Bartholomew's Notes

A flyer for a recent event in Gibraltar:

Thursday 30th March 

RESTORA-TIVE

SAFE AND EFFECTIVE ?

Dr Aseem Malhotra | Dr Clare Craig | Dr David Cartland

Hosted by John Bowe

The logos for the two sponsoring organisations then follow: WEU, indicating the Workers of England Union, and FG, a local group called Freedom Gibraltar.

The billed speakers are well-known within the anti-Covid vaccination movement: I’ve previously blogged on Malhotra and Bowe, while Clare Craig of HART is a familiar figure from GB News. David Cartland is also with HART: on social media, he has promoted the idea that Covid vaccination causes magnetism and that areoplanes are responsible for chemtrails; screenshots indicate alignment with the view that SARS-CoV-2 does not exist; that Freemasons “without doubt” control medicine, academia, religion, finance, entertaiment and corporations; and that doctors and nurses involved in Covid vaccination should face public hangings (illustrated with an image frequently misattributed to the Nuremberg Trials).

A video of the proceedings has been helpfully summarised on Twitter by John Bye. Cartland was unable to speak due to a stomach bug, although he was present in the audience. However, disappointed attendees were instead treated to an appearance by David Icke’s son Gareth Icke; there was also a short recorded message from the disgraced MP Andrew Bridgen, and a Zoom call with Steve Kirsch. Kirsch was recently in the news after he approached a woman he didn’t know on an airflight and offered her a large amount of money to remove her face-mask; he’s since followed up by photographing a random woman wearing a face-mask he saw at a sporting event and posting the image online with a derisive comment about her.

Bye adds that the Q&A

got off to a good start when the first ‘question’ from the audience was a lady promoting some alternative health quackery about ‘healing through sound and frequency’, ironically interrupted by constant feedback from the mic. And it didn’t get any better. The other questions asked about vaccine shedding (which Malhotra brushed off as harmless), whether viruses even exist, and terrain theory vs germ theory (all getting huge cheers from the audience).

A lighter moment was when someone accidentally pressed something that set off some disco lights.

A WEU roller banner was displayed prominently on the stage behind the speakers – the organisation also had a stall at the recent TCW “Celebration of Dissent” event in London. As noted by Hope Not Hate last year:

The WEU has thrown its weight behind an increasingly unstable and bewildering anti-vaxx and anti-lockdown movement. Much of this movement is anti-scientific and driven by fear, conspiracy and confusion. The WEU has even taken out advertisements in such places as The Light Paper, whose founder is an exponent of the Flat Earth conspiracy theory.

And that’s not all:

As well as baffling employers and others with a myriad of faux science and legal jargon, the WEU has pushed the idea of non-existent rights of employees under spurious notions of “common law” which, according to the WEU’s General Secretary Stephen Morris, has been around for “1700 years”.

The group got into trouble for issuing bogus press cards to “citizen journalists”, with the Press Association winning an injunction:

The use of these fake cards came to the attention of anti-fascists when a number of far-right activists produced WEU press cards while attempting to antagonise real journalists and trade unionists covering far-right demonstrations and gatherings.

In particular, the cards were brandished by anti-migrant activists as an excuse to follow and harass asylum-seekers, as described in details by the Antifascist Research Collective. Returning to Hope Not Hate:

The WEU was represented in court by Robin Tilbrook, who described himself as the “Chairman of WEU”… The court heard the WEU was considering using the name ‘English Media Group’ in future. Interestingly, though not entirely surprisingly, the ‘English Media Group’ surfaced late last year when far-right fellow travellers Alan Leggett, Nigel Marcham, Steve Laws and Tracey Wiseman were in court in Dover for their activities related to refugee arrivals. Laws is better known as “the migrant hunter” and Marchman as the foul-mouthed reprobate “the tiny veteran”. Again, the WEU described all four as “journalists”.

Tilbrook is leader of the fringe-right English Democrats party (previously blogged here), while the WEU general secretary is a regular ED candidate named Stephen Morris. These details raise some doubts about the WEU’s claim to be politically unaffiliated. The WEU is also the sole affiliate of the “English TUC”; Hope Not Hate notes that they are run out of the same office, and Morris is again general secretary. I’m sure there was no intention to make people think that the WEU is part of the Trades Union Congress.

Also involved with the WEU is one Dr Niall McCrae, whom I previously noted here.

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