Only in my hometown of Brighton and Hove (a delightful seaside city turned wretched by its political class) could such a thing happen. Only here could a city council be so captured by gender ideology, so eager to be its loyal flagship, that it would physically eject a woman from the town hall chamber for simply opposing its cloyingly woke groupthink.
The opposition that resident Kay Lyons tried to voice in the precious time-slot the public are allowed was no more than a passionate plea to repair what she believed to be breaches in schools child safeguarding procedures. In Brighton and Hove, a growing number of parents share these concerns. In one instance, known to the council and freely admitted by the secondary school concerned, teachers were aware of a child’s use of a breast-binder in school but tacitly supported its use and withheld the information from the parents.
As the video webcast testifies, Kay Lyons hadn’t used foul or threatening language or accused an individual of wrongdoing. She hadn’t glued herself to the table in front of her or got up and sprayed paint across the Mayor’s crimson robes. Nor had she grabbed the ceremonial mace and waved it about (as our tantrum prone MP for Brighton Kemptown Lloyd Russell-Moyle had done in parliament in 2018). No – in fact, Lyons hadn’t even finished her question when, without any warning, her microphone was cut off and three security men surrounded her.
Whilst the manhandling and ejection of a member of the public is surprising (and possibly a criminal offence), the council’s determination to silence anyone questioning schools’ use of the gender affirmation approach (alongside the practice known as ‘social transition’ whereby a child’s name and pronoun are changed, often without knowledge or consent of the parents) is not. You can read more about these dubious practices here.
Kay Lyons was the fourth resident to go into the town hall to voice such concerns. Back in July, I was brusquely told that parental concerns about trans activists entering schools and posing as experts were, in fact, “baseless smears”. On the matter of the council recommending its schools promote gender ideology, the response was an emphatic “this council follows national law, policy and guidance”. This followed a council reply in August clarifying that parents appearing to hold gender critical beliefs “may or may not be transphobic” but it will “reserve the right” to challenge anything it regards as “causing harm” (this presumably includes any resident who dares to question the council’s trans activism).
Having previously sounded an alarm about the council’s use of a third party provider to embed Critical Race Theory into schools, I imagine council leaders are never pleased to see me show up. The May election hadn’t helped. The new majority Labour administration that swept the Greens from power resented the challenge from independent candidates. In Queens Park and in Kemptown, myself and pub landlord Alan Towler ran against Labour candidates who included a 19 year-old and her aunt who beat us hands down only to be expelled from their party six months later amidst allegations of electoral malpractice. Right across the city, fresh faced Labour hopefuls were excited at the prospect of bringing forth a new era of good governance following three miserable years of Green Party mismanagement.
Against a backdrop of 35 (now 33) Labour councillors eager to bolster Keir Starmer’s General Election chances by painting the town red, a new council leader emerged. Few had ever heard of Bella Sankey but many hoped that she would be a breath of fresh air and herald a return to competent city governance (and certainly a welcome end to the Green’s faddish embrace of every cause imaginable). Perhaps, as one local Labour supporting commentator put it, Labour would now “listen to local people and treat them with respect, not assume that if they disagree it is because they are bigoted, lack sophistication or need ‘re-education’”. The Greens had been a nightmare but dreams of Labour returning us to sanity were short-lived. From the very first full-council meeting, faith in Bella Sankey sprang a leak. Within two months, Sankey had punished one of her Labour councillors for retweets supporting the views of J.K. Rowling and Germaine Greer. Abruptly removed from her city regeneration role, Cllr Alison Thomson was ordered to apologise for her “anti-trans sentiment” and attend re-education. In a statement, Cllr Thomson said, “I am committed to undergoing training to better understand the lived experiences of transgender people and with the aim of becoming a good trans ally”. “Her apology reads like a hostage statement” wrote one commenter under the local press report. “You expect this kind of dystopian, authoritarian agenda from the disgraced Green Party but it seems that Labour are already sinking to the same low level,” wrote another. Perhaps to avoid further embarrassments, Sankey ordered that all Labour councillors attend the trans-awareness re-education provided by controversial activist group Gendered Intelligence, though how this follows national law, policy and guidance is debatable.
With the ejection of Kay Lyons at the second full council meeting, the ‘Labour will be our saviour’ bubble had well and truly burst. It’s hard not to wonder if the Brighton Labour membership, sent spiralling back to reality, then sent the hapless Eddie Izzard back to his? Izzard was, after all, a selection candidate seemingly oblivious to parents’ safeguarding concerns – it was all just “Tory culture wars” (which was presumably why residents so badly needed him in Parliament as Brighton’s “voice for trans people”).
The reality of what is happening in Brighton and Hove schools is only just coming to light. Bizarrely, the council insists that it does not have a specific policy about social transitioning in schools. As if preparing itself to throw headteachers under a bus if it all goes wrong, the council likes to imply that the matter is for school leaderships to decide. Yet, the council-produced schools guidance, the ‘Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit‘, has been tirelessly promoted in city schools by co-authors Allsorts Youth Project. And Allsorts has been tirelessly promoted by the council.
The toolkit’s fiercest advocate is Labour councillor Emma Daniel (currently the council’s safeguarding lead). Promoting the 2018 version, Cllr Daniel wrote: “If trans children don’t get support and understanding they may hurt themselves and refuse school.” Another Labour councillor reinforced this view in an email reply to me: “Too many young trans people take their own life, as the people who they love and others around them, do not tolerate/acknowledge their identity.” The spectre of imminent danger and the urgent need for schools to be pro-active placed significant pressure on headteachers especially given the toolkit claimed to be guiding schools on the law too. For activist teachers the toolkit simply reinforced NEU advice on this issue which states that members have “a professional and ethical obligation to support young trans and gender-questioning students in education”. The NEU guidance also implies a legal obligation because the Equality Act prohibits discrimination of anyone with the protected characteristic of “gender reassignment”. But as NEU whistle-blower Patrick Stevens correctly points out, the guidance steers members to categorise, a priori, any child who self-identifies as trans as a ‘trans child’. Following this mind-set, if a teacher fails to support the ‘gender questioning’ child – who therefore must be ‘trans’ – he or she is guilty of discrimination.
The invidious position schools were placed in by the council explains why Brighton and Hove seems to have borne witness to some of the most horrifying breaches of child safeguarding anywhere in the country. At this year’s LGB Alliance conference, a spokeswoman for a new group, PSHEbighton.org, gave an extraordinary speech.
The group (which many of us have joined) exists as a lightning rod for parent experiences and knows of parent complaints spanning schools right across the city. Two of the examples summarised at the conference concerned girls who had started to question their gender identity at school. Same-sex attracted, autistic, trauma in their families – in both these cases the girls had fallen under the influence of online trans-activists.
In one of the examples, online activists had encouraged the child to self-harm in order to obtain a social work referral. A social worker came to the family home and on her initial visit, without having read any of the clinical history of the child, declared to all present that this child was now a boy. The parents obtained school records and learnt that for the previous year the school had been actively socially transitioning the child behind their backs. This came as a shock because the headteacher had promised this wouldn’t happen. It became apparent that activist teachers had gone ahead regardless. Some helped facilitate the use of breast-binders and organise sessions with Allsorts. They were aware the child had obtained testosterone, and deliberately withheld this from parents. PSHE Brighton has received similar stories from families dating back to 2016; in all circumstances families raised concerns with headteachers and school governors, to no avail.
On the breast-binder issue alone, a clear moment – you’d think – for a safeguarding red-flag, the school should have escalated the matter (under existing statutory guidance, it is made abundantly clear that everyone – including families – has a role to play). But in the increasingly warped world of Brighton and Hove City Council, activist officials, councillors, teachers and social workers operate a deliberate agenda intent on driving gender identity theory forward. In schools, where activists simply overrule the wishes of ineffectual heads, their cause is paramount and parents who object are cast as abusers – part of a bigoted blob of untutored minds. A recent tweet responding to the new Government guidance says it all. Labour’s safeguarding lead Cllr Emma Daniel tweeted: “The sad reality is that mainly kids need protecting from relatives – that’s basic and obvious safeguarding. And this guidance should be about the safety of children not the feelings of parents.” To clarify a reply asking if she meant ‘mainly’ or ‘many’, she tweeted: “Either really – safeguarding mostly involves protecting children from relatives.”
Responding to a public question in November, Deputy Council Leader Jacob Taylor disputed the claim that headteachers were crying out for DfE guidance: “I can honestly say that in meeting most of the headteachers in this city over the last couple of months not one has raised this with me.” Perhaps. But like Cllrs Sankey and Daniel, it seems Labour leaders in Brighton will continue to cobble together an alternate reality in which the only safeguarding concerns they need to ponder relate to children at risk from their parents. In the ‘nothing to see here’ city, the accounts of parents can be ignored or, in the case of Kay Lyons, ‘refuted’, demonised and responded to with naked aggression.
In the Times, Janice Turner put it well when describing the underlying principle of the new Government guidance, which is “parents must be told if their child socially transitions since this is not a neutral act but a pathway to medical interventions”. Turner makes reference here to the Cass Report – a document our council will assiduously not have read. A local women’s group raised money to give every city councillor a copy of Time to Think by ex-BBC Newsnight reporter Hannah Barnes. Though it’s possible a few of Brighton’s Labour councillors might read it secretly by candlelight (or risk more ‘re-education’ sessions) the majority are likely to remain amongst the group who laughed as Kay Lyons was ejected and who, a minute later, heartily applauded Sankey when she denounced Lyons as an aggressive protester advancing an “agenda”.
And so it seems this Labour administration – just over six months into its term – has drunk the gender ideology Kool Aid to the extent that it will die on this hill despite its own national leadership welcoming the draft DfE Schools Guidance for Gender Questioning Children.
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“Only in my hometown of Brighton and Hove…”
Would that it were only possible in Brighton and Hove.
Legal professionals are everywhere manifesting their make-believe virtual worlds through the manipulation of language and expert whataboutery. If a corporation can be a person, why can’t a man be women?
An excellent vehicle by which to destroy a country.
Sorry but this is really a bit silly. The law regards companies as legal persons so that they can be legally liable and be sued. If you wanted to sue a company you would be glad of that.
This makes my blood boil. Who really has the welfare of children at the heart of their thinking? Children’s parents or children’s state service providers? The latter are not only incentivised by woke dogma, but also by their very real need to feel good about themselves. Feel good about themselves by destroying the lives of innocent children. I couldn’t despise these creatures more; they are evil. I’m not sure what I would do if I had young children being indoctrinated like this by this filth. Nothing good.
Labour are communists in disguise. They are showing their true communist, totalitarian colours in Brighton and other places they control. A coming Labour government will have people in gulags: cancellation, firing from jobs and then polizei stasi investigating your thinking will become the norm. We are heading for a very dark place in this country. The socialists are coming for you and your thoughts and freedom. Hopefully it will cause civil unrest and they will be destroyed.
Labour are vile. A clear and present danger to children and the people of this country. How in God’s name are people really favouring this shower of communist dictators??.our people have become mad. They deserve their prison which is coming fast.
The really simple explantion for events like this, especially the transition from Green -> Labour without any change of the Against the people united we stand! political agenda is that there’s money to be had by acting in this way. So-called trans activists are adults seeking to exploit vulnerable, eg, depressive or autistic, children, for their own benefit. And council sold the children to them based on being legally entitled to imprison them in so-called school buildings for most of their time which have thus found new and much more exciting and profitable purpose than teaching them boring stuff like history or maths.
The methods of these people may resemble those of Marxists. But they’re certainly not planning to uplift the working class to decent standards of living by fighting against their exploitative employers.
Forget the gender nonsense and concentrate on the real issues that these children will face .
The majority of these schoolchildren will no longer have their birth father living in their home by the time they are 7years old and there is NO money or organisations out there to help them understand and survive these changes.
There is something particularly evil about this assault on the mental health and emotional integrity of young children. Frankly I can understand it when parents faced with this situation take the law into their own hands.
TLDR
I did read it. But the article could have benefitted from some editorial shortening.
I wonder why nobody is investigating why so many children have these transgender issues, is it environmental toxins?