Welcome to issue 20 of the Transform Newsletter. Is anyone else dreading the inevitable photoshoots from Starmer’s visit to the White House ?

A warning from Germany

It’s not just about rising immigration.

The success of the far right AfD in securing second place in the German elections is alarming, but it’s important to understand what’s driving this. The great majority of the immigrants who live in Germany are in the western states, while the areas where AfD support was strongest were all in what used to be East Germany. The striking thing is that these are also areas of economic deprivation, where there is a sense that communities have been left behind and abandoned.

Low income voters who are concerned about the cost of living don’t trust mainstream parties to act in their interests – is this sounding familiar ?

A key reason for Trump’s election victory was his promise to bring down the cost of living. In reality, consumer prices can go up and down for all sorts of reasons outside of a government’s direct control. But it’s unlikely that American tariffs, or Germany leaving the EU, would have the effect of bringing prices down; while the obsession of the American and German far right in investing in oil and gas is likely to make energy prices more rather than less volatile.

In the UK, the failure of the Labour government to take any action to tackle poverty and the cost of living is causing rising disillusionment among sections of the working class, and a groundswell of support for Reform. If there’s one thing that Starmer’s remembered for, it’s his refusal to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

Starmer’s response to his critics was to establish a Child Poverty Taskforce, which is due to report in Spring 2025. It was hardly an inspiring move, given that Labour had had 14 years in opposition to come up with solutions, and given that plenty of good solutions were on offer.

Last week, inflation rose to 3%, and there’s worse to come. Food price inflation is at 3.3%, and is expected to go still higher in the second half of 2025. Water bills are set to rise by 26% this year. And on Tuesday it was announced that the energy price cap would be rising by 6.4% on 1st April. What’s the point of a Labour government if it can’t even shield people from rises in utility bills ?

Action Call: support the struggle for Trans Rights

Transform’s campaigning focus in March 2025 will be on trans rights. It may be useful to give some explanation and context for this.

Support for trans rights in the general population is weak, and has fallen significantly in the last couple of years. Only within the under-25 age group does support still remain solid. Some people on the left believe that it’s not good strategy for left organisations to champion comparatively unpopular causes such as trans rights, that all we’re doing is dividing the working class, and that we should focus instead on “bread and butter issues” such as jobs, housing, and the cost of living.  

We’re not doing anything new here. The tradition of standing up for oppressed minorities is as old as the labour movement itself. In the 1840s there was quite a bit of anti-Irish sentiment within the working class, but the Chartist movement was unapologetic in its opposition to the discrimination experienced by Irish people.

If the hate is allowed to go unchallenged…

Staying silent is not a neutral action. If we do nothing, there’s every reason to expect that hate crimes will continue to rise year on year, while at the same time ever more people who pay a visit to the loo find themselves being harassed by gender critical zealots. Inevitably, some of those victims of hate crime and harassment will be cis women wrongly suspected of being trans.

Charities, trade unions and progressive organisations could find themselves increasingly being hit by malicious legal claims for no other crime than trying to be inclusive and to create a culture in which everyone is treated with respect.

Equality laws protect all of us

Anti-trans campaigners claim that they should have the “right” to be prejudiced and abusive toward trans people. They call this free speech. They’ve taken many cases to court at great expense on this issue, but what they’d really like to do is to amend the Equality Act to remove any doubt that they’re free to be as cruel as they want. In the USA, they’ve got their wish: Trump’s administration not only refuse to acknowledge the existence of trans people, they’ve also stopped all Government departments from activities that could be construed as DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion).  

What this shows is that it doesn’t end with discrimination against trans people. It ends with white nationalism, and a bonfire of the rights and regulations on which millions of people rely.

Defending personal freedoms matters

On February 20th J.D. Vance stepped on the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC where he told his rapturous audience that “we’ve got to persuade our fellow citizens that unborn life is worthy of protecting, it is sacred in the eyes of God, and it should be sacred in the eyes of man, too, and we have to pick up the torch and fight for that every single day.”

For fundamentalist Christians and the far right, the battle to deprive trans people of their bodily autonomy has always gone hand in hand with the battle against abortion rights. Both sets of attacks are ideologically driven, rooted in a socially conservative view of family relations. Gay marriage is also on the target list.

A movement that believes in the literal truth of the Bible has shown no compunction about pushing back against mainstream science. Inconveniently for them, most medical professionals support gender-affirming healthcare, including for teenagers as long as safeguards are in place. In the last five years, a whole industry has grown up dedicated to discrediting decades of accumulated knowledge around trans healthcare.

We can see from this that defending the right of trans people to make decisions affecting their own bodies is linked to challenging conservative ideologies, and defending science against political interference.

Liberation politics, not identity politics

Trans people are under massive and sustained attack from the mainstream media, and from the majority of our politicians. But we don’t regard them as victims, we don’t assign them any special status, we don’t call for them to be treated any differently from any other group. Instead, we link arms with them. We go on their demonstrations and invite them to ours. Like other liberation movements before it, the trans rights movement can bring a new strength and vitality and inspiration to the class struggle.

Trans Rights: what is it that we’re demanding ?

We demand that all elected politicians stand by these simple truths: that there are more than two genders, that gender can change, that trans and non-binary people exist, and that they deserve to have their gender choices respected and to be allowed to live peacefully.

Trans people should enjoy the same protections as anyone else against bullying, harassment and abuse (including malicious misgendering). Failure to provide this is discrimination.

Trans people should have access to gender affirming healthcare through the NHS, and waiting lists should be in line with other NHS services. It’s a scandal that the Health Minister Wes Streeting has withdrawn healthcare from trans youth. He says that this was because of the Cass Review report, but the Cass Review was set up by a Tory government, it deliberately excluded any professionals involved in trans healthcare, and its findings have been strongly criticised by large sections of the medical community. It’s also relevant to note that the Report didn’t advocate a permanent puberty blocker ban.

Trans and non-binary people should be fully consulted over any legislation that affects them, and as a matter of good practice, political parties shouldn’t be drawing up policies on trans issues without involving trans people.

Transform unreservedly condemn the appalling attacks on trans people by the current American government, including the four Executive Orders signed by the US President, and we urge all our MPs to do the same.

Tackling Transphobia workshop

The Tackling Transphobia online training workshop on Tuesday March 11th is fully booked. In view of the high level of demand, Transform may be re-running the event in the near future, so watch this space.

Transform Talk

Places are still available for our event on Wednesday March 5th (7 – 9pm):

Road Blocking and Contempt of Court for Social and Climate Justice, presented by Giovanna Lewis

Giovanna is an ex-Labour councillor jailed for telling the truth in the Crown Court. Sign up here to find out

• What is non-violence?
• Why get arrested and go to prison?
• Why isn’t it all over yet?

“We need to be there before the far right arrives, not just reacting afterward”

One of the panellists at Transform’s conference on How does the left respond to the rise of the far right? was former North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll.

“The challenge,” Driscoll told the conference, “is that the mainstream media is dominated by people who have a different kind of social power available than we have… If you’re a billionaire, you can maybe buy Twitter, fund a thinktank, own a  newspaper. That’s how you get your message out. You bribe a few politicians.

It’s not an option for us.”

If the left are to win, we need to think differently: “we’ve gotta build it in a way that gets people in who are gonna give a little bit of their time. And if we want people to be giving their time, we have to do it in such a way that it’s actually enjoyable to them… What you want is something where you go away from it thinking, ‘Hey, that was really good. You know what? I’ll bring my mates next time.’​

That, in a nutshell, is what we’ve gotta get right.”

A full report of Driscoll’s speech can be found in The Canary.

A month in photos

Transform’s Alan Gibbons addresses the rally demanding that the inpatient ward at Marie Curie in south Liverpool remains open.

At the enormous march on February 15th, when 150,000 took to the streets of London in solidarity with the Palestinian people (courtesy of Doug Thorpe).

Leonard Peltier has been released after 50 years in jail. The Native American activist who ran for US President in 2004 was pardoned by Biden. “I’m free. They didn’t break me,” he says.

Next Newsletter

The next newsletter will be out on Wednesday 19th March. Let’s learn from and be inspired by one another. Please send us your reports and your photos. You can contact us at any time at info@transformpolitics.uk: please mark your email for the attention of the Newsletter Team.

In solidarity,

Transform Newsletter Team