Green Party members publicly refuse to campaign for Sheffield parliamentary candidate
Members of the Green Party of England and Wales have been publicly announcing their refusal to campaign for a parliamentary candidate in Sheffield. Dozens of members – including five Sheffield City Councillors – have posted a graphic on Twitter which reads, “I am a Sheffield Green Party member and I support trans rights. I will not campaign for any candidate who discriminates against trans people.” Green Councillors Ruth Mersereau, Angela Argenzio, Alexi Dimond, Brian Holmshaw and Martin Phipps all shared the graphic. Collectively they make up over a third of the Green Councillors elected to Sheffield City Council.
While most members who have shared the graphic have not named a specific individual, it is widely understood that the public comments are in response to the selection of Alison Teal as the Greens’ candidate for the parliamentary constituency of Sheffield Central. Some have explicitly named either Teal or the Sheffield Central constituency in their tweets, and both Teal and her supporters have conceded that while the graphic itself does not name her, it is nonetheless directed towards her candidacy. Bright Green understands that some members chose not to name Teal specifically because the Green Party’s code of conduct prohibits public criticism of other members.
Teal was selected as a candidate for Sheffield Central in an internal ballot of Green Party members in Sheffield. Beating three other candidates, she received 56 per cent of first preference votes. 273 voted in the selection, a turnout of 28 per cent.
Sheffield Central is a constituency that has brought the Greens some of its highest levels of support anywhere in the country in recent general elections. In 2015, the Greens received 15.8% of the vote and the constituency was the seventh strongest for the party in terms of the number of votes cast for the Greens.
Teal has been a high profile member of the Greens for a number of years, and has been the party’s candidate for Sheffield Central once before, in 2019. She came to prominence as a forthright campaigner against the felling of trees in Sheffield, and was elected as a City Councillor in 2016. Following the 2021 local elections, as Labour lost overall control on Sheffield City Council, Teal entered the Council’s cabinet, covering sustainable neighbourhoods, wellbeing, parks and leisure. In this year’s election to the Green Party Executive, she stood on a job-share ticket with anti-fracking campaigner Tina Rothery for the position of chair, finishing in third place. When Teal stood down as a Councillor, she was publicly critical of her party. She said, “We’ve seen the party move from being tolerant/thoughtful to authoritarian/dogmatic underpinned by racism”. She also said that “I don’t think party politics is helping anymore” and “I think my energy might be better spent outside the system than in it.”
In recent years, Teal has increasingly been embroiled in controversy surrounding her statements on trans rights. She has on a number of occasions tweeted her opposition to what she describes as “gender ideology”, which she has said has a “frightening impact” on children and has branded “regressive”. Most recently, Teal was heavily criticised after sharing an article which repeatedly referred to the comedian Eddie Izzard as a ‘man’ and ‘he’ and opposed her use of women’s toilets. Izzard, who is currently seeking selection as the Labour Party candidate for Sheffield Central, is genderfluid and uses she/her pronouns. The text Teal quoted from the article in her tweet read, “The loss of women’s rights starts with looking the other way for an Eddie Izzard and ends with a society that doesn’t flinch at placing a male sex offender in jail with women.”
One of the members who has said they will refuse to campaign for Teal told Bright Green, “People are entitled to their personal beliefs, but they are not entitled to use the Sheffield Green Party as a springboard to launch a gender critical campaign against a trans public figure, campaign against [Green Party] policy”. They went on to claim, “shortly after the selection for Sheffield Central she very publicly criticised a potential Labour candidate, comedian Eddie Izzard, not on the basis of any differences in party politics – but because she used a women’s toilet.” The member also alleged that Teal’s candidacy risked “forever damaging the reputation and sustainability of the local party”, adding that they believed, “we cannot afford to alienate members, voters and activists who will reasonably expect a parliamentary candidate who supports the [Green Party] and its trans inclusive policies.”
Members who have shared the graphic told Bright Green that Teal’s candidate statement contained no indication of her views on trans rights, or any conflict between her views and the party’s policies.
Despite a significant proportion of the Sheffield Green Group sharing the graphic expressing their refusal to campaign for Teal, this is not a universal opinion among the Group. One Green Councillor in Sheffield – Peter Garbutt expressed a different view. He retweeted a post from a former deputy leader of the party – Shahrar Ali – which defended Teal and said that she had received “disgusting abuse”.
Bright Green approached Alison Teal in advance of the publication of this article, but she declined to comment. Teal has, however, consistently denied that she is transphobic.
Sheffield Green Party was also approached for comment, but had not responded by the time of publication.
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Image credit: Krystyna Haywood – Creative Commons
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Totally ashamed of my councillors in sheffield behaving like this . This is bullying. It’s also totally untrue , Alison Teal gets my vote and my families too . As a member of the Green Party and supporter it makes me ashamed to see them behaving like bullies and children , not adults and not even caring that they are naming and shaming people with hyperboles . I support Alison
This is silly and childish. As a Green I shall campaign for Alison.
She should concentrate on the environment and leave the most persecuted members of society alone. Anyone who does a slight amount of digging will see that anti trans campaigners are not protecting womens rights but in fact are causing damage to them. The recent UN report on this informs us that must of the funding pumping into these anti trans campaign is coming from groups that opposite women’s rights.
It is pretty hypocritical for members to claim that “People are entitled to their personal beliefs, but they are not entitled to use the Sheffield Green Party as a springboard to launch a gender critical campaign”, when the official Sheffield twitter account and several other official green party accounts were used to launch a gender ideologist campaign against Alison, and the LGBTIQA+Greens stir up the hate towards her by telling members “You have every right to be angry with that candidate”.
I have to laugh at the notion that it is Alison who is alienating voters, given the ratio of responses to the councillors and other TRA’s sharing the post. Looking at the replies, it seems pretty clear that this campaign is backfiring and it is the councillors and their mates getting burned.
I think you would be pretty angry if a candidate was to say a black person could not use a woman’s toilet. I don’t know the context so am not going to criticise everyone but the tweet supposedly saying “The loss of women’s rights starts with looking the other way for an Eddie Izzard and ends with a society that doesn’t flinch at placing a male sex offender in jail with women.” is clearly bigoted imv and should not be held by any person who is seen as representing the Green Party. A prison should be a safe place for anyone and methods to assure it is should be put in place. If they are not the blame is not on trans people.
If this reporting from the Bright Green article is correct, I have no problem at all with the position of the 5 councillors:
In recent years, Teal has increasingly been embroiled in controversy surrounding her statements on trans rights. She has on a number of occasions tweeted her opposition to what she describes as “gender ideology”, which she has said has a “frightening impact” on children and has branded “regressive”. Most recently, Teal was heavily criticised after sharing an article which repeatedly referred to the comedian Eddie Izzard as a ‘man’ and ‘he’ and opposed her use of women’s toilets. Izzard, who is currently seeking selection as the Labour Party candidate for Sheffield Central, is genderfluid and uses she/her pronouns. The text Teal quoted from the article in her tweet read, “The loss of women’s rights starts with looking the other way for an Eddie Izzard and ends with a society that doesn’t flinch at placing a male sex offender in jail with women.”
One of the members who has said they will refuse to campaign for Teal told Bright Green, “People are entitled to their personal beliefs, but they are not entitled to use the Sheffield Green Party as a springboard to launch a gender critical campaign against a trans public figure, campaign against [Green Party] policy”. They went on to claim, “shortly after the selection for Sheffield Central she very publicly criticised a potential Labour candidate, comedian Eddie Izzard, not on the basis of any differences in party politics – but because she used a women’s toilet.” The member also alleged that Teal’s candidacy risked “forever damaging the reputation and sustainability of the local party”, adding that they believed, “we cannot afford to alienate members, voters and activists who will reasonably expect a parliamentary candidate who supports the [Green Party] and its trans inclusive policies.”
Absolutely bloody insane. She was elected to stand by the majority of the local Party and has been a stalwart for decades. A brilliant councillor and activist. There are few areas of the Party the trans fundamentalist have not destroyed and here they go with another. Fortunately they are a minority of Green councillors in Sheffield. Honestly, at a time of social crisis, ecological disaster and Tory meltdown these people are really utterly narcissistic. Trans rights are a complex issue, closing down any questioning is childlike and betrays the weakness of an argument
Totally agree. What is happening to the democratic, intelligent party that once existed to address social cohesion, equality and of course the climate crisis and ecological emergency. We are in danger of self destruction through immature and viscious internal attacks.
The fact they didn’t name her but did name the city where as far as I am aware, only one candidate has been recently selected. means the candidate in question was easily identifiable. I don’t think any of the councillors are protected from being subject to the Code of Conduct. For example, Chris Jarvis, how long did it take you to work out who it was about and decide to write an article about it?
Our party has a serious problem conflating defending women’s legal rights with being transphobic, even when women patiently and repeatedly say that all people deserve respect, dignity and safety, but that women lose some of those things if their legal single sex spaces are forcibly made into mixed sex spaces. When the Equality Act 2010 was brought into law, it was obvious that there would be potential clashes of rights between women and those undergoing the process of gender reassignment, and between some religious groups and those undergoing the process of gender reassignment.
Rather than lead the way with round table discussion looking at where such conflicts might arise and how we as a Party could campaign for safe spaces for all, and dignity and respect for all, GPEW fell down the hole of saying there was ‘no debate’. This has led to women in the Party feeling intimidated, afraid to speak up for their rights, and labelled as TERFs and Transphobes if they try to raise issue centred on women or girls, or the need for traumatised women (1 in 3 have been sexually assaulted) or women from Orthodox faith backgrounds to have single sex, rather than single gender, spaces.
It’s easy to bandy words around, but can any of these cowardly councillors actually find something transphobic (and I do not mean something that advocates for women’s rights) that Alison Teal has ever said? I think her record as a councillor has included times when she has spoken up for all in society. She has been a very public figure in the fight to keep Sheffield trees from needless removal and has enjoyed electoral successes. She was legitimately chosen as candidate with an outright majority because she centres environmental issues, not marginal sideshows.
Shame on those who are ripping our Party apart when the world is in flames around us.
Alison faced prison because of her involvement in the #SaveSheffieldTrees campaign. She is someone who will stand up and be counted for what she believes in,and won’t be cowed or bullied.
Those trying to challenge the democratic decision of GP members should be utterly ashamed.
Those trying to paint Alison as hateful because she stands up for women’s rights should also be ashamed. I’m certainly ashamed for them.
It used to be possible to work together with others in GP despite different views. OK there were rows and fallings out, but nothing coming close to what’s going on now.
What happened? What happened to working together despite disagreement?
There is something rotten currently at the heart of GP and can only hope we can be rid of it sooner rather than later before more people are hurt.
Another story about the trans debate causing some ructions in various different groups. In times of climate collapse i wonder about our priorities.