Union campaigner: I was cancelled by trans rights activists

The Herald Scotland

26-07-2025

In the end, though, a series of events made her believe she had a duty to take action.
'I'd contacted a lawyer before for advice but then dropped it. Then recently, a friend of mine died and it prompted me to change my mind. She had also been an active trade unionist who had found herself hounded and humiliated for her beliefs. The Supreme Court ruling aligned with my perspective and yet my union issued a statement rejecting it. When I saw what was happening to Sandie Peggie, it made up my mind.
'I'm suing them because of my belief system. I believe in a materialist and collectivist approach to politics and this ran contrary to my beliefs. Someone needs to burst this bubble in the unions and I'm now prepared to do this.'
Ms Macdonald is a retired member of the PCS, the UK's biggest civil servants' union. In a period spanning more than 20 years, she rose to become one of its leading activists and, for several years, a full-time lay official.
She was vice-chair of the Scotland Committee, a co-ordinating body for all branches and groups across the civil service. And she became the first (and so far only) female chair of the National Standing Orders Committee. She was a regular speaker at TUC and STUC conferences and sat on the national appeals committee, addressing members' disputes and conduct issues.
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However, three years ago, an extraordinary series of events sickened her surrounding her distinguished life membership award.
'The DLM award was for my contribution to the union, including having been the only female chair of the National Standing Orders committee, as well as all my contributions at branch level and on the National Women's Forum. Some people, though, considered me to be a transphobe and had written to the general secretary to say they didn't think I should receive it because of this.
'These honours are awarded after you retire and I knew nothing of a campaign to have my nomination rejected. I was told that someone had gone to the NEC claiming falsely to have evidence from Twitter and Facebook that I was a transphobe.
'The NEC said they needed to examine this evidence. And so my nomination was put back to another meeting. I was completely oblivious to all of this.
'I was also nominated for a DLM in my Scottish Government group. A lot of them thought the same, though, and so I didn't get it because of my alleged transphobia. It didn't even get to a vote as the president felt the strength of feeling against me was so bad.
'Someone was despatched to tell me why I wouldn't be getting the DLM award. It had all been done and dusted behind my back. I had no opportunity to respond. They'd also heard that my national award was under review. The knowledge of this apparently helped swing others in the room.
'One member phoned to tell me that she was in tears at what was being said about me: they hinted I was racist and homophobic as well as transphobic. I'd devoted over 20 years of life to the union, only to discover that I was regarded as a nothing purely because of my advocacy for women's protected rights.'
Ms Mackenzie believes that trans activism has become the de facto policy of her union and that it directly threatens women's rights.
'I'd begun to notice a change in the nature of the motions in the equality section occurring around 2016,' she recalls. 'When you're on the National Standing Orders committee, you get a wide oversight of the state of the union. You're seeing every motion from every branch and you have to determine if they're competent and within the rules. I was the only female on it and there are no women on it now.
'Among those being put forward, there were suddenly many concerning trans rights. I began to fear some of the demands within these motions might be in breach of the Equality Act 2010 and carried the potential to bring the union into disrepute.
'Whenever I started to talk about issues from a woman's perspective someone in meetings would always say 'and transwomen'. But these were biological men. I assumed that more people would speak up. But as time passed I felt I needed to try to understand this ideology more.'
She says as the campaign by trans activists to cancel her award proceeded, it was accompanied by moves to humiliate her in public.
'A few days before I was due in Brighton to pick up my award, I broke my ankle badly. So, they said I could accept my award by video link. I said I couldn't do this as I was in a lot of pain. I'd had two plates inserted and was housebound for months.
'So, they said I could be invited to come back to get the award at another time. Then, they suggested making the presentation at the president's reception at that year's STUC conference. However I heard nothing.
'At the conference when my nomination went forward, I was told, for the first time ever, a ballot had been organised to ratify it from the floor.
'So they decided to put it to a vote and ballot papers were actually produced. From my perspective this was the worst kind of discrimination.
Fiona Macdonald had wanted to hear Mark Serwotka speak. (Image: PA)"It was Mark Serwotka's last conference (past general secretary) and I wanted to hear him speak so I was viewing this at home. I knew nothing about the vote. I could see people saying I shouldn't receive this award. And although the president was dismissing them it was a shock to hear all this when you didn't even know beforehand that it would take place.
"I was sitting at home following a big operation. The disappointment and hurt at hearing all this stuff being said was extreme.
'This was further discrimination on the basis of my beliefs. It's why I'm suing them. I asked them a year later what had happened about my award, but didn't get a reply. I couldn't believe that people I'd been friendly with vanished when I looked to them for support. I just broke down. I called a friend and said I couldn't believe this was happening and that no-one had thought to tell me.'
'He said he didn't realise how bad it had all got. So many of them were involved in other aspects of union work.'
Ms Macdonald wrote to the general secretary, Fran Heathcote, to ask what had happened to her award two years after she was meant to receive it, only to be told by Ms Heathcote that she didn't know she hadn't received it.
'She suggested that I could choose a local meeting where I could receive it. I responded that I'd feel uncomfortable about going to a local meeting where I'd been intimidated by some of their members. That's when they said they would send it in the post. I found that deeply offensive. It seemed designed to humiliate me further."
This final insult, she says, was the culmination of almost a decade of serial abuse Ms Macdonald says she suffered within the PCS for rejecting trans ideology. When she began to fear that some of this would hurt women she began to get involved in Facebook discussions with other union members.
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'I remember chatting to some people who were saying that 'transwomen are women'. I said to them: 'If I think I'm a cat, who's to say I'm not if you're only going on the evidence of people's feelings'. You need to be more scientifically sound about this. This is when I realised I'd made a target for my back.
'The first in-person meeting I went to was organised by Women's Place UK on Leith Walk in a venue called Out of the Blue. I was trying to say that this issue will be bad news for unions because it looks like we'd be in breach of the Equality Act and expose us to action further down the line. I was also calling on women to become involved in the debate to defend themselves.
'When I got there, a group called 'Sisters Uncut' were waiting outside banging pots and pans.
'One of the speakers was a de-transitioner, Gill Campbell. There was also a woman who'd been threatened with having her child taken from her because she wouldn't affirm that child in her desired gender. These women's testimonies were really painful to listen to, shocking actually.
'The wrath that the de-transitioning woman faced and the family who had been destroyed because a school and the social workers were targeting her for not affirming her child's new identity was very distressing. This is when I realised what no debate actually means. There were politicians and trans activists outside literally trying to drown them out.'
By then though, she felt that the genie was out of the bottle and couldn't be put back in.
She now began receiving casual threats on Facebook, including 'Pride is watching you' from, she says, the LGBT cohort inside the PCS. She'd noticed others were getting the same treatment. 'It was quite menacing,' she says.
'A climate of fear had been created inside the union. We were meeting in secret in people's kitchens and by Zoom. A lot of women were terrified. They were right to be: they were losing their jobs and their positions in the union. They were being hounded.'
Fiona Macdonald now believes that if it hadn't been for the intervention of Mark Serwotka and his successor as general secretary, Fran Heathcote, that her Distinguished Life Membership award would have been cancelled completely.
'Leadership sometimes means though, that you have to stand up and say unpopular things,' she says. 'History will record who stood against oppression and many trade union leaders will be remembered for staying silent or joining with the discrimination.
A spokesperson for the PCS said: 'PCS notes that this matter may be the subject of litigation. Accordingly, we will not be offering any comment at this time.'