After almost two years of litigation and deliberation, a tribunal ruled that the law does not allow transgender children’s charity Mermaids to challenge the charitable status of the LGB Alliance (LGBA), the ‘gender critical’ gay rights organisation set up to represent gay, lesbian and bisexual people on the issue of gender identity.
The ruling was described variously as a “seminal moment for pluralism” (Times), a “lesson in tolerance for the toxic trans lobby” (Mail), a victory for free speech (Spectator), “freedom of thought” (Mail) and “scientific truth” (Spiked).
Mermaids’ appeal against the Charity Commission’s (CC’s) decision to award LGBA charitable status was based on the argument that by publicly criticising Mermaids’ work, the group had caused harm to trans people. It also claimed that LGBA’s opposition to its lobbying “has caused significant interference with our work, consequences for our reputation, and potential financial cost to us”.
From the very first day of LGBA’s existence, the organisation has been exposed to the worst excesses of cancel culture. Some politicians abused parliamentary privilege to make defamatory attacks on the group. Media outlets carried misleading stories about it and refused it a right of reply. Campaigners tried to prevent the organisation from finding space to hold its annual conference. Arts Council England even withdrew a grant to LGBA to make a film about gay life in Britain during the Queen’s reign, with staff at the taxpayer funded quango likening the group to the Ku Klux Klan. And so on and so forth.
“It is astonishing,” wrote Janice Turner in the Times, “how Mermaids, and the wider LGBTQI+ sector, whose abbreviation includes the “T” for trans, could not tolerate the tiniest of opponents. Mermaids has 18 staff, has received millions in public money including a £500,000 National Lottery grant, and its fund-raising cookies are sold in Starbucks; LGB Alliance has three staff paid with small private donations.”
Mermaids’ case was of course backed by Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project. Earlier this year, Mr Maugham published a book which Prof Yuan Zi Zhu, reviewing it for the Times, described with commendable restraint as “unbearably boring”. Its title? Bringing Down Goliath: How Good Law can Topple the Powerful.
The appeal was intended to address two issues: whether Mermaids had the legal right (known as ‘standing’) to challenge the decision of the Commission to register LGBA as a charity; and, if it did, whether LGBA meets the definition of a charity as set out by the Charities Act 2011.
In fact, standing was the only issue the tribunal ruled on, a point that Pink News was quick to spot, with the pro-trans news site subsequently describing the ruling as one that did little more than allow the “‘gender critical’ group” to “escape judgement on a technicality”.
Not so, says the Barrister Barbara Rich – standing is in fact “an important element in a scheme created by Act of Parliament” (ConHome). As per the Charities Act 2011, an appeal over a decision to register any given organisation as a charity may only be brought by persons who are eligible to ask judges to do so. This is ‘standing’. Who has it? The Attorney General for one, along with various other groups, including “any other person who is or may be affected by the decision”. Mermaids submitted that it fell within that category.
The key phrase there is “affected by”. In its strictly legal sense, the term is interpreted narrowly to mean situations where there may, actually or potentially, be a direct effect on a person or organisation’s legal rights arising from the CC’s decision to register a new charity.
Mermaids had sought to argue that the decision to grant LGBA charitable status gave the group access to funds that made its activities more effective, in particular as regards interference with Mermaids’ endeavours. The “height of the factual case put on behalf of Mermaids”, as the ruling puts it, was that LGBA’s “false claims” about Mermaids were now being taken more seriously and that “people might well think twice about publicly supporting us, working with us, or applying for jobs with us, given the climate LGB Alliance has created”.
It’s fair to say the panel wasn’t impressed with that line of argument, ruling that Mermaids had “no legal right to operate free of criticism, or from having it said that it is undeserving of public money in comparison to another charity”. Elsewhere, the ruling is similarly strong on the importance of freedom of expression, noting that “the fundamental rationale of the democratic process upon which our society is founded is that when competing views, opinions and policies are publicly debated and exposed to public scrutiny, the good will over time drive out the bad and the true will prevail over the false”.
In judicial terms, that’s the equivalent of an overhand right delivered during a world title fight by a Tyson Fury who’s just remembered he’s got a table booked at The Savoy in 40 minutes’ time. In just a few short paragraphs, Stonewall’s ‘no debate’ mantra, which maintains that dissent is abuse and words equal violence (thus justifying physical violence in response), is summarily despatched.
All of which only really left Mermaids with its hurt feelings to cling onto; the sense that people had been emotionally “affected by” the LGBA’s words and deeds. But so what? The issue at law was not how many fluid ounces of tears may or may not have been shed into pillows in the small hours of the night, but whether a person or organisation’s legal rights had been affected by the CC’s original decision. As the judgement points out, “the fact that Mermaids and those they support have been affected emotionally and/or socially is insufficient to provide them with standing to bring this appeal, no matter the depth of the feelings resulting from the Decision or the strength of their disagreement”.
Writing in the Spectator, Brendan O’Neill suggests that the case against LGBA has now been comprehensively dismissed. But has it? The judge who made the initial December 2021 ruling that evidence and legal argument on both standing and the full merits review of the CC’s decision should be heard together, thought an appeal on standing was foreseeable.
According to Barbara Rich, an appeal upwards through the tribunal and court system would have to reach the Court of Appeal, with a permission filter at each stage, to have any prospect of changing the current interpretation of “affected by”.
English charity law has always been pluralistic in its accommodation of a range of beliefs. If a less narrow version of “affected by” were subsequently to be established on appeal, it would risk weaponising concepts like “insult” and “offence”, gifting activists in charities up and down the country an opportunity to challenge the charitable status of any groups they happen not to like for purely ideological reasons.
And what, meanwhile, of LGBA? Tying the group up in exhausting, expensive litigation for the past two years has effectively allowed the process to become the punishment. Its legal fees now stand at more than £250,000 and have meant that funding applications for a planned helpline and a history project have had to be put on hold. Were it to materialise, an appeals process would surely prove even more time-consuming and expensive – and all the while, the group would remain in existential limbo until all appeals were exhausted. You can contribute to LGBA’s CrowdJustice fundraiser here.
Dr. Frederick Attenborough is the Communications Officer of the Free Speech Union.
Stop Press: A playwright and journalist called Phelim McAleer has written a verbatim play based on transcripts of the tribunal hearing. Judging from Phelim’s previous work, it should be very funny. He is holding a staged reading at a theatre in Camden Town on 22nd July and those wishing to purchase tickets should click here.
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“Nick Dixon and Toby Young Talk About Whether Klaus Schwab is Pulling the Strings”
Can we stop with this straw man stuff please?
Yes, it’s clear that, through funding by related parties, he very much is pulling the strings of the mainstream media, who won’t cover what in other times would have been a topic of immense public interest. I remember decades ago seeing heavy media coverage of the influence of freemasonry, but on the far more influential activities of the WEF, in particular their promotion of digital ID and CDBCs, both instruments of tyranny, there’s a deafening silence. This is not normal behaviour, and it can’t be explained away as political incompetence.
It is explained away by WEF stooges within the MSM. The MSM has been captured to ensure compliance on the messaging.
I take issue with Toby’s comments about those supporting Andrew Bridgen’s actions. Toby said something to the effect that those people view Andrew Bridgen in an idealistic way and can’t tolerate any criticism of him. Since when were politicians idolised by covid sceptics, especially an MP who voted for vaccine mandates for care home workers? No, it’s what he is doing that we support. And as Toby said, even a respectable professional like Dr Asseem Malhotra is getting smeared by the covid regime. They will always find something to use against the non-compliant so it’s not worth fretting over whether or not they’ll get triggered.
The story of the covid jabs is a massive crime that has resulted in at least hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of injuries worldwide, while governments are in wilful denial. The Nuremburg Code has been ignored and vax refuseniks have been persecuted. Worrying about the use of the h-word is simply playing into the hands of those who want to avoid these crimes being exposed.
/tin-foil hat on/
My personal view is that Schwab et al are just a think tank – and tank that has morphed over the years from something to Globalism to now something truly tyrannical out of 1984 and BNW etc..
The genesis of this I believe stems from our banking systems and fractional banking with interest.
The World financial system has become too big, too complex and like all currencies will eventually go to zero. We are now in the exponential portion of currency creation and I suspect in the next few weeks or months, the whole system will collapse.
For the first time in human history, a very high proportion of civilisation will no longer be able to feed itself, grow its own food, use its own stock and trade to survive and rebuild.
The Bankers have known that mathematically this is inevitable. Wars and devastation have been a good way to reset and stave-off mathematical collapse in the past. The world is too interconnected now for that model on a wider scale. Too destructive to infrastructure.
I believe that the C19 episode fulfilled a number of key markers. Control, possible ill-health and death with the treatment, possibly some sort of “marking” system but also more importantly, reducing the velocity of money world-wide while the finances are re-arranged to stave-off the collapse a little longer. The resources going into Ukraine is another marker. I don’t see why the G-7 would really give a damn about UKr unless for an ulterior reason (money laundering or positioning for break-up of RUS for resources – followed quickly by China to stave-off mathematical collapse further) when it itself has been breaking middle-east countries apart for a quarter of a century with immunity?
The Bankers need a solution and to usher in a new control currency without it being their fault. A collapse now would be seen as their fault and never be given control again. A black swan (as Schwab tells us now – a cyber attack) could collapse the system relatively easily and usher in CBDC’s.
CBCD’s need to be seen as the saviour (along with the digital control and personal digital ID) and hence the WEF, I believe rather than directly control, have had well-placed wealthy (made wealthy) see where their bread is buttered and if they don’t see the downside, they are all rummaging in the shit and detritus like the rest of us.
The WEF, Global Elites etc…rely on us plebs all wanting a saviour when the financial SHTF and they have the solution to the problem they caused. We will receive with applause the false prophet and for the first time in history, control and monitor expansion to suit them and not us.
We are the carbon they want to reduce.
/tin-foil-hat off/