The WEP continues to betray its members

...on behalf of a single, male, Google employee (by An Anonymous WEP member)

Sandi Toksvig

Mandu Reid, the leader of The Women’s Equality Party, yesterday sent an email to members of the party announcing, in the gaslighting, DARVO language of the ‘be nice’ brigade that she has decided to completely ignore her constitutional requirement to carry out a Members Consultation, on the issue of gender Self ID. 

Her reason?

‘I am excited by the new frontiers that open up with self-ID and non-binary identities, and I don’t think they have to be at odds with the protections we have all fought so hard for.’

Well, that’s okay then. No need to ask our opinion. We only pay our subs because we are good serfs, not because we want to be, y’know, REPRESENTED.

The condescension continues with the reanimation of the ‘no debate’ trope.

“In my view, the bigger threat to those hard-won rights is this debate itself, which is stopping us from coming together around our common cause. That is why I have decided in consultation with the Steering Committee not to run a traditional form-filling consultation, which risks creating further polarisation. Instead I want us to embark on a process of sustained dialogue, to help break the deadlock.”

All sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it? But let’s look at the evidence.

The underhand tactics began at the 2018 party conference after an acrimonious debate on a motion to support self ID was referred back to the policy committee for a consultation of all members. It became clear that the biggest issue in feminism for a generation could not be entirely ignored by a political party supposedly set up to support women. Or so we thought! 

In fact, ignoring women is what the Women’s Equality Party does best of all. A hugely expensive and secretive members assembly, to decide the remit of the eventual member’s consultation (yes, it’s complicated!) was eventually set up in 2020, but manipulated, micromanaged and controlled in such a way that the actual issue of Self ID itself was not allowed to be discussed openly.  This was too traumatizing for trans members apparently and too divisive. The process was labyrinthine and secretive. Most members had absolutely no idea it was even happening. NatCen were commissioned to implement this process, an organisation at that point, headed by Nancy Kelley, who a few months later went on to become CEO of Stonewall.

Also heavily involved in setting up the process were WEP deputy leader Tabitha Morton and policy committee member Pamela Ritchie, both of whose names were on the original 2018 motion supporting Self ID. No conflict of interest there whatsoever!

So then what happened? Well, for over a year, those women in the party who hadn’t yet given up, asked repeatedly for the results of this assembly and for a timetable of when the full members consultation (promised in 2018 remember!) would take place. Emails were continually ignored. Apparently, there were more important issues like Mandu’s campaign for London Mayor. She received fewer votes than Count Binface! You’d have thought that might have given the top echelons of the party pause for thought on how they might be losing the support of women, but apparently not. 

Yesterday, after 9 months of sitting on it, Mandu finally revealed the results of a survey completed by 45 of the 49 assembly participants. These participants were carefully handpicked to represent a balanced view on the subject and not the views of the party as a whole. Even with this manipulation, we see that 71% of them, after hearing expert testimonies from both sides of the debate, were in favour of retaining single-sex spaces. No shit sherlock! No wonder they don’t want a consultation of all members!

For three years, WEP have publicly pretended they were committed to a respectful and open debate on this subject.

‘The WEP process, which is facilitated by the independent social research institute NatCen, will last four weeks, and the assembly’s recommendations will then be put to the party’s 30,000-strong membership for consultation.’

In reality, the leadership have done the exact opposite at every turn. They have silenced their own paid-up members fighting for sex-based rights. They have refused to engage on any meaningful level with dissent, they have ignored emails, blocked the investigation of official complaints of bullying, allowed the smearing of founding members’ reputations and deleted branch WhatsApp groups at the mere mention of women being a biological reality.

WEP, already a tiny party, is losing members daily over this issue. In the last few week, half of the Policy Committee have either resigned or have not been replaced after their tenure has ended. A handful of gender extremists at the top have orchestrated an unconstitutional power grab by recently announcing that there will be no elections to replace them. Democracy? Who needs that?

Why on earth is the party doing this?

As this site reported previously, one of the WEP’s biggest donors is a wealthy software engineer for Google with a trans-identified child. According to the electoral commission website, he donated £91,700 between 2015 and 2020. He was also given a role on the members assembly and was present in the feedback session at conference last year, where he described how painful it was for him to have to listen to ‘extreme views.’ 

WEP need his money. Despite the constant plugging of Sandi Toksvig’s books in official emails, they are skint.

This is not a political party anymore. Was it ever? Created as a vanity project by North London luvvies, it has always run itself as if it was an unaccountable media company., the kind of company that tweets support for #MeToo at the same time as turning a blind eye to bullying and abuse happening under its nose. Sandi Toksvig has an unelected lifetime position on the steering committee and has remained resolutely silent on the destruction of women’s rights, presumably so as not to jeopardise her television commissions. This is not and never has been ‘doing politics differently. 

Real political parties democratically represent their members’ interests. WEP is an autocratic, unconstitutional, money-making scheme, that sells women out for dosh in order to keep its leadership looking fashionable. 

The irony is, that WEP has some exceptional feminist policies and a wealth of experience and knowledge amongst its grassroots members. The party structure undermines all of this potential with its vice-like grip. It is the few controlling the many. We desperately need an effective political movement that actually fights for the rights of women and girls, preferably one that is founded as far away from Islington as possible.