Women’s Place - cancelled Leeds meeting

[Goldenbuzzer]

Came across this FOI request regarding the cancellation of the booking - it’s been updated today.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/womens_place_uk_booking?nocache=incoming-1257930#incoming-1257930

As well as publishing all their emails about cancelling the booking and redrafts of the press release, Leeds council today, accidentally published the name and phone number of the person who made the original booking - since been removed. I can’t believe they actually did that...

Absolutely disgusting behaviour by Leeds Council. Instead of offering protection for people peoole discussing a government consultation they side with, and capitulate to threats by terrorists.

I would be interested in contributing to a legal fund for challenging everyone who has libelled wpuk as transphobic.

In hindsight some positives however are that :

-Leeds City Council showed their true colours and councillors can be voted out
-lots of people were disgusted by the cancellation and it showed the world what women are up against
-the meeting went ahead anyway! 😀

The sponsoring councillor has remained completely silent and not once defended her position or WPUK’s. She’s chosen to remain loyal to the Labour Party. It’s councillors from other parties who are fighting this.

so no one is even going to comment on why an organisation didn't put their correct name on the booking and then wonder why when they were found out that the council cancelled that booking?

It’s perfectly obvious from the e-mails that they decided to close the meeting down due to complaints. At some point, someone must have seized upon the correction and decided they could use it as the perfect excuse for closing down the meeting at such short notice.

They would have shut down the meeting either way. The e-mails are all about what excuse they should use to demonstrate their support for the LGBT community without getting into trouble. It’s perfectly obvious they know what they are doing is dodgy and they are trying to steer a way through so they don’t get into trouble.

"The sponsoring councillor has remained completely silent and not once defended her position or WPUK’s. "

TBF she may not want to be hounded out of the Labour party and deselected by the bromentum arseholes. There's one of here and about fifty million people straining at the leash to have her thrown to the dogs.

Alison Garthwaite's feminist credentials are not really in doubt.

'one of her'

Of course it’s obvious that the spelling was just corrected. Anyone can see that or, you know, ASK if not sure.

That email trail is there for everyone to see. They were scrabbling about to come up with the best excuse.

Placemarking for updates

This is the e-mail that shows they had decided to shut down the meeting first, then were scrabbling for excuses.

I note that we have not been permitted to see the e-mails or discussion around this.

I also note in the Leeds Council statement that they allege the person making the booking said

“the meeting was about women’s rights and peace and that some women can feel nervous and intimidated as a result of violence and showed her pictures which were described as portraying female immigrants.”

This looks like an outright lie. WPUK have no reason to hide who they are. Presumably this was a one-to-one conversation and therefore they believe they can get away with lying. What a horrible world we live in, where officials pretend to take the moral high ground as they casually cover their tracks in ways that demonstrate their absolute lack of morality.

Looking at the emails, Jess Lennox sent hers at 12:02pm and by 12:34pm, the reply from Geoff Turnbull shows that Cllr Lewis had been made aware and was already looking into cancelling the booking.

For this to all happen within a half hour time period strongly suggests that nobody questioned what Cllr Lennox had put in her email and took her at her word that this was a 'hate rally', backed up by the email response from Cllr Bithell at 12:08 saying that WPUK were trying to 'restrict the rights of trans women'.

Cllrs Lennox and Bithell need to take responsibility for the defamation of WPUK that led to the meeting being cancelled.

It would be brilliant if someone could get either Cllr Lennox, Cllr Bithell, Cllr Blake, or Tom Riordan to answer the questions:
Do you believe women can have penises?
Do you believe that same sex attraction (NOT same gender attraction) is a fetish?
Do you believe facilities such as refuges and mental health wards should be same sex or open to all?

The other councillors who were not involved in the cancellation should be demanding answers from those who were involved. That's their job. The council is accountable to the people.

This shambles reflects very poorly on the integrity of councillors at Leeds CC. Not one of them assessed evidence before rushing to judgement. And then they flailed around trying to decide which lie would work best. That is clear.

And given that so many people were involved in it (including the Chief Executive), it makes you wonder what else is going on in that council.

“the meeting was about women’s rights and peace and that some women can feel nervous and intimidated as a result of violence and showed her pictures which were described as portraying female immigrants.”

What does that even mean? It's a bizarre conversation - again, it feels like conversations I've had with people who seem to have decided what I'm talking about, but it turns out they've got no idea.

What possible pictures could they have shown? The website seems to have suffragettes I think?

“the meeting was about women’s rights and peace and that some women can feel nervous and intimidated as a result of violence and showed her pictures which were described as portraying female immigrants.”

Who is the "her" here? The sponsoring councillor or the admin worker who accepted the booking form?

The booking assistant. Here's the full paragraph -

When handing in the booking form at the Civic Hall, the individual asked the booking assistant for extra security explaining that the meeting was about women’s rights and peace and that some women can feel nervous and intimidated as a result of violence and showed her pictures which were described as portraying female immigrants. As a result of this it was agreed that some additional security would be in place to help manage access as it was ticket only - which is not an unusual course of action.

Doesn't make clear who described the pictures as portraying female immigrants - WPUK or booking assistant. My money's on the booking assistant.

Ignoring all the shock/horror about possible misrepresentation - why should women, meeting peacefully to discuss legislation that will affect us, be forced to hold back information about who and what we are, in order to prevent our meetings being sabotaged?

All the snorting and being-offended is nothing but camouflage to hide the fact that women are being silenced.

What time were the venue details released? Someone had time to receive 32 e-mails, and write that e-mail by 12.02?

Highly recommend the pdf of emails

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/522563/response/1257930/attach/3/appendix%201a%20emails%20FOI%2022150.pdf?cookie_passthrough=1

It's like a Private Eye satirical piece - with various people trying to beef up the statement with lengthy denunciations of A Women's Place after the statement's been released, someone fretting about the tourism bloggers who are in the hotel near the event and who may see the activity...

I've got screenshots of the councillors crowing about this on twitter - I'll dig them out later

That email trail is unbelievable. That message from Geoff (Turnbull?) to the comms team - 'Can we liaise re the message / comms line we are using?...'
Quite aside from anything else, I cannot believe the stupidity of putting all this in email.

And nice to see him dragging in the City Council comms team who, I assume are paid employees, not elected politicians.

FOI's useful isn't it.

They were saying the booking was under false pretences pretty early on.

They were worrying about whether some Visit Leeds delegates would see a protest. Then they mention that the WPUK twitter doesn't mention a protest so maybe it won't happen. What protest were they expecting - one by WPUK or from trans activists?

No one questioned the narrative they were given. No one asked for evidence. It's a bit like when you hear that police officers believe the first witness they speak to, and then understand everyone else's statements within that narrative (that might be being mean to the police but it's something I have heard people say).

What a fucking shower they are.

It's West Yorkshire. Where safeguarding goes to lie down and die.

Then they mention that the WPUK twitter doesn't mention a protest so maybe it won't happen. What protest were they expecting - one by WPUK or from trans activists?

Those emails from James Rogers about WPUK:
Cllr Lewis has just informed me that they are now planning a protest at the Civic Hall for this evening - presumably at the same time the event was due to take place - I’ve organised for community safety/policing colleagues to attend to monitor.
and later
Their twitter feed doesn’t mention a protest anywhere tonight so hopefully it will be a small or non existent.

Did he actually understand what was going on there? Did he really think that WPUK were going to organise a protest? Did someone mislead him?

If it wasn't mentioned on twitter who is he getting his info from?

If it wasn't mentioned on twitter who is he getting his info from?

Presumably from the emails that they have refused to release. But he does seem to be under the impression that it was WPUK were going to be organising a protest.