Chair’s Roundup of 2023

2023 was by far our most active and successful year yet. Our Year in Pictures video features all the key highlights. View it HERE! 

Or, if you are someone who prefers to digest information in a written format, this blog post will bring you much of the same information but in words.

LVW on Federal Committees

2023 got off to a strong start, with several of us having recently been elected to Federal Committees, namely Alison Jenner, Alison Eden and me elected to Federal Council, and Alison Jenner elected to Federal Conference Committee. Over the course of this year fifteen of us have been elected (unopposed) to English Council. 

Having a voice on these committees is vital to our work as not only does it allow us to make a positive contribution to the operation of the party at the highest levels, but also allows us to hold the committees themselves to account, especially when it comes to women’s rights and the equal treatment of party members.

Definition of Transphobia

During 2022 much of our focus, and that of the party, had been on the Lib Dems’ Definition of Transphobia. This definition had apparently been designed to drive out gender critical members from the party by making the expression of their beliefs grounds for expulsion. We told the story of its evolution and its ultimate radical revision here, here, here and here.

The story should have come to an end by 2023, once the party had digested the two legal opinions provided and amended the Definition to make explicit that gender critical beliefs are lawful and legally protected within political parties. However, in late 2022 there was an immediate backlash to the Chief Executive’s prudent actions, with an English Council motion likening gender critical beliefs to antisemitism and white supremacy, a Lib Dem Voice op ed decrying the decision to amend the definition, and a further scathing article from LGBT+ Lib Dems, all insisting the leadership pursue a third legal opinion, presumably in the hope that it would say something different to what the two KCs had already said. Unsurprisingly, as was reported in the latest edition of Liberator, this outcome did not come to pass. (By the way, if you’re wondering why you can’t see responses from LVW or any of our supporters to these articles, it’s because Lib Dem Voice refuses to publish any dissenting views.)

We hope 2024 will be the year the Lib Dems finally stop spending the party’s precious time, energy and money on the unnecessary, illiberal and unworkable Definition of Transphobia and take a long-overdue pivot towards women’s rights.

Spring Conference

The Liberal Democrat Constitution includes a clause designed to promote women’s participation on Federal Committees. But thanks to gender identity “ideology” it was (and unfortunately remains) worded in such a way that not only women but men who say they are neither men nor women are invited to be counted within this quota. 

We submitted a constitutional amendment for debate at Spring Conference that would have made the wording in this clause more effective, rational and compatible with equality law.  

Sadly there was a contingent within Conference that was determined not just to oppose the motion but to ensure no debate about it would be heard at all. Several “move to next business” motions were submitted, even though, as the last item on the agenda for that day,  there was no “next business” to move to. Eventually Gareth Epps was chosen to make his arguments for why the amendment should not have been accepted for debate in the first place (apparently we were trying to erase the very existence of trans people). Then, to a chorus of verbal abuse (cries of “bigot!”, etc), I had two minutes to make the case for why this was an amendment worth debating, making specific reference to the underrepresentation of women on party committees and the law around positive action measures as set out in the Equality Act. Several MPs, including the party leader, entered the room to support the debate-phobic activists.

While the debate was successfully cancelled from the agenda, the behaviour of activists and the leadership left many stunned. By behaving so outrageously the censorious activists helped give the profile of our group and that of our campaign within the party a considerable boost. Several people came to speak with us afterwards to thank us for what we are doing, and an unprecedented number of new subscribers signed up to our mailing list. One of our new supporters volunteered to write a blog post for our website. We also did our own roundup here. Watch the video of my Spring Conference speech here.

Spring Conference also featured a debate on the party’s new Code of Conduct. Daivid Barnsdale and Toby Keynes both contributed to this debate asking for an end to the institutional abuse of gender critical members. Both (ironically) faced verbal abuse from the floor as a result. Toby’s speech can be viewed here.

Autumn Conference

In July we submitted our motion “Time to Rethink the Medicalisation of Gender-questioning Children” for debate at Autumn Conference 2023, along with a petition of around 150 Lib Dem members asking for it to be heard. This motion seeks to update the current Lib Dem policy of administering puberty blockers to any child that asks for them, in light of emerging medical evidence demonstrating both the harms and ineffectiveness of this practice. Unfortunately the motion was rejected for some surprising reasons, as we recount here.

Period Drama

Meanwhile, a motion about “period poverty” was selected for debate. Largely restating existing party policy, it appears that it was deemed necessary to include this item on the agenda in order to make the point that - as the motion states - “menstruation is not just a women’s issue”. Indeed the proposer of the motion said if that line were not included then the proposer wouldn’t support it. 

A Telegraph reporter picked up on the line in question, having spotted it in the Autumn conference agenda. A number of follow-up articles and extensive commentary on the Lib Dems’ “period drama” ensued, including an article by Jo Bartosch, in which we are quoted. 

Conference Fringe Meeting and Book Launch Event

2023 was the year we published our first book, Liberals and Women’s Rights. The result of extensive research and a huge team effort of writing, the book takes the reader on a whistlestop tour of the various harms to women’s rights of political transgenderism, and the corrupting effects of this ideology on liberal institutions and values. 

This was our most ambitious project yet and we are immensely proud to have pulled it off and for the response we have received. We’re already thinking about the subject of our next publication.

Our thanks go out to all the team who contributed, and to those who contributed to the launch event at the Hotel Miramar, including Sarah Ludford for her introduction, Dame Jenni Murray for chairing and Raquel Rosario Sanchez, Dr Laura Favaro and Vaishnavi Sundar for being our speakers. Jenni Murray did a great write-up of the event in her weekly column.

Events

Over the course of the year we held our regular monthly online “in conversation” events with a wide range of eminent guests including Jenny Lindsay, Magi Gibson and novelist Gillian Philip; Professor Sheila Jeffreys; journalist Dr Victoria Smith; Dr David Bell, psychiatrist; US lawyer Kara Dansky and, in a joint event with our friends at LGB Liberal Forum, Simon Fanshawe.

We also attended a number of external events. In February a group of us attended UCL’s Education for Women’s Liberation conference, where we ran a stall and a cross-party workshop with Labour Women’s Declaration and Conservatives for Women. 

In September I was lucky enough to attend a free speech event in the House of Lords where I got to give out advance copies of our book to many notables of the “gender wars” and grab a quick picture or two as well! 

Later in the year we also had a presence at FiLia conference, Women’s Declaration International conference (thanks to Alison Jenner for representing us there) and the LGB Alliance conference where we shared a stall with LGB Liberal Forum. Alison rounded off a busy month at a Let Women Speak event, where she read from our book. 

Parliamentary Work

Our cross-party parliamentary work in collaboration with Labour Women’s Declaration and Conservatives for Women has continued throughout this year, with many successful cross-party events. These briefings allow parliamentarians a space in which to speak freely and learn from experts in a range of fields. We also ran an individual briefing exclusively for Lib Dem parliamentarians about the proposed clarification of the meaning of sex in the Equality Act. We hope to offer more of these sessions to Lib Dems, alongside the cross-party work, in 2024.

In the House of Lords International Women’s Day debate, Baroness Ludford spoke in favour of making the term sex in the Equality Act clear. Sarah’s speech was picked up in several newspapers including The Times and Daily Mail.  In October, Baroness Hussein-Ece spoke in the Lords about the NHS’s hypocritical removal of the word “woman” from internal documents. We are grateful for the leadership, courage and clear-headedness shown by Lib Dem peers, challenging sex-denialist ideology in their various different ways, both in the House of Lords and behind the scenes. 

We would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to you and everyone else who has supported us by following and spreading the word about our work, getting involved as a volunteer, or being among those who have been kind enough to make the donations that allowed us, among other things, to hold our first in-person fringe event and publish our first book.

We would also like to thank our patrons, Baroness Ludford and Baroness Thornhill, who are our Honorary President and Honorary Vice-President. 

Finally, thank you to the new Executive Committee too for stepping up. I can’t wait to get moving on plans for the year ahead. 

Dr Zoe Hollowood