Abused and Silenced

But Net Gains for Liberal Voice for Women at Lib Dem Spring Conference

Last month’s Lib Dem Conference in York was an eventful and hugely productive few days for the LVW team. We were pleased to have got a Constitutional Amendment on the agenda that would have gone some way to reversing the gender-ideological capture of the Constitution that had occurred in 2016. Our proposal was to make the wording of article 2.5 consistent with article 2.4, which refers to “men and women”.

We believed our amendment to be uncontroversial, particularly given the fact that the current wording doesn’t make sense and appears to leave the party susceptible to legal challenge. We wrote about our rationale for the change here.

First up, however, was a debate and vote to ratify a new Members Code of Conduct on the Saturday afternoon. This would set the scene for our Amendment scheduled for close of play on Saturday. The highlight of this debate was Toby Keynes, Chair of the fledgling LGB Liberal Forum, who took the opportunity to highlight the abuse and victimisation suffered by those party members who believe sex is real and sometimes sex matters. Despite the heckling, which was extremely helpful in illustrating the points he was making, his speech was very well-received by the Conference audience, many of whom may have been learning about this issue for the first time. Watch his speech here.

Our debate, F15, was scheduled for 5:30pm, the last item on the agenda on the Saturday. There had been a failed attempt to get it dropped from the agenda at the start of the day. At 5:30, the Chair introduced another measure intended to remove it, in the form of a motion to “move to next business”. The fact that there was no next business to move to was no impediment, as the intention was not to move to anything else but to ensure our debate was not heard. 

The proposer of the “move to next business” motion was given the opportunity to speak, followed by our Chair, Dr Zoe Hollowood, who had just two minutes in which to make the case for the debate going ahead and rebut some of the outlandish claims made by the previous speaker, while shouts of “bigot” were hurled at her from the floor. Watch Zoe’s speech here. 

Given the hostile atmosphere in the room, it was no surprise that the show of cards vote went against us. The Chair said he was looking at the online votes, but the numbers were not announced. And although our members called from the floor for a count (which would have allowed us to know the online numbers) they were told that 50 people would have needed to have been standing in their seats in order to trigger that. But by the time the Chair had explained this rule the window in which it needed to happen had already elapsed. Of course it had.

So there was no F15 debate, Conference didn’t get the opportunity to hear our rationale for proposing the change, and article 2.5 of the Lib Dem Constitution remains a potential legal liability for the party. 

But Conference did get to witness some of the obnoxious and misogynistic behaviour of the party trans activists. And not only Conference, but also the outside world, as Lewes Lib Dems’ Diversity Officer, Cllr Sean McCleod, tweeted “F*ck the terfs” in response to some online commentary. This was naturally picked up by his local Tory MP, who quite rightly described the tweet as “disgusting”. The story was reported in The Argus. Meanwhile the video of Zoe's speech went viral on Twitter, was even translated into Spanish and viewed over half a million times, at least 13 times more than watched Ed's official speech via Twitter.

What is most striking is that since the F15 debate was cancelled by people who claimed it was not worthy of debate, there has been a huge amount of debate on the subject on Lib Dem internet channels. There has also been a call for us all to leave (which we won’t be doing) on the house blog site Lib Dem Voice. If the comments underneath this article look strangely one-sided there is a reason for this, which Lib Dem Voice helpfully spell out in their editorial policy, “Articles and comments which may contribute harm to marginalised groups will not be published. We will not allow a toxic atmosphere which fosters prejudice and discrimination. There are occasions when people have to pick a side and we will do so when we consider it necessary to make our small bit of the world a kinder, more progressive place.” We would like to enquire further as to LDV’s interpretation of the words “harm”, “marginalised”, “toxic”, “prejudice” and “discrimination”. 

Hearteningly, a few days later an article by Willie Rennie appeared, clearly in response to the antics of the weekend, urging members to “disagree well”. There were even some supportive comments allowed underneath it. We would like to thank Willie for his timely and much-needed intervention, which not only makes the case for reasoned debate, but also highlights some of the reasons why many people are not on-board with the whole package of “trans rights”, namely “policies and laws that allow a rapist, who identifies as a trans woman, to be considered for a place in a women’s prison.”

So, contrary to claims made in the conference hall, there is undoubtedly a considerable appetite among Lib Dems for discussing issues arising from the conflation of sex and gender in law, issues of freedom of speech, and of the pathologisation of childhood gender nonconformity. It is therefore a shame that conference-goers were denied the opportunity to debate some of this in the most appropriate setting. 

Although our debate wasn’t heard, Spring Conference was a great boost for our profile in the party. We had lots of interesting and constructive conversations, and, thanks largely to the behaviour of our detractors, lots of new sign-ups on our website. It is clear to us that many people are still waiting for their moment to be brave enough to speak up in support of our work, as they watch from the sidelines and offer private support. One supporter has written a guest post of their own thoughts here. And as long as we know there are party members who are thinking like this we will continue to seize every opportunity to speak openly and honestly about the issues we care about, and hope to help others be braver next time.

Here’s to more progress for our movement in Autumn Conference in Bournemouth!

We also have the story of Spring Conference 2023 in video form here.