“We are living through a period of radicalisation… Far from being the exception, sections of the LGBTQ+ community have been at its vanguard – and the forefront of the fight for trans rights. The rest of the socialist left must reach out to them.”
Labour Outlook’s Sam Browse writes on the aftermath of last week’s Supreme Court judgement and the need for an independent socialist politics that speaks to the experience of trans people.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that in the Equality Act 2010, all references to “sex” should be interpreted to mean “biological sex”. It’s uncertain what the legal consequences of this are for trans people – it’s likely it will ultimately be decided by further litigation and the precedents those cases set – but it’s clear that the immediate outcome has been for Government departments to revise their single sex spaces policies, and a remise of the ongoing demonisation of trans people in politics and the media.
Responses from the socialist left have ranged from horror to welcoming the judgement. To frame yet another, I want to offer the vignette of a recent controversy from London’s LGBTQ+ community, involving one of its major, long-standing hubs.
The Royal Vauxhall Tavern (RVT) is an iconic LGBTQ+ venue in London. It was where Lilly Savage fermented her acid wit, and where Freddie Mercury is rumoured to have taken Princess Diana while she was dressed – so the legend goes – in full drag.
As an LGBTQ+ venue, one of the biggest events of the year outside of London’s pride march is the Eurovision party. Israel has always featured in the programming, but with the genocide in Gaza this provided a political flash point in 2024’s contest. Regular promoters at the RVT, who supported the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, threatened to withdraw their shows if the party went ahead. In a rollercoaster of scheduling, it was pulled by the owners, but then rescheduled again, causing outrage. Progressive promoters cancelled their own shows and – rightly – issued angry statements about the lack of solidarity coming from one of London’s most venerable queer institutions, and how they had been messed about by the management.
Shortly after, the owner announced he would be selling the RVT citing the controversy over the non-boycott. His comments are telling. In an interview with the Irish Times, he said –
“The younger ones – many are non-binary and all that, and that’s great for them. I really mean that. But the promoters of the Monday-Wednesday events are also very vocal on political issues.”
“None of us support what Israel is doing in Gaza, but there has to be a distinction made between the Israeli state and its people. I don’t want to say my older crowd doesn’t care about the issue, but they don’t quite get the history of it in the same way. In simple terms, we’re a gay bar, not a political venue. People come here to get away from talk of wars.”
Notwithstanding the flippant and offensive “non-binary and all that” throwaway, the remarks do point to real divisions in the community. There was a difference in the clientele on Monday to Wednesday compared to the weekend crowd. In my experience, in the former part of the week it was younger, not only were there more gender non-conforming people but there were far more women and people of colour, and there were a lot more piercings and multicoloured hair. Towards the back end of the week, things got whiter, more male, and the sartorial tastes of the audience much more conservative.
And so did the politics. In those first three nights, the political centre of gravity was far further to the left. Zarah Sultana , Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn featured as weekday guests. You could expect to hear jokes satirising systemic racism, empire and colonialism (including in Ireland), and as the later controversy over Eurovision demonstrated, Monday-to-Wednesday acts and audiences had a strong affinity for the Palestinians.
The point being, as a political space, the weekday RVT was more progressive and enlightened not only on the question of LGBTQ+ rights but the whole gamut of British politics than most other entertainment venues, straight or LGBTQ+. As the owner points out in his own Sally-Bowles-esque way, it was also the place where trans, non-binary, and queer people were most represented. From this, I think it’s fair to say that amongst LGBTQ+ people, the part of the community that most consistently advocates for trans rights is also the most consistent opponent of war, imperialism, racism, climate change denialism and – yes – capitalism.
Importantly, too, that cultural and social trend has carried through into organised politics. Last year’s very large trans pride event – which the organisers call a protest, unlike the London Pride parade – featured a pro-Palestine bloc. It was the biggest on the demo and has consistently come out onto the larger Palestine demonstrations. Building on the solidarity of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, we’ve also seen the emergence of Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants, and queer people organising against the far right and fascists in places like Honour Oak, working alongside organisations like Stand Up to Racism (indeed, SUTR have rightly identified that the “anti-woke” demonisation of trans and other LGBQ+ people has been a key driver of the growth of the far right).
It is that radical current that understands the connectedness of their oppression to capitalism, to imperialism, to racism, and that has attempted to build links of solidarity with other struggles. Indeed, in the case of the Gaza genocide, that has often involved refusing to be implicated in the “pinkwashing” of the Israeli state. They understand that the assault on LGBTQ+ rights is part of a global reactionary movement from Trump and Farage to Orban, Le Pen, and Meloni which is itself the political expression of global capitalism in crisis and an ever more vicious imperialism that has turned Gaza into a graveyard.
In the current conjuncture, rather than the petit-bourgeois, “and all that”, Sally-Bowles-parochialism of the RVT owners, is it not exactly that current to whom the socialist left, if it is serious about representing the rights and interest of all workers – including LGBTQ+ workers – should be orienting?
In the wake of the Supreme Court judgement, it’s right to ask how we do that. A starting point would be to broaden our understanding from the usual media talking points – toilets, prisons, sport etc. – and develop an independent socialist politics that speaks to the experience of trans people.
On almost every social measure, trans people are disadvantaged. In the labour market, 2021 census data shows that they suffer higher rates of unemployment, and the last National LGBT Survey, conducted in 2018, found that 60% of trans people earned less than £20,000 per year.
Access to appropriate healthcare is dire and has been made worse by attacks on gender-affirming care in the media. The process of gaining a Gender Recognition Certificate can take many years, is overly medicalised, and often reinforces gender stereotypes. Given the above, it’s no surprise that trans people are likely to have significantly poorer mental health outcomes and suffer with long term mental health issues.
In housing, trans people are vastly over-represented in the homelessness statistics. Shockingly, Crisis report that 1 in 5 LGBTQ+ people has suffered homelessness at one point in their life. If that were not bad enough, that rises to 1 in 4 for trans people. When they are in housing, they are more likely to live in deprived areas than other groups of people.
The education system is not a welcoming place for trans kids either. Two thirds experience bullying for being trans, and the previous Government’s Section 28-style guidance makes it harder for them to come out to their teachers and seek support.
In the labour market, healthcare, housing, and education, trans people face systematic discrimination and disadvantage. Not only that, but alongside the escalation of transphobic rhetoric from politicians and media pundits, we have also seen ballooning hate crime statistics, with the figures reaching record highs in the previous year. Those alarming numbers are the business end of a wider sharpening of opinion. Recent polling has shown that people have become less favourably disposed to trans rights and trans people than they were five years ago – no doubt because of the relentless media onslaught and moral panic they have faced in this time.
These are only some of the issues. Socialists need a politics that addresses them, integrating them into our platform of socialist solutions to the multiple crises we face, and working out from them to build practical unity across the left and labour movement.
We are living through a period of radicalisation of which the mass demonstrations over Palestine are perhaps the best example. Far from being the exception to this, sections of the LGBTQ+ community have been at its vanguard – and at the forefront of the fight for trans rights. The rest of the socialist left must reach out to them and articulate a class struggle politics that resonates with and speaks to their concerns. That is how we create unity in the wake of the Supreme Court judgement – and build a movement that represents all workers against the bosses, the bankers and the war mongers.
- Sam Browse is an organiser for Arise Festival and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow him on Twitter/X here.
