Militant transgender group ‘Bash Back’, which has claimed a series of attacks on politicians and institutions, should be banned as a terrorist organisation, a former government advisor has urged.
A former Labour Member of Parliament, who served as an advisor on political violence under the last Conservative government, has said the government should learn from the drawn-out process of banning the Palestinian Action organisation — which he observes that, despite its public professions of peaceful intent, was pushing a campaign of violence in private — and act more quickly over an emerging trans-extremist group.
John Woodcock, who was made a ‘life peer’ by the Conservatives and is now known as Lord Walney, took to The Times to write of ‘Bash Back’, a group that encourages hammer attacks and which has claimed strikes against the offices of a government minister and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
“If Palestine Action showed us anything, it is that governments cannot afford to wait until direct action movements become entrenched before acting… Palestine Action was not the transparent, non-violent protest group it claimed to be but a covert organisation whose operations were planned to avoid detection. We should not make the same mistake twice,” he wrote.
Bash Back is going through a process seen with other extremist groups, the government’s former independent adviser on political violence and disruption said, which sees “supporters are encouraged to believe that extreme measures are justified,” while opponents are dehumanised and intimidated.
Noting the Bash Back group’s particular fixation on the hammer as a political weapon and the revelation that veteran conservative politician Ann Widdecombe was beaten to death with a hammer earlier this month, Woodcock continued:
“This week a court heard that Ann Widdecombe was struck 21 times on the head with a hammer. Nobody should prejudge proceedings that are active, and I make no suggestion here about who was responsible or why.
However, it is a fair observation about Bash Back that in the days since her death, the group has withdrawn nothing. Not one image of masked, hammer-wielding activists. Not the guide instructing supporters to select political targets and strike them until they desist.
An organisation genuinely committed to non-violence, watching the country absorb the killing of a public figure in her own home, would have paused. This one did not.”
The Times noted in its report that the government issued a boilerplate response to Lord Walney’s call, neither revealing nor promising anything. A spokesman is reported to have said: “While the right to protest is fundamental to our democracy, this cannot cross the line into intimidation, unlawful or violent behaviour. Those doing so will face the full force of the law”.
Bash Back itself has replied to Lord Walney’s article since its publication, taking to their Blue Sky account to publish a series of statements that mainly attacked the character of the lawmaker himself, while also defending their own conduct. The trans militant group said:
“…we completely reject the idea that we are a ‘terrorist’ group. We are a non-violent direct action group that demands total liberation of trans people… we do not condone causing physical harm to any human being… proscription is a tool of control wielded by the ruling class against those who challenge their power… We will not be intimidated. Neither should you.”
Lord Walney was a Blairite Labour Member of Parliament who clashed with his Labour Party during the Jeremy Corbyn era when it took a turn to the hard-left and moved through a series of antisemitism scandals. A one-time chair of the Labour Friends of Israel group, the then-John Woodcock was accused of sending a staffer inappropriate emails and eventually quit the party.
Bash Back, for their part, called the politician and political extremism advisor a “lackey”, a “right-wing authoritarian who despises all forms of dissent”, and a “racist who bullied staff and demanded the removal of a Muslim activist’s passport”. The group asked Walney, “Why should anyone listen to him?”
In addition to the group’s self-confessed forays into property damage and intimidation, Bash Back is previously reported to have allegedly engaged in hacking. The Free Speech Union claimed in January that its databases had been hacked, stolen, and published, revealing the identities of its donors.
FSU chairman Lord Young noted Back Back “openly boasts about breaking the law,” adding: “Bash Back is a dangerous anti-democratic organisation that boasts about breaking the law and encourages its supporters to steal hammers to carry out ‘direct action’, including against Members of Parliament… Neither we nor our members will be cowed by these tactics.”
As previously noted:
In the past the Bash Back group claimed responsibility for vandalising the offices of a government minister, smashing windows and spraying “child killer” on the walls, a reference to the claims of pro-Transgenderism activists that not caving to their demands causes suicide. Months earlier, the group smashed windows at a conference centre hosting a three-day meeting of a feminist NGO, “billed as one of the largest grassroots feminist gatherings in Europe.”
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