Lord Walney, formerly Labour MP John Woodcock, has written in The Times calling for Bash Back, a trans direct action group, to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation under UK law. He draws a line between their published tactics guide, which he describes as operational planning for coercion, and the killing of Ann Widdecombe. The Home Office has declined to comment specifically on Bash Back but issued the standard formulation about the right to protest not extending to unlawful behaviour. Bash Back has flatly rejected the terrorist label, described itself as non-violent, and taken the opportunity to remind readers of Woodcock's own history: suspended from Labour in 2018 following sexual harassment allegations, resigned before the investigation concluded, then handed a peerage by the Conservatives.

Before anything else, the murder of Ann Widdecombe, if that is what the courts find it to be, is a tragedy. A person was killed in her own home. Nothing that follows from me is an attempt to minimise that, or to treat violence as acceptable when it comes presented as a cause I support. It is not.

But Woodcock is not making a careful legal argument. He is making a political move, and the two things are not the same.

What Bash Back has actually said and done

Bash Back describes itself as a trans-led direct action project committed to total transgender liberation. Its own materials explicitly state that it does not condone causing physical harm to any human being. What it has done: vandalised Wes Streeting's office after he made the ban on puberty blocker prescriptions for young trans people indefinite, and published a donor list it says was obtained by hacking the Free Speech Union. Its tactics guide describes targeting the offices and property of organisations and individuals it considers transphobic, and acknowledges that its methods will be "rarely legal". It advises forming local cells, identifying targets, and continuing pressure until those targets change their behaviour.

That is civil disobedience with a harder edge than most. Property damage, data exposure, and the explicit naming of targets are serious matters. The hacking in particular crosses a line that many trans rights advocates, including me, would not endorse. These are things worth discussing honestly.

What they are not is terrorism. Terrorism, in law, involves the use or threat of violence for political ends, designed to intimidate the public or coerce a government. Bash Back has said, in its own words, that it does not condone violence against people. Woodcock's case rests on what the group failed to do after the Widdecombe killing: retract its imagery of masked activists, pull its tactics guide, express something he considers adequate remorse. That is not a legal threshold. That is an expectation of deference he is demanding from a group that refuses to be deferential.

Why this language is being used now

Trans people in the UK have watched, over the past several years, as the ground shifted beneath them. Puberty blockers banned. NHS gender services dismantled. The Supreme Court ruling reinterpreting the Equality Act in ways that stripped protections many people had relied on. The EHRC producing draft guidance that several legal commentators described as a blueprint for segregation. Each step was framed as careful, measured, evidence-based. Each step landed on trans people as a blow.

Bash Back was formed in that context. You do not have to endorse every tactic they have chosen to understand why the group exists, or to notice that the people calling for it to be banned are the same people, or the allies of the people, whose policies made it feel necessary.

Woodcock called for Palestine Action to be proscribed before the government acted on that recommendation. He is applying the same template here. The effect of proscription is not merely to make certain acts illegal, they were already illegal. The effect is to make membership itself criminal, to make any expression of support potentially criminal, to make the entire project of organised trans resistance something the state can pursue as a security matter rather than a political one. That is a profound escalation, and it deserves to be named as such.

The double standard that keeps showing up

People tell me, often, that they just want things to be fair. That they are not asking for special treatment, just the same standards applied to everyone. So let me apply the same standards here. Bash Back vandalised an office and published a hacked donor list. Those are crimes, and the people responsible can be prosecuted for them under existing law. The group's founders and members can be investigated, charged, and tried. That is how law works in a democracy.

Proscription is a different instrument entirely. It is reserved, in principle, for organisations that pose such a threat to public safety that their very existence must be prohibited. The organisations on the UK proscription list are groups responsible for bombings, mass shootings, and coordinated campaigns of murder. Placing a trans liberation group on the same list is not proportionate legal reasoning. It is a statement about whose resistance is legitimate and whose is not.

I notice, too, that the people most loudly demanding Bash Back be treated as a terrorist threat are rarely the same people who have expressed much urgency about the psychological harm caused to trans young people by an indefinite ban on puberty blockers, the crisis-level waiting times for any gender-related NHS care, or the climate of fear that many trans people describe simply trying to live their ordinary lives. The harm flowing in one direction is framed as a security emergency. The harm flowing in the other direction is framed as a necessary policy adjustment.

What actually needs to happen

Trans people are not a security threat. They are people who want to live, work, be with their families, access healthcare, and move through the world without being made to feel like their existence is up for debate every single day. The vast majority of trans activism looks nothing like Bash Back. It looks like showing up at consultations, writing letters, sharing stories, supporting one another, and continuing to exist with as much joy and dignity as the circumstances allow.

When those routes are ignored, dismissed, or actively closed off, some people push harder. That is not unique to trans people. That is what happens to any group that finds itself running out of options. Woodcock's answer to that situation is to reach for the most powerful silencing tool available to the state. My answer is to ask why we got here, and who is responsible for the conditions that made it feel, to some people, like the only way left.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about trans healthcare, gender diversity, and the lives at the centre of both.