Women’s conference on Saturday was tiny, around 200 people on delegate estimates.  

Some delegates were asking afterwards whether it was even quorate.  (It doesn’t actually have a quorum).

And this comes on the back of it being cancelled entirely last year.

This all comes from the NEC’s insistence on excluding trans women, which led all but one affiliated union to boycott the event, and many many CLPs.

The issue has been discussed a fair bit on the fringes of conference, such as at the (very good) ‘LGBT+ Labour’ meeting on Sunday – ‘Delivering a trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices’.  A question mentioning the women’s conference led to response from the platform that the tiny turn-out means the party cannot keep up that exclusion –  to the unanimous approval of the audience.

One place that the issue wasn’t taken up, unfortunately, was in the CLPD ‘Yellow pages’ – either in the issue for the women’s conference, or subsequently, with no mention as yet of trans rights at all.  But this is a matter of party democracy.  With no conference at all last year, and a tiny shadow of one this year, its future is in doubt.  A campaign is needed for a return to a standalone and trans-inclusive women’s conference.