green party leaders split over trans rights and women’s rights

When elected co-leader in 2021, Adrian Ramsay will have been well aware that one of the first issue which had to be resolved was the party’s internal conflict over trans rights, self -indentification, women’s rights and women’s safe single-sex spaces.

That was precisely the issue which had lead to the resignation of his predecessor Jonathan Bartley, shortly followed by Sian Berry’s standing down.

Whilst Adrian has remained relatively silent over the deep divide over sex
and gender which is splitting the party, non-binary co-leader Carla Denyer has openly
expressed her unreserved support for the Scottish Greens’ Gender Recognition Act, self-identification and trans rights over biological women’s rights.

In an interview for the New Stateman published in the week  8-14th October 2021, she referred to the LGB Alliance as a ‘hate’ group because of ‘their perceived exclusion of transgender people’.

A year and a half later and true to her beliefs, and now Parliamentary candidate for Bristol West, Carla Denyer has lent her support to the LGBTIQA+ greens’ Open letter’ * to Baroness Falkner, the Chair of the Equality and Human Right Commission, thus registering her objection to a proposed amendment to the Equality Act which would clarify that “sex”, as a
Protected Characteristic, is to be interpreted as biological sex.

Such objection has been endorsed by Stonewall to which the Green Party is affiliated.

Adrian Ramsay, also selected as Parliamentary candidate for Waveney Valley on
the Norfolk/Suffolk border did not add his name to the 139 Green Party signatories
and supporters of that letter of objection to the EHRC.

Strangely enough, neither did Green MP Caroline Lucas who has since announced
her standing down for the next General Election. She has however given her enthusiastic  endorsement to London Assembly Green Councillor and hapless transgender
champion Sian Berry as her preferred candidate for Brighton Pavilion.  Sian Berry is a signatory to the letter of objection to the EHRC’s chair, Baroness Falkner.

When asked by New Stateman’s reporter Harry Lambert whether, under some
circumstances spaces should be exclusively reserved for those born female,
Adrian Ramsay said ‘under the current legislation, there are circumstances
where service providers can make judgements on a case-by-case basis and prisons
is an example of that, where safeguards decisions are made that way’.

Commenting further, Harry Lambert added: ‘Ramsay did not elaborate, but his
position is obvious: it may indeed be acceptable to restrict access to a space
on the basis of sex as in the current law’.

* Go to our posting of 14th April ‘ LGBTIQA+ Greens deep concern about the
EHRC proposed amendment to the Equality Act’ for the letter of objection and
the list of Green Party signatories to that letter.