When the Green Women’s Declaration (GWD) asked for a stall at the party conference last year, their booking was cancelled. The basis for this appears to have been an internal document, ‘Guidance to identify queerphobia’, introduced by the Greens in 2023. It warns that any expression of gender-critical beliefs, such as referring to a ‘transwoman’ as a biological man, is discriminatory. GWD claims this guidance is effectively unlawful, and is taking legal action against the party on the grounds that the definition ‘precisely encapsulates a gender-critical view’ – a belief that is protected under the Equality Act. Lawyers acting for GWD have also described the decision to remove the stall as ‘deliberate and unlawful’.
GWP director Zoe Hatch tells me that the group ‘tried everything’ to work with the party on this issue:
‘We wrote letters, we raised whistleblowing concerns, we met with the CEO. At every stage we have been met with silence, deflection or punishment… We booked a stall at the conference to talk to members about women’s rights – the party cancelled it two days before the event, following a smear campaign that targeted us for our beliefs. No reasons given, no conversation. Taking legal action is our last resort but now we are here, we are determined to seek justice for Women and Planet.’
In the same week as GWP went public with its case, the party’s deputy leader, Mothin Ali, was seen at a pro-Iran demonstration where attendees chanted ‘Death to America’. He stood in a crowd with members of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which was described by the Independent Review of Prevent as ‘an Islamist group ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime, that has a history of “extremist links and terrorist sympathies”’.
Ali’s previous statements have also raised eyebrows. After Hamas launched its spree of rape and murder on 7 October 2023, Ali praised the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ – Hamas’s codename for the attacks. In 2024, after winning his council seat in Leeds, he shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and described the result as ‘a win for the people of Gaza’. Apparently, these comments are more acceptable within the Green Party than the unremarkable observation that humans come in two sexes.
Ironically, it seems highly likely that Ali, as a Muslim, is aware that biological sex matters. Indeed, he will no doubt know exactly where in the mosque his veiled wife would be expected to sit – at the back.
It is easy to take the recycled piss out of the Green Party, and to laugh at the vegan left eating itself with surprising bloodlust. But there are people involved who genuinely care and, whether one agrees with them or not, sincerely want to make the world a better place. As Hatch explains:
‘This is about whether women can take part in political life while holding beliefs that the law protects. Women who have spent decades campaigning for the environment and quietly building the foundations of the Green Party have been sanctioned, censored and now banned from conference.’
Some of the Green Party’s policies undoubtedly seem a bit bonkers to the mainstream. They might best be summed up under the campaign slogan, ‘Back Zack and decolonised crack’. But the Greens’ adherence to gender ideology is hardly unique. Over the past decade, members have been expelled or disciplined in the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats for alleged ‘transphobia’. Indeed, at present we have an equalities minister, Bridget Phillipson, who apparently believes a court ruling affirming that there are two sexes is confusing, and a health secretary prepared to allow a medical experiment on children who are confused about their gender.
If we are going to mock the excesses of the Green Party, we should at least be honest about the fact that on gender ideology they are still firmly within the political establishment. Before the other parties start hurling stones at the Green house, they might take a moment to inspect their own glasswork.
Jo Bartosch is co-author of Pornocracy. Order it here.
