Dear Rebecca…

We have been given permission to publish this email which was sent anonymously to Rebecca Long-Bailey after she signed the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights.

Dear Rebecca,

I am a Labour woman and I am now so scared of voicing my concerns to your campaign team, that I am sending this through a friend’s email… and I am too scared to tell you my name.

We have met you and I, and chatted about policy, power, green industrial revolution and the changes needed to our economic base.

I have worked myself to exhaustion for years fighting for Labour in a region where Labour has grown exponentially in the last 5 years but was ignored prior to that.

We worked anyway and we have new marginal seats and almost 50 new councillors.

As a woman I have fought for rights and protections for the LGB community for decades.

As a nurse, I have cared for people undergoing transition surgery when other staff wouldn’t cover the shifts, 20 years before the Trans population gained their political and financial status. Before anyone really knew what they suffer and experience.

As a Labour member and union activist I have fought in hearings for the rights of all vulnerable groups including the LGB and T communities.

I have been reduced to tears of shock and fear by your position today on my right to speak for women and girls, on the shocking levels of violence and the epidemic sexual abuse and trauma we experience.

The leading cause of death for women and girls is men.

Predators are abusing trans rights to abuse girls and women.

The risk of changes to law must be safely evaluated under reality based EIAs, hearing the lived experiences of and to protect all the vulnerable groups… and women and girls are the most vulnerable, the evidence is overwhelming. We are dying every day… and the justice systems does not keep us safe.

We have been excluded from hate crime legislation and now have fewer rights than all other protected groups.

Labour must have this debate safely and well.

In the light of your assertion that all women like me are suddenly ‘transphobic’ and must be expelled from the party, where do I go?

How do I tell my gay niece and her fiancée, that the party who enshrined their rights in law has now rejected them both for being lesbians?

Where is my political party now?

I feel sick and scared. I have been reduced to shaking and even at my middle age feeling utterly shattered by your and other candidates’ thoughtless actions today.

I have given 36 years in service to the public and the fight for others and our equality.

When I retire I will have given 50 years of public service.

I now discover that there is no safe space for me as a biological woman, as a DV survivor, to collectively organise in my Labour Party.

The Party who wrote the Equality Act.

I am terrified to speak. Should we cancel our women’s councillor training? What can women say now, in our party?

And how do I vote for a Leader who doesn’t want me in my Party.

Heartbroken Union Rep, mother, aunt and Labour activist.