Following on from my post his morning about the show of solidarity with trans people planned for this lunchtime, this is how it went.
The event was attended by women and equalities spokesperson Christine Jardine MP, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton, Baroness Sal Brinton and former leader Jo Swinson as well as hundreds of Conference goers.
Adrian Hyyryylainen-Trett has some more fabulous photos on Twitter:
Great to be outside #LibDemConf with the longest #trans & #nonbinary banner with hundreds of delegates firmly stating our party support for #Transrights – well done @CharleyHasted @LGBTLD @caronmlindsay @SalBrinton @chalmersdavidn @cajardineMP pic.twitter.com/YLRtfylmne
— A.Hyyrylainen-Trett (They/Them) (@Juvelad) September 15, 2024
The event was reported in Pink News and LGBT+ Chair and LDV editorial team member Charley Hasted is quoted:
Hasted said that the demonstration was designed to demonstrate their support for trans people, particularly in the context of widespread anti-trans rhetoric across the UK, and that LGBT+ Lib Dems would use it as a jumping off point to campaign for “reform and guidance on the law on protected beliefs”.
They continued: “This isn’t just about trans people- there are thousands of protected beliefs including veganism, Scottish independence, anarchism and so on. If a charity, trade union or political party can’t include or exclude people based on their beliefs then how do we maintain the existence of those organisations?”
They continued: “This isn’t just about trans people- there are thousands of protected beliefs including veganism, Scottish independence, anarchism and so on. If a charity, trade union or political party can’t include or exclude people based on their beliefs then how do we maintain the existence of those organisations?”
“It’s our job to take the gesture and use it make a real difference. We have to do better. All of us,” they added.
It’s important to say that this was a display of solidarity for trans rights, but the people who were there also fight for women’s rights, racial equality and rights for disabled people. We all stand side by side and fight for each other’s rights. That’s how it should be. We don’t try and divide and rule.
At the Federal Board report session today, Party President Mark Pack was asked about the decision to allow the anti trans group to have a stall by another friend of LDV, Leon Duveen. This is his response:
Thank you for the question Leon, and thank you to FCC for accepting this as a late question as I know it is an issue on people’s minds at this conference and I share many of the frustrations – of your frustrations – about it.
The context for this question is that FCC decided to decline a stall to a group of party members who are not an official party body and who strongly oppose some of the party’s stances. However, the party’s legal advice, including from a specialist in discrimination law and considering the points raised at FCC in favour of the decision, was that this would be illegal and we would, at great cost, lose any resulting court case.
To simplify the legal situation greatly, the issue is that we are required to be consistent in how we handle views that are protected under equality law with how we handle other views.
I find it personally very frustrating that the law does not give us greater scope to make political judgements over what we want to have happen at our events, but alas the law is not as we would wish.
So we could choose, for example, to ban any stand at conference which in any way disagreed with party policy – but that would require us to ban stalls such as those from Young Liberals to name just one group that sometimes disagrees with the party’s leadership and indeed has done so with some success!
We really don’t want to go there.
And I know that people, including on FCC, have therefore hoped that instead we could think about concepts such as values rather than policies and so find a way to distinguish between those they might wish to have here and others.
But I am afraid that the consistent legal response to those different attempts has been that it would be illegal to refuse the group that FCC wished to turn down.
As I said, I regret that – and alas therefore I think we do need to acknowledge that when the legal advice is clear, the appropriate course of action is to follow it – which is what our finance committee chair did in declining to authorise the costs of refusing the stall.
On a couple of points of detail as the question mentions the party’s official Associated Organisations. We have charged commercial rates for the stall that has prompted your question. They are not an AO and did not get the AO rates.
I am sorry that I know you – and others – find this situation unhappy. We are, though, planning to have a debate on the policy that they disagree with at our Spring Conference. I hope and expect that will give the whole party a very clear opportunity to express where the overwhelming majority view is in the party, which is our strong support for trans rights and for our trans and non binary colleagues.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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11 Comments
As a non member but Lib dem voter, I’d like to know what exactly these people running this stall have against the trans community? Is it trans people in general or certain issues they disagree with?
>”…If a charity, trade union or political party can’t include or exclude people based on their beliefs then how do we maintain the existence of those organisations?”
Well there are some who disagree with you…
Australian court rules in landmark case that asked ‘what is a woman?’
To add to the discussion about Charley Hasted’s quote: It makes sense that a political party might want to exclude someone who does not share that party’s overall philosophy. So for example, it’s quite reasonable that the LibDems might not want to allow someone to join who doesn’t at all believe in liberalism. But to my mind it’s worrying if a party wants to exclude someone who generally supports most of what that party stands for, just because that person disagrees with the party on one single issue. That kind of disagreement should be resolved by discussion, and by voting on policy etc., not by excluding people. Besides, if you don’t allow members the freedom to disagree about specific policies, then you’re never going to evolve as a party. The LibDems have long had a tradition of allowing free discussion on any topic – that’s one of our strengths.
Lib Dems are very good at disagreeing, but there are some things that are not up for debate. The way this group conducts themselves by failing to respect the identity of trans people shows that they are not interested in respectful, courteous discussion
Lib Dems are very good at disagreeing, but there are some things that are not up for debate.
Who has the authority to declare which things are, or are not, up for debate?
One thing that should be off limits in a liberal party is questioning someone’s identity. People know who they are and it is not for anyone to disrespect that
Imagine a group claiming as a “philosophical belief” that anyone born in India was Indian for life, and that even if they had lived in Britain for many years and had obtained British citizenship, they weren’t “really” British.
Imagine that group advocating that certain services and spaces must be reserved only for those born British, and that others must be given separate spaces. Separate but equal of course,
That’s not *explicitly* a racist or fascist opinion (it doesn’t explicitly mention race or skin colour for instance). But I think we’d all have no hesitation accepting that such a group was in fact bigoted and 100% opposed to Liberal Democrat core values and simply should not be given a stall at conference,
Hi Caron, are you arguing that belief in and acceptance of the concept of self-ID for gender and commitment to change existing legislation to reflect that, should be a fundamental principle and condition of membership for Lib Dems? Is this Ed Davey and others’ view?
If self-ID is ‘not up for debate’, why has the party been unable or unwilling to carry through such a policy and formally expel people who do not hold that view, rightly or wrongly?
I’m quite prepared to accept that self-ID is the consensus view of active members of the party, the issue for me is what the consensus activist group in the party can legally and morally do, and what it has the will to do, visa-vis activists and members who dissent (loudly or quietly, or are just unaware of the party’s policy on this, which humans being humans, and despite what one might think, is entirely possible).
(Also having an internal democratic consensus for a specific policy is different from a consensus to discipline those who disagree).
Response to @Mick Dyer:
I’m a member of the group in question, and we are NOT anti-trans. That is a smear that is untrue and grotesquely unfair. Here’s what we believe in a nutshell: trans people deserve all the love, support and rights that society and the law can give them…. UP TO the point where extending their rights would impinge on the rights of other groups. That is classic Liberalism. John Stuart Mill 101.
I’ve been a LibDem member for nearly 40 years, I’ve seen all the ups and downs, sacrificed so much for this party and for the principles of Liberalism. The same is true for many in the group. The way we are being treated over this by our own party is disgraceful. The fact that I can’t even mention the name of the group on this website tells you something. As does the spectacle of our party president saying how “regrettable” it is that the party has been forced to follow the law on equality and free speech. Just think about that.
I can’t mention the name of our group but if you do a bit of googling you can find it. Please do that, and take a look at our website. You’ll find what we actually believe there, and you can make your own mind up.
@tony: The name of the group: Liberal Voice for Women, a misnomer if ever there was one because most women in this party do not support this group either in principle or in the way it advances its arguments. The officially recognised women’s organisation is Liberal Democrat Women who do so much to advance the cause of women’s rights and equality in the party – putting forward motions on, for example, ending men’s violence against women and girls, period poverty and tackling inequality in pregnancy and neonatal care.
It’s not the mentioning of the name that is the problem with so many of the comments we get from the group’s members, it’s the blatant disrespect for others, the construction of clumsy sentences to avoid at all costs using the appropriate pronouns for a trans person and the like.
There seems to me to be an inherent conflict in saying that trans people should have all the love and support while at the same time advancing an agenda that would strip them of the right to be legally recognised – because they have to show that they have been living as men or women fully in order to get a Gender Recognition Certificate. What you and your colleagues in this anti trans group – and it is anti trans, that is not a smear – would make life intolerable on a daily basis for trans people. It’s bad enough for trans women, but nobody ever thinks about the impact on trans men if they were forced to use facilities on the basis of “biological sex.”
It would deny on principle healthcare to young people that may save their lives. These decisions should surely be made on an individual basis by clinicians, patients and families together, not by campaign groups on the basis of a review that is problematic, cherry-picking and widely discredited.
So “love and support” doesn’t mean much when you’re advancing a cause that would destroy their lives.
And then there’s the toxic atmosphere this group contributes to in our society, feeding into the demonisation of trans people, trying to make people afraid of a group who just want to get on with their lives in peace. This inherently makes them less safe and accepted. And it’s not only trans people who are liable to public attack – any cis woman who does not look as feminine as passing “gender criticals” would like can find themselves on the receiving end of suspicion. I have several friends who are cis women (all of whom are trans allies) who come in for abuse because people think they are trans. Most of the time they find it highly amusing, but there are times it goes too far.
There are, of course, ways to have challenging and difficult subjects. Feminist and LGBT+ organisations have been doing this for years, in mutual respect, working together to achieve equality for all. It’s funny how successful these conversations can be when they are conducted by people who don’t try to make out that trans people are inherently a threat and move to remove rights from them that don’t need to be removed in order to get a fair outcome in any given situation.
So I will make absolutely no apology for picking a side on this one. As a lifelong feminist, I will not be erased by a group that claims to be standing up for women but in fact does very little to do so that doesn’t involve advancing anti trans talking points.
I’m confused as to what rights this group thinks that giving trans people the same rights as cis people would impinge upon?
As far as I can tell, they just want the right to discriminate against trans people, segregating people based on whether they were born cis or trans for no rational reason. That seems obviously transphobic.
Generally speaking, a good way to judge whether a policy is transphobic is to apply it to gay people and see whether it would be homophobic. It would be homophobic to say, as many used to, that all lesbians and suspected lesbians should be denied access to women’s changing rooms for the safety of straight women. It’s similarly transphobic to say that trans men should be denied access to men’s changing rooms for the safety of men.
As liberals we oppose that sort of discrimination. Human rights are important to us. There is no right to discriminate, but there is a right to live as the gender you identify as, rather than having one forced upon you by other people.