green party women’s group disbanded: “procedural or political?”

Not for the first time since the capture of the Green Party’s instruments of governance by identinarians, members of the Standing Orders Committee (SOC), have overreached themselves with a ruling, as reported on the BBC,  that Green Party Women (GPW) cannot be recognised as Members Working Group of the Party.  

In response to a request from transactivist members of the GPW’s committee dated 18^th October for a ruling as to the unconstitutionality of the committee because the election of the committee should  have taken place at the Autumn Conference of 2022,  SOC’s convenor Ash Routh agreed and replied: “ The practical consequences is that GPW is currently disaffialiated from the party” and confirmed  that Green Party Executive (GPEX)  and Equality and Diversity  (E&D) had been advised of this.  

The rationale invoked by SOC in their ruling communicated to Green Party Executive (GPEX) and the Equality and Diversity committee (E&D) reads as follows:

“Consihetger (sic) or not Green Party Women is properly constituted at present, under the bye-laws to section 5(xii) of the main GPEW constitution. This is quoted below:

“ Conditional upon the membership of the group being open to all Green party members only and on the officers of the group being annually elected , the group may be recognised  … as a Members Working Group”

SOC agreed unanimously that these are non-negotiable conditions and that since the Green Party Women Constitution does not, at present, require annual elections of its Committee, nor has its present Committee been properly constituted since , at least, an annual terms came to an end without an election at Autumn Conference 2021, GPW does not meet one of these necessary conditions”.

In their appeal to GPEX dated 23^rd November, members of the 2022 Committee –  now deemed  to have also been unconstitutional –  confirmed that the election of the Committee “annually “ had been adhered to every year.  The only exception being in 2020, when,  “after attempting to conduct the election within that time scale, GPW were “required” by the ERO in consultation with the Green Party Regional Council to re-run the election”.  

Visibly concerned about SOC’s ruling to disaffiliate the Green Party Women’s group, co-leader Adrian Ramsay asked at a recent meeting of GPEX whether the ruling was “ political or procedural ? ”. Re-assured by Jon Knot , GPEX chair, that it was ‘procedural’, the matter was swiftly dispatched to the newly elected Equality and Diversity Committee co-ordinator to deal with.

We understands that members of the E&D Committee , which has a strong representation of trans activists, have been discussing SOC’s ruling. Any decision as to whether the Special Interest Group which represents 42 % of the membership is actually disbanded – or disaffiliated- will not be known until after the New Year.

It would seem that the annual election of a new Green Party Women’s committee may therefore de facto have to be delayed. Given SOC’s ‘rationale’ for its ruling that all elected committee since 2020 have been unconstitutional because the timning of their election failed to meet a “non-negotiable” clause in the GPEW’s constitution, one may wonder whether any women’s committee will ever be deemed to be… constitutional.

Judging by the overwhelming testimonies of sex discrimination and victimisation presented by former GPW’s co-chairs Emma Bateman (2022) and Zoe Hatch (2023), deselected candidate for Sheffield Central Alison Teal and GPEX whistleblower Dawn Furness at the Green Women’ s Declaration Webinar ‘ the Process is the Punishment’, it would seem that SOC’s disaffiliation of Green Party Women was anything but political.