In March 2023, nearly 100 Metropolitan Police officers were crammed into a special seminar at New Scotland Yard. They were there to mark Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) and to listen to presentations from several trans-activist speakers.
This ‘celebration’ is now the focus of allegations that the Met have been captured by trans activists. This is the claim of detective constable Melanie Newman, who has bravely taken the Met to a tribunal on the grounds they discriminated against staff with gender-critical views. During the tribunal hearing, which began last week, she has said that the Met have created a ‘hostile environment’ for anyone who challenges transgender ideology.
The details that have emerged so far, if true, paint a shocking picture of life in the Met. At the TDOV event, one speaker, trans activist Eva Echo, allegedly told officers that trans people needed to be ‘saved’ from gender-critical people, who had ‘warped, twisted views’. Echo is said to have warned officers of the ‘cult-like behaviour’ of those who raise concerns about men in women’s toilets and women’s sports.
It’s also been reported that the officers and staff attending the TDOV event hissed at the mention of women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker), who has organised rallies across the world to highlight the threat from transgenderism, and remind policymakers that the word ‘woman’ means ‘adult human female’.
If this turns out to be the case, it would hardly be a shock. Another one of the speakers at New Scotland Yard, Shea Coffey, had previously posted on social media that it was ‘hilarious’ when Keen was assaulted in New Zealand in spring 2023, during an incident that left her fearing for her life.
Keen, who has been hassled by the police over her gender-critical views in the past, is not surprised by these claims about the Met. ‘I’ve had too many dealings with the police over the past few years to think they take threats to my safety seriously’, she tells me.
Newman, who joined the Met after working as a journalist, has told the tribunal that numerous colleagues were investigated and disciplined after raising concerns about the influence of trans activism on the force. In her witness statement, she also details how specialist LGBT officers and trainers freely made grotesque comments about gender-critical people. One sergeant allegedly referred to them as ‘a bunch of lesbians’ – as if the word ‘lesbian’ was a slur.
The Met have long faced allegations of institutional sexism, and this embrace of transgender activism has only made matters worse. After all, the police have been actively championing an ideology that tells women they have no right to their own spaces, language or safety.
Moreover, the Met have been more than happy to investigate and intimidate women who speak out against gender ideology. Officers spent more than a year, between 2023 and 2024, investigating researcher Maya Forstater for ‘malicious communications’ after she posted on social media that a male GP who identifies as trans ‘enjoys intimately examining female patients without their consent’.
In Baroness Casey’s 2023 report, which accused the Met of more traditional forms of misogyny, she warned that ‘those who speak up… learn the hard way that there are adverse consequences for themselves, for their careers and for their teams’. Reading Newman’s testimony, it seems like nothing has changed.
In transgenderism, the Metropolitan Police have found a new way to dress up old-fashioned sexism as something right-on and progressive. The Met aren’t just failing women – they seem to be waging war on us.
Jo Bartosch is a journalist campaigning for the rights of women and girls.
