31 May 2026
Yesterday IBT comrades participated in a demonstration in Oxford against the latest attacks on trans people in Britain. A visiting comrade from our New Zealand section spoke to extend solidarity and express the common elements of the struggle worldwide. Reproduced below is the leaflet we distributed at the protest.
The Supreme Court ruling and the draft EHRC Code of Practice are not neutral "clarifications". They license bosses, councils, schools and hospitals to police trans people's bodies, documents and daily lives. They invite exclusion from toilets, wards, changing rooms, refuges, workplaces and public services. This is state-backed humiliation.
The attack is sold as "protecting women". That is a lie. Women are not protected by forcing trans people out of public life. Women are endangered by poverty, domestic violence, low wages, collapsing services, landlords, cops and bosses. The ruling class turns fear sideways, scapegoating a vulnerable minority instead of the system that produces sex oppression and insecurity.
HR policies or court rulings will not liberate anyone. The workers' movement must take a side. Trade unions, student unions, tenants' groups and community campaigns should organise co-ordinated refusal wherever bosses, councils, schools or hospitals turn the ruling and the draft EHRC Code into exclusion or sex policing. Teachers, nurses, council and retail workers must not become border guards of the sex binary.
The workers' movement should defend trans workers, students and patients from sackings, harassment and exclusion. It must demand full legal self-identification, sex-neutral toilets and private changing facilities without cutting existing provision, and full, free trans healthcare on demand, with no punitive waiting lists or degrading gatekeeping.
Women and trans people are oppressed by the capitalist family, which supports the policing of sexuality and the sexual division of labour. Dignity is not a scarce resource to compete over. Trans and women's liberation are one and the same fight.
Trans rights will not be secured by pleading with the state. They require working-class power and a revolutionary party that fights for all the oppressed.
Defeat the EHRC Code!
Make anti-trans rules unenforceable!
For class-struggle defence of trans rights!
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