Supporters of the PCS Broad Left Network offer our deepest sympathy and solidarity to the family and friends of Brianna Ghey. Brianna Ghey was a 16 year old trans girl who was murdered in Warrington last weekend. In response, vigils have been called across the country to stand with the LGBT+ community. The PCS Broad Left Network urges our supporters to make every effort to support these vigils and the struggle for LGBT+ rights generally. Brianna was a much loved daughter, supported and cherished by her family. Like anyone, she wanted to live a life with the space and support to be her true self. Due to the UK government’s appalling U-turn on reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the absolute failure of our society to make space for trans people to live as their authentic selves, Brianna’s death will have to be recorded using her deadname and her death certificate will wrongly declare her to be male. This injustice demonstrates the erasure of Brianna’s young life, just one example of the erasure faced by all trans people who get married, live and die under a system which forcibly denies who they are. Now that she has died, the state – aided by reactionary elements in our society – will insist that she never truly existed as the wonderful young woman that she was. This erasure, propped up and deepened by the disgusting transphobic discourse ripping through the media at present, is the genocidal outcome of the anti-trans lobby.
That word is not used lightly; the Lemkin Institute for Genocidal Prevention describes the gender critical movement’s ideology and practice as having a “genocidal nature” in their 2022 report and call it a “centerpiece of right wing ascendency in the Western world”. The 1948 United Nations Convention on preventing genocide states in Article 2 that alongside the obvious definition of killing or harming members of a group, one definition can be “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction or in part.” While the Convention refers to “national, ethnical, racial or religious groups”, the parallels with the targeting of the very essence, existence and validity of trans people as a group as described in the Lemkin report are clear. A person’s trans identity is an inherent and inalienable part of who they are, and there is a growing voice in society urging us to deny that. We must reject it, and trans rights must be upheld and defended as an urgent matter of life and death.
Trans people, the LGBT+ community and their allies, can see that her murder is not simply an isolated incident. LGBT+ rights are under attack in a way that hasn’t been seen since the 1980s and the introduction by the Thatcher government of the hated Section 28. In reality, despite improvements amongst social attitudes and legal protections won because of the struggles of LGBT+ people to have their voices heard, trans people continue to face unrelenting hostility throughout their lives: in schools, on the streets, in the workplaces, and in wider society.
The newly-appointed Deputy Tory Chairman, Lee Anderson, has openly stated that their party will use a culture war-type agenda to sow division by attacking trans people in a bid to desperately try to cling to power. Disgracefully, much like their approach to striking workers, Keir Starmer’s Labour sit on their hands whilst trans people face attacks from the right and the far-right. Trans people also face specific barriers in accessing public services, such as access to mental health provision and gender reassignment services, because of the austerity policies of successive governments and councillors representing the mainstream capitalist parties. Hypocritically, some of so-called allies of trans people amongst these pro-austerity parties are the same politicians who have voted to introduce cut services, scrap or water down equality training including in the civil service, slash legal aid and introduce tribunal fees to deter access to justice. PCS members at conference have consistently voted to show their solidarity with our trans comrades by passing motions, often in spite of the recommendation of the Left Unity-dominated National Executive Committee, to unequivocally defend trans rights.
The PCS Broad Left Network is proud to demand justice for Brianna and her family and friends. The BLN recommits its pledge to stand with the LGBT+ community and against the austerity policies that fan the flames of division, hatred and discrimination in our society. We urge our supporters to join the vigils over the coming days ahead to demand justice.
PCS Broad Left Network 