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.

I posted originally, assuming that Tatchell had turned out to support Hamas and then checked what he'd been arrested for. Now I see he was arrested for criticising Hamas. Never thought I'd say good for him, but good for him.

The reason he's not generally trusted to be on the right side of history is his advocacy of sex with minors and his support for any bloke in a leopard-skin mini skirt who says he's a woman. Here he is supporting a drunken Fred Wallace at an infamous debate at the Institute of Ideas, where Fred behaved appallingly to Helen Joyce:

PT wouldn't be the only public figure serving time for that.

It beggars belief that gay men fought long and hard to get the paedophile tag removed from homosexuality. Yet awful blokes like PT and even a few other public figures are quite happy to tie it back on again and no one does anything to these people. Ugh.

As for this being a goady thread I agree but it feels good to have a dig at some of our public figures for their hateful views.

Members of the various governments we've had, male and female, had ties with P.I.E as well, it's incredible the reach these people have.

He doesn’t share your opinion and his “passion” for human rights is mighty selective in who he wants promoted and who he wants persecuted.

I also remember him from the Bermondsey election and many, many other times. He was atrociously treated, just like every other candidate who was identified as gay or lesbian. To read or hear him in interviews or at events afterwards it was all about him, the treatment meted out to others (remember Linda Bellos?) barely got a mention.

As pp say - he is a lifelong publicity protestor, he knows exactly what will get him arrested and what won’t. I‘ve heard vast amounts of his version of this story on every media outlet, I’d like to hear some of the other views from people around him at the event. I would expect to see a new book or speaking tour from him imminently which just happens to coincide with his latest experience of MC white male oppression

Incidentally, the citation according to reports was for “racially and religiously aggravated breach of the peace” which usually equates to trying to provoke a reaction within a protest rather than the actual peaceful protest.

I’m worried how many people support someone being arrested and held for something that is not, and should not be, a crime, because they dislike or disagree with him on other grounds.

Especially when that thing is non-violent protest against Hamas.

The right here basically is not to be arrested for expressing a view that the police think a crowd might dislike. If we concede that, we have a police state.

I can agree with most of us whilst believing that it is a real shame that the police are not protecting people's rights to express legally held views, whilst ignoring threats of violence. In an ideal world the police would be actively protecting our legal rights, and not pandering to those who make violent threats.

I think it is interesting that this is what the police found offensive, not any of the other offensive things he has done and said.

But he was also released and apologised to do it's not like he's still being held that might be a different matter.

He knows what happens at protests, he knows what causes ructions, he revels in making causes all about him. It's really hard to be sympathetic in his case for that alone with or without his other views

It's outrageous that he's allowed to use his voice to promote paedophilia, when women are arrested for defending their rights and stating facts. Totally unsavoury character.

Completely agree.

I am concerned about recent restrictions on our right to protest. Deeply worrying.

Not at all concerned about the murky world of Peter Tatchell's protests. A man who aspires to be provocative.

Obviously PT and KJK are rather different, but there is a massive irony that KJK got arrested for being untoward towards paedophiles, whilst a paedophile apologist gets arrested for (effectively, not literally) being untoward towards a proscribed and repellent islamic terrorist organisation.

Yeah obviously he shouldn’t have been arrested for that, that’s a righteous cause but the pedo apologist gets no sympathy from me.

Haven’t women been placed in a cell ‘for just stating a fact?’ Sounds like he got some just desserts to me.

I hadn’t heard about Peter Tatchell’s associations with paedophilia before this and went to do a bit of research- the following is from his own foundation where he tries to refute the claims but honestly the questions asked are so damning and his excuses are so weak (“they tricked me!”) it pretty much does the opposite

https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/what-peter-tatchell-really-said-about-child-sex-abuse/

It is frustrating to see people wilfully refusing to notice the fact that Tatchell completely (and rightly) disavowed PIE and has stated many times the obvious point that sex with children is ‘abhorrent’ and ‘impossible to defend’. By all means criticise him but preferably not on a spurious basis.

Unfortunately a lot of otherwise sane people came into contact with Dunn and his ilk. PIE as an organisation managed to hitch itself to the National Council for Civil Liberties in the 1970s partly on the back of the fact that the NCCL wanted to reduce the age of consent to 14- people like Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt were involved with the NCCL at this time. PIE was a nasty and devious group that should never have got a toehold in anywhere- it was revolting and the fact that so many people involved in it were youth workers or teachers is horrifying. However, if you’re going to smear Tatchell as some kind of paedophile then at least look at the facts as to what he did and said which are freely available with a quick use of Google.

Personally I wouldn’t support a lowering of the age of consent to 14 which the NCCL did and I believe Tatchell still does. (The idea being that since it happens anyway it is wrong to criminalise the young people involved) However, it’s worth bearing in mind that any talk of lowering the age of consent for gay men in the 1980s took place at a time when the age of consent for gay men was 21 which now we all (hopefully) agree was unequal and too high.

It also doesn’t make you a paedophile to note that different cultures and different times have held different views on ages of consent. In the UK girls used to be married at extremely young for example- 12. Does noting these things make someone a paedophile or are they just anthropological or historical facts?

But anyway don’t let any kind of nuance (or even research) get in the way of the Tatchell
hate!

I like that he called out Hamas; I don’t like that he used ‘outing’ as a method in the 90s. I think his activism is important, I also think he can come across as a twat at times. Should he have been arrested this time around? Surely not. And is it better to have people in public life who ask questions and raise debate, surely it is?

I know they have, and that is very wrong too. Unless it clearly incites violence, no one should be arrested for anything that they say.

I think you are missing my point. If I want to exercise my legally held view that immigrants are welcome here, I would not do so, for example, in the middle of a crowd of people suggesting that hotels should be burned down. That would be a bloody stupid thing to do, wouldn't it? I would certainly be at the counter protest, and I would expect the police to manage and protect both sides of the event provided that they all remained within the law, no matter how much I might despise "the other side". Nobody was telling him that he didn't have a right to express his views or that they weren't legal. They were telling him where to express them (i.e. not in the pro-Palestine group because they objected to him being there) and he refused. I don't know hat the pro-Palestine group think or believe, and there is no evidence they supported violence or Hamas. But they did not want his opinions in the space that it had been agreed they could use, and he was welcome to join the other protest (if they wanted him, I guess) or stand on a corner on his own (my personal preference). He was going out of his way to be goady, and he wanted to be arrested. It isn't the first time. It won't be the last.

Neither do I, OP, but don't discount the fact that the police act on intelligence as well as what's actually in front of them at the time, and this being a deeply toxic attention seeker there's every chance he may have planned some further stunt or speech during or immediately after the event

If the police got wind of that, and especially if they'd come to know what it may have contained, getting him out of the way until things were over might have made a lot of sense

You don't agree that isreal isnt commiting genocide - you aren't helping your case here for being a reasonable person who respects the rights of other here OP...

I don't. If what happened to Israel on 7 October happened here in Britain, I would want the launching pad to be entirely occupied, and those responsible completely destroyed. Hamas are responsible for the civilian casualties.

I would say it’s a sign of the times.
Anyone can report anyone they disagree with as committing a hate crime.
The law in the UK is an ass

It also doesn’t make you a paedophile to note that different cultures and different times have held different views on ages of consent. In the UK girls used to be married at extremely young for example- 12. Does noting these things make someone a paedophile or are they just anthropological or historical facts?

It does if you do not criticise them and try claim they are justified because ‘other cultures’.

Yes, if this is all there was to his arrest I agree it is both wrong and worrying.

I think this particular individual holds some vomit-inducing views and would therfore suggest that it would be a sensible precaution to have a therapist on standby for anyone who was ever obliged to (lawfully) trawl through his harddrive.

However, the law should apply to everyone equally and in my view a very wide latitude should given to what people can say without fear of arrest.

I'd much rather know what people like this are thinking than not. Apart from anything else it gives me the opportunity avoid them.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for him as an individual and have to fight against a certain schadenfreude here, but I'd defend those principles to the death so that they apply to everyone, including the brilliant GC Mumsnetters.

Hmm I've read his initial letter to the guardian and his reverse ferret on his website and other interviews he did. After the letter he got and rightly so quite a bit of flack from the gay community and general public before he went out onto his face saving exercise of they tricked me, honest. And I also mentioned government ties to pie in a previous post, it certainly wasn't just a handful either.

So while I agree research is the key, assuming that those of us posting what an abhorrent man he is haven't done any research is in fact, wrong. Some of us have and found him lacking.

In all consciousness I cannot and will not support him.

Hamas are responsible. Palestinians are not. Women and childremn are not. Hospitals are not. If this is a war, and Israel says it is, then there are rules to war and countries are expected to abide by those rules. Israel is not doing so. What Hamas did was appalling and I in no way support them or it. But a proportional response is not razing a nation to the ground and killing civilians in revenge. That is as barbarous as what Hamas did.