Heckle is sharing below the text of an open letter which was sent to the general secretary of the STUC on Friday on behalf of more than 70 trade unionists after it became clear that an anti-trans campaign group known as “Labour Women’s Declaration” would have a stall at this year’s Congress, currently taking place in Dundee.
Dear Roz,
We are a group of LGBT+ activists and allies who are members of mostly STUC-affiliated trade unions and some others wishing to show solidarity. The list of signatories, arranged by union, is what could be gathered within less than a day, given the tight time scale between us finding out about this issue and our hope that you will see this e-mail in advance of Congress this Monday. We are confident that many more LGBT+ members and allies would be willing to put their name to this message if we had more time to reach them all.
Several of us have been delegates at STUC Equality conferences and have learned to view the STUC as a uniting force leading the fight against the rise of the far right. It has therefore disappointed and, frankly, hurt and disgusted us to hear that STUC Council has seen fit to allow a transphobic hate group masquerading as a women’s rights group to hold a stall at Congress: The Labour Women’s Declaration. LWD, like several other “women’s groups”, were formed specifically to oppose the progress in trans rights that we had been promised and have now been completely derailed, thanks to their sanitised presentation of what is at heart far right activism. You will be aware that anti-trans activism has been used as a wedge issue for further far right agitation. Indeed, several anti-trans groups have moved quickly from celebrating trans people being stripped of their dignity to announcing their intention to shift focus to anti-immigration campaigning using the same “protecting women” rhetoric. We see this happening before our eyes in America. The Trump campaign spent an inordinate amount of their funds on anti-trans propaganda and fear-mongering in the lead-up to the election, which has secured him at least four years to attempt to become the fascist dictator he appears to want to be, wreaking untold havoc on anything related to diversity and equality across a country that we once saw as a beacon of freedom and progress.
We have, for several years now, seen the despicable and unchallenged demonisation of trans people in our media. The LGBT Workers’ Conference gave some of us a forum to discuss this and support each other as comrades across the trade union movement. Trans people warned us repeatedly how much of an influence this would eventually have on the progress we have worked hard to achieve, as well as the inevitable knock-on effect on women’s rights these groups purport to champion. However, many of us did not foresee quite how badly things would go. We did not foresee that a newly-elected Labour government would completely u-turn on trans rights, outdoing any Tory government before them in their quest to demonstrate that they could be even more cruel to this demonised and scapegoated community of our brothers, sisters and siblings.
While the Scottish Government’s attempts to progress trans rights have been supported by our parliament and stymied by Westminster, our representatives in the Scottish Parliament are now also turning their backs on us, including former allies in Scottish Labour and the SNP. At his summit in Glasgow on the evening of Wednesday 23rd April, it was put to the First Minister that the Scottish Government should be progressing the legislation promised to us. He did not respond specifically about the Gender Recognition Reform bill (now apparently an open goal given the Supreme Court ruling contradicts the justification for the Section 35 order) and it seems very much like the majority of our parliamentarians want to be free of the discomfort of standing up for our rights in the face of a very vocal minority of anti-LGBT bigots with wealthy backers. We reiterate that this will not stop with trans people, although what has been done to trans people should be enough in itself for us to care and see how dark our future is. The far right attempt to split solidarity among the LGBT+ community in this country has failed but we now appear isolated from the rest of society, given this regression and also the disgusting language now being used to ‘debate’ trans people in both of our parliaments.
It was unthinkable to us that, so quickly after all of this negativity and regression, that the STUC would show us the same disrespect as our politicians. We gather that this was a decision made by Council and the justification seems to relate to avoiding potential controversy arising from denying LWD space. This was a grave error. Your LGBT+ members are now in a position where we are the ones who will be driven to complain and potentially draw controversy when we see our allies lend legitimacy to groups who seek to harm us and eradicate us from society. The trade union movement relies on courage and solidarity in order to further the progress that all of us want. This move utterly undermines these basic tenets and will only serve to erode the trust we had in our unions and the STUC to continue standing up for us when the political will is on a sharp decline.
Yours sincerely,
[Signatures redacted]
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