is a cunt.
Free Speech Union newsletter:
“As reported by the Telegraph, I’ve written to Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner to raise serious concerns about the fact that the government’s new Islamophobia Working Group is operating behind closed doors, with all advice to ministers marked ‘not to be made public’. That’s completely at odds with the government’s own rules on transparency and public engagement.
Worse still, a ‘call for evidence’ intended to inform the group’s work was launched without any public notice and only came to light after a leak, having been quietly circulated to a hand-picked collection of interested parties.
I’m also concerned about the group’s composition. Of the five members whose names have been made public, most have endorsed the extremely broad definition that an All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims came up with in 2018. As I said in my letter, this is like appointing a panel of vegans to give objective advice on national dietary guidelines.
If that definition – or one like it – is adopted by the group, even in a non-statutory form, it could very easily become a de facto speech code for public authorities, stifling legitimate discussion and eroding the boundaries of lawful expression.
I’ve asked the Deputy Prime Minister to disclose the group’s full membership, publish the advice she’s received so far and explain how she intends to reconcile the current process with a commitment to free speech. I’ve threatened to take legal action against her if that’s not forthcoming.
Our demands feel especially urgent given the timing. The group’s secretive call for evidence emerged on the very day that Baroness Casey published her audit into the grooming gangs scandal. One of her central findings was that the abuse of thousands of vulnerable girls – often by groups of Asian Muslim men – continued for so long because officials were afraid to speak out, silenced by a culture of political caution and fear of being labelled ‘Islamophobic’.
That mustn’t be allowed to happen again. And yet the APPG definition of Islamophobia has already been adopted by dozens of local authorities, including in areas directly affected by rape gang scandals. In several of these councils, it has been incorporated into internal disciplinary codes, meaning staff face formal investigations if they refer to the ethnic or religious background of the perpetrators. The APPG’s guidance expressly lists as an example of Islamophobic “tropes” the claim that Muslim men have targeted white girls in grooming gangs – the very pattern Baroness Casey’s audit identified, and which victims and whistleblowers fought for years to expose.
Needless to say, the FSU is also preparing a formal response to the accompanying call for evidence and would urge any members who wish to contribute to do so.”
telegraph
Nominated by Shit Cake Baker.
