Sexist Unions boycott Labour women's conference

[fromorbit]

Unison, Aslef, Usdaw and the Musicians Union are planning to not attend Labour Women's Conference on 26 September 2026 in Liverpool because men are not allowed.

This is breaking Labour party rules against sex discrimination against women and that the Supreme Court judgement is correct:
https://labour.org.uk/resources/supreme-court-judgment-faqs/

This could be a huge issue for Burnham and Labour. Especially as Unison, & Unite are already facing court cases over their refusal to admit women exist.

Like the recent Amnesty trainwreck this could be a self inflicted car crash for TAs in the unions. It will force Labour to choose between reality and catering to a bunch of sexists who don't like it when women get have political meetings without male supervision.

It's a good point. All that fuss, all the noise about supporting the TRAs, and they mustered eight people protesting at the women's conference. I guess even the most rabid misogynists understood how it would look.

Shows how many support women, even if quietly. Suppose we should be grateful there was no piss or moobs out on this one.

I think that given it was a Union organised boycott and they are more than able to create effective picket lines, that they were asked not to have a presence.

ie Labour was more worried about their might be images that could have sullied the aura of Saint Burnham!

Just part of their total duplicity.

So sadly I dont think this means the fault lines are shifting.

My union was definitely asking people to go….

Given than Unison has banned transwomen from its own women’s conference, in order to stay within the law, maybe they realised they might look a bit odd picketing someone else’s.

Were the members all washing their hair?

Just wondering how much of it was an actual active boycott from the CLPs and how much using it as an excuse not to send women to the women's conference as it is an expense and they perhaps preferred last year when the delegates only went to the main conference? .

I was washing the cats hair… n

I think that was probably part of it.

There was a lot of rumours? facts? floating around saying only 200 women had turned up compared to 1,000 last year.

😂😂Sorry, but that's nonsense. I've read everything carefully and other users are agreeing with me, not so much with you.... Leaving this now, because my time is too valuable to waste any longer.

Someone should look at the overall figures for gender balance in delegates and attendees for this year in comparison with last year

As was said upthread, many women will have been put off by the thought of pushing past shouting, screaming protesters calling them bigots and transphobes. The threats did much of the job.
But still interesting that in the end ot was the self invested few who turned up to protest women meeting without their permission.

Between this and Parkrun's upcoming failure - when will it actually dawn on the transphobic contingent that they are actively harming the sensible GC cause?

I think that was why the protest was bigged up so much by the unions. Just another attempt at intimidation by the genderborg to prevent women speaking. It’s as though they believe transpeople are the most important people ever to exist and women are just their support humans. It’s why they get so angry when women go off script and say no. All they have left now is to try to intimidate people into following their ideology. It’s not working so the rage soon appears.

This conference was for biological women only in order to comply with the law. Is the law transphobic now, father?

It seems that vast swathes of former attendees disagreed with it. Are they allowed to disagree with you without being insulted?

Disagreed with what? The law?

I dont think it was necessarily the idea there might be threats. This was all within the context of Union organising and as it were, them having an official position.

I suspect that many would not have dared to go to the conference, and then have to face possibly being threatened for breaking the formal boycott of which ever union they are part of.

So more likely if there were 1,000 last year and only 200 this year, whether the 800 not turning up are union members.

According to that poster, everything women want that goes against the wishes of some men is “transphobic”
I really don’t understand the hatred some posters seem to have towards women who refuse to allow men into female spaces, and the sheer hubris of them coming on to feminism boards to scolders women discussing how GI affects them.

I consider it another attempt to try to bully women and just shows how low some people must be. They seem to feel that transpeoples wants must be placed over everything, and if women suffer, then it’s no big deal.

It’s interesting that those who perceive transpeople as subject to endless bullying and threatening behaviour are unable to see the threats and bullying meted out to women who simply want to go about their lives normally and within the law.

Men in unions have always thought of women as support humans tbf. This is an evolution of that, with women joining in.

More than just last year!

Whilst I'm not saying the whole boycotting nonsense had a lot to do with it (but yes, a significant proportion are union delegates), there's always more at play that can affect attendance.

For example, I'm an ex CLP secretary from a small CLP with a small budget. We could only ever afford to send one delegate to conference every year and had a policy of funding 1 woman one year, open the next (which was always interpreted as the 'man' year). Any women wanting to attend in a 'man' year needed to cover costs themselves... This meant that every other year there wasn't anyone eligibile to attend WC.

Historically WC was seperate from full conference. Now that they've added it to start of FC, that's a lot of time taken off to attend both conferences which women (the ones who most likely have caring responsibilities etc) are often unable to give. I know that attendance of WC from my ex CLP and neighbouring ones has consistently fallen since they tacked it on to the main one. And I'm sure that's the case elsewhere in the country.

But that's the thing about data - people can infer what they want from the numbers to fit a narrative. The truth however is always more complex and nuanced.

Last year’s women’s conference was cancelled, because of the SC ruling. I can’t find an attendance number for the year before. I can however find complaints from members that the conference was being downgraded. Only one day, not a great room. It’s possible that the downgrading was happening due to some of the issues outlined above.

But whatever they believed many wouldn't have been funded, whereas they could be fu nded to go to the main conference ( whatever they believed) even though the rules were not decided by the women's conference?
And similar restrictions did not apply to the main conference?

Or because of the cost