Exclusive: LGBT Greens protest Green Party women’s group platforming of gender-critical speaker at conference event

Green LGBTQ activists have disrupted a Green Party women’s event after they platformed a gender-critical speaker.

Green Party Women organised an event at conference this morning about pelvic health, with physiotherapist and gender critical activist Elaine Miller as keynote speaker. 

While the session was underway, a group of around 15 Green Party members from groups including LGBTIQA+ Greens and Greens Organise silently entered the room holding a long trans banner. 

The protest comes after another gender-critical group, Green Women’s Declaration, were banned from attending this year’s Green Party Conference. 

A woman from Green Party Women, who called herself Babs, walked over to the group and told them to leave.

She could be heard saying to the protesters: “You are right-wing authoritarians and you need to get the fuck out.”

Babs also shouted: “Men men men.”

She later told LFF that the protesters were “authoritarians” because “they’ve come into a women’s space to cause trouble and they’re trying to impose their views on us”.

Reade Layton, a member of the Trans Greens committee, said that the group was protesting because Miller is “a very loud TERF [Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist]”. 

During a Gender Recognition Reform debate in the Scottish Parliament, Miller lifted her skirt and flashed MSPs, revealing what appeared to be fake pubic hair.

The bill sought to lower the age limit for applications for a gender recognition certificate from 18 to 16.

Miller, who opposed the bill, staged the protest in the public gallery in December 2023, saying: “If you will not be decent, then I will be indecent.”

Layton said: “We have no problem with the topic of the event, we have an issue with the group platforming Elaine Miller.”

Dylan Lewis-Creser, a member of the Green Party Executive, called women’s pelvic health “a very important topic”, adding “we support all discussions on women’s health, but we shouldn’t be platforming people like Elaine Miller”.

Lewis-Creser said that “They’re framing it as a women’s rights issue but it’s just about demeaning trans people and creating a more hostile environment.”

Hannah Collison, a Green member in Sheffield, said that “The Green Party is an inclusive space and makes a point of including all trans people in that inclusive space.”

She said that, by contrast, Green Party Women “are known to be transphobic and exclusionary”. 

Collison alleged that a member of Green Party Women pushed her and shouted at her. 

She said that the group had planned to walk silently to the front of the room with the banner and then leave, but that they were blocked from passing. 

Security removed the protesters from the meeting, citing safety grounds.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward