The UK action network Trans Kids Deserve Better staged a sit-in at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in London and Glasgow on Monday 26th May, with police arresting a number of people, including children, at the Glasgow event.
Trans Kids Deserve Better, are a group that campaign for the rights, freedoms, and protections for trans children across the UK, and have created a number of high profile protests in the past that usually involve their members erecting large banners on the outside of buildings, and their members scaling those structures. The members planned a peaceful protest at the EHRC in response to the Commission's recent attempts at issuing transphobic guidance.
Following the UK Supreme Court ruling on woman in the Equality Act 2010 referring to 'biological women', the EHRC quickly put of interim guidance that attempted to encourage organisations and bodies across the UK to exclude transgender people from single sex spaces, and have even gone on to encourage the full segregation of trans people by barring them from any gendered spaces.
Protestors arrive at the building in Glasgow's West George Street at around 10:30am, where they scaled the front of the building to erect a banner that read 'End segregation, trans liberation', whilst a small number of protestors stood on a small balcony. More supporters were assembled in the street below them.
Police began to arrive on the scene shortly after, and tried to get the three protestors to leave the balcony. When they refused, several officers entered the building carrying equipment, including a crowbar. At around 12pm officers appeared in the windows behind the protestors, where they struggled to open the windows for a short while.
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| Three young trans people on the EHRC office balcony. |
When police were eventually able to open the windows two police women attempted to talk the protestors down, but the trans children refused to make eye contact with the women. After this, three male officers came onto the balcony and forced the trio inside the building. Fifteen minutes later two of the three children were lead from the building in handcuffs, and were ushered into the back of a waiting police van.
It was at this point that the supporters began to try to prevent the van from leaving, crowding around in front of it, trying to block off the roadway, and one person even crawled under the vehicle. The crowd could be heard loudly booing, and chanting 'let them go'. Never a group to miss an opportunity to engage in violence, police then swarmed the crowd, pushing people to the ground and shoving them out of the way of the vehicle. One man was violently pinned to the ground by two officers and then handcuffed. A second was held up against a police vehicle and was also handcuffed.
It is unclear what happened to the third child that was arrested and did not exit the building with the other two, though it is likely that they were removed from the building via another exit.
It was later confirmed by police that six people had been arrested at the protest, five of them as part of the protest, with a sixth having been arrested for assault. At least two of those related were teens, with one ages 18, and the other 17-years-old. The police have reported that no injuries happened during the incident, despite video of them manhandling members of the public.
After the incident Trans Kids Deserve Better released a statement saying that this was a 'direct response to the EHRC’s statements which seek to further alienate trans people from groups or spaces that they would have otherwise have been allowed to exist in.
'They’re showing the EHRC that they won’t let their guidance dictate where they’re allowed to exist, in a very literal sense. The young activists are determined to get their rage, anger and sorrow out and this action is the way to do it.' They continued. 'Trans kids deserve to have a right to education without worry of being segregated because of their identity, so change that, go to the protest and be vocal about your anger because Trans Kids Deserve Better.'
One of the protestors on the street, identified as Moat by the Socialist Worker, said 'Police arrived and immediately tried to cordon off the building. They then went inside and violently dragged the protesters who were occupying the offices from the balcony. After they threw the protesters in the van, another two people tried to intervene.
'One person tried to get under the van where those arrested were being detained. To stop them taking them away. It was so brutal. A girl beside me got punched in the chest and then pushed on to her face.' He continued. 'I was there to support the action. I wanted to show my support for Trans Kids Deserve Better. What they were doing was peaceful. The way the police were treating people was terrible.' This statement from Moat seems to offer a different version of events to those reported by police, who claimed that no one was injured.
Supporters gathered outside of the Govan police station following the arrests, showing their support for those detained by the police. Jess, a trans woman present outside the station said 'The number of people here keeps growing. People are not in a hurry to leave. We will stay here until those arrested have been released. The police were fishing for a confrontation today. There was a lot of anger and we were demanding that they let the people arrested go.'
A second supporter outside the police station, identified as James, told the press on the scene 'Police have acted shamefully—and this is made even worse by what happened over the weekend. Police on Saturday allowed a far right rally in the city to go on for over 10 hours. They were pushing anti-racist activists back, and protecting the far right and Nazis. When we showed police a picture of someone caught on camera doing a Nazi salute, the policeman’s reply was, ‘I don’t have my glasses with me.’ It’s shocking. They protect fascists and attack trans kids.' James referenced an event in Glasgow on Saturday 24th May, as well as several other Scottish cities, where far right extremists were allowed to march and protest for several hours.
Alex, who was also present outside the station told The National 'A lot of people are thinking that it was police brutality, which is completely understandable. At this time, we're obviously just very angry about what's happened. We think it could have been handled better. We think that if there was a lot more like speaking, asking people to move, the whole situation would have been a lot more respectful if there was a bit more communication there, instead of going in straight to force.'
The Trans Kids Deserve Better protest in London was allowed to continue, and police did not take action in that case.
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