Ben Foley has been a Green Party councillor since 2019, being one of the first Greens ever elected to a Bedfordshire unitary council. He stood as a Parliamentary candidate for the Party in 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019 and 2024.
Foley has also served on the Green Party Regional Council to represent the Eastern Region for a number of years. In that capacity, he has shown a remarkable level of dedication to the implementation of the Party’s code of conduct and Stonewall inspired “Guidance to the definition of Queerphobia”.
So, what is actually so special about Ben Foley and why his connection with leadership candidate Zack Polanski matters to members about to chose their Leader/s ?
Foley is not a Young Green fresh out of university. He is an experienced member of the Party. So when he added his name to that of Zack Polanski ‘s LGBTIQA + affiliates of the Green Party’s letter to the EHRC‘s chair, expressing his “deep concerns” about her article “Clarifying the definition of “sex” – whereby “sex” under the Equality Act of 2010 was always meant to mean biological sex -, his gender ideology standpoint was confirmed.
Foley has always been actively involved in defending Party policy on Trans Rights which affirms that “Trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary are real …”. This is where “sex” and “gender” within the Green Party are deliberatly confused, as per Stonewall’s former gender ideology.
However, there is a lot more to Cllr Foley than his allegiance to Party policy on Trans Rights as his call for action on 5th January 2024 recently leaked to The Green Light reveals. We have reasons to believe that his appeal to root out members who hold “gender critical” views comes from a private social media plaform popular amongst green trans activists and shared with members of Special Interest Groups such as the LGBTIQA+, the Young Greens, and the “inclusive” Feminist Greens
Because Foley’s message ‘illuminates’ a dark corner of the Green Party which explains why and how so many members have been – and continue to be – suspended and now in Exile., or expelled, we make a no apologies for posting the full text of his rallying call verbatim. We trust readers will draw their own conclusions as to the direction the Party would take under Zack Polanski’s leadership.
“ The party has a very vocal minority ( who insist they are the majority despite repeated evidence to the contrary ) who are determined to express their ” gender critical ” (GC) views, and make much of the Forstater decision ( that indicated for that particular Employment Appeal Tribunal GC views should be given ” protected belief” ( status ). They imagine that because of the Forstater decision they can say whatever they like, even if it is contrary to the party’s code of conduct and guidance on how to identity transphobia. Frustratingly, the Party does not have the staffing resource to be proactive in protecting spaces like this, so pretty much whenever something appears, it takes a formal complaint to deal effectively with it – when complaints aren’t easy to write and our complaints system has been overlooked for years now.
Then, when action is taken against someone, there is a serious danger that the individual sanctioned will decide to look for a pretext in the situation to launch a court case against the Party, raising money from well-known rich transphobes, the religious right in the USA and other sources hostiles to the Party to fund their court case, while the Party has to rely on its members to defend itself in such cases, which makes it extremely difficult.
The overall result is that a lot of transphobic stuff isn’t removed because it is being added far quicker than anybody can deal with it. There are, however, good people who are very dedicated to trying to make sure some of the more important cases are dealt with by internal processes.
I’ m very much hoping the result of the recent court case ( result to be announced ) will mean it becomes clearer that the party really does have rights under article 11 of the ECHR that mean it can protect its common purpose, but in the mean time we have to work hard to avoid disappearing under all the transphobic comments, and it is SO frustrating“.
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