Peter Tatchell Arrested - Outrageous

[Everanewbie]

AIBU to be outraged my Peter Tatchell's latest arrest?

For those who have not heard, the famous campaigner attended a recent Gaza protest. He held a placard that demanded Israel stop the genocide, and that Hamas are a shameful, and reiterated their official terrorist status for the torture an execution of a Palestinian man that attended an anti-Hamas demonstration in Gaza. He was arrested on the basis of inciting racial and religious hatred. The police have since apologised indicating that they believed him to be part of a counter-protest. He spent 5 hours in a cell.

Yes, subject matter aside, its difficult to have sympathy for that individual.

Unless they are doing things like expressing support for a proscribed terrorist organisation... the irony of course being that Tatchell was arrest for criticising Hamas!!!!

having said that, of course, i don't give a flying fuck about his personal circumstances. Especially since his story and the police's story don't apparently tally.

I do have huge concerns about freedom of speech in the UK (insofar as you have it). But i am spending the energy i do spend worrying about that, worrying about women.

I agree with you OP.

Its the old adage “I might not agree with what you’re saying but I will defend your right to say it”

One of the most fascinating aspects of this whole battle is how many people seem to have started off fighting for women's and LGB rights, and found themselves increasingly concerned with issues such as freedom of speech, the right to protest, politics in the workplace and classroom, police impartiality and competence, authoritarianism in all it's forms. Maybe if we can think the TQ+ for one thing it is that it has woken a lot of people up to a lot of other issues which maybe we took for granted before.

TBH most of the MC white progressives on the NCCL for whom PIE was a badge of how super cool and progressive they were had abandoned PIE and were condemning them well before the mid 80s. Tatchell was definitely in a minority on this even in the 80s.

Tatchell is a relentless self promoter, I stopped listening to him decades ago after the umpteenth time his version of events was somewhat askew from everyone else’s. Most of the coverage of this is his version of events, he knows exactly what is likely to get him arrested. I’d be interested to hear exactly what was happening and what he was saying at the time rather than the “I was just carrying an impartial placard” schtick.

I suspect he'd have been even more outraged if he had NOT been arrested.

His version of why he lost the Bermonsey by-election is especially interesting.

He says it was because of a vicious anti-gay campaign.

I have heard it was more that a constituency full of ex-service men and women did not fancy being represented by an Australian draft dodger.

Nice bit of whataboutery but excusing something currently happening “because culture” is not the same as saying what has happened historically. One is subject to change, one isn’t. I also note that he never used that excuse to justify bans on gay relationships “because culture”.

I don’t know what sort of school you went to but when fictional or dynastic young relationships came up it was always in the context of “this was not a good thing” which is pretty much all you can do without a TARDIS.

The police sometimes get it wrong, they aren’t perfect. PT was released without charge and came to no harm. I have less than zero fucks to give about this man who is a pedophile apologist and thinks women’s rights are problematic.

Also perhaps because what he stands for was becoming very clear by then?

The story-changing in an attempt to avoid criticism is a well worn and very visible tactic, but as the Q&A on his own website showed he's just not skilled enough to pull it off and so the deceits become ever more visible

Typo

The fact PT was held for five hours is not the issue. The issue is pro-terrorist supporters are not being arrested and charged.

I think you missed my point- it was in response to another poster’s comment. My point was that it doesn’t make someone an actual paedophile if they note that in different places and at different times different things have been/are tolerated. Just because we here and now don’t think that those things are at all right or ok does not mean they haven’t happened in the past or don’t happen elsewhere.
I think that point stands regardless of anyone’s feelings about Peter Tatchell who is someone who sometimes says and does interesting and agreeable things and sometimes very much doesn’t.

I was a very young party member at the time in London but some of that by election and era is burned in my memories.

The constituency did have a lot of ex service personnel, it was a solid working class constituency with a large population of both veterans and national services men and women>. Every family had experienced the sharp end of war and its consequences. The former MP Bob Mellish was one of them - a local working class boy who understood the community well and had served in WW2. Mellish stood down precisely because he opposed the militant end of the party which selected Tatchell.

They were never going to enthuse about a “foreign draft dodger” being imposed on the area, even if there wasn’t much support for the Vietnam war. Especially when local candidates were available and overlooked and he came from the part of the party which cost them a popular local MP.

The anti gay campaign was real and nasty but I don’t believe he would have been elected anyway. Similar campaigns were run against other gay and lesbian candidates who won elections.

Its not true that Hughs (who won) “came out as gay” later on, he was bisexual and he certainly didn’t shout about it but I didn’t think it was particularly secret at the time. His behaviour in the campaign was shitty at times. What Hughs did and Tatchell didn’t was to engage with locals on their own terms (he was a black cab driver and used the cab to travel around in the constituency). Hughs made himself more identifiable to the community whilst Tatchell represented a wing of the party which was unpopular with voters and talked down to them. If Labour had wanted to keep that seat he was the wrong candidate at that time. If they had put him up in a Hampstead safe seat he most likely would have won.

You are missing the point. PT was not commenting on the fact children were abused in the past. He was saying it is fine for them to be abused today because culture - and that IS the actions of a paedophile apologist.

And you are deliberately ignoring the point that the “other cultures” excuse in this discussion is excusing the behaviour not just observing it in history.

Feel free to point out where Tatchell has “explained” homophobia in some cultures as “part of their culture” rather than condemning it. I can’t think of an occasion whereas that “explanation” has been trotted out quite a number of times for paedophilia. Even amongst north London “progressives” he has been an outlier on this subject.

There are many arguments where I find myself on the “same side” as Tatchell. I still don’t believe a word he says any more unless I can verify it. I’ve seen too much bullshit and self promotion over too many years.

But not an actual paedophile
I think people have to be a bit more careful about bandying that particular smear about

Hughes’ bisexuality was very much secret at the time - whether known in ‘Westminster circles’ or not, he himself has apologised for lying about his sexuality.

I haven’t accused him of abusing children, I have no idea if he has or not. So it makes little difference to me whether he excuses those who abuse children because he is sexually attracted to children or not.

Really? Not in my constituency it wasn’t. He apologised for not publicly talking about his bisexuality at the time and for going along with some of the vile comments in the press but by keeping it private he was following the conventions of the time.

There were quite a few MPs who kept their sexuality private in public despite the fact that their sexuality was no great secret and not just in “westminster circles”. I wasn’t in “westminster circles” but had a pretty accurate view of who was gay/bi/straight-but-shagging-like-a-bunny in my region. It was common gossip amongst party members/activists of all parties.

Yes fair enough. I don’t disagree with you and I obviously totally disagree with Tatchell’s letter quoted up thread. The only point I was making that seems to have been totally lost was that anthropologists and historians and people citing their work are not themselves paedophiles or ‘paedophile apologists’ just because they note that consent ages differ. It’s just a fact that they do and did, even though we here and now are shocked and disgusted.

You can’t seriously be saying that the voters in Bermondsey in 1983 knew that Hughes was bisexual. Because I was there and this is just not true at all

You seem very exercised about excusing a man who says child abuse is ok because culture. Why is that?

'The distinguished psychologists and anthropologists cited in this book deserve to be heard. Offering a rational, informed perspecive on sexual relations between younger and older people, they document examples of societies where consenting inter-generational sex is considered normal, beneficial and enjoyable by young and old alike. Prof Gilbert Herdt points to the Sambia tribe of Papua New Guinea where all boys have sex with older warriors as part of their initiation into manhood. Prof Herdt says the boys grow up to be happy, well-adjusted husbands and fathers.

'The positive nature of some child-adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures ...'

He's not merely noting that in different places and at different times different things have been/are tolerated, is he? There's no acknowledgment that we here and now don’t think that those things are at all right or ok, is there?

He is very clearly using that very different cultural practice to support his opinion that actually it is ok to abuse children.

It is not even ‘child abuse is ok because culture’ is it? It is ‘look at this culture, they prove child abuse is ok’.