Few people will shed tears over reports that Stonewall has warned about job losses following huge cuts to the US government’s overseas aid programme. They might reasonably ask why it was receiving “aid” from a foreign government in the first place, which was assisting the charity in its vital work of imposing “preferred pronouns” and gender-neutral toilets in UK workplaces.

Some might even suggest that the donations amount to foreign interference in this country’s domestic affairs, an unmissable irony when British feminists have long faced baseless accusations of being funded by shady American organisations. Now we know it was Stonewall that was receiving the foreign dosh, scooping up more than half a million pounds over the last three years from the Global Equality Fund (GEF), a public-private partnership administered by the US State Department to advance “LGBTI rights” around the world.

Stonewall’s focus in the last decade has been very much on the last two of those letters, enraging gay men and lesbians who feel this has come at the cost of their hard-won rights. It has labelled lesbians “sexual racists” for objecting to having sex with trans-identified males, and issues guides to “getting started with trans inclusion in your workplace”. These titles propose that trans people should use toilets “that align with their gender”, disregarding how women might feel about sharing spaces with males.

The charity claims that its work in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus is threatened by the aid cut, but it’s hard to see why the US couldn’t have supported projects in those countries directly, without channeling funds through a British charity. The GEF is just as captured as Stonewall, with a stated purpose of “working to increase the visibility and empowerment of queer women, transgender, intersex people, and members of other marginalised LGBTQI+ communities”.

There’s something about these events that doesn’t add up. According to The Times, Stonewall’s chief executive, Simon Blake, warned last week that up to half of the organisation’s 114 staff might lose their jobs in a “restructuring” exercise, something that has been blamed on Donald Trump’s cuts to foreign aid. Yet American money makes up a relatively small proportion of the organisation’s annual income of almost £7 million.

Stonewall’s financial problems existed long before Trump’s second stint in the White House. Organisations have been leaving its “Diversity Champions” scheme in droves, belatedly realising that the annual fee isn’t good value for money, given that Stonewall’s advice often reflects the law as the organisation would like it to be, rather than it actually is. Private donations and money from wills are falling, and its accounts for 2023-24 showed a deficit of £858,461, up from £574,269.

Local authorities, health trusts and other publicly-funded bodies have discovered that disciplining employees who don’t toe the Stonewall line is likely to land them in expensive — and reputation-damaging — employment tribunals. The organisation has squandered its good name through overreach, piggy-backing the demands of trans activists onto an outstandingly successful campaign for gay rights.

The question that has to be asked is whether Stonewall’s hand-wringing is an attempt to secure access to yet more public funding. Money from UK “Government sources” is one of the few metrics that has increased in recent years, rising from £572,868 to £618,757 last year. That’s almost three times what Stonewall received from the US (£233,583), and several of the donors, including the Scottish and Welsh governments, are as dogmatically attached to gender ideology as ever.

Stonewall has also enjoyed a close relationship with leading members of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet: Health Secretary Wes Streeting was formerly a campaigner for the group, while Women and Equalities Minister Anneliese Dodds seemingly uses its prescriptions as a guide for Labour policy. Trump is a hate figure for many within Starmer’s party, but the Government should not allow him to be a scapegoat for problems Stonewall has brought on itself.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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