Cancel culture and gender ideology in the Green Party

This is an extraordinary story of how an ordinary Green Party member was cancelled and suspended over alleged transphobia and anti-semitism in 2021 - for trying to assert women’s and children’s rights in a party that has been captured by gender identity ideologues.

My story is not unprecedented. The trouble has been brewing since at least 2016 (as I outline in Gender identity politics in the Green Party below).

My cancellation started in January 2021 when my 'gender critical' Green Space discussion page was abruptly deleted by the party’s chief exec. This was followed in February by complaints against me that led to a ‘no-fault suspension’ (NFS) for 'transphobia' and 'anti-semitism'.

That, gentle readers, is the short read. Please allow me to introduce myself and recount this sorry tale.

My local Green Party

I joined the Green Party in Colchester in about 2006. Colchester Green Party has about 150 members of whom about ten per cent are fairly active campaigners. I was the election agent. We focused on typical bread-and-butter green issues: air pollution in the town centre, recycling, and arguing the green case in planning applications. In 2019 we got Mark Goacher elected as the first-ever Green on Colchester Borough Council.

The national Green Party

The party has over 50,000 members, a turnover of £2 million a year, a score of paid staff at its London headquarters, telegenic leaders, one MP, the sainted Caroline Lucas, and lots of local councillors. (At May 2022, the tally was 447 seats on 141 councils.)

I was confident that the party was in safe hands and that the supreme decision-maker - Conference - was taking important decisions with care and integrity and a truly one-member-one-vote democracy that was the envy of other parties. 

In practice, local party members are generally too busy on local issues to get involved at the national level. Attendance at Conference is dismally low, usually about 500 members (one per cent of total membership). This means that a determined, well-organised faction can control the conference agenda and capture important central committees. This is what the gender ideologists have been doing since at least 2016, when the ‘transwomen are women’ motion was passed.

I knew there was controversy about the gender issue, but I reckoned it was a minor issue that would soon be resolved. 

I was more attuned to it than most: I had a close family acquaintance with a gender non-conforming teenager. So I commented from a ‘gender critical’ point of view.  

My Green Space about Keira Bell and GIDS

Any Green Party member can set up a discussion page on the party’s internal forum, known as Green Spaces, on virtually any topic. But the gender critical Greens had not so far set one up. I did so in autumn 2020 and mainly posted about the case of Keira Bell versus the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), which in December 2020 effectively (if briefly) stopped the NHS from prescribing puberty blocking drugs to under-18s.

I was labelled 'transphobic'. 

I persisted anyway, asking why weren’t Greens speaking out about this? Normally, we are wary of untested, new technology and we are naturally opposed to consumerism. I argued that Greens, of all people, should understand how corporate, consumer capitalism constantly strives to find new markets for economic growth and profit; medical interventions for unhappy, trans-identified children were the latest in a long line of fraudulent promises that there is a new product that will finally make you live happily ever after.

I urged fellow Greens to “follow the money”. This was what had guided the journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal in 1972, which toppled President Nixon. It now guides Jennifer Bilek, whose blog at www.the11thhourblog.com focuses on medical interventions for transgender people and the profits to be made from creating a market for lifelong, costly hormone treatment and for sex-change surgeries on physically healthy individuals. It is a lucrative new market that was almost non-existent last century.

George Soros - an anti-semitic trope?

When I quoted Bilek’s blogpost at how-lgbt-nonprofits-and-their-billionaire-patrons-are-reshaping-the-world on my Gender Critical Green Space, I was asked why I had included mention of George Soros: I was advised that this was an ‘anti-semitic trope’, that is a slur, canard or myth. But it is a glib and lazy trick to say that any mention of George Soros constitutes an ‘anti-semitic trope’. Anti-semitism is despicable, which is why the accusation of anti-semitism is often used nowadays as an easy way to vilify opponents. This happened in the Labour Party to Jeremy Corbyn in 2020.   

I reject the accusation of anti-semitism. I merely repeated Bilek’s statement that George Soros and his Open Society Foundation have been funding gender ideology. This happens to be true: Michael Biggs, Professor of Sociology at Oxford University, corroborates this at 4thwavenow … open-society-foundations-the-transgender-movement. I think it is fair to question why prominent, wealthy philanthropists, whatever their gender or race, are funding gender ideology.

Deletion of my Gender Critical Green Space

Now, I don’t know why my Gender Critical Green Space was deleted - abruptly and without warning - on 27 January 2021 by the party’s chief exec, Mary Clegg. I suspect that my mention of George Soros had something to do with it. All I was told was that my page had been 

“removed for numerous breaches of the Code of Conduct. This is in response to notifications from other users of Green Spaces.” 

But, as my page was deleted without trace, it’s impossible now to judge what the breaches of the Code of Conduct were, nor who had complained. Very convenient.

‘No-fault suspension’ complaint by anon LGBTIQA+ Green

On 24 February 2021 I was put on ‘no-fault suspension’(NFS), which has now lasted nearly two years and continues to prevent me having any dealings with the party at local, regional and national level.

NFS is reserved for the most serious complaints - the ones where there is “an immediate risk to the party or to bodies or individuals unless suspension is activated” according to Standing Orders for Party Discipline, para 3.2. 

The NFS decision is taken by the Green Party Regional Council (GPRC), whose meetings every three months have continually renewed my NFS without ever looking at the defence I submitted as soon as it was imposed. (This is normal GPRC practice: only the case for the prosecution is made out, never the defence.)

This is a breach of the rules of natural justice (and the Human Rights Act 1998, Article 6, right to a fair trial), which require a body which is carrying out a judicial role (GPRC in this case) to listen to both sides before passing judgment. 

No-fault suspension cannot be imposed in a vacuum. It normally has to be harnessed to a complaint of a breach of the party’s code of conduct. Mine was imposed for a complaint by an anonymous member on behalf of LGBTIQA+ Greens. 

Anonymous complaints are allowed but only under Standing Orders for Party Discipline, para 3.7, which states: “The name of the complainant should be disclosed to the respondent unless the complainant has requested anonymity, with reasons. The Referral group shall consider and determine any request for anonymity.”

The Complaints Form provided no reasons for anonymity. Para 3.7 adds that: “On request from the respondent, the Referral Group shall review a complainant's anonymity.” When I asked them to, they reviewed the case and upheld the complainant's anonymity. (Since then, maybe due to misaddressed emails or some other bureaucratic bungle, the Complaints Manager has revealed to me the complainant's identity!)

Complaints of breach of code of conduct

Two complaints were made against me in the same week in February 2021 and, as explained above, the NFS was imposed for the first one, which alleged transphobia and anti-semitism. It was supported by six screenshots: two retweets and four posts in Green Spaces. The latter were part of the internal members-only website, so could not conceivably have been bringing the party into disrepute with outsiders. 

As for Twitter, one of my retweets was #thestanilandquestion, which is where @helenstaniland asks: “Do you believe that male-sexed people should have the right to undress and shower in a communal changing room with teenage girls?” 

The other was of a statement that Sian Berry supports the erasure of sex as a protected characteristic. Well, I think she does. In a pluralist party, it should be fine to say so, and to disagree with the leaders. After all, the party’s Code of Conduct at para 8.1 states that: “Members’ right to freedom of thought, conscience and belief should be respected.”

The second complaint was filed by Richard Firth of Leeds Green Party. He is someone who knows the complaints system well. He is both a serial complainant and someone who has been disciplined for his own breaches of the code of conduct. In 2020 he was suspended for a year after he posted about ‘petrifying some terfs’ and how he would ‘rather be a pervert than a terf' - see www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3872388-Richard-Firth-suspended-from-Green-Party. The suspension was lifted in January 2021, allegedly on a technicality, before the year was up. This was just in time for him to make a complaint about me!

In November 2021 an ‘investigator’ was appointed to look into the first complaint. Thom Robinson (DC Member, North East region) interviewed me on or about Friday 18 February 2022 via Zoom. That was already a year after the NFS started. Unfortunately, Robinson has been on extended sick leave ever since and has never filed his investigation report, without which the case cannot proceed.

I complained that justice delayed is justice denied and eventually, in summer 2022, the complaints manager assured me that an alternative investigator would be appointed. But as at January 2023, none has been.

The second complaint was heard on 28 May 2022. I was too stressed to attend. In my absence I was given a slap on the wrist - about the lowest level of sanction available. The disposal of the second complaint does not lift my NFS, because the NFS is attached to the first complaint.

Gender identity politics in the Green Party

In my view, the divisive discourse on gender identity politics is the most urgent issue in the Green Party today. It needs to be resolved before we can move forward with our mission to mitigate the ecological and environmental crisis and tackle other issues of social justice. Otherwise, there will be more suspensions and expulsions, not to mention the departure of members who have had enough. Here are some examples.

Olivia Palmer (2018)

Olivia Palmer was expelled for alleged ‘transphobic abuse’ directed at Munroe Bergdorf, a male-to-constructed-female, on Channel 4’s Genderquake programme in May 2018: see her blog at perspicats…genderquake-debate-fiasco-and-the-mccarthyism-that-followed. 

Andy Healey (2019)

Andy Healey was suspended for alleged transphobia (from 2019 to 2021) in relation to safeguarding.

Dee Searle and Bea Campbell (2020)

The two critiques that I read in 2020 that still stand out as prescient and accurate were the resignations of Dee Searle (July 2020, ‘Can the Green Party be Saved from its Leadership Clique?’) and BeaCampbell, whose July 2020 blog describes bullying, authoritarianism and narcissism among the gender ideology activists.

Dom Armstrong (2021)

Early in 2021, Dom Armstrong, the only Green Party councillor ever elected in Washington/ Sunderland, resigned over the issue.

GPEW co-leaders, Jonathan Bartley and Siân Berry (2021)

In summer 2021, in a move that was, in my view, caused by their concerns about toxic gender ideology in the party, both co-leaders resigned. Jonathan Bartley, co-leader for five years, resigned on 5 July.  On 14 July, Siân Berry, his joint co-leader, resigned and gave as a reason an “inconsistency” between the party’s promises and actions on trans rights.

Court cases vs GPEW

As at January 2023, three party members are taking the Green Party to court.

·        Shahrar Ali, former Deputy Leader, is “challenging an unlawful discriminatory and oppressive campaign” to remove him as the Green Party Spokesperson for Policing and Domestic Safety. Since 2018, he has been subjected to abuse and harassment for expressing gender critical views and trying to seek rational consensus about matters of sex and gender identity. See: Worthy of Respect in A Political Party.

·        Emma Bateman, who was co-chair of Green Party Women, and would be still, but for yet another No-Fault Suspension, is “challenging the Green Party to stand up for sense, science and our sex based rights.” See: The Green Party must respect our sex!

·        Dawn Furness “devoted 8 years to a political party that expelled [her] after whistleblowing on safeguarding & Women's sex-based rights” and is taking the Green Party to court for institutional sexism, and discrimination on the grounds of sex and on the basis of my Gender Critical beliefs. See Institutional Sexism in the Green Party

Conclusion

Since waking up in 2020 to how the national Green Party has been captured by gender identity politics, I have joined the gender critical side: we believe we are speaking up for (what we perceive as) truth and women’s and children’s rights. 

On the other side are the gender ideologists, also arguing for their perceived truth, which is unconditional acceptance for everyone who identifies as 'LGBTIQA+'. (This is an evolving acronym that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer/questioning, asexual and more; the plus sign denotes many other terms such as non-binary and pansexual.)

I’ve realised that most Greens (and most of the general public) fall into a third category: people who are well-meaning but bewildered and don’t want to upset anyone by using the wrong pronouns. Most Greens don’t know that gender ideology continues to tear the party apart. Some Greens know but ignore it because it is too toxic. They ought to know better.

I don’t know who will prevail, but it seems that there is growing public awareness of how authoritarian and malicious the trans activists are: whatever examples I could give here would doubtless soon be superseded by yet more egregious events, so instead I’ll refer gentle readers to gendercriticalwoman.blog and grahamlinehan.substack and juliebindel.substack for more details.

Finally, I want to stress that nothing in what I have said is about ‘transphobia’, defined as hating or fearing transgender men or women as individuals. My problem is with the ideology, not the people. The slur that gender-critical people like me are transphobic is rather like saying that people who criticise the Pope’s cover-up of paedophile priests must hate all Catholics, or like saying that people who criticise Israel over Palestine must be full of hatred of all Jews.

Please let me know - in the comments below - if you support my case to lift the suspension and reject the complaints against me.

PS. 23 Feb 2023. 

Re being cancelled from your favourite political party, here is Heather Brunskell-Evans' sorry tale of losing her position as a Spokeswoman for the Women’s Equality Party’s (WEP) policy on Violence Against Women and Girls due to her alleged “prejudice against the transgender community” (which sounds like WEP-speak for what the Green Party calls "transphobia"):

As a result of my views expressed on the Moral Maze Radio 4 on November 15th, 2017 complaints were made by one or more party members, and I became the subject of a 3-month investigation. The Executive Committee upheld the complaints and on February 20th, 2018 my elected position was taken from me.

Read on at www.heather-brunskell-evans.co.uk/body-politics/open-letter.