[The header pic is a screenshot from a 2018 article in the National Scot, published during the #NoDebate years]

This week, Woman’s Place UK closed up shop, and the women who founded it are now resting on their laurels amidst cheers and tears from women all over the country. Well if I know them, they’re not actually resting at all, they are busy doing the things trade unionist women do all the time. Nevertheless, it’s a historic moment. WPUK was one of the factors that instigated the now burgeoning women’s movement, the phenomenon that has led to US commentators calling the UK ‘Terf Island’.

Camden revisited

You may not know you want to know this but yesterday, himself and I went for a walk along the Regents Canal. Up past Camden Lock, I found myself reminiscing about a workshop I’d been to at a Community Centre in Camden, what felt like a lifetime ago. It was organized by Sarah Jay, amongst others, and addressed by one Maya Forstater (yes, that Maya, but before she was famous).

It was efficient, informative and quite mind-blowing. The purpose was to show women exactly where they stood in UK law, to discuss changes being proposed by various groups and what their consequences would be for women in employment law, in health, in sex discrimination cases – in fact, by the end of the day, we saw that our legal status was under threat in every aspect of our lives.

No debate on the left?

Those who sought that law-change in spite of what women’s needs might be, were running their campaign under the battle cry of #NoDebate and they had persuaded large tranches of the left that women discussing proposed changes to the law (changes which they called ‘trans rights’) were bigoted, transphobic, right wing, and therefore legitimate targets for abuse, bullying and exclusion.

Those of us working with Woman’s Place were very careful to stay away from any ideas we considered detrimental to trans people, particularly because we were aware how many vulnerable girls and young women had been led to believe they needed a ‘sex change’. Nevertheless, we determined to state our case. As a result, we found out just how many people had been gagging for an opportunity to bully, abuse and exclude women they could not control.

Going to that workshop was one of my responses to unexpected bullying and abuse that broke out locally, initially in Hastings Momentum I think, against women talking about women’s rights. I also went, along with our Labour Women’s Officer Gill Knight, to a meeting of Labour Women’s Network in London, to see if, as Labour Party officers, we could get help there. We didn’t. Old faithfuls of Labour’s version of feminism, from Harriet Harman to Dawn Butler. responded to our questions only with a slightly high-pitched and oft repeated cry of ‘transwomenarewomen!’

That was the required formula, to ensure #NoDebate. It was a year or so before they thought to add ‘transmenaremen’. They only did that because we kept coming back with ‘what about trans men’. You see, misogynists do know who women are, and they were not initially interested in promoting the ‘rights’ of ‘trans men’ (who of course, are female). They just wanted to help ‘transwomen’ (who are male) break down women’s boundaries.

Meeting on the margins

So the Labour Women’s Network would have been a total fail for me, were it not for the women who emerged at the midday break to distribute leaflets about women’s rights. We approached each other with extreme caution – I remember being super-cautious about a particularly tall woman with bubble-gum pink hair who was approaching me with extreme caution. I thought – she has pink hair. She’s almost certainly going to scream ‘terf’ and accuse me of committing literal violence with the leaflet in my hand … but she didn’t.

That’s how I met Lisa-Marie Taylor, of FiLiA, and also the women who founded Woman’s Place UK, and Merched Cymru. Oh, the women I know now, that I did not know then! Oh, the things I have learned! We all went to the pub afterwards, and talked about what each other was experiencing and what we were doing about it. The WPUK women had decided to make it their mission to break the #NoDebate force by running a series of open meetings to kick-start the debate on our side of politics and in the general population up and down the country. (The right never had any trouble commenting – see the newspaper clip above – but that wasn’t any help to us). They asked me if I’d help organize a WPUK debate in Hastings.

I did, and it was a resounding success. We filled every seat. We had gay, straight and trans people on the platform and in the audience, and we all learned a lot. I also spoke at the WPUK meeting famously held, and infamously picketed, at the Labour Party conference in Brighton in 2019.

One of the reasons I really value WPUK is that it was run by well known trade unionist women – we had Megan Dobney, former Chair of STUC, as Chair of our Hastings meet – and they kept firmly to (lefty) TU standards about being socialist and anti-racist which was a key factor for us, when the opposition started trying to paint us as far-right bigots. It was because of that particular slander that I was so pleased to see the editor of the Morning Star at our Brighton event, come to see what we were actually talking about. I recognized him because I’d come straight from the Morning Star’s own conference fringe event – it was the first time I realized that that’s how you spot the real left. Their politics comes from materialist analysis, therefore they seek evidence…

… unlike the faux left who tend to gather around Labour conferences and, eg, spend their time picketing feminist meetings they know very little about.

Here’s to you, sisters!

So WPUK has come to a close – and as they drop the final curtain, thousands upon thousands of women are cheering, applauding and shedding tears – but thanks to the endeavours of WPUK and the other women’s campaigns that sprung up around them, those women now know each other, and know feminism. Women, three thousand of whom will be at FiLiA’s international feminist conference next year. Women who know their legal position, know what they want and need, and do not fear the debate.

A sad moment it might be, but WPUK are quite right. Their mission was to defeat #NoDebate and bring the issue of women’s rights to public notice across the country. It’s taken seven years. They have succeeded gloriously, and contributed hugely to the now unstoppable women’s movement in this country. Here is their statement, along with a list of the meetings and debates they ran…

… They intend that website to stay online, to bear witness for us all of what we have achieved together.

True, we still run alongside a variety of liberal and faux feminist groups and organizations, who never realized that women’s legal rights were under threat – or did not dare admit that they were. True, I was sat having a chat the other night with a bloke who’d failed to notice anything happening at all – but we are here, and the numbers of the oblivious and the denialists are dwindling – and conference by conference, court case by court case (we have won almost all of them) we are reclaiming the achievements of generations of women before us.

Women’s legal rights will be protected and restored. True, most of the women on the left are (quite rightly!) busy with NHS and Palestine campaigns just now but the work for women’s rights goes on. I can prove it – only last month, I went to a workshop for women in politics led by one of WPUK’s founders, Kiri Tunks, and most of the women I know are already eagerly discussing the likely content of next year’s FiLiA conference, and what they might want to add to it.

The work goes on, as it always has, and always will.

Thank you, sisters.

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