Well, what a couple of days this has been!
On the one hand, there is still real worry for Tara. We understand that she is in Horfield Prison. She’s probably being held in solitary confinement for her own safety. It must be awful.
On the other hand, the petition in her support is closing in on 65,000 signatures as I type. In the meantime all of this has happened.
Ben Howlett, the MP for Bath, has been busy pigeonholing his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and putting pressure on them to do something.
Rather briefly I was down to appear on the BBC’s local news program, Points West. Thankfully for the people of South-West England, they managed to get Ben instead.
I had this article about the flaws in Britain’s gender recognition laws published in Bristol 24/7.
That earned me a phone call with a journalist from the Telegraph, which resulted in this article where CN Lester and I give the existing laws (and the Gender Recognition Panel) a good kicking. Thanks Radhika, great job!
Meanwhile Ben was raising Tara’s case in the latest session of the Transgender Equality Inquiry. I suspect that Caroline Dinenage was very relieved to be able to hide behind an excuse of sub judice. There may be stern words passed down to the Bath magistrates court.
Also Tara’s lawyers have been busy. Her sentence will be appealed. The hearing will be in Bristol Crown Court on Friday. Sadly I’ll be on my way to London then, but I suspect that a large part of the Bristol LGBT community will turn up. I’m leaving this in the capable hands of Ceri Caramél, the remarkable young woman running Tara’s petition, and Daryn Carter of Bristol Pride.
We have no idea how much information is getting into Horfield. Probably not a lot, but hopefully Tara’s lawyers have been in to tell her what is going on. It would not surprise me to see her on national news on Friday. Yesterday I was hoping she’d get moved to a women’s prison. Such is the outpouring of support for her in the country that I’m now hoping that her sentence will be commuted to something non-custodial.
If you want to send a message of support to Tara you can do so here. She can’t get email, obvious, but Ceri and her friends are collecting all of the messages and will deliver them as soon as possible.
When I was a kid my father used to read the Telegraph every day. He gave up on it during Margaret Thatcher’s government because he found it too right wing. And now here I am watching a Tory MP and the Telegraph helping lead a campaign for trans rights. You could knock me down with a feather.