In 2024, I won my claim for unlawful discrimination against the Green Party after it removed me, two years earlier, as a front bench Justice Spokesperson (Ali vs GPEW). It had already been established by Forstater at the Employment Appeal Tribunal in 2021 that the belief that sex is biological, binary and immutable is “worthy of respect in a democratic society”. In my case, the courts also ruled that, despite the necessarily higher thresholds for lawful freedom of expression in political associations, politicians were still protected from discrimination based on their gender critical beliefs under the Equality Act 2010. The Green Party had breached that threshold.
Following my appointment as a national spokesperson, I was subjected to an unrelenting campaign of harassment, led by Sian Berry and others, that culminated in my unjust removal. Judge Hellman found the party had produced no evidence to warrant my removal, it breached procedural fairness in doing so and had discriminated against me because of my gender critical belief (‘Shahrar Ali wins “gender critical” court battle against Green Party‘, BBC, Feb 9th 2024). The party spent vast sums (I would estimate £400,000) to defend the case and lost. It had to pay damages, too, and at a subsequent hearing I was also awarded 60% of my costs (‘Greens hit with £90,000 bill after discrimination case‘, BBC, September 13th 2024).
I remained an active member throughout those proceedings, able to contest elections internally and externally (such as the London Assembly). However, in August 2024, the Green Party processed two sets of complaints against me concurrently – each based on my sex realist statements on social media – and decided to suspend and remove my membership and associated rights.
After 22 years as an active member, having just won a two-year court battle against the party, you can imagine my horror and dismay at being so blatantly discriminated against again — I’d been more or less kicked out of the party with breath-taking chutzpa. Despite an encouragement from the judge for rapprochement between the parties, I found myself being punished instead. This felt like victimisation on steroids!
In the first set, the party heard four complaints against me, each alleging ‘transphobia’, suddenly accelerated to a disciplinary hearing after it reversed its decision to undertake a proper investigation first. The central allegation common to the complaints was that in comparing the age-inappropriateness of wanting to teach a two-year old the concept of transgender identity to the inappropriateness of wanting to teaching them about schizophrenia at this age, I had somehow likened gender identity to schizophrenia. I argued, and still maintain, no reasonable person would want to do either of those things. I was merely criticising Stonewall for pushing its ideological agenda on unwitting kids.
I was also disciplined for seeking to bring a motion to conference in 2021 that would have banned GenderGP from dispensing puberty blockers in the UK. Instead of being commended for my foresight in anticipating the risk of harm to children, as was subsequently evidenced by the Cass Review and the puberty blocker moratorium on NHS and private providers, I received a two-year exclusion from the party and a five-year ban on standing for all internal and external positions upon readmission.
In August 2024, the party suspended me on an emergency “no-fault basis” following a further complaint from one of the earlier complainants. This one was to do with my criticism of the obscene spectacle of the International Olympics Committee granting Imane Khelif, whom I described as male and correctly attributed sexed pronouns to match, entry into the women’s boxing competition. I regarded the consequences for fairness and safety of female competitors as grotesque. According to the disciplinary referral group, “There is no justification for presuming that she [sic. Imane Khelif] is male. No evidence.” Anybody who has followed reports into Khelif’s sex eligibility tests will know this to be a demonstrably unsafe assumption. I was suspended for “misgendering” Khelif even though I had correctly sexed him (he is genetically male), and Khelif has confirmed that he does not identify as transgender.
As Gandhi once said, the means are the ends in the making. Justice is a perfect example of both means and ends: procedural justice subverted is justice denied. As with the first case, I believe my legal team will be able to compellingly argue that I have been subjected to gross abuse of disciplinary process by agents of the Green Party, acting in a coordinated effort to subdue the lawful expression of my gender critical belief within and outside the party. The examples of procedural abuse are legion – from refusal of officers with clear conflicts of interest to recuse themselves to convening inquorate hearings and playing fast and loose with disciplinary standing orders. When the time comes, I will press for the court hearings to be live streamed so that the fanatical rot of the Green Party and its mob perpetrators can be fully exposed to the electors.
I was deeply moved by the groundswell of moral and financial support for my first legal case. I need your support again now, please. The Green Party is a morally bankrupt imposter of its former self. Who would cheer on mutilation of children’s bodies, despite Cass? Or refuse to condemn balaclava-clad incitement to hatred of women by TRA fanatics on marches that it would itself sponsor? Or abandon all reason when it comes to the protection of single-sex spaces for women and same-sex attracted lesbian associations following the Supreme Court ruling?
The Green Party has inflicted significant detriment upon me already – preventing me from attending conference last year to move a motion on Cass and seeking to stop me from standing for the London Assembly or a future leadership election this year (in 2021, I garnered 21% of first preference votes). As I am no longer a serving spokesperson, the party would be even harder pushed to justify my exclusion on such disproportionate terms. A second court win against it could cost it bankruptcy.
I am initially seeking £10,000 over the next two weeks. This will enable me to fully engage my legal team to complete an objective assessment of my chances and home in on the best legal strategy. I would expect a Letter Before Action and Particulars of Claim to follow shortly thereafter.
I have instructed Doyle Clayton, one of the most formidable discrimination firms on the circuit, alongside counsel, Jeffrey Jupp KC, who brought his considerable power of legal persuasion and political insight to bear in the first case.
In politics as in court, the Green Party plays nothing if not dirty. We, however, play clean – because the truth, as with justice, will continue to prevail.
Dr Shahrar Ali is a British politician and academic who served as Deputy Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2014 to 2016. Donate to his crowdfunder.
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