They wrote in an email to What The Trans:
To whom it may concern,
I am a representative of BASH BACK, a trans led direct action group devoted to tackling the rising tide of transphobia in the UK. As I write this, actionists are conducting our first action at Wes Streeting's office in Ilford North.
Wes Streeting, as you well know, is responsible for a heinous ban on puberty blockers for trans youth, as well as a swathe of other restrictions on transgender people's healthcare rights.
He is also, according to at least one legal professional, personally responsible for covering up reports of the deaths of trans young people under the care of NHS England. Every day, trans people are dying as a result of his policies and his inaction.
As trans people, we refuse to take this lying down any longer. We have chosen to take action to demonstrate that we will not be victimised or scapegoated by Streeting and his ilk any longer. We will not allow more of our loved ones to be to be harrassed, to be legislated, to be excluded, to be denied healthcare, to be murdered. We are trans and we BASH BACK.
Are you sure about that? Unless you've got some historical or political credentials, I'm going to assume you just haven't heard of it being successful. Peaceful dialogue is rarely the start of things. It happens after you make it known that without it, there will be consequences.
OK, so there were the militias on the streets of Britain that convinced the government to retain Northern Ireland, but this is a remarkable outlier, and Britain is noted for being good at getting ahead of things, of bending rather than breaking, and of avoiding the connection between insurrection and change.
For example, while armed insurrection was the mark of Europe in 1848, the Chartists were simply petitioning Parliament. There were outlier bands of Chartist insurrectionists, but not official and they were suppressed very quickly. The Chartist demands were not immediately adopted, but most eventually were, as a result of the engagement from within the system over an extended period, and the recognition that incremental change would lessen the desire for revolution.
We see the same again with Women’s suffrage, where the violent Suffragettes were a total failure and even a negative force, while the peaceful Suffragists, working within the system, came closer to effecting change. Ultimately it was the upheaval of the war which brought change.