Thousands of women Labour Party members will quit if men who believe they are female are allowed to join all-women shortlists, a leading party figure has warned.
Labour veteran Linda Bellos – once notorious as the far-Left leader of Lambeth Council – spoke out as The Mail on Sunday revealed that her name was on a secret hit list of 32 party members targeted by transgender activists.
Transgender teenager Lily Madigan, who was controversially appointed as women’s officer for her local Labour Party last year, is an administrator of a secret Facebook group called Labour Against Transphobia which drew up the list.
A Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist hit list has been drawn up by a number of Labour activists including trans teen Lily Madigan (pictured with Jeremy Corbyn)
Amid reports of an escalating battle raging in the party between feminists and transgender activists, it can also be revealed:
- Two women have been suspended from the party after being named on the ‘hit list’
- Sources on the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) say its ruling council is passionately divided over the issue
- Leader Jeremy Corbyn is paralysed with indecision, torn between traditional feminists and a fear of offending the transgender movement
Labour’s plans to open up female-only parliamentary shortlists to ‘self-identifying’ transgender women – which have yet to be ratified – have been met with a bitter backlash from feminists.
Stephanie Davies-Arai (pictured) formed a parents’ group concerned about the number of children being allowed to change gender
They in turn have been branded Terfs – Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists – by transgender activists.
The Labour Against Transphobia Facebook page invites members to name anyone in the party they believe to be ‘transphobic’, and to supply evidence of their supposedly anti-transgender views.
The damning dossier has been passed on to Labour officials with the aim of having the accused members expelled. Two women on the list – Jennifer James and Venice Allan – have been suspended.
Ms James said: ‘Labour has, essentially, a secret police group with a hit list. I have been suspended for saying women don’t have penises and men don’t have vaginas.’
She has launched a crowdfunding campaign which has raised more than £20,000 for a legal challenge against transgender women on the shortlists.
Ms Allan said claims she had harassed transgender women in person and through social media were ‘ridiculous’. It can also be revealed that Ms Bellos – a friend of Mr Corbyn – is on the list.
Condemning the list as ‘Stalinist’, she said last night: ‘If Labour is foolish enough to allow trans women to be selected for all-women shortlists they will lose thousands of women members who will resign from the party.
Jennifer James launched a campaign to stop men who self-identify as female being accepted on all-women shortlists
Linda Bellos is a renowned activist. She was barred from speaking at Cambridge for ‘questioning trans politics’
People who grow up with the privileges of being boys or men are not women.’
Another woman on the list, Stephanie Davies-Arai – who runs Transgender Trend, a parents’ group concerned about the rising number of children being diagnosed as transgender – said she was shocked at being called transphobic, adding: ‘I’m not even a Labour member. I’m furious to be put on that list.’
One Labour insider said: ‘This self-ID situation is problematic for Corbyn. With the advent of Momentum, the biggest growth in party membership has been from young people.
‘Self-identification and safe spaces are very much part of the millennials demands, and he is held hostage to that.’
Ms Madigan, the women’s officer in Rochester and Stroud, says she is only ‘vaguely aware of a list’, but it is reported that there are screenshots of her discussing it in detail with other group members.
A party spokeswoman said: ‘All-women shortlists are and always have been open to all women, which of course includes trans women.’