The rhetoric around trans people has become increasingly venomous in the past few years. The right-wing press and the Tories have sought to use trans people as a pawn in the culture war, to divide us and distract us from the myriad issues in our everyday lives.
The following is a transcribed speech delivered by Socialist Alternative member Claudia O’Riordan at the opening rally to the Revolutionary Ideas 2024 Festival, held on 9 November in Liverpool.
Rather than stand up and challenge these attacks, the Labour Party under Starmer has bent to the pressure and engaged in the same rhetoric. Whether it’s saying ignorant comments like “men can’t have cervixes”, making dangerous comments about how trans women ‘don’t belong’ in women’s spaces such as bathrooms and prisons, or straightforwardly hateful comments like calling trans women “male bodied biological men”, senior Labour figures have kowtowed to the right wing and helped to enable the toxic culture that we see today.
This is the atmosphere that emboldened the likes of 16 year old Brianna Ghey’s murderers to carry out their brutal attack last year. Since 2012, we have seen a 1,426% increase in criminal reports regarding transphobia. 41% of trans people in the UK report having experienced a hate crime in the last 12 months.
But of course, this isn’t just about rhetoric. It’s about policy too. Labour abstained when the last conservative government blocked the Scottish parliament’s efforts to reform the Gender Recognition Act, which would have made it easier for one to change their legal gender. They have also reversed their pledge to introduce self-identification. As it stands, the process to change one’s legal gender can take up to seven years, and waiting lists are getting longer every day.
Labour endorsed the Cass Review, which ostensibly looked into the effects of transitioning on children, but in reality was a transphobic and unscientific screed. One of Wes Streeting’s first acts as Health Secretary was to lengthen the Tory ban on privately prescribed puberty blockers for under-18s, even extending it to Northern Ireland, in line with the recommendations of the Cass Review. We have also seen in Scotland how NHS Lothian has frozen all referrals for under 25s to the Chalmers Gender Identity Clinic in Edinburgh.
Not content with limiting access to vital and life-saving healthcare for children and young people, NHS England have announced a further review into adult trans healthcare, which will likely take its lead from the Cass Review. The attacks on the already unfit provisions begin in the easiest and most sensitive area for them to attack – services for children and young people. But there are no signs of it stopping there.
To see Labour enact, cheer on, or at the very least turn a blind eye to these attacks on trans people is disappointing, upsetting and infuriating, but unfortunately it is hardly surprising. Labour have long since abandoned being a party that represents workers and the oppressed, and is firmly a party that caters to big business and the super-rich. Upholding the two child benefit cap, scrapping the winter fuel allowance, raising tuition fees, scrapping pledges on areas like zero-hours contracts, parental leave and sick pay – all these show Labour’s true nature. But perhaps nowhere is Labour’s failure to stand up for the most vulnerable more clear than when it comes to their position on Palestine.
Since the war began last year, estimates for the number of dead in Gaza have risen to up to 180,000 people. Meanwhile Starmer and the Labour Party have hidden behind the trite aphorism “Israel has a right to defend herself.” Despite suspending up to 30 weapons licenses for Israel, 320 licenses are still in effect, including for F-35 fighter jet parts. Foreign Secretary David Lammy himself said the decision to suspend those 30 licenses will have no “material effect on Israel’s security”. Or to put it another way, it will have no material effect on the Israeli regime’s ability to continue its genocidal war.
British military intelligence continues to support Israeli actions in Gaza, and the UK helps with the export of weapons to Israel, primarily from the US, through Cyprus. There has been no talk of imposing sanctions on Israel – not even after the latest escalations in Lebanon. Even the calls for a ceasefire are couched in ifs, buts and maybes.
We cannot rely on the Labour party to defend any of us. That is why Socialist Alternative is calling for a new left party. One rooted in working-class struggle and armed with a socialist programme, that can fight back against Labour and the Tories, as well as the billionaires and big business.
But the likes of trans people and especially the people of Gaza cannot afford to sit around and wait for that to happen. When we talk about the struggle for trans rights, we are also talking about the struggle for housing, bodily autonomy, secure jobs and a living wage, and a fully-funded National Health Service. When we talk about the struggle against war, we are also talking about the struggle against racism, against imperialism and against climate change. We need to be organising in our workplaces and our communities, linking our struggles together in order to strengthen the fightback. When we are united as a class, there is nothing that can stand in our way.
