A polarised debate around trans rights tore the Sheffield Green Party apart. 18 months later, many members are hoping for a truce

Good morning members — and welcome to Thursday’s Tribune.

Alison Teal vs the Green Party has been rumbling on now for 16 months. Just weeks after the former Nether Edge and Sharrow councillor and tree protest hero was selected as the party’s general election candidate for Sheffield Central, she was suspended after expressing “gender critical” views. This is now the fourth piece The Tribune has done about the story since October 2022. But an important court ruling that was handed down last week could have big implications for her case. Are the two sides ready for a compromise? Dan Hayes reports.

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Your Tribune briefing

🚗 A parking firm have been accused of “contempt for the court process” after its claim against a woman who accidentally inputted the wrong registration number collapsed due to a lack of evidence. Excel Parking initially fined Jane Walker £100 for her stay at the Broomhill rooftop car park, but this had grown to £245 by the time of the court case. Excel sent her 12 letters, including a “final demand” and a “letter before claim”, but the case was dismissed.

⚽ The last time Sheffield featured in the august pages of the New York Times was when some tree protesters were (falsely) accused of poisoning Amey workers. This (much nicer) piece, by top football writer Rory Smith, examines the city’s claims to be the birthplace of the beautiful game and speaks to some of the people trying to bring it home. Unfortunately for us, the place where the world’s oldest football club first played is now occupied by B&Q.

🏰 As we reported in Tuesday’s Tribune, work is now well underway at the former site of Sheffield castle, as the £15 million transformation of the site into Sheaf Field Park begins — and the Sheaf and Porter River Trust have managed to set up a webcam in Exchange Place Studios to monitor the work. The Trust is also looking to find someone who lives on Blonk Street so they can get another camera angle. If that’s you, please contact them on Facebook.

Things to do

🎸 On Friday, Sidney and Matilda will host an evening in aid of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. The night will include performances by indie pop icons Mr Ben and the Bens, angular dance poppers Good News, purveyors of spooky lo-fi Sydney Herds, and country inspired dream pop band Faint Paint. DJ Poppy Turner, a resident at Deptford Northern Soul Club, will be spinning classic floor fillers until 2am. Tickets are £9 and doors open at 7pm.

🐲 On Saturday, join Hongkongers in Britain and Re-Water CIC for a Year of the Dragon party at the Millennium Gallery. Enjoy live music and Cantonese opera as well as a demo from a senior master of cheongsam, a Chinese garment with a rich history and tradition. On the day there will also be Hong Kong style snacks, crafts, games and products in a pop-up market. The drop-in event runs from 10.30am-4.30pm and the suggested donation is £3.

🍄 On Sunday, join Siobhan O’Malley for a winter foraging course in the Rivelin Valley. As well as exploring the edible mushrooms and plants of the Rivelin area, the walk will include wild gin and food samples. Siobhan (Shonys Mushrooms on Facebook) is a Sheffield-based fungi-farmer with 20 years of foraging experience. The walk lasts three hours and begins at 1pm — and will meet under the willow tree by the cafe. Tickets are £26 (under 16s go free).

A polarised debate around trans rights tore the Sheffield Green Party apart. 18 months later, many members are hoping for a truce

“There’s a dominant faction in the party and it’s been wreaking havoc,” says Alison Teal. “They won’t go quietly. I know that. But now it’s so much harder for them and it gives us great confidence to continue to fight against it.” It’s Friday, 9 February. An hour earlier, the Mayor’s and City County Court in London ruled that former Green Party deputy leader, Dr Shahrar Ali, had been discriminated against during a row over his “gender critical” beliefs. It’s a verdict Teal had long been hoping for. Though it won’t directly affect her disciplinary case with the Green Party, its importance to her own situation can’t be overestimated.

Teal has now been suspended by the Green Party for more than 16 months. The former Nether Edge and Sharrow councillor was selected as the party’s candidate for the Sheffield Central constituency in September 2022, just as she had been in 2019, but just a few weeks later she was out in the cold. After she shared an online article in The Critic magazine about Eddie Izzard using a women’s toilet, five Green councillors posted on Twitter that they would not campaign for any candidate who discriminates against trans people. They didn’t mention Teal by name, but it was clear who they meant. Around the same time, a complaint to the Green Party of England and Wales was lodged against her, and she has been on a “no-fault” suspension ever since, with no idea when, or if, her case will be heard.

The episode is all the more puzzling given Teal’s personal story as the former “golden girl” of the Green Party. Her role in the Sheffield tree protests — during which she was arrested and spent eight hours in a police cell — made her a hero of the movement. At the party’s 2018 conference, co-leader Caroline Lucas said Teal’s acquittal after her arrest for blocking a tree shredder has been one of her “proudest moments”. The tree scandal led to the Sheffield Green Party becoming a force to be reckoned with in city’s politics, and led to Teal serving as a member of the council’s cooperative executive between 2020 and 2021. This was seen as proof that Greens could achieve power. How did it all go so wrong?

When I catch up with Teal, as well as asking her about her reaction to the Shahrar Ali ruling, I’m keen to find out where all this began. Teal tells me the row has been “rumbling along” since the mid-2010s. However, the party’s spring conference in March 2021 was the moment that things finally came to a head. That’s when the party adopted a policy of gender self-identification, whereby people could change their legally recognised gender through a “statutory declaration”, rather than having to get the state or a medical professional to approve it.

Alison Teal, Shahrar Ali and other “gender critical” members of the party didn’t agree with the policy, but lost the argument. However, Teal still stood to be the Green Party’s candidate for Sheffield Central at the general election and was selected with 56% of the vote in September 2022. A few weeks’ later she tweeted the article from The Critic and was suspended shortly afterwards. Since then, both the local party and her candidacy have been in limbo.

How much the Shahrar Ali ruling affects her case has been hotly disputed. In Teal’s view, it completely vindicates her argument that both have been subjected to unlawful discrimination because of their gender critical beliefs. “The principle has been proven that it's okay to believe that sex and gender aren't the same thing and that our party can’t force us to think one particular way,” she tells me. “The Green Party’s got a lot of work on its hands now to resolve all those cases, because clearly they didn't act appropriately and it’s not acceptable.”

Her opponents, on the other hand, see more nuance in the court’s ruling. They say the court found in Shahrar Ali’s favour as a result of procedural issues, rather than because of his gender critical beliefs. “As long as we follow proper procedure — and I see the Alison Teal situation being proper procedure — then we don’t need to worry about any legal action,” said one trans member of the Sheffield Green Party, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity.