Reflections from Autumn Conference 2024

This Conference was a big one for us, as it was the first time we had been allowed to run an exhibition stand alongside our Lib Dem colleagues. We also ran a very successful fringe featuring three brilliant speakers, the recording of which can be viewed here. Our emergency motion about the situation of women and girls in Afghanistan made it to the ballot but was sadly not selected. We will continue to advocate for these women and girls who are facing unspeakable oppression at the hands of the Taliban.

Our fringe speakers, left to right: Helen Joyce, Almut Gadow, LVW Chair Zoe Hollowood Baroness Ludford and Laura Favaro.

The flyer we used to promote our emergency motionon Afghan women

We had applied to hold an exhibition stand at Lib Dem Conference on the same terms as other similar groups of members at almost every Conference since 2021. Having consistently denied us this for several years, the party finally agreed to let us have a stand (albeit at the commercial rate), for this year’s Autumn Conference, in Brighton.

Our application this time had initially been rejected by the Federal Conference Committee. This decision was then overturned by the party Treasurer on grounds of fiduciary duty: to continue to discriminate against our group on the basis of our belief that sex is real and consequential - protected under the Equality Act - would have presented an unacceptable financial risk to the party.

We were only told on the Tuesday evening before Conference that we would in fact be able to go ahead with our stand, leaving us 3 days' notice in which to organise materials and cover.

We think we managed to pull together a very respectable selection of merch and campaign materials: LVW lanyards, t-shirts (Liberals Debate and Can We Talk?), stickers, our book Liberals and Women’s Rights, our one-page Manifesto (For Women, Reality and Liberty) plus Manifesto sign-up sheets, a briefing on the Grainger principles (what makes a belief “worthy of respect in a democratic society”), another on women’s sports, a flyer for our fringe meeting, another for our emergency motion (on women in Afghanistan).We also had a library of books for people to browse including The Cass Review and, often a useful talking point, Rachel Rooney’s beautiful picture book for small children, My Body is Me, which was compared to terrorist propaganda by the detractors who hounded her out of her job for having published it.

Party leaders provided a backdrop to our presence from the auditorium. In the first session of Conference, Federal Conference Committee Chair Nick da Costa expressed his disappointment that FCC had been unable to prevent us from exhibiting, and reassured conference-goers that their safety was paramount. Conference-goers who found themselves too frightened by our presence to attend at all were promised a refund.

Our bustling stand in full flow on Saturday mid-morning

On Sunday afternoon, President Pack devoted around 5 minutes to explaining the background and very publicly confirming that the party had been determined to continue discriminating against us but had been unable to because we were, frustratingly for him, protected under equality law. This disappointing incident was picked up by various press outlets including here, here and here.  Nonetheless, ours was one of the most consistently visited and certainly the most well-staffed stands at Conference, with between two and six volunteers there at any one time. To give our readers a sense of the atmosphere on the stand, we have pulled together below a selection of the feedback from our volunteers in their own words:

Zoe

After a bit of a slow start to our first conference morning (‘Toby, where are the flyers?’ Judith ‘I went to the wrong entrance’) it was very exciting to see our own stand and get to work putting out flyers, displaying books and getting to know our neighbours. By mid-morning on Saturday the stand was in full flow. Some friends already known to us popped by to say hello and congratulate us. Other people came to find us after speaking to our members outside the conference venue. People wanted to talk about our emergency motion on the rights of Afghan women and girls, about our manifesto, and more generally about the discrimination and vilification we had been subjected to and the illiberalism they had witnessed emerging in the party. 

Some women came to whisper that they were fine for males who identify as trans to have their rights but they were fed up of them also demanding women’s rights. “We worked hard for those rights, I am not just going to give them up!” said one woman. Another long-time Lib Dem member told me how he had struggled with this issue. “At first, I just thought it was the next gay rights movement” he told me “but I always like to look at things from the opposite side of the debate to test the ideas and that’s when I could see there were problems.” It’s great to hear many liberals still applying rigorous scrutiny to ideas and not willing to be spoon fed what they “should” think. 

Some other stands started to put up trans flags and posters, apparently as a protest to our presence, and there was a large protest outside the venue fronted by Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP and Christine Jardine MP. This didn’t particularly bother us but caused a few people to tell us they didn’t like these symbolic attempts to bully and intimidate us and ultimately it all functioned as an advert for the fact that there is a group of women in the party standing up for single-sex services and safeguarding children. People actively came to find us as they wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. It couldn’t have worked better in the end.

It was a really encouraging experience and I look forward to speaking with more LibDem members in Harrogate.

Imogen

We had a steady stream of visitors, with many of them asking to join Liberal Voice for Women and signing our manifesto. Many were new to conference and knew little about the movement to erase the legal concept of sex and how it harms women. Some visitors wanted to know the difference between our group and the official Lib Dem women’s group, to which we were able to reply that we believe women are female and that we think this is an important fact that has consequences for policy-making. 

It was great to have the opportunity to demystify what is meant by “gender critical” beliefs, which are in fact the beliefs held by most people as they are rooted in reality. 

Anne

Being on the stand was quite a rollercoaster experience. I spoke with a lot of people. We didn't always agree with each other, but I think we developed a better understanding of our different perspectives. Overwhelmingly most people were willing to discuss things in an open and friendly manner and I welcomed the opportunity to explain why I think that sex-based rights are important and that we shouldn't just cut the word 'sex' out of the list of protected characteristics. I felt like crying when it was suggested in the Conference hall that women like me posed a physical threat to young trans people at Conference. This didn't just slander us, but also added to a climate of fear and distrust.

Toby

Toby Keynes, LVW volunteer & Chair of LGB Liberal Forum

Nick da Costa’s and President Pack’s speeches turned out to be helpful wake-up calls for many conference goers who hadn’t been aware of the visceral toxicity we face from within the party, and massively increased the flow of visitors to the stand. In all my years as a Lib Dem Conference exhibitor, I’ve never been involved with a stand that had anything approaching this level of traffic. We’ve massively increased our mailing list and several of the new parliamentarians and party members who didn’t even know we existed have been able to find out for themselves what we are all about.

This also makes us the first-ever banned stand present throughout a LibDem Conference –  as well as officially My Best Conference Ever.

Rachel

It felt like Mark Pack and Nick da Costa were at a different conference, or in some kind of parallel universe. They were in the auditorium agreeing that people might be made to feel “unsafe” by our presence, while on the stall we were being approached by party members acting like completely normal liberals, asking questions, sharing their thoughts, debating. 

Some attendees had already made up their minds that they agreed with everything we stand for and came straight up and signed our manifesto. A small number were very clear that they disagreed with us and had come either to scold us or employ well-rehearsed arguments about “oppression” and “intersectionality” to convince us that we are wrong. We were particularly grateful to these visitors, as they provided a valuable opportunity for us to test and refine our own arguments. We were also approached by people who were genuinely on the fence, who wanted to ask questions, share their doubts and feelings and engage in sometimes lengthy discussions.  

I was surprised how little people knew about a subject they held a passionate view about. For example, some people were keen to denounce the Cass report, but, no, they hadn't read it, and had no knowledge of the actual effects of puberty blocking drugs, apart from believing they simply "paused" puberty. They were taking a lot on trust. We hope that with our input, and with a greater flow of information, the party can apply greater rigour to this area of policy.

I’m reminded of a line from Helen Joyce’s speech at our fringe: “What matters isn’t that I was able to get satisfaction, what matters is the other end of free speech, it’s actually free listening.” Hopefully Lib Dems will have their right to free listening respected at future conferences to come.

Judith  

By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, everything on the stall was packed up, from the banner to the biros. Looking back on the weekend my main feeling was how exhilarating it had been, from start to finish. Our biggest team ever, with so many of us meeting face-to face for the first time, working together with such enthusiasm. And having several people always available was crucial, as there was rarely a time when there wasn’t at least one conversation going on with visitors to the stand, and more often several. It was so welcome finally to be able to give our own account of what we actually believe and why, rather than being misrepresented and vilified by others.

Away from the stand, there was our excellent and well-attended (in person and online) fringe meeting on the silencing of women in academia. Many of us made sure to go into the hall to hear and vote for the good motion on maternity care put forward by Lib Dem Women (not our biggest fans), and we were sorry to see at least one trans activist urging delegates to vote against hearing our motion on the appalling oppression of women in Afghanistan, purely to spite us.

It was unpleasant and upsetting for us to hear ourselves disowned and disparaged by the President of the party, who is supposed to represent all its members, but who suggested that it was reasonable for others to feel unhappy and potentially unsafe by our presence at Conference, and deplored the fact that the party’s legal advice precluded them from keeping us out. But if I’d been in his position, with a clear warning from his lawyers that by treating us less favourably than other members the party is breaking the law, I’d have been more careful about attacking the Equality Act itself, as well as boasting that the party had still discriminated against us in the terms on which we were allowed in. His lawyers will also have spotted that the way he publicly attacked us clearly created a hostile and intimidating environment for people with our protected beliefs, defined as unlawful harassment under the Equality Act. You’d think Mark Pack was trying to strengthen the case against the party, and in front of plenty of witnesses.

So, huge thanks to everyone who contributed through the Conference period, to a great team effort and a brilliant experience. And – cheers, Mark!