Trans+ life in the UK is more than concerning - what next?

June 2nd 1953, London, England. Coronation day of Elizabeth the second, who would at the age of twenty seven become Queen of the United Kingdom and Head of the Commonwealth Nations, but that morning much of the United Kingdom was already celebrating. News had broken that four and a half thousand miles away Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had finally become the first individuals in history to conquer Mount Everest. The person breaking this historic news, via coded message and two runners, was none other than Jan Morris, intrepid reporter for The Times. Jan Morris would go on to become a world famous journalist, writer, and historian, known for her works on Venice, Trieste, the British Empire, and her beloved home country of Wales - as well as her book covering her transition, Conundrum.

Margate Pride has been around for ten years, and depending on which local you ask, it celebrated its tenth, or 11th, anniversary this year. See, that’s the thing about local and regional queer stories and history. You often have to rely on one of the queerest forms of communication to find them out - gossip. It's that fascination, which has led this town - with one of the densest populations of LGBTQIA+ people in Britain, only a little behind London, Manchester and Brighton - to better understand its queer heritage.

The north of England has a long history of welcoming migrant communities, despite a growing far-right movement growing in the region. Indeed, immigration is an integral part of the history of the UK. While that’s in part due to a horrific colonial past, today we would hardly be anywhere without it. The well-loved national dish of Fish and Chips was brought over by Spanish and Portuguese migrants, and popularised by the Jewish migrant community in the mid-1800s. The iconic mini cooper was invented by a Greek engineer, who came to the UK to study. Chicken tikka massala, development of Marxist theory, 4am shawarma after a night out. Adrian Collins heads to Bradford, to speak with Trans+ refugees and migrants to find out what it's like on the intersections of being Trans+ and a migrant.

Allyship, solidarity. They’re words that are banded around a lot. Allies often ask how to show solidarity, and marginalised queer and Trans+ folks try their hardest to give ever-increasing practical insights. But what do those words, really mean? How do you do justice to the work?

Rachel Taylor MP told the UK Parliment, "waiting times for gender affirming healthcare are nothing short of a national scandal". Speaking, using almost word for word our reporting in the Gender Clinic Files - an investigation into the length of waiting times for NHS gender identity clinics (GICs) - she set out how 48,000 adults remain on waiting lists, with an average waiting time of 25 years. In one clinic, we found a 224-year wait if you joined the list in March, three times the average UK life expectancy. More than a lifetime of waiting.