Directly detrimental to the liberation of the trans community

t I want to deal with it when we come to a decade — the 1970s — when I was an adult, turning 20 in 1974, the year before Todd was born.

To Todd this was a golden decade of equality, political innovation, successful revolt, worker-student unity and so on. Over our national landscape marched and organised legions of committed change-agents. And what spurred them on? One aspect, Todd writes, was “the existence of the USSR and the eastern bloc [which] provided a highly visible reminder that capitalism wasn’t the only way to organise society”.

I was there. I was a young communist. I can assure Todd that the existence of the eastern bloc provided daily reminders that no alternative to capitalism had yet been found. But then I don’t suppose she ever met a Romanian youth delegate.

So she'd have a lot in common with John McDonnell, it seems. But her left-wing views count as nothing for the Oxford University Labour Club when it comes to the unforgivable crime of transphobia.