Delaney was 19 when she wrote her greatest work, A Taste
of Honey. Todd respects and even admires Delaney. She describes Delaney as being
one of the first writers to show that women "had minds and desires of
their own… She develops this point
further by saying, "more than a decade before the Women's Liberation
Movement emerged in Britain", her work "challenged the assumption
that women found fulfilment in marriage and motherhood". They "openly
longed for a taste of honey, craving love, creativity, adventure and escape".
Like the former Communist Party historian E. P Thompson,
Todd would like to rescue people from the condescension of history, and she
does precisely that with Delaney. Delaney, it is true, does need to have all
the dead dogs cleared from on top of her. The book is extensively researched,
and Todd was given access to what little papers were left to her daughter by Delaney.
Delaney was a complex figure, and despite writing some
very good stuff, she found writing difficult, a point echoed by the director Lindsay
Anderson, who said, "She finds it difficult to turn the stuff out".
Delaney was part of a generation of working-class writers
that had to fight every inch of the way to get recognition and reach a wider
audience. On a personal note, I and probably a lot of my generation were influenced
by the books of Delaney and other authors Like Alan Sillitoe, who wrote among
other books Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning, Late Night on Watling Street by Bill Naughton, The ballad of a Sad Café
by Carson McCullers[1]. However, last but not
least, A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow. These books were on the list of every Comprehensive
school's English class when I was growing up. I shudder to think what is on
there now.
Like I said in the opening to this review, Todd is a very
good historian and is a very good writer. I have no qualms over her portrayal
of Delaney. But Todd has an agenda and presents a distinct perspective on Delaney.
As Simon Lee put it, "Todd is particularly invested
in repositioning Delaney as a paragon of feminism, specifically the second-wave
feminism of the 1970s. But the question remains: to what degree is this
authentic to Delaney? Todd's repositioning assumes an authoritative stance
because of its biographical form. As a result, Tastes of Honey makes a strong
claim about its subject, but the book's relative success or failure can be
gauged by how well Delaney supports that claim".[2]
Todd's feminist agenda has been emboldened by the new Me
too movement that originated in the United States and is now a Global Phenomena.
As David Walsh points out the "The ostensible aim of this ongoing movement
is to combat sexual harassment and assault, i.e., to bring about some measure
of social progress. However, the repressive, regressive means resorted
to—including unsubstantiated and often anonymous denunciations and sustained
attacks on the presumption of innocence and due process—give the lie to the
campaign's "progressive" claims. Such methods are the hallmark of an
anti-democratic, authoritarian movement, and one, moreover, that deliberately
seeks to divert attention from social inequality, attacks on the working class,
the threat of war and the other great social and political issues of the day".[3]
While it is important to rescue figures like Delaney,
whose work is still relevant and tackles issues still with us today, trying to
portray Delaney as a feminist icon has more to do with Todd's politics than
Delaney's actual legacy or politics.
As Lee again writes, "Todd herself has become
somewhat of a lightning rod of controversy as one of the more prominent figures
of "gender critical" feminism — otherwise known as "Trans
Exclusionary Radical Feminists," a movement that sprang from 1970s
second-wave feminist politics".[4]
In the section entitled policy and politics on her
website,[5] Todd
outlines her political views. She writes, "If we are to create an
alternative to dog-eat-dog capitalism, then we can only do so collectively
through socialism. I have written for
the Guardian and other media on the need for comprehensive, non-selective, free
education for everyone, at whatever stage of their lives. I am also a feminist
who believes that sex and gender are different. I believe that boys and girls
should be able to do exactly what they want to do and do not have an innate
gendered identity, based on my historical research, which shows that as
expectations of boys' and girls' behaviours change, so do their actions and
ambitions. There is no innate 'feeling' that defines womanhood, as some
organisations such as Stonewall suggest. My research leads me to believe that women
are and have been treated as different and inferior to men on the basis of our
biological sex and our potential and actual role as mothers. As such, sex needs
to be taken very seriously in understanding the discrimination women face. I also believe in the right to evidence-based
debate about women's rights. As such, I am proud to be involved in the women's
rights group Woman's Place UK".
Todd's socialism is, at best, a watered-down form of
reformism. At worst, her support for a feminist solution to female working-class
emancipation, no doubt how sincere, will lead to the pitting of female workers
against their male counterparts. She does not believe in revolution, and she is
certainly against a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism which is the only way
female emancipation will come about.
As the great Rosa Luxemburg said, "Women's suffrage
is the goal. But the mass movement to bring it about is not a job for women
alone, but is a common class concern for women and men of the proletariat".[6]
[1] See My Autobiography of
Carson McCullers – 29 April 2021-by Jenn Shapland
[2] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-progenitor-of-second-wave-feminism-on-selina-todds-tastes-of-honey/
[3] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/19/year-o19.html
[4] https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-progenitor-of-second-wave-feminism-on-selina-todds-tastes-of-honey/
[5] https://selinatodd.com/
[6] https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1912/05/12.htm
