Two directors of the Green Women’s Declaration have spoken out on GB News after being banned from entering their party’s conference in Brighton.
Speaking to the People’s Channel about why they were banned, Zoe Hatch and Jude English declared that they are “no longer allowed” to voice their agreement with the Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces.
Recalling her long-term membership with the Green Party, Ms Hatch told GB News: “I’ve been a long standing Green Party member, I joined because I was really, really concerned about the environment and concerned about my children’s future.
“And it came to my attention when I was on The Executive, I was there when they wanted to expel Shahrar Ali, and I couldn’t be part of that, so I resigned from that.”
Ms Hatch then became one of seven chairs of Green Party Women, which represents female members, but revealed that they have all been either “suspended or expelled” for expressing support for the Supreme Court ruling.
She said: “We’ve all been suspended or expelled because we believe and we really just agree with the Supreme Court judgment around single sex provision for women, which I think the majority of the British public do as well.
“It’s a unifying thing, people recognise that women need single sex spaces, but saying that inside the Green Party is no longer allowed.
“If you put your head above the parapet, if you’ve got any sort of platform, you get suspended, expelled or sanctioned or bullied out of the party in various different ways, and that’s what’s happened to us.”
Green Women’s Declaration Directors Zoe Hatch and Jude English have spoken to GB News after being banned from conference
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GB NEWS
Having formed the Green Women’s Declaration in response to the action against Green Party Women, Ms Hatch explained that for two years in a row, they have applied for a stall inside the party conference, to which they were then banned from attending all together.
She told GB News: “We applied for a stall last year and again this year, because we are Greens and we want to interact with the rest of the party conference.
“We’re a policy and advocacy group around this particular issue for women’s rights, and we’ve been banned from attending, but we haven’t been given any justifiable or good reason or any explanation at all, actually, for why we haven’t been denied the right to a stall or even any advertising in the brochure this year.”
As a current chair of Green Party Women, Ms English told GB News that she believes her expulsion was revoked after a “realisation” by the Greens that they needed to “address these issues”.
The campaigners were forced to pitch their stall outside the conference in Brighton
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Ms English said: “I was also expelled and readmitted last October, I think partly because there was a beginning of a realisation that they needed to address some of the issues, so I’m really pleased to be back inside this time.
“There’s a different sort of a vibe, it’s quite positive, but the Green Party fundamentally has some problems with women’s policies and women’s activities.
“I’ve had so many interesting conversations with policymakers, one of whom was shocked that there was no women’s policy section, and I explained that it’s been extremely difficult to access the policymaking process for the past number of years, and there’s been gate keepers and people patrolling that.”
Ms English argued that policies which are “detrimental to the rights of women” have been allowed to be “fast tracked” over other policies.
Ms Hatch and Ms English told GB News that women’s rights policies have been called ‘transphobic’ by the party
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GB NEWS
She said: “People have been expelled and suspended from the party to prevent us from putting any policy through, while other policies that I would say are detrimental to the rights of women have been allowed to be fast tracked through or prioritised across the party.
“So it’s very, very difficult to see how the party can and Zack Polanski himself can talk about his commitment to women’s rights, his commitment to women’s groups and his commitment to women’s issues, when in reality people like myself are not really able to access it.”
Ms Hatch concluded that a proposed women’s rights section was previously deemed “transphobic” by the party.
She told GB News: “Last year we put forward a whole women’s rights section and it was deemed transphobic just because it was talking about women’s rights and it was ruled out of order, but there was no justifiable reason.
“There are policies around women or women’s health which will not even use the word women or female, and they could be about menstruation and your support for women that menstruating.
“Well, how can you talk about that without being able to say women or female when it’s only women or females that are menstruating?”
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