Jo Maugham: The significance of Trans Mission

Trans Mission, last night’s concert at Wembley Arena in support of trans lives, was significant twice over.

Unless you are trans you will not grasp how close to fascism your experience of Britain is today. Your access to public healthcare is being removed by a process led by individuals who are nakedly biased. NHS England uses language that equates transness with sickness. 

Even the media, like the BBC, that has a legal obligation to be independent, routinely presents trans people negatively. Newspapers without that obligation, in a manner akin to the German press of the 1930s, scour the globe for stories that feed their desire to present transness as moral decay. 

The Supreme Court refuses even to hear you on decisions with a profound effect on your life – whilst accepting into evidence unchallenged and simple falsehoods. And, under political pressure, the police refuse to prosecute even explicit incitements to violence against you.

Even if these conspicuous and often deliberate attacks on your existence find only modest support in the real world, their effects are terrifying. Labour promised in its manifesto to make conversion therapy illegal but its systematic, creeping removal – even criminalisation – of medicine for trans people admits no other description than conversion therapy. 

Loving families who try and keep their desperate and sometimes suicidal children alive by providing privately the healthcare that is routine in much of the rest of the world are hounded by social services threats to take those children into care – and face visits from the police. 

And, try though he might, by commissioning a bogus report from someone with a conspicuously anti-trans perspective, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, cannot cover up the surge of suicides among young trans people that is the predictable and predicted result.

Living under incipient fascism is hard. But Trans Mission was a celebration of trans lives and trans joy. Six and a half thousand people came – a raft of huge artists and major cultural figures performed for them. Many others could not be fitted into a bill that ran for five hours. 

It was my dearest hope, mine and the many who supported the concert, that Trans Mission should fill the cup of the trans community dealing with these disgraceful attacks. That it should replenish the spirit and the joy and the togetherness and the strength of that community.

It achieved that objective.

But second, it also proved that, beyond the so-called Labour government, there is very real and visible and significant political support for trans people.

Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, spoke on the stage and to us. Perhaps his, and the Green Party’s, support for the queer community comes as little surprise. But Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, also came and met with us, and appeared on the Trans Mission stage. His, and the Lib Dems’, commitment to trans people is no less secure and no less profound.

There will be options at the next general election for progressive and liberal voters who cannot fathom or forgive Labour’s choice to stand with every patriarchal, autocratic, fascist leader in the world. In my slot I said that “the forces of facism, and those who bow to them like Wesley Streeting, will not win.”

These successes were only possible thanks to a huge number of artists and speakers who performed for free. But I also want to thank those whose contribution off the stage might otherwise go unnoticed:

• To Olly Alexander for bringing people together
• To Martha, Michael and all of Olly’s team at Kinndred Management
• To Jess Kinn and Harriet Quare of ROAM artists 
• To Glyn, Jamie, Toby and the Mighty Hoopla team
• To Dani and Lewis and the Not a Phase team
• To Sam and Dom and everyone at Broadwick Live 
• To Simon Jones PR
• To Poppy, Milly and Robyn of Blackstar Agency
• To the artists and speakers and their incredible teams
• To Good Law Project’s own Ella Hunter-Murphy
• And special thanks to the live events industry – the suppliers and freelancers that gave their time and kit in the most incredible show of support and solidarity. Without the crew, drivers, caterers, security teams, bar staff and everyone else involved in the planning, logistics and delivery this event would not have been possible.

You gave so much. I hope the trans community will forgive me, a cis man, for saying how grateful it is and we are.