This is an expanded and re-edited version of the interview which appeared in the Sunday Times on 20 September:
Although she seems a little weary when we speak, there’s a certain steel about Sandie Peggie. “I do feel like a poster girl,” she says. “I’m kind of glad that I’m at the forefront of it.” It requires some explanation. Three years ago Peggie, a senior nurse, objected to a male doctor, Beth Upton, using a female changing room at the A&E department in the NHS hospital in Kirkcaldy where they both worked.
After a confrontation between Peggie and the transgender doctor just before Christmas 2023, NHS Fife decided Peggie should be suspended for alleged “unwanted behaviour”, pending an investigation.
Whilst waiting for the outcome of her disciplinary, Peggie took NHS Fife and Dr Upton to an employment tribunal, claiming she was the victim of workplace discrimination and harassment. The tribunal hearings, held mainly in February and July last year, made Sandie Peggie a household name. “Infamous”, she says with a smile.
In December last year, the tribunal panel ruled that NHS Fife had harassed Peggie via four procedural failings, but her main claims of discrimination and victimisation were dismissed. Peggie is appealing the outcome, but is now turning her attention to a parallel legal claim she made against her union, the Royal College of Nursing. The 53 year old is claiming the RCN’s failure to properly back her legal challenge against NHS Fife was an act of discrimination.
“It’s down to my gender critical beliefs”, she says. “They’ve been so unsupportive. Right from the very start, I’ve not had any support at all from the RCN. They’re blinded by trans activists just now.”
Indifferent and Disdainful
Peggie’s claim hinges on the failure of the union to advise her properly by telling her she had a potential legal claim against her employer, and their refusal to provide formal legal assistance when she made a secondary claim against NHS Fife over their handling of her disciplinary.
“They were completely indifferent to me as a member with a previous history of sexual assault who did not want to undress in front of a man”, she says. “They hold a disdainful attitude towards, and do not wish to be associated with, those holding sex realist beliefs. Even though they are protected in law.”
Peggie will be the first witness to give evidence when the trial starts on Wednesday. It is a prospect she finds “extremely daunting”, even going as far to say that she is “desperate” for the whole thing to be over. I wonder what she’s trying to prove.
“I want this to be a wake-up call”, she says, “for the RCN and other unions. They really should be working for their female staff and ensuring that there are spaces for biological women, who should have separate changing areas.”
It’s been a difficult period for Peggie, who remains under investigation by the Nursing and Midwifery Council for alleged “transphobia”, a complaint her legal team point out was made in the light of the publicity generated during the 2025 trial by people she had never met, let alone worked with. She is still an employee of NHS Fife, but has been off sick with stress for more than a year and is currently on half pay, telling me she has had to “fall back on savings” to get by.
Funding
Peggie is being backed in her current legal action by anonymous private donors. JK Rowling is an obvious candidate – the billionaire author is in contact with Peggie and on several occasions spoken out in support of her – but Rowling’s office will not say if she is one of the people behind her claim against the RCN. This lack of transparency raises questions.
Tanya Park, a trans rights activist, has speculated in the past that Peggie’s legal funding might be part of a “coordinated litigation campaign” being waged against organisations with trans-friendly policies which are “operating largely in the shadows, bankrolled by wealthy individuals and organisations.” Park thinks the rules should be changed so the identity of any person or group providing more than £10,000 in litigation funding on any matter becomes a matter of public record.
Park told me this was not about “asking anyone to justify their cause” but rather “asking them to fund it in their own name… where there is a public interest in knowing”. The only thing Peggie’s legal team were prepared to tell me is that there is that there are no foreign individuals or organisations funding Peggie’s case.
Peggie bridles at the idea of being used as some kind of pawn. “I am pursuing my own aims”, she says. Which are, in her words, “common sense. A man can’t be a woman, that’s all there is to it.”
She remains mystified as to why the RCN among many other unions seem to disagree. “I just think that’s very strange. I mean, even the government – they’re really for all this trans activism. People who have been to university, very clever folk, are actually telling people that they could be the opposite sex. It doesn’t make sense to me. I am fighting against an ideology.”
Reputational Risk
A fight like this always comes with potential risk. Peggie was vilified during last year’s tribunal when evidence emerged she had shared racist jokes on a private WhatsApp group about the 2022 floods in Pakistan, including one which said “Britain has plenty of spare p*kis if they want some back”. Her husband Darren gave evidence at the tribunal and was challenged on the jokes he had shared on social media about Islam and trans women. Sandie’s eldest daughter Nicole, who is gay, had her sexuality discussed in court.
As a family, they have stuck it out. Sandie says they have been “a tower of strength for me. Darren has stood by me and my decisions and agreed with me all the way. He also continues to work hard since my wages were reduced.” Sandie “regrets” sharing the jokes about Pakistan and says she wouldn’t use that language again, but she is still furious at NHS Fife’s decision to bring it up in court in what she calls an “especially upsetting” attempt to discredit her. “None of this was relevant to my objections about having to share a female only changing room space with a man. I was disgusted that Fife Health Board could stoop so low as to invade personal messages. Anyone who knows us knows that we are not racist.”
Over the last two years Peggie has met various luminaries campaigning for women’s rights, including Maya Forstater from Sex Matters, whose own case led to gender critical beliefs being protected in law. Last year Peggie travelled down to Newcastle to support the Darlington Nurses, who set up their own union after being abandoned by the RCN during their legal fight for single sex spaces.
Bethany Hutchison, President of the Darlington Nurses Union, describes Peggie as “quietly spoken, warm and sociable, but beneath that gentle nature is an extraordinary courage and resilience. It is a privilege to stand alongside her and we are proud to call her both a member and a friend.”
Captured
Another ally is the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who, after meeting Peggie in January this year, called her an “admirable person who has been through hell”. Peggie says Badenoch “understood everything that was happening. She was sticking up for us”.
Being chummy with the leader of the opposition is one thing, but she has yet to receive an invite to Number 10. Peggie seems to think it unlikely as things stand, describing Andy Burnham as “captured”. I ask what she’d say to the new PM if she had the chance. She replies with a shopping list: “follow the law by stopping males in females spaces, stop telling children in schools that they can change sex and stop children being given puberty blockers. And stop men being given drugs to make them lactate and abuse babies through ‘chest feeding’. It’s vulgar.”
Whilst Burnham was Mayor of Greater Manchester, the city’s Labour council adopted the declaration that “trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary individuals are non-binary”. Peggie says she would ask Burnham “who gave birth to him”.
The RCN says it is “an anti-discrimination organisation” (phew!) adding:”We support and represent the rights of all our members and we strive to ensure that all members experience discrimination-free workplaces. We treat our members’ right to confidentiality with the utmost importance and do not comment on individual cases. We are defending the tribunal and are not in a position to comment further.”
Whither Upton
Although the RCN is not affiliated to the Labour party, the largest union in the country, Unison, is. Unison’s current leader Angela Egan has already said she wouldn’t feel comfortable supporting someone like Sandie Peggie. Peggie thinks the Prime Minister should be showing political leadership to the unions who provide so much of Labour’s funding.
“I think it would help his votes” she says, “If he was to come down and fight for the gender criticals for a change, because we’re the ones that are actually following the law. I think it would look pretty impressive if he was to side with us and not be like the rest of them.”
Peggie is certain her advocacy for single sex spaces has popular support. Despite spending nearly a year out of the limelight she tells me she still gets stopped in the street “on a daily basis”. Most people “just want to shake my hand. It’s very surreal. There’s actually a lot of people that come up to me and say they work for the NHS and they’re just backing me for doing what I’m doing.” Peggie was stopped by one woman who told the nurse “her sixteen year old was doing her exams and had used my case for her Modern Studies essay, which was really nice.”
I ask if she ever thinks about Dr Upton, who has now left the NHS and registered as a female doctor in Australia.
“Do you know”, she says, “I think about this case nearly every single day. And I do wonder what he’s doing in in Australia. I hope he’s not making the nurses there’s life as difficult as he made mine. I hope that he’s behaving himself. And going into a different place to get changed.”
I am going to be live-tweeting from court and publishing reports from Peggie v RCN on this website. This will be entirely funded by subscription. If you would like to receive the GenderBlog newsletter and blog posts in your email inbox for a small monthly or one-off donation you can sign up here. Your email address will be stored securely and confidentially, never given to a third party and will only be used to inform you about things I think are interesting. If you have a story, please use the contact form. All messages go directly and securely to my email inbox and will be dealt with in the utmost confidence.
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