An Australian Member’s Impressions: LGB Alliance Conference, London, UK, 2023

LGB Alliance UK conference, London, 27 October 2023.

Read more about the conference here.

A member from Australia attended the LGB Alliance UK conference in London; here are some of her impressions.

The conference was very well organised and well attended, some 600 people, including a small number from outside the UK. There was a strong feeling of community and of actually achieving something together. Quite a few younger people attended—more than in previous years, apparently—and the large foyer housed many stalls from people (mainly women) from across the mainstream political spectrum, in key organisations working in the gender critical space. The day finished off with a disco in that same foyer with music from the 70s an 80s.

The conference took the form of successive plenary sessions—no parallel sessions. I personally found this a pity as there was virtually zero space for attendees to engage in sustained conversation in small groups, outside the breaks.

The morning sessions included informative and often moving testimony on what is happening in schools and workplaces (including the National Health Service [NHS], which is Europe’s largest employer and the 5th in the world). The news is not encouraging overall but the evidence of fightback is. Later in the day there were a few celebrity speakers including Simon Fanshawe, a co-founder of Stonewall who left the organisation over the gender identity issue, and the keynote speaker was comedian, playwright and journalist Andrew Doyle. Australian academic Holly Lawford-Smith also spoke in the afternoon.

Unfortunately from my point of view, Holly was one of a small minority of four female speakers in a conference dominated by male speakers, even if most of the chairs were women. In an organisation co-founded and largely driven by women the lineup seemed not to strike quite the right balance.

Another downside for me is that various conversations I was able to engage in during the day rather gave me the impression that the “mothership” and other “gender critical” activists in the UK do not understand the Australian context as well as one might have assumed. This surprised me. Clearly we need to improve our dialogue with LGB Alliance UK and officialise our delegations to their conferences wherever possible. I look forward to being part of that in the future.