 Moving on. So our next speaker, let me introduce our next speaker to you, Barbara Wood is the for Britain's spokeswoman on gender issues. I spoke with Barbara last night, we're having a chat over it right, and she's going to tackle or talk about the I guess one of those issues which pervades politics and pervades our country at the moment and that's the whole trans narrative. And I think you'll find this extremely interesting. So please join me in welcoming Barbara Wood to the stage. Hi everyone. Thanks very much. Can you hear me at the back? Yes. Okay. That's the last time I'm going to use the word, I don't approve of the word gender at all. It should always be sex. But I let David off that one. I was told to speak on freedom, justice and democracy in about 20 minutes. So I asked for a bit longer because these are big issues discussed for as long as humans have been talking. I decided the only way I could really do this effectively was to pick one topic and put it under the microscope use it as a test case so to speak. And ask is our right enshrined in law to speak freely about this issue being upheld is the justice system treating people equally over this issue. And if the answer to either of those questions is no, I maintain we don't have a functioning democracy anymore. So I chose to talk about transgenderism which I got interested in only about 18 months ago when I discovered that the government was holding a public consultation on proposals to change the 2004 Gender Recognition Act which I had never heard of. And I'll be really interested later to hear from any of you in the room who filled out the public consultation. It apparently was the second highest number of responses. I believe it was over 100,000. I did. But I knew nothing about it. So I had to get to grips with something that was, well, I don't think I'd even heard the word transgenderism. I certainly never had it past my lips before. So I read the debates in Hansard from the run up to the 2004 act. I went to some seminars. I did a lot of reading. And it was a bit of a learning curve and I didn't much like what I found out. I also realized while I was doing this research before the consultation how many other areas this issue impacts policing and the judiciary, child protection, education, health, employment and sports are all involved. I'm not talking here about individuals. This has nothing to do with having a problem with individuals. I don't. They can wear, say, call themselves what they want. I'm solely concerned with the increased visibility of this issue and how our freedoms to debate are being eroded. To start with, I'm going to read a paragraph from a 2017 report from the OECD, the organization of economic cooperation and development highlighting the dangers of policy capture because I think this has a lot to tell us about what's going on here. Then I'm going to give you the relevant articles from the Human Rights Act, which was in the UK act of 1998, which came from the European Convention on Human Rights. They're so important to know. And I couldn't have recited these 18 months ago, but I can now. In fact, I carried them with me on some printed paper. I'll briefly describe what the current law says and give you some examples of actually what's going on. And to finish, I'm going to suggest a few things that we're all going to have to do cooperatively and collaboratively. And I go further and say things we must do because doing nothing is not an option anymore. Do nothing and you're complicit. So first, the definition of policy capture from the OECD goes like this. And I quote and watch out for the word democracy here. Policy capture is the process of consistently or repeatedly directing public policy away from the public interest towards the interest of a specific group or person. Capture is the opposite of inclusive and fair policy making and always undermines core democratic values. The capture of public decisions can be activated through a wide variety of illegal instruments such as bribery, but also through legal channels such as lobbying and financial support to political parties and political campaigns. Undue influence can also be exercised without the direct involvement of public decision makers by manipulating the information provided to them or establishing close social and emotional ties with them. End of quote. Let's take as the starting point that freedom of expression as defined in article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society that without it there is no democratic society. Article 10 specifies the right to freedom of expression including the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. In addition to article 10, the other relevant articles in this discussion incorporated into UK law via the Human Rights Act are article 9, the right to private and family life. That's article 8, sorry. Article 9, the right of freedom of thought, conscience and religion and article 11, the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others. Now the relevant legislation in this issue is the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 which was intended to help people of both sexes with gender dysphoria. This is a recognized condition and refers to those born male and want to present as female and vice versa. It's estimated to affect approximately 0.01% of any population. That would mean about 6,000 people in the UK. This figure was actually mentioned in the debates in Parliament in 2003 and as by the time of last year's public consultation approximately 4,990 gender recognition certificates had been issued, it seems that estimate is about right. But it's important to understand that this legislation was nothing to do with transgenderism. In fact, I couldn't find one reference to the term given during the debates in Parliament. It's also a fact that the legislation in the UK put in place one of the lightest touch systems in the world for getting recognition of gender dysphoria. Many countries require hormone treatment as a minimum, others require hormone treatment and genital surgery as well. The UK requires neither and in fact the majority do neither. All that's required is a two year period of medical supervision during which the applicant lives as the opposite sex and undertakes to do so for the rest of life and that's it. Once they have a gender recognition certificate, birth certificates, passports, driving licenses can all be changed to reflect the new sex and the individual has legal privacy for life. It is of course a legal fiction, no one can change sex. However for some years the LGBT lobby groups such as Stonewall have been demanding that the gender recognition act of 2004 is scrapped. No supervision, no medical oversight, nothing. It's too onerous they say. It is humiliating and intrusive. I am what I say I am and if I say I'm a woman or a man, I am and that's all there is to it and to say otherwise you're a bigot and phobic. The demand is for gender recognition certificates for anyone who wants one on the basis of self identification and lifelong legal privacy without hindrance. Now I'm not discussing the rights and wrongs of these proposals. My argument is about the freedom to debate, challenge and question a proposed change to existing law. A change that has the potential to radically and adversely impact the existing rights of everyone but particularly women and girls as spaces currently segregated by sex, changing rooms, hospital wards, toilets, sports, refuges will be lost. And what better time for open debate of the issues than when there's a proposal to change legislation and to do this without fear, without fear of losing your job, the police contacting your employer, being beaten, spat at and prevented from accessing public meetings arranged specifically to discuss the issues, being removed by the police from a public meeting because transgender lobbyists don't want you there, without fear of being visited by the police at your home, arrested, held in a police cell for seven hours while your children, one of whom is autistic and the other one of breastfeeding age, are left at home. Interviewed under caution because you tweeted or retweeted something or misgendered someone, being told by the police that although your retweet doesn't constitute a crime, they needed, and I quote, to check your thinking. That really happened this year. If you live in a society which claims to have freedom of expression, you really wouldn't expect any of this to happen just because you hold an opinion. You know, something really controversial like women don't have a penis. Only women menstruate. Trans women are men. Children cannot be born in the wrong body. A woman is an adult female, my pin. A man is an adult male. Unfortunately, if you live in the UK today, all of these things that I've just mentioned are to be expected. In fact, they have all happened in 2018 or 2019 and all of them in connection with the transgender juggernaut. And these are a handful of just hundreds of examples I could have chosen. I think if such things were reported to be happening in North Korea or Iran, we would just shrug and say, well, what do you expect? Totalitarian state. But this is here in the UK and it's happening now. So much for freedom. Moving on to the justice system, and in this context I'm going to first look at the police, the front door as it were, to the justice system for most citizens. A good start would be the police applying the law correctly. We do not currently have a system of self-identification in this country, which means that any male who does not have a gender recognition certificate is legally male and vice versa, of course. So why are police forces across the country allowing men accused of rape and other violent crimes against both men and women to self-identify as women? A self-identifying trans person has no legal right to have their alleged offence recorded as though it was committed by the opposite sex. Who takes these decisions? Where we asked, who decided this was a good idea? Can North Wales, South Yorkshire, Thames Valley, Durham, Kent, Norfolk and Suffolk, the British Transport Police and others, explain why they think self-identification is part of UK law? Why are self-identifying men allowed in women's prisons and other sex segregated spaces when they can legitimately be denied access even if they have a gender recognition certificate? Is this an example of policy capture? I think it might be. Justice is supposed to be blind and impartial. We are equal before the law. However, it's starting to feel like the British police are acting as the personal police force for transgender lobbyists ready to do their bidding, ensuring that debate is shut down. But an interesting judgment was handed down by the European Court of Human Rights in April of this year relating to a case in Moldova, some poor individual was taking on the Moldovan government. I won't bore you with the details, but the judgment stated, and it's really interesting, and I quote from this year, freedom of expression as secured in paragraph one of article 10 of the Convention constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society. Indeed, one of the basic conditions for the progress and for the self-fulfillment of the individual. Subject to paragraph two, it is applicable not only to information or ideas that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but it also affects those that offend, shock or disturb the state or any section of the population. Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broad mindedness without which there is no democratic society. End of quote. Remember, that's a judgment from the European Court of Human Rights this year. So with that judgment in mind, let's compare and contrast these two cases. At the Labour Party conference in Brighton just the other day, 2019, end of September, a grassroots group called Women's Place founded last year specifically in connection with the government consultation to raise awareness of the implications of the proposed changes to the 2004 Act. They organised a fringe meeting. Trans activists protested the meeting, which I and I hope all of you agree they absolutely had a right to do so. What they did not have a right to do was harass, intimidate and threaten people trying to access the meeting. Mostly women, but some really brave men there as well. Some of whom reported being terrified. Sussex police were in attendance. They stood by and did nothing. Throughout the meeting, the protesters held up a barrage of noise, beating drums, banging on the windows of the meeting room in attempt to shut down the debate. Sussex police stood by and did nothing. No arrests were made. Sussex police have defended their inaction. But if you watch videos of the event on YouTube, it would seem that at the very least public order offences were committed. And what Sussex police seem totally unconcerned about is the fact that they failed to uphold the right of Women's Place to hold the meeting and the right of those attending to access the meeting. As guaranteed under Article 11 of the ECHR, the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others. And under Article 10, the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information. Have Sussex police been captured? I think they may be. But on the other hand, when trans activists hold a meeting and call for help to deny someone their rights under the same two articles, the police are all over it like a rash. In March 2019, the London Offices of Accenture, a multinational professional services company, hosted a public event. They sold tickets to recognise International Transgender Day of Visibility. It was organised by members of Pride in Accenture Diversity Network. That's people who work for Accenture. It was a public event. The panel included Susie Green, the CEO of Mermaids, the charity that advocates for transgender children. The blurb for this event said, and I quote, please be reminded that the event is centred around inclusion, open to everyone of all ages and we look forward to welcoming you to Accenture. However, they didn't really mean that. It was a qualified welcome and not extended to potential critics. In this case, it meant calling the police to remove people from the audience who might disagree with them. A small group of women were spotted in the audience. That is before the meeting even started. Nothing had actually been said at this stage. The organisers didn't want these particular women there. In spite of the fact, they had bought tickets in their own names. They hadn't done anything underhand. Astonishingly, seven City of London police officers were immediately available to help. This is at a time when apparently we have no police officers who can actually solve crime, but seven City of London police officers turned up to deal with four women who were doing nothing more controversial than sitting on chairs. They were having a slice of pizza and a glass of wine waiting for the meeting to start. Where did the police on standby for this event? Where did these seven suddenly appear from? The organisers lied and claimed the women had been disruptive. That's not possible. The meeting hadn't been discussed. The women were told by one of the organisers and I quote, my panel does not feel comfortable with you here. So not really welcoming at all. They were forcibly removed from the venue and there's a video on YouTube of one of the women being carried out. She was sitting on a chair just like you're sitting on today with a policeman each leg and they lifted her up and carried her out because she had refused to move. She had a right to be there under every article of the Human Rights Act. They had said and done nothing. Were the police impartial? In upholding articles 10 and 11 of the ECHR and UK law, I don't think so. But what the trans lobby want, they get aided and abetted by the British police. Debate closed. So now it seems not only are the British police after you because of something you did actually say, even though it wasn't a crime, they're also on the case before you've even opened your mouth. I would suggest that the city of London police have also been captured. Now it's a very short step from loss of freedom of speech to compelled speech. But that's where we're heading and in fact some of what I'm going to say now means we've probably already arrived there. Have you seen the video featuring the deputy chief constable of Cheshire Police to celebrate International Pronouns Day? Apparently, according to her, she's a woman, not using the pronouns demanded by someone causes, and I quote from the video, huge impact on somebody and their wellbeing. Really? Huge impact. Now if she were talking about the huge impact on someone who's had their house burgled and knows full well that the chances of anybody turning up to investigate are pretty slim, I might agree with her. Or how about a child sexually abused for years by gangs of men while the police look the other way, saying it's a personal lifestyle choice. I bet that causes huge impact. Wrong pronouns? No, not interested. And by the way, Cheshire Police is the force that in 2017 saw the third largest overall percentage increase in crime in the country. And she wastes taxpayers' money, our money, making vacuous and virtual signal videos about pronouns and misgendering. But remember the OECD definition of how policy capture is achieved. The bit about undue influence can also be exercised by manipulating the information provided or establishing close social and emotional ties. So is it a coincidence, I ask myself, that Stonewall, one of the biggest lobbying groups in the country named Cheshire Police, whose Deputy Chief Constable made this video, they named Cheshire Police as the top police force in the country for equality among lesbian, gay, bi and transgender staff. I suggest Cheshire Police have been captured. And the judges are at it as well. In 2018, a district judge, won't name him, presided over a case of assault by beating. The accused was a six foot plus male, who thinks he's a woman. The offended party, an actual woman, was instructed by the judge to use her male attacker's preferred pronouns, which naturally were female. In effect, he was compelling her to pretend that her attacker was a woman. He was compelling her to speak what she believed was a lie, and compelling her to adopt a form of speech that put her at a disadvantage and prioritized the wishes of her accused. She's actually written quite movingly since that, of how upset she was by this, that it put so much extra pressure on her, because not only was she in the, you know, being questioned in the witness box, but she had to remember that this guy is a woman. Even worse, in the summing up, the judge told her off. He chastised her for showing bad grace, for failing to use her attacker's preferred pronouns throughout the trial. Equal in front of the law? Hardly. So first, they take your freedom of speech away from you. Then they tell you how to speak and what to say, so much for justice. It's a pity that trial took place in April 2018. I say that because a few months later, in October last year, the UK Supreme Court handed down the judgment in what's become known as the Gay Wedding Cake case, which is actually, more correctly, Lee versus Asher's Baking Company. A judgment that might have made the judge think twice about trying to compel someone's speech, and given the plaintive the confidence to tell him exactly what he could do with his compelled speech. The judgment handed down very clearly states, and I quote, it was Lady Hale, the famous Lady Hale, who read this judgment last year. Freedom of expression, as guaranteed by Article 10 of the ECHR, includes the right not to express an opinion, which one does not hold. This court has held that nobody should be forced to have or express a political opinion with which he does not agree. One is free, both to believe and not to believe, end of quote. The court made it clear that the purpose of equality law is to protect people, not ideas, and that no one should ever be compelled, as that poor woman was in that trial a few months earlier, to make a statement or express a message with which they do not agree. For balance, I should mention that the person involved in this case has now appealed that decision to the European courts. So coming to the end of this talk, I remind you of the OECD definition of policy capture I read at the start. Capture is the opposite of inclusive and fair policy making, and always undermines democratic values. It's true, the trans lobby has captured the media, both mainstream and social. They've captured the police, the judiciary, the NHS, Girl Guides, sports authorities, public institutions and private companies, politicians, local authorities, the education system, and the list just goes on and on. Above all, they've captured our freedom of speech, and I don't know about you, but I want it back. By shutting down the debate, aided by the complicity of the justice system, they have undermined our democracy in a properly functioning democracy. The voices of everyone would be included in open debate, but in this one, only one side is getting heard, the other is being silenced, so much for democracy. So I'm going to finish quickly now, coming up with some ideas that we can toss around today and later, of what we can do. First of all, know the law. Know what the law says about freedom of speech, thought and conscience. The relevant articles are just a few sentences, but you need to be ready to quote them if necessary. When the police come knocking on your door, they may come knocking on my door after this, you need to be ready, my brain will freeze. So what I've done, this sounds really paranoid, but it isn't, I've actually printed out the judgments that I've quoted to you, the one on the Moldovan case and the one that Lady Hale gave. And I've printed out those articles, 8, 9, 10 and 11. I've got one in the car, I've got one in a handbag and I've got one in a briefcase, because you're going to need these. It's so many of these cases that have been getting in the headlines, it's because people didn't know what to say when they were confronted. Being better informed about my rights has given me so much confidence, I genuinely didn't know the word transgender 18 months ago. And I'd like to see that judge try and compel my speech if I'm unfortunate enough to come up against him or any other one. In the context of the transgender situation, I think there are some very specific things we can do. On this list that I've got here, I have also at the top got the nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act of 2010 and make no mistake, if we get self-identification in this country, and if we get a Labour government, I guarantee it will happen in the first 12 months, the Equality Act 2010 is very much under threat. Stonewall, they deny it, but it's actually on their website I've looked. They want these protected characteristics gone. Sex is a protected characteristic. So is gender reassignment, that is if you are one of the tiny number of people that have a certificate, but that is also a qualified protection. They can still be excluded from sex-segregated spaces if the circumstances warrant, like from a woman's refuge or something like that. Gender and gender identity do not appear as protected characteristics. Print them off and keep them with you because it's become apparent, and it was from some very good work done by some of these grassroots organisations that sprang up last year because of this government consultation, that many local authorities, police forces, public bodies, private and public companies did not have the list correctly displayed on their websites. The Welsh government website had it wrong. Some of them had removed the word sex altogether and shoved in gender, more inclusive, more diverse. The law is the law, and they have to comply with it. How to enforce it if they don't know what it is. Refuse to use the word gender. David, don't do it again. The right word is always sex if you're talking about the difference between male and female. I never remember hearing the word gender used throughout my education and most of my life I think until recently, unless it was in a grammar class, I speak Spanish so I had to know whether something was a masculine or feminine noun if you did Latin or French or whatever. It's the same. Stop using it in this context. It is sex. Refuse to use preferred pronouns. People are free to choose whatever language they want about themselves, but what they may not do is compel others to comply with their choices. And we have the law on our side. That's why it's so important to know it. Make sure they understand this is not a politeness issue. This is a freedom issue. Boycott companies that cave in to the transgender demands. My boycott list is now so long I may never go shopping again very soon. They're all on it. There's no time to go into this now, but this is really something I am prepared to spend some time liaising with individuals, with branches, to organize collective and cooperative action. We spend money. They want it. Marks and Spencers are not having another penny of my money until they reverse their decision that they took about 10 days ago to introduce self-identification for changing rooms. Oh, yes. We've got so much going on that we kind of missed this stuff. They have now decided that something that is not UK law well it's nice, isn't it? So if you go into an M&S store anytime soon, you may find yourself sharing with a self-identified man. So let's collaborate. Let's start boycotting and let's put Marks and Spencers at the top of the list. And it's coming up to Christmas. We could do a lot of damage. It's not like they're making a fortune. They're always giving out profit warnings. And so you have to decide. Do you want freedom of expression or do you want an M&S Yule log? Don't go there. There's always an alternative. This is really important. Demand investigation of the links between lobby groups such as Stonewall and Mermaids and others and the police and others. They were established as charities but they are operating as political activists. So how come they're training the police, the NHS, other public institutions and private companies? Both Stonewall and Mermaids and all of these lobby groups receive public funding which is not government money, it's our money. We're taxpayers. We have a right to ask. Right to MPs, police commissioners, chief constables demanding to know why self-identification is being introduced by stealth when it is not recognised in UK law. Above all, we need to organise collectively for maximum effectiveness. So let's put our heads together. This is just too big to leave it up to a few brave individuals. Stay silent, do nothing and you've been captured. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the day.