Psychics at Bristol Trans Pride?

Ahead of a Full Council meeting on Tuesday 14th July, Bristol Trans Pride was already mobilising supporters. By 9.17am on Monday, comments on an Instagram post urging people to pack City Hall were marked as ten hours old, showing the call-out had been live since at least Sunday night.

“BRISTOL, WE NEED YOU,” read the flier which stated “Bristol City Council will be hearing questions regarding the EHRC guidance and giving its response.” It also contained a striking detail: “Nine questions have been submitted by people likely to oppose trans-inclusive policies” 

Yet the council says the public questions and statements were not made public until Monday.

When the details were published, there were 10 questions, from nine members of the public. Those who had submitted them were emailed a link shortly before 6pm. TERF Times has not established exactly when the material first appeared on the council website.

One woman who had submitted a question raised concerns with Democratic Services that morning, after seeing the Bristol Trans Pride post but before receiving the council’s link. TERF Times understands the Instagram post was removed between around 3pm and 3.20pm.

The discrepancy has alarmed some of the women involved. Residents must provide their full names and addresses when submitting questions, prompting fears that personal information may also have been shared with the activist group.

“In line with the constitution, the public questions and statements for the 14th July Full Council were published on the council’s website on Monday 13th July,” a council spokesperson told TERF Times. “We can find no record of the questions being shared externally ahead of this.”

The council insisted there had been “no personal data breach”.

Pressed further, it said details in Bristol Trans Pride’s post were inaccurate and “did not reflect the number of questions submitted on the topic which the post was referring to”.

However, the number of people who submitted questions was accurate and it still leaves unanswered how the group knew the topic was coming before the submissions were public.

Bristol Trans Pride denied having advance knowledge of the questions themselves or who had submitted them.

“The first time we heard the questions and who submitted them was in the open meeting alongside everyone else,” a spokesperson told TERF Times.

They added: “Your suggestion of some kind of personal data breach is false.”

By Tuesday evening, the public gallery included a substantial contingent of trans activists. One woman told TERF Times she arrived at City Hall an hour early after seeing calls for supporters to attend. Signs warned that the meeting was expected to be unusually busy and that not everyone would get into the chamber.

“We had seen on Instagram that the trans activists were calling in the troops, so we arrived at five for the six o’clock meeting,” she said.

A recording of the meeting confirms that women asking questions were repeatedly jeered and interrupted by activists in the gallery, while responses from Green group leader Cllr Emma Edwards were greeted with cheers and whoops. Edwards did not respond to a request for comment.

One attendee said neither councillors nor the chair intervened. When the mayor closed the public forum and invited people to leave, one woman stood and called out: “Please obey the law.”

As the women left the chamber via the stairwell, a full one-litre bottle of water fell from above, where some of the trans activists had been sitting, narrowly missing two of them.

Several attendees described the atmosphere outside City Hall as intimidating. One said activists gathered near the entrance and chanted “There’s many, many more of us than you” to the tune of She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain.

Residents had submitted a cluster of questions about sex, the Equality Act and single-sex services, including “Why is Bristol City Council ignoring the EHRC?” and “Will the Council Obey the Law?” Another concerned funding for women’s organisations being spent on men.

The council has separately declined to give a direct answer on whether any council-run single-sex facilities admit users according to gender identity rather than biological sex. Instead, it said its approach was to comply with the Equality Act 2010 and relevant guidance “while treating all service users with dignity and respect”.

The council’s Trans Inclusion and Gender Identity policy was recently updated to comply with EHRC guidance. It advises:

“Some services may choose to operate on a mixed sex or inclusive basis, including welcoming people to separate or single gender services on the basis of their gender identity. In these cases, services should be clear that they are not operating as single or separate sex services based on assigned sex at birth and should describe their eligibility criteria accurately and transparently.”