Beatrix Campbell - Political Development

Political Development

Campbell joined the Communist Party of Great Britain around the time it was turning itself from a bulwark of trade union officialdom towards a more feminist and multi-culturalist programme. She joined a reform faction founded by university lecturer Bill Warren in 1970 and was one of the 'Gramscians' who "took leading positions in the party" when she joined the National Women's Advisory Committee. She worked as a sub-editor on the Morning Star newspaper, with critics noting she received state subsidised holidays to Communist East Germany during this time and praised the country.

At that time, Campbell excused the party membership's identification with Stalinist oppression in Eastern Europe: "… in the main it is a solidly working class part of the Party which is called Stalinist … only by virtue of the fact that they thought the CIA was about to take over Czechoslovakia and it was therefore politically correct that the Russians moved in." However, Campbell did use the label 'Stalinist' as a negative, but what she meant by 'Stalinist' was those elements in the Communist Party who criticised the line put forward by its leadership. So she condemned the "Stalinists in the party who have actually realised a position which is a very comprehensive criticism of where the leadership is going".

In 1977 Campbell defended the Communist Party's revolutionary credentials: "There is no way it is legitimate to say that the party isn’t revolutionary... the defeats, the comings and goings doesn’t make it an organisation that sells out the masses."

In 1984 Campbell suggested that rising unemployment would lead to the criminalisation of young men: "the form of boys' masculinity constitutes them as folk devils, a 'danger to society' ... they generate a kind of moral panic ... symbolised by the social nuisance of big bad boys who bite social workers". Seven years later, though, Campbell lost her critical distance on the criminalisation of young men reporting rioting in Blackbird Leys: "The riots of 1991 were driven not by pain but by pride, the vanity of fragile masculinity... Some of the 'bad boys' have just made some crap estates even worse."

As Campbell's distaste for the mob intensified, her attitude to the forces of law and order softened. Her sympathetic interview with Derbyshire Chief Constable John Newing was titled 'A Fair Cop'.

In September 2008, she applied for membership of the Women's National Commission, a government quango set up to speak on behalf of UK women, and was successful.

In July 2009, writing for The Guardian she wrote in support of surveillance of the public and vetting of authors before allowing them to present to children in schools.

In October 2009, she was announced as the Green Party of England and Wales Parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn stating "We put at the absolute centre of our policies, the sustainability of social relationships and the need for a fundamentally fair society. We stand for social justice, respect and equality between the genders and the generations. And we don’t think that slicing public services to ribbons can be the way forward for British society."