Growing Pains: Inside The Green Party Gender Row

10 min read24 August

With four MPs in Westminster, the Green Party is enjoying record-breaking success. However, behind closed doors, the party is navigating a fierce debate on gender issues, which some say could “tear the party apart”.

With the Conservative vote imploding, and Labour losing support over its stance on Gaza, the Green Party offered an alternative for disaffected voters at this election. The Greens have now quadrupled their number of MPs in Parliament, and are feeling buoyant.

However, trouble is brewing within the party. With Labour’s Corbynite flank welcomed into the fold, more traditional, environmentally focused Green Party members are feeling sidelined by an influx of younger, more socially liberal types motivated by identity politics.

Nowhere is this tension more stark than on gender issues. Since 2021,10 members of Green Party Women (GPW), a group founded to “defend and extend the rights of women and girls”, have been suspended or expelled from the party. At least 17 signatories of the Green Women’s Declaration, which advocates for women as a sex, have faced the same.

The official reasons for these expulsions vary. However, the group are united in believing this is a fundamental attack on women who defend their sex-based rights.

It has now emerged that another Green Party Women co-chair has been expelled.

Amanda Stones was expelled in July for breaching a clause of the party’s constitution which prohibits members from campaigning for someone standing against a Green Party candidate.

She was told by the Green Party Regional Council (GPRC), which oversees disciplinary processes, that she had been campaigning on behalf of Sheffield Central Independent candidate Alison Teal via an anoymised X account.

Teal was suspended from the Green Party in 2022 for arguing that sex is a biological characteristic which cannot change over time.

The X account had previously tweeted a “partial picture of her face”, said the GPRC, which “clearly matches that of Amanda Stones”.

However, Stones claims the woman in the picture is not her. “I told the party, ‘that's not me’, and you haven't got any evidence that is me’,” she says. “I've been targeted since I stood for election for Green Party Women [Chair]”. Stones has been expelled from the party for five years with no right to appeal.

Stones, along with four other former GPW chairs, is now considering legal action against the party. Financial auditors have previously warned the Greens faced “uncertainty” in continuing to run normally, after leader hopeful Sharah Ali successfully sued the party for unfair dismissal over his views on trans rights.

Three more members were also expelled from the Green Party in July under the same clause.

Mandy Vere, 68, is a founding signatory of Green Women’s Declaration. She was expelled in July after facilitating a webinar in which Alison Teal and Zoe Hatch, a suspended former Green Party Women chair, were speaking.

While Vere acted as co-host of the webinar, she says this was only to help with the tech and to answer questions on the chat. Instead, the complainant “jumped to the conclusion” that a co-host sits on the executive of the Green Women’s Declaration.

It's no way to treat members; it's discriminatory and it is likely to lead to more court cases

The complainant alleged the webinar represented a campaigning activity for Teal’s parliamentary campaign. For this, Vere was also expelled for five years with no right to appeal.

“It's no way to treat members; it's discriminatory and it is likely to lead to more court cases,” she says. “I’m going to have to weigh up my options. And I think there's quite a number of women and one or two men doing the same at the moment.”

Hazel Pegg, who sits on the Green Party Women committee, was also expelled for attending the webinar. Pegg used to sit on the Green Party Executive, but resigned after a footnote saying that sex-based rights can be seen as questioning trans rights to exist was included on an official document. One other Green Party member was expelled but did not want to be named.

In July, Brighton Pavilion MP Siân Berry took to X to praise her party’s lack of whipping system, which allows Green MPs to “vote with our conscience”. However, those expelled say having no whip means the party lacks culpability.

Jude English was suspended as a Bristol councillor in March. She claimed she received a no fault suspension to prevent her from standing as a candidate. She is now taking the party to court.

“Because we don't have accountability in a discipline system, this particular group of people, the GPRC, have appointed themselves the whip, and they're using no fault suspension as the whip,” she says.

The GPRC is seen as judge, jury and executioner by those expelled. They claim a group of trans activists have taken control of the council, and are purging the party of gender critical voices.

English claims the GPRC is, “completely taken over by gender ideology types”, who have “been suspending anybody they don't like – anybody who they see as difficult or just wanting to ask a question or say, ‘can we talk about this, or can we have debate?’ And because they've got this power, there's no counteraction.

“It is a witch hunt. The people who are behind it are looking for people who dissent, and then they're picking them off as soon as they can”, she adds.

While gender critical voices are being expelled from the party, the Greens are looking to shore up partnerships with similar minded groups on the trans debate. In the run up to the election, the Women’s Equality Party – which stands in favour of gender self-ID – endorsed Berry for Brighton Pavilion.

In July, a message was shared on the Green Party’s Conference Agenda Forum by Green Party executive chair Jon Nott. It stated that following the WEP’s endorsement of Berry, “the Party Executive will be discussing proposals for closer co-operation between our two parties”.

In the view of former GPW chair Zoe Hatch, who was suspended from the party in 2023, this was a move to “make the party look pro-women in response to recent negative publicity, leverage [Founder Sandi] Toksvig’s celebrity or get more trans activists in the party”.

One member who saw the message said she “went away and looked up on their website” but there was “zilch” on environmental policies. “They don't have to have policies on everything, but you think if the Green Party was going to hook up with some feminist birds from another organisation, we'd actually want the environment to be kind of there”, they say.

The member agrees with Hatch that the alliance with the WEP seems a way of the Green Party proving they are acting on behalf of women. However, they say generally women are “invisible” within the Greens: “If you look through their manifesto, we were only mentioned as ‘women and girls’ in the short manifesto version that went out online”.

I think Adrian has that calculation that if he says anything – even just says, ‘let's be nice to one another’ – he risks undermining his own position

While intra-party fighting may be inevitable when a grassroots party tries to scale, insiders warn the party’s MPs are also divided on issues of gender.

Nathan Williams, who was expelled from the party in March, claims that Co-Leader Carla Denyer and Berry are “true believers” who “would love to throw all the gender critical members out of the party”.

Berry previously lodged the complaint against former Green Party Women chair Emma Bateman that saw her expelled from the party in 2023. Denyer has also publicly condemned LGB Alliance, an advocacy group founded in opposition to the policies of LGBT rights charity Stonewall on transgender issues, as a “hate group”.

In contrast, Williams says Co-Leader Adrian Ramsay is “publicly extraordinarily quiet on the issue”.

He claims: “I think he is concerned about it, and is very concerned about the toxicity and the way that gender critical people are being treated. But I think Adrian has that calculation that if he says anything – even just says, ‘let's be nice to one another’ – he risks undermining his own position.”

In April, the Green Party issued a statement regarding the Cass Review, which uncovered malpractice in NHS treatment of youngsters seeking help on gender and identity.

However, the statement was swiftly withdrawn after the LGBTIQA+ Greens threatened to remove their support for the party’s leaders in the general election, a former GPW chair has claimed. The Green Party did not dispute that it removed the statement from its website.

While Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s decision to keep the Conservatives’ ban on puberty blockers drew the ire of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, the Green Party has not made a statement on the development.

The Green Party did not respond to a request for comment on Streeting’s decision to continue the ban.

My personal feeling now is that the Green Party is, sadly, probably a lost cause

In Scotland, the "groundbreaking" Bute Agreement between the Scottish National Party and Greens to work in government together ended in tatters in April — and a row over puberty blockers played a big part. The NHS in Scotland had paused the pescription of puberty blockers to under 18s, to the fury of the Greens. Shortly after, the Scottish Green Party expelled 13 members for signing a declaration stating that biological women were entitled to sex-based rights and protections.

Robin Harper, former leader of the Scottish Green Party and the UK’s first Green parliamentarian, left the party to join Labour over its stance on gender issues in June. He says if the Greens in England and Wales continue “ignoring 50 per cent of their membership”, it could “tear the party apart”.

“The trans debate is going to dominate matters. They’ve lost their grip here, they’re really very much in the hands of the trans movement,” he says.

Now, he says he is urging his local government association to consider setting up a citizen’s assembly to debate gender issues.

“I think it could tear the party apart,” he says. “That's why I'm suggesting that they do this quiet route of a citizen's assembly, as they did in Éire. This is what they really desperately need to do – to defuse the situation and get the discussion [going]. And also a commitment to science – please, please, a commitment to science.”

Ahead of the England and Wales’ Green Party autumn Conference, members are bringing forward a motion to formally address these expulsions and suspensions.

Entitled “End the Purge”, the motion states that, “a majority of the present membership of GPRC have acted in ways which are both contrary to the constitution of the Green Party and potentially unlawful in view of the Shahrar Ali case and other recent legal precedents”.

The motion demands “all the present members of GPRC to stand down” and all members suspended or expelled for gender critical reasons to “have their bans on re-joining the party revoked and their memberships reinstated immediately via a general amnesty”.

However, it remains to be seen whether the motion will attract 50 supporting members for it to be heard at conference. Now, there is a feeling among those expelled that the Green Party will never return to its green roots.

“My personal feeling now is that the Green Party is, sadly, probably a lost cause,” says Williams. “It will become a fringe party, more about identity politics and trans rights with a vague environmental add on, but will be primarily an extreme social justice party.

“And that's fine for such a party to exist, but anyone who cares for has environment as the most important thing is best to steer clear of it”.

The Green Party did not respond to a request for comment on individual reported cases of suspensions or expulsions from the party.

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