I am still furious that Linda Bellos was interviewed in North Yorkshire on extremely spurious grounds - an older, black lesbian - for a supposed 'hate crime'. She had a seizure during that interview and it had to be stopped.
(I think it was Norfolk & share your anger. Not least that she was then, with Venice Allan vexatiously privately prosecuted by someone claiming to be a trans rights advocate)
Linda Bellos statement:
"Police State?
On Saturday the 21st of April 2018 I drove to King’s Lynn to meet, voluntarily 2 Police Officers who wished to interview me under caution regarding words I spoke at a meeting on the issue of Trans Women in York on the 8th November 2017. What I found out during the course of the interview was that my brief contribution to the discussion was being broadcast on the Internet when I thought that my words were simply being recorded. The police implied that my statement implied or stated I would strike back if attacked are being interpreted as capable of being for a threat to Trans women, that is people who hitherto had been defined as men.
I did say that I would fight back, as I had had to do when I was a small child in London in the 1950’s and 60’s when racists attacked my brother and me. The fight back I was referring to was against those people who attacked Maria McLaren, though I did not know her full name at the time but I had seen the recording of that attack in October at Speakers Corner and it had made we very angry and distressed, especially when I read the increasing demands that some trans young ‘women’ were making within the Labour Party and elsewhere to be considered women and to silence any biological women who are critical of the growing politics of ‘gender’.
On the 8th of November I had driven from my home just outside Norwich and had gone to what I believed was the venue of the Meeting I was to speak at, I found the venue at about 4pm and had given myself enough time to find a place to buy food and relax before the meeting was to start. What I found instead was that the venue had been threatened and that the organisers were about to travel around York to find an alternative venue. I parked my car and joined them in the trip this was necessary because I did not know York and would have found it almost impossible to know where to go.
We did find a Hotel Meeting room available for hire and we went back to the rendezvous point where attendees had been asked to gather before they were told of the new venue. If I was briefed about who else was speaking or that the meeting was being live streamed I did not register these facts. The only relevance was that I would not have spoken about Maria Mc had I known she was speaking at the event. As for the live streaming, I had no idea that this could be done. I say this because I thought that I was speaking only to those present in the room.
I make this latter point because the Police in interviewing me advised that I may have caused alarm to those not in the room who might hade interpreted my words as a threat to them, or perhaps as an incitement to harm Trans women. What seems to be forgotten is that physiologically trans women have grown up as to be boys and men, with both male strength and sense of entitlement. I can defend myself if attacked and thankfully have not needed to do so for many decades, but it is important to my independence and autonomy that I feel free to be in any space and situation to express my views. That is what I believed our ‘freedom of expression ‘refers to.
So my time and money are being spent on defending false claims against me and to taking not only my time but that of the police.
It would appear, that men who now call themselves women are entitled to threaten and dominate feminists such as myself and if we speak out of step with their utterances we are ‘transphobes’. Does the right to designate others to apply only to Trans women? Can I call them racists for treating me ‘less favourably’ than they treat white feminists? If so, I assure you my complaint would be under civil, not criminal law and I cannot believe that the use of resources in interviewing me under caution is a proportionate use of public resources. But who am I to consider myself equal to young white men who think they are female?
I have yet to hear whether the police intend to take further action against me and they are/were alarmed that I had an epileptic episode that caused the interview to be curtailed, still I await further police action with interest.
Linda Bellos OBE"
thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3237264-Linda-Bellos-arrested-Title-edited-by-MNHQ-to-make-clear-that-she-was-in-fact-interviewed-under-caution