Pro-trans demonstrations will spread across the country after Supreme Court ruling - with rallies expected in towns and cities including Liverpool, York and Coventry
Pro-trans demonstrators are planning to take part in a series of protests across the country this weekend against the Supreme Court 's ruling on the definition of a woman.
On Saturday, thousands descended in front of Parliament in central London in a hastily arranged demo following last week's judgement, and seven statues, including one of women's votes campaigner Dame Millicent Fawcett, were vandalised.
A statue of former South African prime minister Jan Smuts was also graffitied with the words 'trans rights are human rights', prompting home secretary Yvette Cooper to brand the behaviour 'disgraceful'.
Metropolitan Police officers are now looking for those who allegedly defaced the statues.
But at least 15 further protests are now being organised by pro-trans groups for this Saturday and Sunday in towns and cities from Darlington to Southampton.
In York, calling for people to gather at St Helen's Square, the city's ' LGBT forum' said it was 'deeply disappointed' with the decision made by the UK's highest court, which they said 'risks further marginalising trans, non-binary, and gender-diverse people.'
Last week, judges unanimously ruled that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act 'refer to a biological woman and biological sex' rather than 'certificated sex'.
This means that transgender women with a gender recognition certificate can be excluded from single-sex spaces 'if it is proportionate to do so.'
The decision was welcomed by many campaigners as a 'victory for common sense' but also prompted a backlash from pro-trans lobby groups.
It is believed the Metropolitan Police was under-prepared for the scale of Saturday's central London demonstration and was expecting just a few hundred protesters. However, thousands took to the streets.
Statues had not been boarded up and roads had not been blocked off.
This weekend, pro-trans groups are organising demonstrations in towns and cities including Coventry; Portsmouth; Liverpool; Leicester; Oxford; Birmingham; Cheltenham; Cambridge; Derby; Bristol; Newcastle and Aberystwyth.
In Coventry, the group 'Coventry Trans Pride' has called an 'emergency protest for trans rights', meeting at the city's statue of Lady Godiva on Saturday afternoon.
They call on people to 'come together to show that we won't take these attacks on our rights sitting down… we will not disappear and we will not be silenced.'
In Darlington, a protest in the town's market square was called after the Supreme Court's decision was described as 'more than a simple clarification on wording, it's an attempt to push trans people out of public life completely.
In his first comments since the Supreme Court's judgement, Sir Keir Starmer yesterday said he believed 'a woman is an adult female, and the court has made that absolutely clear.'
He added: 'I actually welcome the judgment because I think it gives real clarity. It allows those that have got to draw up guidance to be really clear about what that guidance should say.'
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