It’s my belief that Tell Mama may have made a grave mistake in going so big with their questionable narrative about what happened when they tried to get into the recent Conservative Party conference. According to Tell Mama they were treated badly by Tory party officials and the security staff who were supplied by the company G4S. Tell Mama, after being ejected from the conference venue, whined about ‘homophobia’ and that they’d been ‘threatened’. In a separate matter, Tell Mama are also threatening legal action against critics, such as this blog, that have called on them to ‘come clean’ about what happened at the Conservative Party conference. It’s correct to ask that of them, now that an alternative narrative of the events that Tell Mama described has emerged. Following the alleged incident Tell Mama said in a statement on their website:
In particular, to register, book, turn up and be denied access to our own fringe event and to have G4S staff placed around our staff and insult them, whilst openly making homophobic comments against an LGBT member of staff is unacceptable and these comments were heard by senior managers within Tell MAMA. Furthermore, to be then threatened with violence by two G4S staff and to be denied access to our fringe when we are there to inform people about anti-Muslim hatred, does not bode well.
This is standard ‘boilerplate’ Tell Mama. There’s the accusations of xyz-phobia, the allusions that they were or are ‘under threat’ and a claim that they were being treated very unfairly. However, this narrative was challenged by the conservative commentator Douglas Murray, who told a very different tale.
Douglas Murray
His take on the matter was that Tell Mama had failed to acquire the correct credentials to attend the conference. Credentials are a vital part of the security for a conference like that of the Conservative Party and that’s especially so where the party conference has previously been the subject of a terrorist attack.
Douglas Murray challenged Tell Mama’s narrative of the incident in an article published in the Spectator magazine that dealt with the subject of ‘hate crime’ and the various claims thereof. Following his description of an incident when the victim of a crime was being pressed by police to ascribe a ‘hate’ motive to the crime, even when it wasn’t there, Mr Murray moved on to the subject of Tell Mama.
Douglas Murray said:
Consider one amusing snapshot. The ‘Islamophobic’ hate-crime recorders at Tell MAMA have previously been caught misleading the public with allegations of an alleged spike in ‘hate-crimes’ after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in 2013. You may remember that this effort managed to distract public attention from the brutal slaughter of a soldier in broad daylight onto mean things said online about Islam. The group’s founder, Fiyaz Mughal, subsequently tried unsuccessfully to sue that renowned knuckle-dragger Charles Moore. Anyhow, last week in the website formerly known as the Independent, we see that this hate-crime industry is becoming magnificently self-generating. Soon they won’t need the public at all.
It appears that Tell MAMA tried to organise an event at this year’s Conservative party conference. But their staff only applied for passes to the conference the day before their event. Anybody who has ever been to a party conference knows that you often have to apply for a pass many weeks in advance. There are, after all, well-known security concerns around these awful events. Anyhow, Mr Mughal and his colleagues had demonstrated as much concern with detail about their conference passes as they have done with the rest of their work. And so, sans passes, they turned up to the secure zone in Birmingham and were not let in.
When the security guards inexplicably stood near to Mr Mughal and his colleagues, the Tell MAMA crew complained that the security staff were being ‘intimidating’. Then, while the security guards were escorting the pass-less ones away, one of the group asked the security staff why they were following them. This Tell MAMA-ist ended up rather rudely accusing the security guards of picking on him, finally demanding ‘Is it because I’m gay?’
Personally, I would doubt it. In my experience there is rarely any shortage of male homosexuals inside the secure zone of the Conservative party conference. But if you’re in the hate-crime business who cares? Facts are for other people. Having been turned away from their Islamophobia event the Islamophobia-peddlers at least managed to squeeze a homophobia incident out of it and the corpse of the Independent wrote it up, thus ensuring it wasn’t an entirely wasted journey. Who knows, if Mughal and co had hung around a bit longer perhaps they might have squeezed a ‘Transphobic’ incident out of it while they were at it?
While such people try to turn the whole of life into one big hate-crime, the rest of us will just have to continue to try to insist on the facts. A task that would be made much easier if the police were on the same side as the general public once again.
Read the rest of this truly excellent article via the link below:
Fiyaz Mughal of Tell Mama. Mughal is the founder of the Tell Mama organisation, an entity that has become a byword for exaggeration and sometimes downright dishonesty.
As you will immediately notice this account by Mr Murray is radically different from that of Tell Mama, which forces us to choose between them. Which of these two accounts are true, the one by the respected commentator Douglas Murray or the one from Tell Mama, a group that has a history of exaggeration when it comes to the issue of ‘Islamophobia’? I know what one I would choose, I’d choose Douglas Murray’s account of the incident mostly because his sources, not to mention his probity, tend to be more reliable than those of Tell Mama.
Murray’s account paints Tell Mama as incompetent cry-babies who messed up the procedure for gaining access to an event that is by necessity held in a high security environment and then tried to blame others for their cock up. Not only that but one of Tell Mama’s staff appears to have attempted to provoke security staff into making a comment that could be perceived as ‘homophobic’ which Tell Mama could make strategic use of later. This member of staff, believed to be Luke Holland, Tell Mama’s West Midlands officer, has a history of claiming ‘homophobia’ and previously resigned from his local Labour Party over perceived ‘homophobia’ against him.
Luke Holland of Tell Mama
The more time that goes by with this story, the more Tell Mama’s story looks mistaken at best or completely dishonest at worst. The involvement of a high profile person like Douglas Murray in criticism of Tell Mama is a major blow to Tell Mama. Previously much of the cricitism of Tell Mama, a considerable amount of which is very justified has, apart from mainstream journalists like Andrew Gilligan, been on social media and alternative news outlets. This mocking by Douglas Murray is a completely different kettle of fish, it’s a decent writer from a decent magazine sticking the boot in now and this may well be getting Tell Mama worried, and rightly so.
Tell Mama are very, very touchy about this particular story, probably because in Douglas Murray they are now up against someone with far more public credibility than themselves and it is showing.
I recently emailed Tell Mama to ask them very politely if they were going to come clean about what happened at the Tory conference? I don’t think I was rude or aggressive to them in any way although I do admit that in my tone I didn’t exactly come over as a ‘fan’ of theirs.
I said:
Dear Tell Mama.
As Mr Douglas Murray has raised some valid concerns about the correctness of your narrative about what happened at the Tory Party Conference shouldn't you be addressing those allegations? It's not enough to merely put up the statement that you have here http://tellmamauk.org/statement-tell-mama-conservative-party-conference/ and leave it at that. This is because this narrative differs greatly from what a trusted and well respected conservative commentator such as Mr Murray gives.
If you are not prepared, which seems to be the case, to engage with myself on this matter then surely you should be engaging with Mr Murray? You should do this either to refute the allegations that the conference incident was due to your cock ups and not 'racism' 'Islamophobia' or 'homophobia', or to apologise for running with what is looking like a mistaken or even dishonest narrative about what happened at the Tory conference. You may say that you don't want to 'be the story' but by your groups own actions you have made it so.
Best Regards
Joshua
Tell Mama must now be aware that Mr Murray’s account of what happened seems to be gaining in popularity and that this alternative account is probably being agreed with more than Tell Mama’s account. Tell Mama’s response to me says more about them than it does about the manner in which I asked them to be honest about the incident at the Tory Party conference.
They said:
DO NOT RESPOND AGAIN - you have been informed to cease and desist on this.
Your obsession is actually reflective of a very lonely man - i.e. you.
Best Wishes,
TELL MAMA TEAM,
Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks,
E-mail: in**@te********.org
Freephone Helpline: 0800 456 1226
SMS us: 0115 707 00 07
Join us on Facebook: tellmamauk
Join us on Twitter: @tellmamauk
Web-site: www.tellmamauk.org
FACILITATING STRONGER & SAFER COMMUNITIES
The legal threat seems almost identical to the ones that they’ve sent out to other critics of their organisation in the past, but its use so swiftly in response to a direct criticism may also show that they are getting very touchy about criticism, especially on this particular story. I’ve been criticising the mountebanks of Tell Mama for a few years now and I believe that this is the first time they’ve issued this ‘threat’ to me. It seems this story in particular may be beginning to bother them.
Tell Mama’s policy with regards to engaging with criticism seems to be one of ‘la la la fingers in ears we can’t hear you’, coupled with whining to the police and left wing news organisations like the Independent about how ‘under threat’ they are all the time. In other words bluster and bullshit. The cut and paste legal threat along with the puerile insult as shown in the email above, are the hallmark of an organisation that is desperately trying and failing to give the impression that they are not rattled by the mockery carried out by Douglas Murray and others. I reckon they are discomforted and what’s worse, it is their own actions which have turned a molehill of an office error into an actual and potential mountain of criticism of them. When it comes to Tell Mama and criticism I can honestly say: ‘they don’t like it up ’em’.
I believe that Tell Mama have cocked up when it came to the matter of passes and credentials for the Tory Party conference and then exaggerated at best, or concocted at worst, a narrative that is crumbling as it is being challenged. The ironic thing about this whole story is that if Tell Mama had put their hands up and admitted ‘clerical error’ as the cause of them not applying for passes early enough, then this matter would probably have been forgotten and they would put in better procedures next year. Unfortunately for Tell Mama that is not what has happened. Instead of being truthful about what may have happened, they have spun a yarn that is beginning to unravel and have liberally sprayed bullshit round to cover their arses. This time they have been found out in a way that is very public and embarrassing for them.
Tell Mama’s own response to the alleged incident at the Tory conference and its radical difference to other, more trustworthy accounts, will probably do them a great deal of damage in the future. Over the last few years, Tell Mama have been amply shown to be a bunch of scoundrels and because they are such scoundrels, they should cease to have any more involvement in advising either our police forces or the Crown Prosecution Service. It’s a scandal that this group is involved in weighty matters such as justice, when every day they are proving themselves to be unfit to do so. It is to be hoped that the aftermath of both Tell Mama’s behaviour at the Tory Party conference, along with their attempts to ‘spin’ the incident, convince those in authority to begin to distance themselves from Fiyaz Mughal and his merry band of ‘Islamophobia’ mountebanks. A functioning, just and honest criminal law system ceases to be so when the likes of Tell Mama and similar groups are allowed undue influence.
So to conclude, with two stories about one incident who do you believe? Do you believe Douglas Murray or the mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya artists of Tell Mama?
Links
Tell Mama’s dubious statement about the Tory party conference incident
http://tellmamauk.org/statement-tell-mama-conservative-party-conference/
Douglas Murray mocking Tell Mama and the general ‘hate crime’ obsession .
This blog’s initial comment on the Douglas Murray vs Tell Mama narratives
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2016/10/11/now-even-douglas-murray-is-slagging-off-tell-mama/
The Chamberlain Files on the subject of Luke Holland’s resignation from a local Labour Party branch due to ‘homophobia’ that he perceived he experienced.
