The Proud National Committee is disappointed by the recent conduct of the NEC and senior officers of our union.

The recent blog hosted on our union’s website titled “Words for Lesbian Visibility Day 2024” contains inexcusable language that breaches our union’s equality policy as well as conference policy. This blog gatekeeps lesbianism, and implies those with a differing view of the label should utilise a different one. This is transphobic, toxic and harmful. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are valid. Biological essentialism holds no place in the workers movement.

We will be formally requesting an urgent meeting with Acting President Martin Cavanagh, the Head of the Equality department and the Comms department demanding its immediate removal and an explanation of how this blog was published and promoted favourably over a blog written by Proud's Women’s rep.

The Proud National Committee is the conference-confirmed self organising body for LGBT+ members. Transphobic blogs like this being published and promoted by our union without consultation breaches the democratically agreed policies not only of Proud itself, but of the whole union. In addition to this, an amendment proposed by our committee for a motion at TUC LGBT+ Conference has been blocked by leadership with zero consultation or accountability.

The PNC were asked to submit this amendment to the Equality Department on 5th April and we sent it on 4th. On 8th April we were asked to provide an explanation of the amendment for the upcoming NEC meeting which we submitted the same day. Despite the NEC meeting that week, this proposed amendment to the motion was not discussed even though this should have been debated by the entire NEC if there was a meeting scheduled before the submission deadline.

Instead, we were informed on 24th April that “Senior Officers” had met to discuss the amendment, and rejected the key change, claiming there was no union policy on this. We were then informed that the accepted amendment had been submitted in time of the deadline of 19th April, without any consultation with the Proud National Committee on the rejected element, and only informing us of this 5 days later.

This amendment would have called for a “child-first” approach to trans healthcare, and we are concerned by the implication that this idea is at odds with the position of our senior officers and are especially concerned by their position being undemocratically pushed through without membership consultation.

Actions such as this stand at odds with the leadership’s promise to engage collaboratively with us as required by motions A50 and A293. Consequently, we intend to raise these concerns at Conference later this month.