Exile Robbie Spence

Exile Robbie Spence

Robbie Spence was election agent for Colchester Green Party for four years culminating in the breakthrough win for the city council’s first green councillor in 2019. In 2020 Robbie became concerned about the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and body-mutilating surgeries on children and young people. He brought a motion about this to the Green Party spring conference in 2021. Virtually on the eve of the conference, he was placed on no-fault suspension (NFS) for alleged transphobia and anti-Semitism following an anonymous complaint by the LGBTIQA+ Greens.  All the charges against him were thrown out by the party’s Disciplinary Committee at a hearing in 2023 after more than two years languishing on NFS.

In 2023 Robbie was elected to the national Policy Development Committee and Disciplinary Committee. The party placed him on NFS again in March 2024 following his blog post about ‘Deep Green Resistance’ and his Zoom webinar discussion with Derrick Jensen, which has been viewed over 555 times on YouTube (as at August 2024).

The party expelled Robbie in April 2024 for alleged breach of his NFS but failed to notify him until July 2024 due to an ‘administrative error’. To add to the farce, they also lifted the NFS against him in July.

The reason for expelling him was that he had posted two messages to the Green Seniors google group while on NFS. Suspended members are barred from interacting with official Green Party channels while on NFS, including the party’s official internal discussion forum and local party meetings. But the Green Seniors google group is not an official Green Party channel of communication any more than the various Facebook groups set up by Green Party members.

At the time of writing (August 2024), Robbie is appealing against expulsion and seeking a ruling from the party as to what channels of communication count as official Green Party channels for the purposes of NFS.

For more information, see gcgreens.uk/suspended-expelled-resigned/robbie-spence-suspended and gcgreens.uk/suspended-expelled-resigned/robbie-spence-suspended-again.

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