Greens expel activist Shahrar Ali who won discrimination claim

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A senior activist who won an unlawful discrimination claim against the Green Party of England and Wales has been expelled and told he cannot return for at least two years.

In February, a judge found that the Greens had unlawfully discriminated against Dr Shahrar Ali during a row over his gender-critical beliefs.

Ali, who is a former deputy leader, was awarded damages of £9,100.

The Greens were also ordered to pay him a further £90,000 in costs in September.

He has now been excluded from the party for a fixed term of two years as a result of complaints made about him in 2022.

The Green Party has said it would not comment on an individual case.

It is understood that some of the complaints against Ali related to a social media post he shared in July 2022, in which he suggested that teaching the concept of transgender identity to two year olds was a “danger to children”.

In a message on X, he quoted a post by the campaign group Stonewall which said that research suggested that “children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity”.

Ali added a comment which said: “Off scale of safeguarding risk. Would we teach 2 year olds concept of schizophrenia?”

The party has told him that any future readmission would be conditional on him publicly retracting tweets that had been complained about, apologising and undertaking safeguarding training.

He was suspended from the party in August this year after separate complaints about comments he made on social media relating to the row about the Olympic boxer Imane Khelif.

Ali claimed there had been flaws in the disciplinary process which resulted in his exclusion and accused the party of “corruption” of “breathtaking, Kafkaesque proportions”

He intends to appeal.

A Green Party spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on individual disciplinary cases.”

The party removed Ali as its spokesman for policing and domestic safety in February 2022 for allegedly breaching the party’s Spokespeople Code of Conduct.

At a hearing in February, a court ruled that Ali’s removal was “procedurally unfair” because the Green Party had not identified any code breaches at his dismissal.

Judge Stephen Hellman said he could not rule out the possibility that this unfairness had been due Ali’s gender critical beliefs.

But the judgement found political parties can remove spokespeople for holding “beliefs that were inconsistent with party policy”, if done through fair procedures.

Source: BBC World

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