The sad saga of Sheffield Green Alison Teal

How a disciplinary issue was transformed into an assassination in the identity politics wars.

                   

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By Alan Story

Most everyone who follows British politics knows how badly Labour MP Dianne Abbott has been treated by her party over the past 13 months.

After submitting an offensive letter to a newspaper in April 2023 --- a letter which she quickly retracted and apologised for --- the long-time Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP immediately had the whip withdrawn by Keir Starmer’s party. In other words, she was kicked out as a Labour MP.

Thirteen months later she remains in limbo. Abbott, the first black woman elected to Parliament and shadow home secretary under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, is far from certain whether she will be able to stand for a tenth term as a Labour candidate in the 4 July election.  On 28 May, BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire tweeted that the party’s “investigation” of Abbott was completed five months ago.  

What was claimed to be a disciplinary matter has become a political battle between the left (from Corbyn’s era) and the right (Starmer’s wing) in Labour. A former chief Labour whip who was also suspended has called that party’s disciplinary procedures “a complete farce.”

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STOP THE DIGITAL PRESS

There were unconfirmed confirmed media reports just as we were about to post this issue of THE LEFT LANE that Labour had restored the whip to Abbott. But it was uncertain whether she will also be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate. Whatever happens, it is obvious Abbott has been treated very badly. To restore the whip AFTER the dissolution of Parliament, but then not being allowed to stand as a candidate would plumb new depths of crassness … and shifty lawyering.     

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The Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) might seem to operate very differently. It campaigns under the slogan “we do politics differently.”  The Green Party routinely tops the polls as the “most liked party” …or, more accurately, the least disliked.  Lefty media types such as Owen Jones, a long-term Labour supporter, are now raising election funds for independent and Green candidates.

Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay. Deputy leader Zack Polanski is on the right.

“WARM AND CUDDLY” IMAGE IS A SHAM

A detailed investigation by THE LEFT LANE has revealed, however, that this “warm and cuddly” image is a sham.

That the Greens are seldom put under the proverbial microscope is no surprise. Many members have no real idea of what is happening internally; less than 20% vote in elections for party posts. Decisions at party conference are not made by elected and representative delegates, but only by those who have the funds and time to attend. As well, the fact that the Greens now have only one MP --- and are likely to hit a max of two on 4 July --- means the Greens are rather irrelevant as players on the national political scene.

But behind the scenes and to most people with democratic instincts, the Green’s  disciplinary procedures ---- and much else of its internal functioning --- are also a “complete farce” … and much like those of Labour. Mind you, it’s mostly an unreported farce.

All kinds of amateur Green political operatives plot and scheme and are totally unaccountable. They ignore the idea that “justice delayed is just denied.” They “forget” that party members are unpaid volunteers who are giving their hearts and minds ---- as well as their £££ and shoe leather ---- with no expectation of a pay back. Well, except hoping to save the planet from a meltdown.

After you have finished reading this article, ask yourself this question: “in the year of 2024, would even the most backward capitalist companies treat its employees as shabbily and with so little respect as the Greens treat their own loyal members?”

No wonder so many talented Green activists are stepping back or quitting. Many others, especially members of the Scottish Greens in recent week, are being expelled or suspended. It is another example of how UK politics is punctuated by cheap shots, marinated in cynicism and spiced by careerism.   

At the centre of this dispute in Sheffield and elsewhere in Green hubs is a debate over what are known as “gender- critical beliefs.” These include the belief that “the belief that sex is biological and immutable, people cannot change their sex and sex is distinct from gender-identity.” (More on this below.)

“OUR USP … IS AN ABSOLUTE LIE”

Thinking about the Greens and how this dispute has flared up in her party, Alison Teal (pictured on cover) , a member in Sheffield since 2014 and, until today (29 May), its candidate for the 4 July vote, said in an interview with THE LEFT LANE:  “Our USP (Unique Selling Point) --- that we’re different --- is an absolute lie. We pretend to be something we are not. So many decisions are made behind closed doors.”

Sounds a lot like the Labour Party, I suggested. Teal nodded. It is even worse, a long time Green activist told me sadly as I researched this article.  

What is slated to happen today (29 May) at a meeting of the Sheffield Green Party is symptomatic of so much of what is wrong inside the party. When the Green Party press office was contacted for comment, an official said co-leader Carla Denyer was not available.  

More than 19 months ago back in September 2022, members of the Sheffield Green selected Teal as their candidate in the constituency of Sheffield Central.  It is a super safe Labour seat ---- our circa 1885 undemocratic First-Past-the –Post voting system ensures that ---  but Teal had been the Green candidate there in the 2019 election and put in a credible performance. Moreover, Natalie Bennett, who had been a candidate here in 2017 while she was GPEW leader, asked Teal to contest the seat.

The Sheffield Green Party in happier times. Charismatic Lord Mayor Magid Magid is on the left, former GPEW leader Natalie ( now Baroness) Bennett is to the left of the sign, and Alison Teal, chosen to stand in Sheffield Central but blocked by the GPEW as a candidate, is on the second row behind the sign.

BENNETT WAS LEANED ON

Yet at the end of September 2022 and two days after Teal was selected, Bennett (now formally called Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle) refused to confirm Teal’s selection after several local party insiders leaned on Bennett. (Appointed as a member of the House of Lords, she now lives in France, not in the Sheffield working class district of Manor Castle where she lived briefly.)  

In the autumn of 2022, the dispute got more heated and Teal was suspended from the GPEW after several local councillors on the other side of the gender-critical debate said they would refuse to campaign for Teal. All very high school politics.  

The facts of Teal’s suspension are quite simple. Armed with the party’s rule book, three fair-minded adjudicators could have decided whether or not her suspension was valid in less than 90 minutes.

But that’s not what happened. A disciplinary matter was turned into a 19-month-long political football in the explosive trans/ identity politics debate. It was not unlike choosing the jury in the current Donald Trump criminal trial based on the political affiliation of potential jurors.

A NEW GREEN CANDIDATE BEING SELECTED

The upshot occurs tonight (29 May) at a hastily-called emergency meeting of the Sheffield Greens. With PM Sunak calling an election, local party brass are empowered to force out Teal and hold hustings for a new Sheffield Central candidate. Voting by party members ends 1 June.  

“I’ve learned a lot of things that I’d rather have not known, I was really naïve about the Green Party,” Teal said in an interview this week.  

Before setting out the wider context of the dispute, I should declare an interest as a journalist. I lived in Sheffield from 2015 to 2023 and I know Alison Teal. We were fellow campaigners in the campaign to save its lovely street trees from a chainsaw massacre conducted by Labour-controlled Sheffield City Council.  We stood together under more than one healthy street tree targeted for felling. I paraded outside a court house in 2017 when Teal, then a local Green councillor, was arrested on orders of the council and threatened with imprisonment for defying an injunction.   

HOW THE TOXIC TRANS DEBATE AROSE

In the past decade, the “gender-critical” issue and often toxic “trans debate”  has popped up in a number of left-of centre political parties, including Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, and not only in the UK. It has been is part of an increasing and unproductive focus on identity politics, a politics that can often generate schisms on the left.

All serious progressives will agree that everyone should be able to live and love as they wish. And transphobia should have no place to hide. The problem comes in knowing what all of this means in practice.  

“Talking things out” and doing so face-to-face is always the best place to start. But activists in the GPEW have told me the issue is often first raised when you get a suspension email from GPEW HQ. Resolution of the disagreement is immediately made more difficult in the weaponised GPEW disputes process run by members who often lack both experience and judgement.

So how did the issue first arise as a political question in the GPEW?  By a “capture the ideological leadership” move. As a long-time GPEW activist wrote me in an email this week: “The capture of the GPEW by Stonewall’s transgender activists who deliberately confuse biological sex with gender to promote their dystopian identity politics agenda can be traced back to motion C4 entitled " Recognizing Trans Rights" adopted by the GP conference in 2016 proposed by trans gender Aimee Challenor with support from non-binary co-leader Carla Denyer.”  You can read more about the  Challenor saga here.

NO GPEW LEADER HAS DIFFUSED GROWING RIFT

This is not the place to examine the Challenor case. Nor is it the moment to lay out both the pros and cons of the gender-critical debate. Or, thank goodness, to jump into the treacherous waters of what some call “trans-fundamentalism.”

Three things, however, are clear: 1)Transphobia is wrong; 2) The growing rift in the Greens over the “sex and gender” was entirely predictable. 3) Not a single GPEW leader of the past decade has had the nous or political skills to diffuse this rift. This includes Bennett, Carolyn Lucas, Jonathan Bartley, Sian Berry, and the two current co-leaders, Denyer and Adrian Ramsay. 

The consequences are building. It is a totally separate party in a separate nation, but the Scottish Greens are currently mainlining identity politics and have been hit by a wave of expulsions. On 26 May, The Sunday Times reported that “ up to 13 members (of the Scottish Greens) --- including retired GPs and primary school teachers --- received confirmation that their association with the party has been terminated for breaching its code of conduct” related to sex and gender issues. The expelled members said were “ostracised by former colleagues “and treated like lepers. The lengthy investigation article is hardly a recruitment leaflet for the Green movement on either side of the Scotland-England border.

Former GPEW deputy leader Shahrar Ali

SHAHRAR ALI WINS LAWSUIT AGAINST GPEW

Here in England in February 2024, former deputy GPEW leader Shahrar Ali won a gender critical law suit against the Greens. Ali, one of the party’s leading orators and a person of colour in an overwhelmingly white party, was dismissed from his post as the party’s spokesperson for policing and domestic safety, likely because of his gender –critical views, a judge found. Sian Berry, then GPEW leader and now hoping to replace Lucas in the Brighton Pavilion constituency on 4 July, was one of Ali’s chief opponents.

The fact that Ali’s crowd funder to pay legal costs for his case raised almost £80,000 from more than 2200 supporters shows the extent of the split in GPEW ranks on sex and gender issues.    

 At least five other lawsuits are being prepared against the GPEW by members (or former members) holding gender-critical views and alleging discrimination because of these views. Such discrimination, if proven, is illegal.

The list goes on and on. Zoe Hatch, the elected co-chair of Green Party Women, was suspended from the GPEW in November 2023. The same group, Green Party Women, have created a special section on its website to list gender-critical GPEW members who have been suspended, been expelled or have resigned.  

Yesterday ( 28 May ) Darren Johnson, a GPEW member of 38 years,  a former London Assembly Member for the Greens ( and the only one 20 years ago) and a person once holding the important post of GPEW “Principal Speaker” has posted on social media that he has been suspended from the GPEW.  His “crime”? Johnson said he was not going to “stay silent while leading members of the Green Party went out of their way to trash the findings of the Cass Review.”  (For more on this April 2024 review that dealt with a range of trans gender issues, such as puberty blockers, see here.)

And now today, the Alison Teal case will likely hit the headlines of Sheffield news outlets as well as spread far and wide on social media. Teal also has a legal case outstanding against the GPEW.

A CHRONOLOGY OF STALLING  

Here is a brief chronology of how the Teal case has unfolded over the past 19 months.

26 September 2022: Alison Teal was selected by members of the Sheffield Green Party (SGP) as their candidate in the next general election for the constituency of Sheffield Central. (Teal had stood in the 2019 GE.) 

28 September 2022: A SGP press launch hosted by former GPEW Leader Natalie Bennett was scheduled to announce Teal’s candidacy. But Bennett backed out after talking to a few party insiders.

1 October 2022:  Teal retweeted a tweet from a friend and Labour Party member attacking Eddie Izzard, a possible Labour Party candidate in Sheffield Central, about not using women’s  toilets. Teal’s tweet was not transphobic.       

10 October 2022: Five local Green councillors tweeted:”I will not campaign for any candidate who discriminates against trans people.” (They obviously meant Teal.)  

13 October 2022:  Outsiders became involved. Seb Cousins of the anti- gender-critical Young Greens tweeted that “we’re working with activists in Sheffield … to end this issue (of a transphobic scandal) …we are the majority & better organised. “ (See tweet below)   

25 October 2022: Deemed to be a risk to the reputation of GPEW and following a complaint that Teal was transphobic, Teal was suspended from the GPEW.

23 January 2023: The chair of the SGP resigned over his failed request to call a SGP emergency general meeting over the Teal case.

3 November 2023: Following an intervention from Teal’s solicitor, the GPEW promised that the complaints against Teal would be investigated in the next month. (They were not.)

22 May 2024:  PM Rishi Sunak called a GE for 4 July.

29 May 2024: With Teal still suspended, the SGP has called an emergency SGP meeting to select a new candidate for Sheffield Central.

Screenshot of a 12 October 2022 tweet by Young Green Seb Cousins (and a colleague)

A BRIEF EPILOGUE:

I remember chatting perhaps five years back with a person who was in charge of “Campaigns” for the Greens. I asked her how large was her budget to campaign against climate change, obviously a signature issue for the GPEW.

Campaigning costs money. A small and mostly online campaigning group called GET PR DONE! that I co-founded in 2020 has raised about £8,000 over three years.

As the Greens have existed more than 50 years, now have more than 50,000 members and have almost 60 employees, I expected the answer to my question about the GPEW budget for campaigning on climate change would be at least £50,000.

I was dead wrong. “Oh, I have no budget at all, Alan” was her reply.

The Greens have lost their way. Instead of dismissing and expelling members and losing costly law suits and getting so enmeshed in identity politics, the Greens might get back to real campaigning about climate change.

Where I live in England we have had record rains. The floods have also been terrible. Only a Neanderthal like Nigel Farage thinks this is unrelated to climate change. 

And a PS: Why doesn’t the GPEW work to increase the Green presence at pro-Palestine marches and challenge the 28 May view of shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves that what the UK needs is the “most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury the country has even seen”?

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Edited by Alan Story, The Left Lane is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber:  http://theleftlane2024.substack.com/subscribe

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