Review of the year 1997

By Christine Burns

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January February March April May June July August September October November December

Christine Burns

Saturday January 3rd, 1998

Alright then, hands up …

Is there ANYONE with a radio or television who hasn’t heard at least one verse of Elton John, singing the updated version of Candle in the Wind in the last two weeks or so ?

Is there ANYONE with a television who hasn’t caught one glimpsed reminder of that sad casket’s journey to or from Westminster Abbey last September ?

Is there ANYONE who can’t immediately identify the event I’m referring to, and probably even what you did that day ?

It seems that if we remember nothing else that took place in these last 365 days, then the sudden, unexpected and brutally senseless death of Diana Spencer on the morning of the 31st August will ensure that 1997 will always have *one* dominating news theme when it is recalled.

In fact it’s at times like this I can see the point in all those media retrospectives that pop up in the schedules around the world as the New Year dawns; for unless someone’s there to remind you, it’s awfully easy for the events of a busy year to fade from memory even before the last bars of Auld Lang Syne have been sung.

In short, I guess we all forget the past rather too easily.

28 Years

Some pasts are best forgotten, of course. And in the twenty eight years that have flowed since that morning of February 2nd 1970 … the morning when Lord Justice Ormrod dismissed a nation’s transsexual people to legal exile … there have been many, many years that ARE best forgotten.

Twenty six and half years with no employment protection.

Twenty six and three quarter years when rape wasn’t rape if the victim was a transsexual woman.

Twenty eight years when ordinary, everyday social activities like starting a pension, taking out life insurance, getting an endowment mortgage, adopting a child, having a family … getting married .. have continued to be effectively ruled out for the thousands of Britons cast into a legal no-man’s-land by a judge who, when all’s said and done, had the medical qualifications to have known better.

A shame he’s dead. There’s someone we could ALL have liked to have had a "One-2-One" with.

Come to mention it, dying’s been no bed of roses for transsexual people these last twenty eight years either … especially if your death has required a coroner’s report prior to the issue of a death certificate.

All-in-all, in fact, it’s been a pretty bleak quarter century in which to be a transsexual Briton.

And … in the search for a contemporary legal equivalent … it’s hard not to keep coming back to the name Myra Hindley … another 1997 news figure .. and the only other soul for whom the British establishment is still prepared to turn cartwheels in order to ensure that a sentence should stick.

Yet if you and I are to share some sort of legal endurance record with a woman demonised for over thirty years in the public’s eyes, and placed beyond any possibility of redemption for her part in the murder of two schoolchildren, then it would be more reassuring to understand exactly what crime WE have committed.

For twenty eight years, ministerial replies to questions about transsexual concerns have varied more in the quality of the typeface than in the content. They used to type it on Remingtons … now they use Microsoft Word. Yet for well over a quarter of a century the stock expressions have been the same …

"Questions concerning transsexuals pose complex and difficult questions … the government continues to review … we await the findings …"

Anyone else prepared to admit that it took them 28 years to study the obvious and still not arrive at a conclusion might be expected to have some explaining to do to their employer. Especially if the rest of the world had looked … and acted sensibly … in the interim.

Of course, we had a change of government in 1997…

(Oh yes, I KNEW that something else important had happened this last year.)

Yet … less than eight weeks away from yet *another* case in the European Court of Human Rights … the government that says it intends to incorporate the Human Rights Convention into British Law is still on course to defend its’ position against Rachel Horsham and Kristina Sheffield. It is prepared to argue with a straight legal face that the status quo which it will be going to Strasbourg to defend *doesn’t* contravene articles 8, 12, 13, and 14 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Not quite what you’d expect from a modernising Labour Party.

You could be forgiven for asking, therefore, whether 1997 really HAS moved us further forward in our campaign … or whether we’ve merely been dreadfully busy treading water ?

Well, of course … you KNOW the answer … we have moved forward. Though it takes a long look through the archives of 365 days’ campaigning to be sure of just how and why…

January 1997

If you’re a conspiracy theorist and think that it’s all being magnificently choreographed as part of some gigantically clever plan then I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. In truth, January 1997 caught us all as much on the hop as everyone else when we batted off a new year with a veritable frenzy of news stories.

Jan 8th

A transsexual woman whose application to train as a police officer was accepted, and then reversed by West Midlands Police began our media year by lodging an immediate appeal following an industrial tribunal ruling in Birmingham, which found that her dismissal was solely on the grounds that her legal status prevented her from carrying out her duties. (See Is He Our Sister, by Andrea Loux (external link) and Searching Questions Tax Police)

Jan 14th

The previous story went almost completely unnoticed, but that certainly wasn’t the case less than a week later, when the (then) Heritage Minister, Virginia Bottomley, decided to "let it be known" that she disapproved strongly of the National Lottery Charities Board’s decision to award a grant of £33,700 to the Gender Trust. This could have been a very messy news event of course … but then Mrs Bottomley perhaps hadn’t bargained on yours truly popping a letter of hers onto the fax machine as I left the house for work that morning … just as she was getting into full flow on the "Today" programme. The letter, sent from Virginia to me in person (and signed by her), had been clearly supportive of transsexual treatment when she’d been the Health Minister just a few months earlier. I sent just one copy … to the Press Association. Sometimes ONE letter is all it takes, mind you … and by lunchtime Virginia and her aides were furiously backpeddling on the news, and being branded by the (then) Labour opposition spokesman, Lewis Mooney, as guilty of "transparent hypocrisy". Chris Smith (Labour’s Health Spokesman at the time) added that this was "…a clear case of double standards". Looking back, this was perhaps the very first time that the UK’s mainstream news media had tried out the opportunity to explore a politically-angled perspective on transsexual affairs … and certainly the first such time in which the "spin" was that it was OK to be supportive of such things. Opposition to transsexual support was, suddenly, just one more "unpleasant" aspect of a hypocritical, intolerant and prescriptive Tory government. In fact, Virginia did the campaign an enormous favour. Yet I don’t quite think *that* was quite her intention !

February 1997

Feb 19th	Whether there is a connection or not in hindsight, I don’t know. Less than five weeks later, however, the media were on our tails again. This time, though, it was the story of an Oxfordshire GP, Dr Joanna Browne, who had taken the difficult step of announcing her transition plans to her entire patient list by letter … with the backing of the British Medical Association (aided by literature and advice from the Gender Trust).
Feb 21st	But if the media were still trying to digest Joanna’s tale in time for the weekend editions, they found themselves with an embarassment of material just two days later, when a Devon Church of England School Science teacher came out with a very similar announcement, and with the support of the School’s head teacher, governors and local education authority … doubtless all mindful of the legal implications of the previous year’s P vs S case in neighbouring Cornwall. Both these tales of public service folk were received in much the same fashion … suddenly very matter-of-factly. In fact, the media seemed to have undergone such a transformation in a short space of time that commentators were talking in terms of a "sea change".
Feb 27th	Sea change or not, the legal tide still hadn’t turned however when a Shropshire transsexual won the right to a High Court hearing against her local health authority. The transsexual woman, was granted a judicial review to examine whether the authority’s refusal to fund surgery was contrary to the 1976 Sex Discrimination Act and the European Equal Treatment Directive …

Rather less publicly, February also saw the first ominous request for "clarification" when my new employers tried to enrol me in their BUPA health insurance scheme, and I filled out the form detailing the things I’ve been treated for over the years …

March 1997

Mar 15th	Ominous wasn’t the word to describe our preoccupations in March, however, when Stephen Whittle and his family found themselves the targets of a hate mail campaign, mailed to hundreds of residents in a mile’s radius of his home. A few months earlier we’d perhaps have been even more worried … and I don’t in any way want to diminish what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of such a letter … yet the events of the last couple of months had also given us a confidence that, whatever happened, it could be faced. We knew what to do. Friends in the local media were briefed … the BBC sent along a reporter, igcognito … and people in their dozens (literally) turned out to the "meeting" at a local pub, designated by the cowards who’d anonymously penned the letter … only to find, of course, that the ORGANISERS didn’t show up. (Well, in fact we’re pretty sure that they WERE there, but they certainly weren’t climbing on any tables to lead a lynch mob).
Mar 19th	On almost the same day that Stephen and his friends were turning an act of bigotry into a happy party night for all at the local pub, the Commission for Human Rights in Strasbourg also announced, by an unprecedented 15 to 1 majority, that they felt there was a case to be heard for Rachael Horsham and Kristina Sheffield, claiming violation of articles 8, 12 and 14. (This is the case which will be heard on February 28th this year).
Mar 22nd	It seemed to be Stephen’s week, too, when an Elisabeth Grice profile of him and several other transsexual people formed the lead feature in the Telegraph’s Weekend colour magazine. Mind you, it was very much the season for transsexual profiles in the printed media … with most of the "heavy" weekend editions having one feature piece or more … all sympathetically written. Yet at the same time … a reminder letter to BUPA was met with continuing stony silence.

April 1997

Looking back, it seems that the whole of April was consumed by preparations for what we hoped would be the event of the year. It was certainly well-starred, given the way in which the case of XYZ vs UK had been so strongly endorsed the previous year by the Human Right Commission.

(See also the complete PFC feature on all aspects of the XYZ case and the people involved).

Apr 22nd

It was with something of a sense of shock, however, that Stephen and Sarah LOST their long anticipated and prepared case. It was a shock not just to us, but to the media too … all geared to cover a story we’d worked hard to brief them on. After such a run of successes, too, it seemed a particularly difficult setback to take in. If 1997 had a black day, then this was it. Yet trans people are especially resilient … used to dealing with the worst. It was a setback. Yet it was also, in many ways, another triumph too. The media did us proud. We won a moral victory … and many, many hearts. The judgement wasn’t without its’ significant "plus" points too. "Family Life" was deemed to exist between Stephen, Sarah and their children … it sounds rather obvious, but not to the law until then … and it was something the government had argued hard against.

Loosing XYZ, barely one week before a Europe-centred general election, was possibly a blessing in disguise too … avoiding the problems which we all feared, which is that our cause would be caught up and used as political capital by a Right Wing obsessed with the "threat" to our sovereign right to kick our own peasants if we want to.

May 1997

May 1st	Any clouds and thoughts about XYZ were swept away sometime in the small hours of May 2nd, of course, when a New Labour Government was returned to power in one of the most astomishing landslides in UK political history. As the dust settled, we began to try and take in the new, vastly altered, poitical landscape. (See also our the feature article on the new government).
May 14th	Back on personal territory, it began to look as though BUPA had been awaiting the outcome of the XYZ case before sending me their own bombshell, determining that (in their view) health care cover for me would have to be hedged by so many exclusions that it wouldn’t be workable. Did I need a cue ? The rest you can follow in our insurance feature.

And behind the scenes in Press for Change the wires were hot with email messages … intelligence gathering on the Labour party, charting the constituency changes and arranging to lobby them, and beginning the largest consultation exercise we’d conducted to date, to decide the basis of our approach to the new government. It is from this process that PFC’s Five Principles emerged.

June 1997

Looking back, both May and June appeared to be quiet in news terms … but then the media could see nothing, in any case, except a new government .. and quietness does not, in any case, equate with inactivity. Looking over the emails, in fact, it was one of the busiest time of the year, with reports pouring in from all over and a gathering sense of renewed committment. In short, we’d recovered from XYZ.

Jun 15th	Press for Change held its’ annual planning meeting, this time in Manchester, almost exactly a year after the IRA bomb that completely devastated the City Centre. Odd to think that on the day of the bombing we’d been having our previous year’s meeting in London. It’s the biggest internal meeting we’ve ever held, anyway, with lots of new Key Activists taking part. One new recruit was an Insurance Adviser very willing to help get some new initiatives off the ground with insurers who were interested in investigating the insurance industry’s attititude towards transsexual people. This turned out to be one of our campaigning flops, however, through lack of interest from the community. People, it seems, prefer keeping their heads in the sand where some things are concerned.
Jun 24th	If we’d had a rest from media coverage in the seven weeks since XYZ and the election, however, the last week of June was far from quiet for Newnham College physicist, Rachael Padman, when she woke to find her picture on the front page of the Times, under the ghastly heading "Fellow who had sex change divides all-women college". Germaine Greer’s career, it seems, was in the doldrums … and what better way to get a bit of attention than to "out" a colleague ? One wonders whether the Times knew what hit it though, when emails and letters began pouring in to their offices from around the world, universally criticising Greer, and supporting her victim. (It’s times like this, of course, that the transgender world’s enormous web of mailing lists and connections is beginning to come into its’ own).
Jun 28th	The month closed with a insurance "happy ending" closer to home, however, when six weeks after they said they COULDN’T insure me, BUPA not only decided that they COULD, but that no restrictions at all needed to apply. Sometimes it helps to have friends in the right sort of places of course … though none of us expected quite such a dramatic and sudden capitulation.

July 1997

Up until July, most of what goes on in Press for Change on a day-to-day basis was restricted to the dozen or so key activists with email accounts. As I’ve said before, what might seem like a quiet month in media or event terms, could be very much the opposite behind the scenes. The volume of email was becoming significant, however … and we began to realise that a lot of the more "newsy" material would be of benefit to a much wider audience. Also, we wanted to provide a means for more people to get involved and exchange ideas at a broader level too.

We’d had, until then, the trans-academic list to use as a conduit for certain types of information. This was very useful, for instance, in getting quick and effective support for Rachael Padman. There was a wider audience we wanted to reach though … non academics … and people with an outsider’s interest in the campaign. So, on 18th July, the UK PFC News list was born … along with UKPFC Forum, in which people could exchange ideas too. The Forum got off to a sluggish start, yet in the five remaining months of 1997, it distributed over 750 messages between a current subscription of 84 members, almost all in the UK.

The News list has grown well too … from an initial subscription of around 120 people to its’ current readership of 184 … with almost a hundred messages, like this, distributed to the community worldwide.

August 1997

And no sooner had it been launched than it received its’ first test as a network. Quite out of the blue, we suddenly learned that an exhibition stand at the Labour Party conference was ours for the taking, for the princely sum of 2934 pounds … if we wanted it.

Did we want it ? I remember that weekend well. Stephen Whittle was out of the country. Other vice presidents of Press for Change weren’t easily available either. We simply didn’t HAVE 3,000 to spend just like that. Our entire annual budget for the previous year had been barely 5,000 in total. Yet we couldn’t turn it down either. So … crossing all our fingers and toes … Alex and I decided on the ’phone that we’d go for it … we’d raise the money somehow … and I made the rash committment to underwrite the outstanding bill in case we didn’t. This could be the most important appearance we were ever likely to make.

I moved 3,000 into my current account … just in case … and we started emailing and telephoning for all we were worth.

It’s history now, of course. In the space of six weeks, the response was incredible … with people who couldn’t afford one pound sending everything they had that week .. and some rather better heeled benefactors contributing hundreds. A few commercial organisations got their arms twisted too.

In the first week of September, I moved my savings back to the building society.

Whilst all this was going on, we were quietly plotting something else too … following a very nervous email which I’d received from a sitting Labour Councillor in Bristol.

September 1997

I remember being very touched by Rosalind’s initial approach to us in early August … debating her choices as a politician faced with an unenviable choice ahead. She felt, however, that if it was to be hell, then it should be hell with a purpose … and so, over the weeks that ensued, we began to plot how we could have our cake and eat it … to help Rosalind through the minefield of coming out publicly to transition in office … and (very much second place) to get what positive benefit we could from the event.

Thinking back, in fact, this seems to have been one of the distinguishing features of the second half of the year …

In the first half of 1997, we were still very often reacting to events .. because, of course, few people ever thought to approach US before their stories hit the press. In the second half, however, people were seeking us FIRST … and granting us the precious opportunity to plan … for their benefit first, and ours second.

Rosalind’s media management superiors weren’t the most optimistic of people I’ve ever dealt with, mind you … and much of our time was spent horsetrading over WHEN the announcement was to be made. I wanted the middle of conference week in Brighton … what better way to protect Rosalind than with her out of the way, and the entire country’s political press barely fifty yards from our exhinition stand ? In the end, we settled for the previous week … with the announcement day continually bobbing back and forth to fit in with whatever the spin doctors felt more important in that week’s planning. One principle remained constant, however, and that was our original proposal for Ros to come out through an exclusive interview with the Guardian’s Clare Dyer … which in the end worked out so well that the whole event went astonishingly under-reported at the time.

Rosalind wasn’t the only event to be keeping us busy in September though …

Sep 13th & 20th

Channel Four repeated the two part Oliver Morse documentary, The Wrong Body

And Press for Change went into the book business too, negotiating deals with the publishers and authors of several complementary books on trans issues so that we could sell them to you and make money for the campaign at the same time.

October 1997

What felt like the busiest month of our year started, of course, with a week long appearance in the Labour Party Conference Exhibition … where we were visited by many of the most important people who needed to see us there. Once again, too, we were totally ignored by the media, even when Alex and I went foraging in the press centre and failed utterly to interest them in covering either the stand presence, or our fringe meeting held in the middle of that week. (For more detailed coverage, and photos, see Newsletter No. 9)

Disinterest was the order of the day three weeks later, too, when we finally delivered the Press for Change petition to Number Ten Downing Street, in company with fifty supporters who came along for the occasion.

Well … not TOTAL disinterest. Other quarters of the press suddenly decided how interesting it would be to do features about trans children (Sunday Times 12th October and Sunday Express 26th October). All GOOD stuff too.

September and October also saw a widening of PFC’s links, with positive moves to set up affiliate organisations around the world, bearing the PFC name, and working to our published principles and mission statement for the same goals in their own countries.

And October ended with important political news too, when the government announced, on October 24th the government’s long-expected plans to incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights into British Law.

November 1997

For some activists and supporters, November seemed like a bit of a hiatus, unfortunately. With so much attention focussed on high profile events like the conference and petition, people had maybe forgotten that Press for Change isn’t a spectator sport … but something that large numbers of people make happen ALL the time by their own efforts. The UK PFC Forum soon put the sense of some sort of “direction” back into people’s minds, however, by maturing rapidly into a place for raising, debating and DOING important work … in areas such as widening the debate on the new drafts of the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care.

December and beyond …

By this point it all becomes a bit too complex to report. This review is probably already too long in fact … and in all probability it won’t be feasible to do such a detailed history ever again. For the campaign is now becoming simply too BUSY and diverse to track each twist and turn.

The changes in the year are clear in looking back though …

A sea change DID occur, some time around February or March … both in general media reporting and in political coverage too. It was certainly not an act of pure chance that Press for Change got invited to Blackpool this year either … and whether we’d been in a prime site, or in a broom cupboard .. or in the pleasant and relaxed place that we were the effect of our presence was to send important messages that help those that help us.

The year taught us not to be complacent though. If ever there was a decision which was EXPECTED to have gone our way, then the XYZ case was it … and showed that a majority vote in the Human Rights COMMISSION does not mean that you’ll get a majority in the COURT itself. As we prepare for another case in February, which had a 15 to 1 COMMISSION backing, it *is* worth bearing this in mind.

Overall, however, the world is changing faster than we can sometimes keep up with.

It’s always important to remember that the birth certificate issue is NOT the be-all and end-all of our case. The ability for trans people to go about their lives peacefully, with dignity and without harassment does not rest solely upon a law saying that you are what you say you are. The really important change has to come in people’s acceptance of that right to exist, especially for those whose condition will always be apparent to others. So although we start a twenty eighth year without our major goal being achieved, the last 2-3 years have been stuffed to overflowing with monthly triumphs of a more important kind … winning the battles and hearts which HAVE to be won before our task may ever really be considered complete.

What’s encouraging though is that yesterday’s obstacle so often becomes today’s quaint piece of history.

On the afternoon of December 30th, my mobile telephone rang at work.

It was a saleswoman from BUPA.

They’d noted that my company membership had lapsed at the end of August when I moved to my new employment … and could they interest me in taking up a special advantageous membership deal on my own account instead ?

Seems a year’s a long time in this campaign …

Christine Burns
January 3rd, 1998