With PCS’s annual delegate conference concluding on Thursday, we wanted to share a report of the main issue of the conference.

As we have reported on earlier: The General Secretary, President and the National Standing Orders Committee made a number of decisions and statements in the run-up to and during this week’s conference which attacked the rights of trans delegates and blocked the discussion of motions of trans solidarity in the wake of the Supreme Court Judgement on the Equality Act.

The primary issues were:

1. The President and General Secretary, without NEC consultation, releasing a public statement in advance of conference which stated that the union was intent on enforcing their own interpretation of the Supreme Court Ruling, advising trans delegates not to use the toilet of their gender. In doing so enforcing segregation and causing harm and harassment to our trans delegates and placing PCS to the right of the rest of the trade union movement, the Brighton Conference Centre and Civil Service Employers.

2. The Standing Orders Committee sending all motions from branches which mentioned ‘the trans issue’ in bulk to the unions lawyers, asking for legal advice ‘in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling’. And subsequently ruling that not only would none of the motions be put to conference, but that none of them would be printed and that this decision could not be challenged. This included a motion from MHCLG HQ Branch which was unceremoniously thrown into the ‘bulk submission’, but to which the legal advice didn’t relate.

3. The Standing Orders Committee, on the eve of conference, ruling that motion A57 on trans rights which had already been printed and circulated as part of the original motions booklet, would also be ruled out of order. The legal advice for this wasn’t forthcoming and had to be fought for on conference floor by the majority of delegates continuously refusing to adopt standing orders. 

When the advice was provided, it did not relate to this year’s Supreme Court ruling at all, rather it stated that calling on the union to ‘oppose exclusionary ideologies that reduce human experience to the biological characteristics of sex alone’ was likely to infringe the rights of those who hold such ideologies as a protected characteristic under the equality act. Leaving us to ask whether existing PCS policy confirming that trans women and women and trans men are men still stands or is itself ‘illegal’.

Who controls conference?

As a result of the above, conference, taking the lead from trans delegates and allies, refused to endorse standing orders, with passionate speeches and heckles from the floor demanding that minimally motion A57 was reinstated onto the agenda. 

Regardless of the SOC legal advice, the President could have accepted A57 as it had already been printed, and the supposed legal jeopardy already breached, by simply calling for a vote on a previous Standing Order Report which included it, but he did not.

In a twist of bitter irony, conference was told repeatedly from the Chair, that it was the sovereign body of the union, despite repeatedly refusing to allow votes to overturn the Standing Orders ruling out of all the trans solidarity motions, on the basis that the Chair of Standing Orders had the constitutional authority to simply refuse for them to be heard. 

To imbue one individual, regardless of political stripe, with the authority to rule-out any motion on the grounds of legal jeopardy and the legal responsibility to do so, is not a tenable or democratic situation and completely undermines the idea that PCS is a member led union. 

PCS Independent Left will be proposing rule changes for next year’s conference to ensure that minimally, it’s conference who endorses any such ruling after being furnished with the legal advice, and that the union indemnifies any individual against legal challenges arising from it, as it does already with the NEC.

We also welcome the election of members of the Coalition for Change to the Standing Orders Committee to challenge such behaviour next year.

Annual Conference should be the sovereign body of the union. Not the Standing Orders Committee and certainly not the lawyers.

When the law is wrong, we fight the law 

There is broad consensus that the Supreme Court ruling is detrimental to trans rights. We consider the ruling and the subsequent interim EHRC guidance as part of a cultural and legislative trajectory of erasure of trans people from society.

When unions in the deep south were faced with legally enforced racial segregation through Jim Crow, did they simply accept the law or did they break it in order to organise black and white workers against it? Did unions simply accept the poll-tax when it became law, or did they support the mass campaign of non-payment to oppose and ultimately defeat it? 

Did our own union simply accept the law had changed disallowing union membership at GCHQ, or did they oppose it and support each and every rep who was sacked as a consequence?

There are, of course, many other examples of unions refusing to accept the law when it challenges the rights, or in this case, the existence of their members.

PCS activists and members need to ask themselves and their leadership – why is it different this time?

The President, General Secretary and the Standing Orders Committee chose to seek legal advice on this question. It is beyond comprehension that they did not know what the response would have been.

But even if they hadn’t, there are other motions on the order paper which could have been challenged legally on a similar basis to the trans solidarity motions. Unison, for example, regularly rules out motions on industrial action on the same basis, using legal advice from the same lawyers as PCS. Why weren’t these motions sent to the lawyers?

At best it’s cowardly and conservative. At worse, underhanded, exclusionary and undemocratic.

It is also important to note that some Group conferences taken this week, did allow similar motions to be debated and voted on, which almost entirely debases the rationale behind excluding them from national conference.

An existential fight

This is not an issue like the debate on the national campaign, or our strategy on hybrid working. This is an existential fight for the trans community. This is why there was rightfully a majority to refuse accepting standing orders on two successive votes.

We sincerely hope that delegates who were frustrated about the delayed start to conference recognise this and direct their frustration to those who prevented the interests of our trans members being debated by conference.

In behaving as they have, PCS Left Unity have not only thrown our trans members under the bus, but have – potentially unwittingly – signalled to transphobes in the wider trade union movement how to ensure similar situations are played out in other unions. 

We want to be very clear to every rep and member, that is the consequence of their behaviour this week.

If there was one incident which demonstrates this the most, it was the emboldening of transphobes to an extent that for the first time at PCS conference, they felt it acceptable to boast from the podium of misgendering and presuming the gender of delegates and harassing them in the toilets. Later providing the same perspectives freely to the Daily Mail.

The power of self-organisation

We want to pay a huge tribute to the self-organisation of trans delegates who led allies in refusing to back down, despite the force of the leadership, lawyers, the standing orders committee and full-timers acting against them.

We also don’t want activists to be disheartened. The power shown on the conference floor during the debate on standing orders and during the Equalities section and the continuous stream of delegates throughout the conference highlighting support for trans siblings should be heartening. There is an organisation here which isn’t going away.

PCS Independent Left will continue to back our trans members and the wider trans community. 

Solidarity means listening to the voices of oppressed people, not silencing them. It means amplifying their demands, not refusing to print them. It means backing them, regardless of the law.