Summary
Emily Brothers: Exclusion from Labour Women's Conference.
Emily Brothers: Exclusion from Labour Women’s Conference.
Long-serving Labour Party member Emily Brothers has been banned as a Delegate to the Women’s Conference and excluded from reserved seats for women in National Policy Forum (NPF) elections.
Liverpool is Emily’s home city, where she grew up, went to school and found politics, joining Labour in 1981. Emily is blind, hearing-impaired, and a trans woman.
Emily’s commitments to the Labour and Trade Union Movement have included standing as a parliamentary candidate in 2015 (Sutton and Cheam) and 2024 (Isle of Wight East). She stood for the London Assembly in 2016 and has stood in eight local elections. She has been active within several socialist societies, previously serving on the Executive Committee of LGBT Labour, Disability Labour and the Fabian Society. Emily is a member of The Co-operative Party, GMB and Community.
Collaborating with Labour’s frontbench Equalities Team in late 2014, Emily ‘came out’ with her personal story, which was covered widely by the media, becoming Labour’s first trans parliamentary candidate and indeed the first blind woman.
Media coverage was positive, except for The Sun ridiculing Emily for being blind and for her sex. Emily secured a landmark ruling against this prejudice by working with other victims of press abuse and trans groups.
Emily has made significant contributions over the last 40 years in campaigns to reform disability benefits and civil rights, including serving with Disability Alliance, Voluntary Organisations for Anti-Discrimination Legislation and as President of The National Federation of the Blind. Emily’s career included managing post-16 education and employment services for The Royal National Institute for the Blind.
Possibly, Emily may be the only trans woman to have worked for the now-infamous Equality and Human Rights Commission, where she was Programme Head for Health and Local Government. Before this, Emily was responsible for governance and leadership at The Disability Rights Commission, including co-ordinating joint work between equality bodies in Britain and Ireland before merger and harmonised laws.
The Labour Party believes it is legitimate to exclude trans women to meet its interpretation of the Supreme Court decision on ‘biological sex’. The Party has failed to explain what it seeks to achieve for women or how its actions are proportionate.
Some 12 years after working with frontbench colleagues to tell her personal story to protect the reputation of The Labour Party from yet another politician not being honest, Emily is being penalised for that act of good faith. Drawing on articles in the public domain from that time, The Labour Party has banned Emily from Women’s Conference and Reserved Seats.
Emily said:
“The Party should take immediate steps to remedy the injustice it has taken against trans people, particularly the egregious exclusion of legally certified sex in policy, practices and procedures, including participating in Women’s Conference and all elections designated for women.
I urge the Labour Party to legislate in this Parliament to remedy the Supreme Court decision and subsequently update EHRC guidance.
We need to find ways to reverse the injustice and indignity being experienced by other trans women and me, including the discrimination being applied by the Party that undermines gender recognition laws and is contrary to Labour values.”
Emily Brothers, together with our own Steph Richards, who has also been descriminated against by the Labour Party at the Women’s Conference, will be making personal protests at the Labour Women’s Conference on Saturday the 26th of September. All major Unions are boycotting the Labour Women’s Conference in protest.
TransLucent will be exhibiting at Bluecoats Liverpool on Sunday the 27th between 10:00 and 12:00 AM.
