Transgender direct action group BASH BACK has made a devastating rebuttal to an article in The Times , in which Lord Walney suggests Britain should move to proscribe groups engaging in “systematic criminal disruption”. Lord Walney is former right-wing Labour MP John Woodcock, who quit Parliament following sexual harassment allegations . While serving as the government’s “independent adviser on political violence and disruption”, he was an active lobbyist for fossil fuel interests and the arms industry.
The article was preceded by an extensive news report which repeats quotes from the article, padded with reminders of previous scaremongering coverage of BASH BACK in The Times. In their statement, included below, activists from BASH BACK argue that the “paranoia from the authoritarian right stems from a need to protect property, ideology, and profit”. The group states it stands behind all its previous actions and reiterates its commitment to non-violence.
In the paywalled article, Woodcock castigates BASH BACK for not removing the image of a hammer breaking glass from its website after Ann Widdecombe was murdered with a hammer on 8 June. Walney is careful not to allege any direct connection, and makes no reference to Widdecombe’s infamous crusade against LGBTQI+ rights . Alleging a slippery slope between property destruction and violence towards persons, he suggests that all groups causing “systematic disruption” should be tested “against that same threshold” that was used to proscribe Palestine Action.
The group’s statement follows. Image: Pixbay CC0
This week, John Woodcock, known as Lord Walney, published an op-ed via The Times demanding our proscription as a terrorist organisation. Woodcock is best known for being the government’s former advisor on political violence and disruption, having played a vital role in the proscription of Palestine Action, and has historically argued for similar restrictions on other direct action groups like Just Stop Oil. His attempt to proscribe our organisation in such a similar way despite no direct connection to the Labour government – even going so far as to suggest “test[ing] Bash Back [sic] against that same threshold [as Palestine Action]” – is curious and speaks to an attempt to exert power against political underclasses through his connection to mainstream journalism.
In his article, Woodcock refers to peaceful protest as a political liberty, where direct action and vandalism is a great violence that can in turn lead to other forms of violence, even murder. Woodcock claims, as Zia Yusuf did a week prior, that direct actionists- perhaps even members of BASH BACK -are responsible for the murder of Anne Widdicombe. Justifying this, Woodcock – who has a history of alleged intimidation, bullying, and sexual misconduct – claims that “[p]olitical violence […] begins with the creation of an atmosphere in which intimidation is normalised”. Woodcock continued “That is why the conduct of the militant transgender group Bash Back [sic] deserves far more serious attention […] “This week a court heard that Anne Widdicombe was struck 21 times on the head with a hammer”. His claim follows a slippery slope argument, that one crime must necessarily lead to another, that the presence of a hammer implies a murder victim and not a window, that to claim to be non-violent must necessarily implicate the removal of anything that can even be read as violent, months after the fact. This follows an authoritarian surveillance rhetoric, a panopticon under which historic non-crimes can be turned into crimes through a game of word association. Woodcock even goes on to repeat the lie that “Sgt Kate Evans suffered a fractured spine during a raid on Elbit”, in order to justify more crackdowns on unrelated protest groups, and to draw a line through the past linking non-violent direct action with the violent death of a politician. Despite all of this, Woodcock asserts that “Nobody should prejudge proceedings that are active, and I make no suggestion here about who was responsible or why.”, intending to grant himself a kind of immunity from contempt, while presenting these claims in a major right wing newspaper. We have always been non-violent, will always be non-violent, and no amount of political deception will change that.
We formed BASH BACK with the intention to draw eyes to the strife we as trans people face in our day to day lives. It is our response to a political environment that sees us as easy …