Photo credit: David Hiney

We often focus on American examples when we consider the history of trans activism – remembering flashpoints of history like the Stonewall riots and key figures like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Leslie Feinberg. It’s important, however, to look at the history of trans activism in the UK. This history can illuminate the current landscape of political and media debates about trans issues. Two books I’ve found invaluable for thinking about trans activism in the UK are Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows (2018), edited by Christine Burns, and The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice (2021) by Shon Faye.

Among essays on various topics from early gender identity clinics to TV and film representation, Trans Britain offers insightful chapters on some of the key events and figures who helped shape trans rights in Britain over the twentieth century. Michael Dillon and Roberta Cowell were two of the first people in the UK to undergo medical transition procedures (in 1946 and 1951 respectively) and to change their legal sex. Meanwhile, the court cases of Sir Ewan Forbes (1965), and of April Ashley (1970), shaped legislation around gender recognition.

As these examples demonstrate, British trans activism has often taken a quieter approach than that of the US. Transitioning in the UK – whether medically or socially – was long a matter of wealth, status, and connections. Dillon and Cowell had close connections with medical practitioners. Meanwhile, Ashley’s and Forbes’ legal cases related to property claims: in Ashley’s case, maintenance payments from her ex-husband Hon. Arthur Corbett, heir to a barony; in Forbes’ case, his inheritance of a baronetcy.

In a similar vein, the UK’s first major campaign group on trans issues, Press for Change, adopted strategies that leveraged members’ establishment connections. As Christine Burns writes, ‘The trans formula for activism was to educate people, make friends in high places, win arguments on the facts and use strategic litigation to break down an unwilling government’ (Trans Britain, p. 128). Press for Change used members’ personal influence to attend major political party conferences; organize meetings with civil servants, politicians, and medical professionals; and put forward legal cases to the European Court of Human Rights.

Press for Change focussed largely on trans people’s rights to privacy and to participate in public life. While their focus on respectability might now be uncomfortable, their work led to changes in legislation in the early 2000s on employment discrimination and harassment, as well as prisoners’ rights – changes which undoubtedly had a massive impact on ordinary trans people’s lives.

More recent trans activism in the UK has shifted away from the approach of leaning on friends in high places, as Shon Faye explores in The Transgender Issue. In the twenty-first century, trans people have adopted tactics including charity and community organizing, mutual aid groups, solidarity funds, demonstrations, protest marches, and coordinated social media campaigns.

The focus of trans activism has become more coalitional, addressing issues of class and poverty that cut across trans communities and other vulnerable groups including sex workers, the homeless, migrants, prisoners, children, and young people. But that’s not to say that Press for Change’s tactics should be forgotten – as Faye writes, “all will be necessary in our struggle” (The Transgender Issue, p. 267).

Turning back to this history of trans struggles for liberation in the UK shows us how we’ve got where we are today. Looking at the past can help us think strategically about our actions in the present to build better futures for trans communities.

Dr. Sabine Sharp – the University of Manchester Library

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