How do we fight for LGBTQ+ liberation in 2026?
Socialist Party LGBTQ+ members’ group
In 2026, the rights won by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, and all queer people (LGBTQ+) would be unimaginable to many of our forebears in the 20th century.
However, in a world dominated by crisis – social, political, economic, environmental – none of the gains won through struggle are safe. Attacks on trans+ people are a warning that LGBTQ+ rights and services are not permanent while society is dominated by billionaires.
But it is important to acknowledge how much things have changed. Today equal marriage is supported by 78% of the UK population. At the time of the first Pride march in 1972 it wasn’t even a question that got asked. Homosexuality had only been decriminalised for men over 21 in England and Wales in 1967.
That Pride followed the Stonewall uprising in 1969 when 4,000 of New York’s LGBT community took to the streets and fought back in a running street battle against police harassment that lasted several days.
The backdrop then was an inspirational revolutionary wave challenging the powerful elite – including wars of liberation in Africa and Latin America, the civil rights movement, and the fight for women’s rights. We again need Prides that are protests against an elite and their system that is today represented by Starmer’s Labour.
Today, openly LGBTQ+ people appear on our televisions every day, not as figures of fun as in the past but as part of society. For young people especially, this positive visibility can be very important. Social attitudes have been transformed. But the need to continue the fight for liberation from oppression and to defend what has been won remains.
There are still parts of the world where it is not safe to be LGBTQ+. Consensual same-sex sexual acts are still criminalised in 65 UN member states, increasing in 2025.
In Britain, despite winning many legal rights LGBTQ+ people still do not all feel safe to live their lives freely. Less than half (44%) of LGBTQ+ people feel safe holding their partner’s hand in public according to research by Stonewall. TUC research in 2024 found that more than one in four LGBT people (29%) aren’t open with anyone at work, with bisexual workers feeling this most acutely (39%). Feeling unable to speak freely about your personal life is a big burden to bear.
Trans rights continue to be under attack. A draft code of practice on the Equality Act by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was put out for a 40-day consultation by the government on 1 June. It is a rewrite of a previous attempt at guidance following the Supreme Court ruling of April 2025.
Scapegoating
While this version pulls back on some of the most unworkable proposals in the original, it still confirms that under this New Labour government, like its Tory predecessor, minority rights are not secure in a society in which a capitalist elite relies on scapegoating to maintain its rule.
In 2021, ie before the ruling, 70% of trans people reported being impacted by transphobia when accessing general health services. Two in five trans people had experienced a hate crime or incident because of their gender identity.
Justifiable fear that things will get worse is rising among this section of the population, estimated at 262,000 people, 0.5% of the population. But there is also defiance. The number of people attending London Trans Pride in 2025 doubled on the previous year’s big turnout to a record 100,000.
The Labour government’s approach to LGBTQ+ rights reflects the two main pressures it faces. On the one side, here are LGBTQ+ workers and young people demanding an end to oppression, with widespread support among the population. So they celebrate Pride in parliament and attend LGBTQ+ events.
On the other side is the capitalist class which demands that Labour seeks to defend and restore the capitalists’ ability to make profits. This means driving down the living standards of the working class and young people.
One of the tried and tested means of doing so is by whipping up division and seeking to weaken the ability of the working class to unite in struggle for our collective interests, against the interests of the billionaires, bosses and bankers.
Anti-trans division is based on an appeal to the fear of male violence and of attacks on women’s rights, including women-only spaces. As with all culture-war appeals, the invitation to feel this fear can appeal to women’s experience of capitalist society where male violence against women remains deeply ingrained, notwithstanding legal improvements in recent decades.
Because of pre-existing oppression, women are hit hardest by austerity. Capitalist politicians – and the institutions that serve the capitalist class’s interests – point to trans women as the main threat to safety within the very public services whose funding they cut and privatise and make unsafe and unreliable.
Cuts and cost of living
LGBTQ+ people have no reason to have any confidence in this government. It has sought at every point to pursue the bosses’ agenda of cuts to benefits and privatisation, only U-turning under the massive pressure from working-class rage reflected in the rebellion of his own MPs, such as on the plan to cut disability benefits.
Labour MP Jonathan Hinder on BBC Newsnight on the day of the debate asking: “Are we for working-class people or are we obsessed with certain middle-class hobby horses, worthy sectors, worthy stakeholders, the stakeholder state, all of that stuff? Or are we actually focusing on the hardworking majority in this country?”
The answer to Hinder is that Labour is definitely not focusing on the working-class majority, which includes most LGBTQ+ people. This is shown in its failure to prevent a new wave of cost-of-living crisis ravaging all our living standards.
While serving the interests of the capitalist class, it is not possible to meet the needs of the working class and so scapegoats are sought – including migrants, young people on benefits, and trans people.
The EHRC draft’s proposal to exclude trans men and women from toilets and other services will not change that situation. And the idea that Labour has women’s safety as a priority cannot be taken seriously given what we know about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with known serial abuser Epstein.
Instead, what is needed is a campaign to unite the struggles of LGBTQ+ people with the wider working class through a programme of jobs, homes, and public services for all, including minorities. A campaign to enact the Trades Union Congress resolution agreed last September for the trade unions to build a national Saturday demo against Labour’s austerity would show the potential to cut across this division.
Right-populist Reform
That includes cutting across electoral support for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. It has been able to take advantage of the anger at Labour and the rest of the establishment parties representing the interests of the elite. Labour’s own attacks on migrants and minorities has given it legitimacy. The fact that Reform has no solution to austerity will also not be challenged by Labour.
But Reform councils have not gone unopposed by the working class. Local government trade union Unison reported a 200% growth in membership in areas where Reform won. In some councils, when Reform took down the Pride flag, members covered their desks with rainbow flags in defiance.
When Reform cancelled its grant to Durham Pride, Stephen Guy, the chair of the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA), reportedly took it upon himself to “encourage the trade union movement to step up and do the right thing, and stand shoulder to shoulder with the LGBT+ community”. The event was put on with trade union donations and had more trade union banners than ever.
The next step in this struggle needs to be trade union, LGBTQ+ and community defence of all our rights and services – not by fundraising but by fighting for central government funding of what is needed. Fighting together against councils of all stripes making cuts and the government will do more to develop solidarity than anything else.
Trade union struggle
Trade union members must fight for their unions to not only express solidarity, but to prepare to engage on how the EHRC guidance is interpreted. Across the 340 pages of the document there are 192 uses of the word ‘likely’, indicating that much of its guidance will have to be worked out and tested in real-life scenarios.
That poses the question of who decides how workplaces, education, health, and other public services are run. It poses the question of how to prevent this ruling ramping up discrimination and division, while meeting the needs of different sections of the workforce and service users. It poses the need for meetings to allow all workers, and or service users, to explain their needs and collectively find a way forward on the basis of collaboration and campaigning for all needs to be met – not division.
But that can’t only be a workplace-by-workplace struggle. Socialists in the trade unions are demanding that the leaderships provide support, training, resources, and guidance for organisers, negotiators and lay reps on how to defend trans+ members’ rights of access to workplace facilities; protect trans+ members from discrimination and harassment; challenge transphobic and homophobic behaviour; and increase awareness on trans+ issues in the workplace and wider society, as part of a campaign to unite workers against all the attacks from the capitalist class.
But the debate on our strategy has to go further than the immediate fight to defend our rights and resist attacks. While mass movements have forced progress and improvements in social attitudes on all these issues, they have not been able to eliminate oppression or prejudice, with all the horrific consequences for the oppressed. Capitalism is incapable of overcoming LGBTQ+phobia just as it cannot end the racism, sexism, or other forms of oppression that are built into its foundations. We also need to fight for a socialist alternative to remove the basis for oppression.
