Protest - how far should we go?

After an interesting discussion at the Battle of Ideas on the 28th October 2023, I consider the ups and downs of some recent protests

On Saturday 28th 2023 I was invited to speak at the Battle of Ideas on the panel Protest - how far should it go? My fellow panellists and the audience provided much food for thought; protest as ‘power’, were the jury right in the Colston 4 case, the distinction between private and public property and what impact were Just Stop Oil having other than enraging those who found themselves unable to travel. My basic point is that you had to ask yourself what you hoped to achieve. It’s not great to waste your time, but its even worse to be actively destructive. If you are pulling something down - what are you planning to put in it’s place?

As we spoke, the noise of the police helicopters surveying the huge pro Palestinian march provided a grim soundtrack - I saw on social media pictures of marchers with dolls made up to look like dead Israeli babies and a stark reminder of where my line is drawn - I won’t glorify death or call for the death of others. That is not a ‘protest’ but a window into a very dark place in the human soul.

My favourite kind of protest is that which utilises existing systems to achieve a definable goal, and its the kind of work I think Fair Cop does so well. I wanted to discuss two examples of this kind of protest - one that worked very well, and the other rather less so - or at least had less immediate results, but which may have helped to plant some seeds which I hope will grow.

PC Lynsay Watson - dismissed for gross misconduct

Let’s start with success. On 27th October, PC Lynsay Watson, a trans identifying man, was dismissed for gross misconduct after a lengthy campaign of harassment of Harry Miller and other members of Fair Cop. His ‘defence’ was that this was a necessary campaign to ‘flush out’ the serving police officers who are members of our group, which he libellously asserts is an ‘anti trans hate group’. Harry warned the Chief Constable of Leicester police last year what Watson was up to, and got the brush off. He persisted and succeeded in getting Watson arrested but then the police and CPS allowed the time limits for charging to elapse. I was thus delighted to read of the misconduct hearing and its outcome. It’s a real credit to Harry’s persistence and determination, as well as an indication that sanity may be breaking out in the official response to alarming behaviour by trans identifying men.

With impeccable timing, the same day the Bar Standards Board emailed me their dismissal of a complaint made by Watson about my appearance on GB News on 11th June 2023. I have provided only a short extract below, as it was a lengthy complaint indeed.

Phillimore was discussing the transgender section of the public and said these words: "The police are acting as the private militia, for a particular ideology which I don’t think has any basis in fact or law, or reason, which is a definite safeguarding risk to children, we have to be able to talk about it, to MOCK it, to be OFFENSIVE about it, these are not criminal offences these are part of a very urgent and necessary public debate" …. This is inciting hatred and harassment of my section of the public by demonising us that we 'own' the police….. Phillimore described my section of the public by using the most dehumanising and demeaning terms she could, calling us an "ideology". I experienced this as a deeply, grossly offensive message and I suffered a visceral reaction where I experienced nausea and shaking. This reaction lasted for hours, my existence of (in my case) over 32 years was both entirely denied and dismissed as an "ideology"…. Phillimore goes further to push her message home, adding a strong element of oppression to her speech, dismissing my section of the public as Phillimore then states we are a “safeguarding risk to children”. Again this horrific slur caused me to experience an intense level of distress and anxiety that was especially painful as any slur suggesting that myself or my community are paedophiles or dangers to children, is the most extreme form of inciting hatred that there is.

It is shocking and frightening to think that at the time Watson cobbled together this confection of lies, hyperbole and libel, he was a serving police officer with the Leicester Police, with the power to arrest and detain me. It is also alarming to think that had he made this complaint 2 years ago, the BSB would have taken it seriously. Either he is lying about his response to what I am saying, or he really is this fragile and unbalanced. Regardless, he is not fit to be a police officer and it is a great concern that he went for so long without investigation.

Harry estimated that Watson had 7 sock accounts on ‘X’, sent to him and about him thousands of tweets over 18 months, and made 60 reports to the anti-terrorist unit. Watson mounted a campaign to assert that Harry was abusive to women and presented fake screen shots. It took 5 weeks for Leicestershire Police to admit that Watson was one of theirs. At the disciplinary hearing, they admitted that Watson had been ‘advised’ by his superior to carry on, but just use an anonymous account. PC Watson was paid £65k of public money during his ‘campaign’, when he seemed to do very little other than tweet abuse and threats at those he perceived were supporters of Fair Cop. Watson’s dismissal for gross misconduct sends a very clear message to those who claim their self identified oppression gives them the right - or even a duty - to act in abusive and dangerous ways. Your days are numbered.

Eventbrite - what happens now?

In December 2022, Eventbrite pulled my book launch from its platform, without warning or explanation, save for that I had breached their policy on ‘hateful and violent’ content. This was quite remarkable as the book hadn’t been published at the time, so its unclear on what evidence Eventbrite relied on in making that assessment.

I shared in January 2023 the information from Eventbrite released after a data subject access request, which is both amusing and revealing, not least because of the lack of confidence they seem to have in their own terms and conditions. I wrote a further update on 19th June 2023.

I am very grateful to those who donated approximately £17K to my crowdfunder; the money has been spent on a conference with specialist counsel, various letters and form filling and a further counsel’s advice. Sadly, I have reached the end of the road - my barristers advice contained a lot of detail about the intricacies of Eventbrite’s various terms of service, which ones I would be found to have signed up to and what jurisdiction I would end up litigating. The short answer to all of that was ‘it’s complicated’ and a clear warning sounded that Eventbrite would fight hard to keep this under US law to avoid any consequence from the Equality Act 2010. The following paragraphs hit home the hardest.

Whilst there may be arguments on both sides and the ways around the application of the arbitration and jurisdiction and governing law clauses, Ms Phillimore needs to be aware of the serious costs consequences if those arguments and factors are not decided in her favour. The consideration here is not necessarily just her legal costs of bringing these proceedings, but the extent of the legal costs that the other side is likely to require to defend them and, if the case fails on the procedural grounds, those costs may still be very high and Ms Phillimore could be liable for them.

For reference, in these types of cases, the costs could reach hundreds of thousands of pounds. This is because Eventbrite may not want to establish a precedent, especially well publicised, for it being sued in English courts on the matters of the Equality Act and may push hard on the questions of jurisdiction/arbitrability/law with a large and expensive legal team, who may appeal any unfavourable decisions and take the issue further to higher courts, increasing their legal bill.

So I can go no further. This game simply isn’t worth the candle. So was this a ‘failed’ protest? I hope not entirely. There are interesting signs that more Americans are waking up to the dangers of arbitrary and unexplained censorship from private, profit making companies. The Attorney General of South Carolina was incensed by a decision on October 19th by Eventbrite to unpublish an event organised by detransitioner Chloe Cole ,writing to demand an explanation in 30 days to clarify how

Cole’s account of the transgender experience is allegedly “hateful, dangerous, or violent, and what [it] will do going forward to ensure [its] event screening policies are politically unbiased and respectful of freedom of speech.”

Even more revealingly, Eventbrite pulled an event organised by Riley Gaines on 26th October 2023 which gained a lot of publicity and inspired a foul mouthed public rant from the Chairman Kevin Hartz, after someone found Eventbrite had platformed an event referring to Hamas as ‘resistance fighters’ and asked why this was ok, but Riley Gaines wasn’t.

I am the Co-Founder and Chairman of Eventbrite and to accuse Eventbrite of being Pro-Hamas is egregious and moronic. How could you make an unsubstantiated slander that I support these genocidal maniacs? Please go fuck yourself! (The last comment represents the individual views of Kevin and not that of Eventbrite, etc, etc).

I asked Kevin why his company had deplatformed my book launch as ‘hateful’ but was prepared to publish events condoning the rape and murder of Israeli civilians. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get an answer, but I would like to think Kevin’s intemperate public response indicates a degree of strain upon Eventbrite as more and more people wake up to the dangers of these unelected and unaccountable moral enforcers, who seem to have a rather shaky grasp of what is meant by ‘hateful’

I will now contact my MP and set out my story and ask - can it be right that a foreign country can operate in this country and profit off UK citizens and yet not pay any mind to UK law?

And you can help - don’t use Eventbrite or any company that acts in this way. Don’t allow these kind of companies to develop virtual monopolies. Investigate other providers - such as Ticket Tailor. Take your power back. Raise this with your MP. Continue the protest.