- Conference
- 2019 National LGBT+ Conference
- Date
- 25 July 2019
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes that research undertaken by The Guardian newspaper this year highlighted that homophobic and transphobic hate crimes in England and Wales have more than doubled over the past five years, with Police recording 11,600 crimes in the most recent year of data. Of concern, almost half (46%) of the crimes from 2017-2018 were violent offences.
According to ILGA Europe, this year was the first time that its Rainbow Europe Index saw countries moving backwards in its ten year history, with countries such as Bulgaria removing access for trans people to change their names and genders whilst others such as Bulgaria and Turkey failed to uphold the fundamental principles of the freedom of assembly and freedom of association.
It seems like arguments that we thought we’d won, issues that we thought we’d dealt with, progress that we thought we were making, have all stopped, or have been questioned or challenged again.
There is a need to reaffirm what Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans + (LGBT+) actually look like at this moment and why progressing LGBT+ Rights is an important issue for the trade union movement.
Conference therefore calls on the National LGBT+ Committee to
1)Develop materials which could be used as part of a workshop focussing on the basics of LGBT+ Rights, including specifically Bi and Trans rights, with an aim that it could be delivered during LGBT History Month 2020.
2)Share and promote the workshop to branches, regions and Self Organised Groups