Why is the British taxpayer keeping Stonewall afloat?

It hasn’t been a good start to the year if you work in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), particularly in the US.

In early January, Meta announced an end to all of its DEI programmes, effective immediately. One of Donald Trump’s first acts in the second term of his presidency was to cancel all federal DEI programmes and remove trans ideology from government policy. Amazon, Walmart and Jack Daniels and other corporate giants have also abolished, or significantly scaled back, their DEI schemes in recent months.

While sanity may be returning to the US private sector, the same cannot be said for the public sector in the UK. And it seems that one of Britain’s most notorious lobby groups, one that has ridden the DEI gravy train hard, continues to pocket vast sums of taxpayer money.

Research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance reveals that Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity, managed to increase its funding from government sources last year by nearly £50,000 – up to £618,000, from £572,000, in 2023. This will go some way to make up for the now dwindling income it receives from Diversity Champions, its controversial ‘LGBTQ+ workplace inclusion’ scheme that has netted it millions from employers over the years.

The extent of Stonewall’s public funding is particularly shocking in light of its recent history. It has been among the fiercest advocates of gender self-identification and the use of puberty blockers for ‘trans’ children. It has mutated from a charity advocating for gay rights to a radical trans-activist group, pressuring institutions into adopting extreme positions on gender ideology. As a result of its controversial campaigning, it’s unsurprising perhaps that the BBC, the Department of Health, Ofsted and Ofcom, just to name a few, have now broken ties with the charity.

It’s a good thing government bodies are shaking off Stonewall, but we should never forget the damage it has inflicted on public policy in the UK and the influence it has wielded at the highest levels. The now-discredited Tavistock clinic pushed puberty blockers on to children based on guidelines that had Stonewall’s fingerprints all over them. In 2018, intense lobbying from Stonewall led Theresa May’s Tory administration to flirt with the idea of introducing gender self-identification. In fact, such was its influence on the government that Stonewall was able to use its Orwellian ‘Workplace Equality Index’ to ‘mark down’ government departments that failed to toe the line on some of its extreme positions. Infamously, using the word ‘mother’ instead of ‘parent who has given birth’ was enough to attract Stonewall’s ire.

It’s easy to look at the recent shifts in the corporate world, especially in the US, and think that the fight to get woke out of our institutions is over. But this would be a mistake. Stonewall has proved adept at maintaining government support despite the negative headlines, and despite the broader turn against DEI. Given Stonewall’s struggling finances (its deficit is more than £800,000), it’s pretty clear that taxpayers’ cash is just about the only thing keeping it afloat.

With Stonewall’s campaigning increasingly at odds with public opinion, now is the time to stop its public funding. Businesses have woken up, and it’s high time the UK’s public sector followed suit. It’s time to defund Stonewall once and for all.

William Yarwood is the media campaign manager at the TaxPayers’ Alliance.