Today in London, a group of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) attempted to join the Mayday march with a transphobic banner.

After being challenged by the London Anti-Fascist Assembly (LAFA) and other members of the parade together with two members from Edinburgh Antifa, the TERFs then called the march stewards who also agreed that their group and their transphobic message was not welcome. LAFA and the march stewards then removed the TERFs from the demo. The TERFs then called the police. Police Liaison officers turned up and the TERF group spoke with them. Cops initially asked the folks to leave the march but the march stewards stepped in to explain that the TERFs were causing the problems. It comes as no surprise that the TERFs were not then asked by the cops to leave, but the stewards were then able to peacefully convince the TERFs that they should leave.

LAFA said in their statement:

” A group of TERFs turned up at the May Day march in London, yelled abuse at a bloc of feminists and sex workers and briefly unfurled this banner.

Comrades from LAFA, AFN groups including Edinburgh Antifa and friends on the demo including queer and trans comrades peacefully stood in front of the banner. The TERFs responded by taking our pictures and attacking us however we continued to hold our ground and resist peacefully. They yelled “male violence” at us despite our group including people of many genders and yelled “racist” at us despite our group including black people, Asians and latinx.

The Terfs called the march stewards on us, telling us they’d remove us but instead the stewards took our side. The march was stewarded mainly by Turkish and Kurdish leftists who’ve seen us at many of their demonstrations and today they responded by showing solidarity with us. The terfs then called the police on us. The police tried to remove us but the march stewards explained to them it was the Terfs who were causing the problems. Together with the stewards including older trade unionists and Kurdish and Turkish comrades we were able to collectively and peacefully remove the Terfs from the demonstration.

TERFs claim to be feminists but they receive funding from right wing extremists, Christian fundamentalists and wealthy individuals linked to pro life organisations. Their aim is to divide and weaken the feminist movement and to divide and weaken the working class. TERFs act in the interests of the bosses and the patriarchy, they are not our comrades, they are enemies of our class and the anti fascist movement and we will continue to confront them wherever we find them.”

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists are no strangers to calling the cops on transgender folk, and today showed that they will do so even when there are other marginalised groups and individuals present. There were “organisations representing Turkish, Kurdish, Chilean, Colombian, Peruvian, Brazilian, Portuguese, West Indian, Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani, Bangla Deshi, Kashmiri, Cypriot, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian, Irish, South African, Nigerian migrant workers & communities plus many other trade union & community organisations.”

UPDATE 3/05/2019

After the Mayday incident, the TERFs proceeded to spread a claim that one of LAFA members racially abused a black woman by using the n-word against her. A video in proof of this claim was produced.

Since this claim is doing rounds online, we would like to clarify some things.

The video’s audio is very unclear.

A person who holds a degree in linguistics and works full time in the field of morpho-syntaction had run it through the PRAAT software, through the spectogram and analysed the formants. This returned the result that the person accused said “fucking bigot”, and not the n-word. A nasal “n” sound is most similar to vowels and does not show up on the spectogram like the bilabial “b” did. The woman at the video is also a Spanish speaker and does not pronounce the “t” at the end of the word.

Towards the end of the video the black woman says “called me a n*****, called me a n*****”. That’s not the Spanish speaking woman and there are clear accent differences.

The fact that the woman in question said “fucking bigot” and not the n-word was confirmed by several witnesses.

What’s more, the TERFs keep insisting that the alleged abuser is a white man. Let’s clarify this too. She is a cis woman. A woman of colour for that matter, and an active member of several groups. To call her a man for publicity purposes is shameful to say the least.