RAF Club bans family charity after it hosted gender-critical activist
The RAF Club has banned a family research charity from holding events at its venue after it invited a gender-critical activist to its annual meeting.
Harry Miller, a retired policeman who won a free-speech High Court battle following a visit from his local force after he tweeted about transgender rights, spoke at The Family Education Trust’s (FET) annual conference in June.
The event took place at The RAF Club in London, where the FET has hosted the meeting for 40 of its 50-year existence.
But Miles Pooley, ceo and secretary of the club, reportedly wrote to FET to say that it had been “very concerned by some social media coverage and other online material” relating to the meeting.
He told the FET that the content had breached the RAF Club’s terms and conditions, and was “against our core values”.
When asked by the charity what content had caused problems, Mr Pooley highlighted footage of Mr Miller in two posts by the FET on X.
‘Police are no longer impartial’
Paraphrasing Mr Miller, one said he was “outlining how the police are no longer impartial”, and the other that “the police want you to believe that resistance is futile”.
Mr Pooley also referred to a repurposed swastika (coloured in the style of the trans Pride Flag) that Mr Miller had posted on his account, WeAreFairCop, as evidence of “particularly concerning” content.
He said that because the RAF Club was recognisable from the pictures, and could be spotted in pictures of FET’s event, it could draw the club into disrepute.
The FET believes that the RAF Club has been looking to prevent it from holding events at the venue since a complaint in 2022.
At the time a manager from The RAF Club, speaking on behalf of Mr Pooley, emailed the FET to say they had “done some research into some of your speakers” and that no more events could take place at the venue.
When pressed by the FET, the RAF Club replied by copying an email from a club member who had complained about the appearance of James Esses and Stella O’Malley “as well as “the conservative commentator and GB News presenter Calvin Robinson”.
The complainant wrote: “I am horrified that the Club has agreed to host what is a prominent anti-LGBT organisation generally, and a hostile group propagating anti-transgender propaganda specifically.”
“Mr Esses was recently expelled from his educational institution for what he claims is because of his so-called ‘Gender Critical beliefs’, others… would state it is because of Mr Esses’ transphobic and discriminatory conduct.”
Mr Esses in December reached a settlement with the UK Council for Psychotherapy after he was thrown off his course for expressing “gender critical” views.
After legal exchanges with the FET, the RAF Club reversed its decision and the event went ahead. However the charity pre-emptively decided to write to the FET in May, explaining that they weren’t allowed to have any “future bookings” and that this meant “no events have or will be cancelled”.
Replying to The Sunday Telegraph’s request for comment, Mr Pooley, wrote: “It came to our attention that one of their guest speaker’s Twitter accounts included material which was offensive and at odds with the Club’s values. This contravened their room hire contract with us for the meeting.
“The most obvious example of offensive material was the tweeting of an image of a swastika. As a symbol of Nazi Germany, the swastika is highly emotive for many of our members and capable of causing upset and offence.
“The Club will not offer its conference space to individuals or organisations who post offensive content online which undermines the Club’s values or risks offending and upsetting our members.
“Therefore the Board of Trustees made the decision to decline any future business from the Family Education Trust, which had not at the time made any further bookings.
“This was a decision of last resort: despite receiving a number of complaints from Club members and third parties about previous Family Education Trust meetings at the RAF Club, we had made a conscious decision to allow a number of their meetings to continue, in the interests of free speech. However, the use of the swastika image crossed a line.
“While there is no formal right of appeal under the Club’s procedures, the Club did nonetheless carefully consider an appeal, engaged in correspondence with the FET, and arranged for a face-to-face meeting between the respective Chairs, the result of which was that the original decision was upheld.”
