PCS conference gutted by risk management

At this year’s PCS conference, a key motion defending trans rights was struck out on legal grounds. An rs21 member in PCS reflects on what unfolded, and what it reveals about the union’s democratic processes.

Last week the Public and Commercial Service Union’s (PCS) annual conference was nearly over before it began, as conference initially refused to adopt standing orders. The reason many delegates voted repeatedly against standing orders was because motion A57 in the original motions book had been excluded in later reports from the Standing Orders Committee on the basis of legal advice. 

Time after time, the current president, Martin Cavanagh, heard yet another reference back, took a vote to adopt, and saw it rejected. Several delegates mounted a spirited defence of the excluded motion. When pressed on a vote to reference it back, the conference was told that they couldn’t, because it was no longer considered a motion. This was met with frustrated shouts: “But it’s in the book!” Only after several hours, veiled threats that conference wouldn’t go ahead (a throwback to the combative conferences of the late 20th century), and a long wait for the results of the final card vote, was the agenda finally adopted and the now-curtailed proceedings allowed to begin.

So far, so much union bureaucracy. The excluded motion recognised that women’s and LGBTQ+ liberation are interlinked, sought to support trans inclusion in the workplace, and opposed ‘exclusionary ideologies’ of biological essentialism that lead to the exclusion of trans people from participating in sport or from accessing appropriate facilities. The legal advice requested on the motion identified a possibility it could provide grounds for legal proceedings against PCS, based on the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of sex in the Equality Act, as well as case law recognising that biological essentialism can amount to a protected belief under the Act.

It is worth recognising that PCS has a complex place in the history of the fight for trans rights. Our union includes many activists who have been at the coalface of liberation struggles within the trade union movement for years. Our former general secretary had close links to gender critical campaigners. In previous years the conference has been filibustered to avoid discussion of key trans inclusive motions, and adopted fudged positions. Some of our members work in their day jobs shaping government equality policy – policies that have shifted over time from compromise, to progress, to regression.

The civil service, like much of the public sector, is facing a difficult future under a Labour government that looks like a more sour-faced version of the post-2010 Conservative party. More austerity, more job cuts and another ill-thought-through drive for productivity, this time fuelled by the latest tech fad, AI. All of these are reasons why unions need to be using our resources to engage, recruit, and prepare to fight. 

The reality of the latest ruling is that it increases harm to one protected characteristic under the Equality Act, while offering no material increase in protection for another. The Supreme Court’s specific interpretation of sex creates a whole host of ramifications across a network of legislation that still needs to be unpicked and tested in case law. Notably, the ruling seems to undermine the Gender Recognition Act, established after the ECHR and House of Lords found that British law did not sufficiently protect the rights of trans people. Meanwhile, the hostility of public debate has led cis women who do not conform to gender norms – too broad, short-haired – to face real challenges and hostility in public spaces. This is an act of state violence.

Fighting state violence carries risks. If we are to strain to take a sympathetic view of the decision to exclude the motion, there is a possibility that the wording of the motion could have led to a legal challenge. That does not mean that there would be a successful challenge. Many implications of the Forstater case and the Supreme Court ruling remain untested in law. A lot of dispiriting public discourse around the implications go way beyond the actual wording of the rulings. Yes, you can’t be discriminated against for biologically essentialist beliefs. But if those beliefs are used to exclude trans people, in conflict with their rights, that may not be protected. 

The process also undermined the democracy of our union. Conference made it very clear that it wanted to be able to hear and discuss the motion. Only under duress did delegates start moving to vote for standing orders, faced with a choice between supporting our trans reps and allies arguing to resist, and their members who had mandated them to vote on tens of motions that were slipping away with time. Eventually as conference got under way, some of those motions were heard. Some good motions set us up for forthcoming battles for the future of our workplaces. But defending our trans colleagues from attack is absolutely inseparable from this battle. 

Well done to all who spoke out for the motion and fought to get it heard. Well done, too, to the groups like mine who, at group conferences across the union, passed motions supporting our trans, non-binary and intersex colleagues. But as the dust settles on the Brighton Centre for another year, comrades across the union need to reflect. Solidarity means that we fight for everyone facing oppression. This year, PCS missed a chance to do so.