drinks reception.
Dawn Butler has been Labour MP for Brent Central since 2015 and was the first elected Black female government minister in the UK. In opposition, her posts have included Shadow Minister (Equalities Office) and Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities between 2017 and 2020. You can find out more about her career here https://members.parliament.uk/member/1489/career
Chairs/discussants: Dr Jan Etienne (Psychosocial studies) and Dr Ben Worthy (Politics)
This was a bit of a weird one
Announced just four days prior to the event taking place, Dawn Butler, most famous for saying (in terf society at least) that babies are born without a sex and that ninety percent of giraffes are gay, was being platformed by the British Politics Centre at Birkbeck University. As a long time subscriber to its newsletter, the normal lead up is several weeks in advance, especially if it’s a biggish name. Therefore I suspect the approach was made by Butler herself, in a rush, in a bid to promote her soporific-sounding memoir.
The host of the event, Dr Ben Worthy, introduced Dawn Butler, flagging her most notable achievement the time she was suspended from Parliament for calling Boris Johnson a liar. Butler claimed she had to ‘go into hiding’ after the incident happened, which really just meant hanging around the Members canteen for a couple of hours (tee-hee).
Playing the race card
Butler is known to play the race card whenever and wherever she can, and the opportunity to do so now was not passed up, regaling us with the story that she was once mistaken of being a cleaner in 2006 (normally domestic staff wear uniforms, so that seems a bit of a stretch) and was able to reveal to us that a fellow MP of colour only the week before had been told that they had to wear their staff pass at all times when inside the Members dining room. This was, of course, racist and not a security breach. Butler giggled and said: ‘As if someone’s gonna sneak in and get some food,’ clearly forgetting the murders of Jo Cox, David Ames and whatever death threats she clearly hasn’t received in the past.
She also claimed that people often mistook her office manager, James (a white man), for being the MP when they turned up to events together, though anything is possible these days, I suppose?
Route into Parliament
Prior to being an MP Butler had worked for the GMB Union and also for the Greater London Authority under Ken Livingstone and felt every single Parliamentarian should have had a ‘proper job’ prior to being elected. A dig at Jeremy Corbyn perhaps? She seems to have purged him from her Twitter timeline in more recent times.
Butler felt that ‘Parliament wasn’t designed for anything other than privileged young men’. Of course such utterances went entirely uncontested and she never explained why she thought this. She claimed that ‘people like Jacob Rees Mogg’ saw her as an ‘inconvenience’. Butler said that Parliament had gotten more ‘autocratic’ (?).
As a proud trade unionist, she thought prior to going into the House of Commons that she would find that everybody there would want to be there trying to make life better. It was a shock to see how self-serving it was, for example, the Coronavirus Act was passed, which meant that the government could do whatever they wanted! Butler was indeed one of 24 who voted against the Corona Virus Act, yet did vote for the third lockdown. Doh!
Butler wanted us to know how corrupt this Government was, citing the scandals over how money was allocated in the pandemic to companies connected to ministers. She referred to it as the Government ‘stealing money’ but didn’t give a single solid example. (Later Dr Worthy cited the My Little Crony site but no one seemed able to articulate exact details.)
On top of the Government stealing money, it then stopped people protesting. Butler finished by finally putting on a tinfoil hat on to tell us that the Government was trying to stop ‘millions’ of people from voting by introducing voter ID and that the Government believes that people without ID wouldn’t vote Tory. It was an attempt to destroy democracy and ‘our way of life’, said Butler.
How have you survived in politics? Do you have any tips to pass onto your younger self?
Butler regaled us with the tale of when she called Boris Johnson a liar in the House of Commons. A quite undramatic moment as it turns out, made when the House was almost empty. She wasn’t even berated by the actual Speaker, rather a stand-in.
She made the decision to call Johnson a liar because she had tried everything to call him out, outside of the House but to no avail. Plus there were some MPs who tried to influence a judge over another MP accused of sexual abuse and their punishment for trying to influence the judge was only a one day suspension. Butler didn’t say who these MPs were, but presumably this is the case she was referring to. It was because of that case that she decided to call ‘Boris a liar’. Everyone dropped her, she claims, because she had broken Parliamentary rules. Except for the people who secretly congratulated her by text, including some Tories. Butler had to go into hiding for a good few hours. In the Members’ Canteen.
Butler knowledgeably informed us that you’re not allowed to call anybody a liar, because they were Honourable Members, unless the front benches tabled that motion. As a backbencher she wasn’t able to do that.
She also claimed that laws were passed on a ‘nod and a wink’ because there was no written Constitution. Not only that, but in the past Parliament only used to sit in the evenings and there were no windows in the House of Commons, which meant that the place had just been designed for old lawyerly blokes, who went there after they had finished their lawyering during the day. And Boris Johnson had tested the very core of our democracy.
Which politician, living or dead, do you most admire?
Butler admires those who break convention and change things. People like Sojourner Truth, who was enslaved but found her freedom. She also admires the suffragettes who didn’t quite fit the mould and hadn’t made it into the history books, i.e. not the married middle class women who managed to secure the votes for themselves prior to working class men gaining the vote, but the ones who moved things forward for everyone (i.e. the intersectional ones, who would’ve included trans women had they existed back then).
Of modern politicians that Butler admires, AOC was the only one she could think of, who she described as having ‘grit and determination’ (AOC recently courted controversy when she faked having her hands cuffed on arrest at an abortion rights protest).
In other words, Butler has not one colleague in the Labour Party, past or present, who has had a significant impact on her politics. I suppose it might be a bit much to expect her go moist about Starmer, a lawyer’s lawyer if ever there was one, but with an election coming up you’d think she might try and get just a little bit excited? Dr Worthy commented that when he had asked the same question of John McDonnell, McDonnell had named Harold Wilson, but Butler remained unmoved.
If you could let voters know one thing about politics or how the system works, what one thing would you tell them?
Butler would let people know that Prime Minister Questions wasn’t real politics but just theatre (as if anyone thought any different). She felt it was on Parliamentary committees that there was good cross party politics being done.
Why did it come down to you to call Boris Johnson a liar?
Finally Butler admitted the thing that really annoys her about Boris Johnson was that he comes from a privileged background. Even now he had been ‘kicked out of Parliament’, (he actually resigned though admittedly didn’t have many options) he had a column in the Daily Mail and was probably being ‘paid two hundred thousand or whatever’. So, straightforward jealousy then?
Butler claimed that Suella Braverman ‘lies about numbers all the time’ and was allowed to ‘lie and walk off’. Yet again, Butler didn’t explain what lies these might be but offered it as further proof that our ‘democracy is rigged’.
Question and Answer session
Why did you say babies were born without a sex?
Butler claimed that when she made her comment that babies were born without a sex she had corrected herself at the time and referred to ‘anti-trans’ campaigners being on the side of the far right. The interview clip below proves that the interview was wrapped up without Butler correcting herself, but let’s be generous and say she misremembered.
Would proportional representation resolve the cynicism people have in politics and politicians?
Butler, a beneficiary of the first past the post system (as all MPs in safe seats are), really was very keen to have ‘a discussion’ about PR. She said that the current Government was proof that first past the post didn’t always deliver a stable government but PR could allow in extremist elements. She also felt it was important that MPs have a constituency.
Do you work with other black MPs as a caucus to advance black interests? The Conservatives are outrageously racist, so most probably wouldn’t vote them, but on the other hand the Labour Party takes the black vote for granted. Will Labour push for reparations for the black community?
Two part question from Birkbeck lecturer
Butler had tried to set up a black caucus in Parliament but claimed someone tried to shut it down before it was even started. She also claimed she had approached Kemi Badenoch shortly after she had been elected and said that Badenoch ‘honestly looked like she was about to die’ (so much for Butler’s commitment to inspiring change, eh?). But she does work with a Conservative MP called Helen a little bit. Black Conservatives weren’t interested in being part of a caucus, so there was no opportunity for cross party working there.
Butler said the Labour manifesto did include something about restorations and felt that it was vital and important. She was a big believer in restorative justice and said now that young people were learning about history and everything, it was becoming important to them too.
She didn’t mention them but she is a member of the following All-Party Parliamentary Groups: Afrikan Reparations (sic), Black Maternal Health, Jamaica and Sickle Cell, which is a fair number of black-interest groups. I suppose it is more convenient for her to create the impression that Westminster suppresses such issues.
Should the victims of the Windrush scandal be compensated in full as soon as possible?
Question from another Birkbeck lecturer
Celebrations for the Windrush generation had been held that week but there was still a lack of respect, she said. The compensation scheme was offering very small sums of money (she quoted 65K, which sounds a lot to me) and that many had lost the opportunity to pass on their homes to their children, etc.
Butler described Suella Braverman as being ‘dead behind the eyes’ when she passes her in the corridor at Westminster and couldn’t be trusted to deal with the issue compassionately. ‘She shouldn’t even be a Minister anyway, because-’ said Butler sheepishly.
What is your opinion on the lack of legal routes into the UK for asylum seekers?
All the talk about ‘stopping the boats’ could be solved if there were safe and legal routes. Butler felt that we had ‘bent over backwards’ for the people of Ukraine but other asylum seekers were treated less favourably (conveniently forgetting a similar scheme for Syrian refugees a few years earlier).
The LGBTQIA+ community’s interests appear to have surpassed women’s rights and other minority rights and the focus is on that over more pressing rights – what are your views on this?
Butler appeared to have misunderstood the question, saying that the Government was planning to fight the next election on the culture wars, particularly trans issues, and this would be used to distract people from more pressing issues. It was too easy for them to pick on the most marginalised groups. We needed to unite and make a safer world for everybody.
Where do you see Britain heading with Brexit still not being resolved?
Butler blamed the rises in food prices and energy on Brexit, despite the rest of Europe experiencing the same and again urged us not to trust the Government.
Is democracy really dead?
Butler repeated that the Government couldn’t be trusted on anything but admitted that there were people on both sides of the House who were committed to democracy and that it was important to keep hope alive. Also, we must remember that there are ‘more of us, than there are of them‘ and if we united we could get fairness and equality for the majority (though didn’t address why, if the numbers were so straightforward, that Labour kept failing to form a government).
You stepped down from shadow cabinet when Article 50 was triggered. What is going on with Brexit?
Butler stuck right in on answering this vague question, saying it was ‘shocking’ that the European Union Referendum Bill (which she voted for, as did the majority of MPs) was passed without ensuring that an ‘outright majority’ was needed. She blamed UKIP, rather than herself and her colleagues, for voting through the terms and conditions on which the referendum was finally held. She regarded Brexit as Trumpism and sneered down her nose at fisherman who had voted for it.
What do you think the Labour Party has to do to win the next election?
Butler thought that Labour didn’t need to do too much, since the Tories were tearing themselves apart and the SNP was imploding (no mention of why that was).
What will Labour do in its first 100 days in government?
The Labour Party would need to set out its stall. It would also inherit a mess from the Tories, ‘if we’re lucky enough to get into power’, contradicting herself from a few moments earlier. It was really good when you get into power that you know what you’re going to do with that power. As of yet though, Butler clearly had no idea what direction Labour was moving in as she wasn’t able to elucidate one single policy. She belatedly remembered that there were five pledges, but not what they were, and sounded like she wasn’t arsed about it either, joking that they needed to be more memorable. To think she could have been Deputy Prime Minister.
Does the media drive too many issues which aren’t about peoples’ real lives?
Yes, and not only that but media was now so fragmented and 24 hour news had weakened the quality of the journalism. Butler recommended Byline Times as a good source of independent journalism (which is currently running a deranged smear campaign against Dan Wootton and has trans activist Helen Belcher as a regular columnist).
In light of the expansion of Section 60, do you think we should train our young people to know their rights if they get stopped and searched by the police?
Section 60 was ‘extremely discriminatory’, but, yet again, Butler did not explain why she believed this. Young people should know their rights. In fact, there was a white woman who was helping young black kids to know their rights so the police arrested and strip searched her. The woman sued the police. The police were racist and misogynistic.
Will the Labour government end the hostile environment for asylum seekers?
Butler hoped so. She also felt that the Home Office was too big and had never functioned well, even under the previous Labour government. However, the hostile environment had gotten worse under the Tories. Previously people only had to show photos of themselves in their school uniforms and that was evidence enough for an asylum claim.
What to make of Dawn Butler then?
A longstanding MP who turns up to a gig for her own memoir totally unprepared to answer even the most simplest of questions. The political hero question is just standard but it was as if she’d never even considered it before – god knows what the book is like. Despite her inability to say anything really concrete, or illustrate any of her arguments, she was so relaxed she was practically on the floor. She had no fear that the Birkbeck academic staff might push her on anything either, which was entirely predictable.
Butler has a very generous repeat donator to her cause, one Anthony Watson, chief executive of the Bank of London and previous board member of GLAAD (a US-based LGBTQ advocacy group which focuses on media). According to Tweeps who have looked into the records, Butler has received a total of £46,700 from Watson so far, certainly his most recent donation was £5,000.
The Bank of London recently started running its own LGBTQ junket – the Rainbow Awards-, in which Stonewall won The GSK Charity of the Year in 2023. Butler is also close to that other junket junkie, Linda ‘Ripper’ Riley, whose Global Diversity Awards has now perished – see here for the Private Eye article which explains her complicated tax arrangements.
Both Riley and Watson have both benefited from giving advice on LGBT issues direct to Labour via Butler, having been made members of its LGBTQ Advisory Panel in 2018. I guess it isn’t just the Tories who can’t be trusted.
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