UK police cancel women's speaking event in Tower Hamlets after Muslim council objects

Women's rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen shared a phone call with police where she was instructed that her group of women could not hold their free speech event in a Tower Hamlets park because the Muslim council and residents don't want them there. Police told Keen that if she were to speak in the park, they were concerned about a public disturbance.

When Keen asked Tower Hamlets for the information they had on her, they said they didn't have any. Police, however, told Keen that the council had objected to her event and that this objection was the reason police did not feel they could ensure her safety.

In a post, Keen said, "Tower Hamlets Council lied to the police. Yet when I submitted a subject access request asking for the personal information it holds about me, it claimed to have no records mentioning me."

In the call with police that she shared, an officer told her explicitly that the Tower Hamlets council had told them they didn't want Keen and her group to speak in the park.

The officer referenced a previous event that had gone on in Tower Hamlets where a group marched to profess their Christianity. In response, residents came out to protest. The officer told Keen that "even though they're obviously a cohesive group, they're not a protest group, per se. So it's a lot more difficult for us in terms of the policing to manage." She revealed that the Muslim council had told officers that if Keen's event went on, they would stage a protest 20,000 people strong.

They weren't worried that the women would cause a disturbance but that the residents of Tower Hamlets would create violent, dangerous conditions. Keen told police that she had no intention of speaking in an area where her safety was at grave risk, as they told her it would be. But she urged them to understand the absolute absurdity that a group of English women could not go to a public park in England and speak about women's issues concerning English women without fearing for their own safety.

"Listen to the state of this.... Below is a call recording between the police and me (listen from about 4 m) I want everyone to understand what state this country is in," Keen said, in sharing the call.

"Tower Hamlets Council lied to the police. Yet when I submitted a subject access request asking for the personal information it holds about me, it claimed to have no records mentioning me.

"This is a recording of my conversation with a police officer on 25 June, two days before our planned event in Tower Hamlets. Shortly afterwards, the police imposed conditions under section 14 of the Public Order Act. We risked arrest if we failed to comply.

"We chose Tower Hamlets to show that there are places in the UK that have become no-go areas for English women like me—places in our own country where we cannot speak freely in public.

"Listen to what the officer says. What you will hear is how our freedom to speak was made dependent on who we are and what those who disagree with us might do if we spoke in public.

"There should not be a public park in the UK where women cannot gather to speak about women's rights.

"I have chosen to publish the whole call so I cannot be accused of manufacturing something. It's is madness though.

"Basically the police are against us, the law abiding British people. We are a nuisance. But we can be controlled and pistol whipped by the state. The police are afraid of migrants, muslims and leftists."

The Let Women Speak event was supposed to take place in June in Tower Hamlets, but Keen was forced to move it when officers could not protect her in her own city.