Thread by @nickwallis

Good morning and welcome to Killymeal House Belfast for Day 4 Session 1 of Morrison v Belfast Film Festival. Proceedings are due to begin at 11am. It is raining again.

Here are some bedraggled camera-folk, to cheer you up.

This is last night's BBC NI report on yesterday's proceedings.

Okay we are underway - for various scheduling reasons there is going to be a pause in Belfast Film Festival CEO Michele Devlin’s (MD) evidence and BFF director Mark Cousins (MC) is going to start giving his evidence.

J = Employment Judge Lisa Sturgeon
P = her and her panel Professor Deborah Boyd and Michael McKeown
SD = Sean Doherty, BFF barrister
NC = Naomi Cunningham, Sara Morrison’s barrister
SM - Sara Morrison - Claimant (C)
BFF = Respondent - R

MC is sworn in
NC I want to start at par 2 of your Witness Statement (WS) - “The Respondent organisation has been clearly supportive of the LGBT community in greater Belfast for many years. It would be impossible to work there and not know...

that. The background here is the historic state, church, institutional and (often) family
shaming, silencing (or worse) of LGBT people in Ireland and elsewhere This has
been shifting in recent years. I often say that Ireland jumped from the 19th Century to

the 21st Century on the subject; cultural organisation, brave individuals and principled
politicians have helped bring about this shift, which has of course improved the lives
of thousands of our fellow citizens.”

NC can I take from this you think the situation has improved
MC I come from round here and gender-critical (GC) are in the majority - they’re not a minority group
NC No most people know that you can’t change sex

MC says that he has studied science and whilst he doesn’t quite say sex is a spectrum he starts talking about flowers and trees
NC but all human beings come from a female
MC accepts that all human beings have come from a mother

NC it’s right that shaming a marginalised group is a bad thing
MC yes
NC and you have taken a side in this
MC I passionately care for the rights of trans people, and, I hope everyone
NC and you have done so since 2013

MC and I think you’ll see I have never used derogatory language against people - certain acronyms
NC TERF?
MC yes - I would not use that and I would be very surprised if you could find me doing so

NC I’m not laying a trap for you - I don’t have anything here which suggests you have
MC I always think you play the ball and not the person - so I don’t call people racist but I say they have been

(sorry) said something racist with the exception of Donald Trump I never use derogatory terms about anyone

J this is all a very interesting social conversation but we have to stick to the list of issues

NC I would like to explore the word TERF with Mr Cousins - you know it is a term of abuse
MC It can be used as a term of abuse, but if you look at what it stands for there is nothing abusive in it

NC is suggesting that if MC stated a GC view it would be career-ending MC pushes back and says it is possible to apologise and move on

NC picks up the Bolshie Bish tweet: "Who's driving 4.5 hours up to Belfast Sunday just
to tell a transphobe to go fxck herself, and then
driving 4.5 hours home??"

NC can we see from the combination of the trans flag, the name, and the aggressive sentiment - that this is a trans woman?
SD why does it matter
NC it will be become clear in the next question
MC I can't answer that - I have no idea who this person is

NC okay if I'm right - this is a man who is travelling a large distance to abuse a woman
SD we have no evidence this person is a man
NC whether this person is male or female that that as a response to women asserting their rights is wholly unacceptable
MC I don't like it at all

NC you say in par 3 that "I was surprised to hear that the Claimant, who was Inclusion/Audience Development
Co-Ordinator with the Respondent, had criticised many of the organisations that the
Respondent had worked with"
NC which ones had they worked with
MC I can't remember

NC you confirmed your statement is true - what work had the R done with the groups mentioned?
MC I don't know. I'm a board member.
NC you're saying in your sworn statement that these were organisations you had worked with
MC when I made this statement I checked

... that we had worked with these orgs - but it doesn't matter - but when I saw the video I thought it was really was inappropriate to denounce our treasured partner orgs who are acclaimed for the work they do
NC let's go to the transcript of Sara's speech at LWS?
MC sure

NC which of these organisations are your "treasured partner organisations"
MC I know we have had relationships with most of them. One of the things I like about the BFF is the way we partner with community groups.
NC you haven't partnered with the WRN network yet have you

MC no
NC do you think you should?
MC yes - I think we should partner with any orgs prepared to have discussions in a non aggressive way

NC you weren't present at 4 May board meeting, but you were brought up to speed on 25th. You said: "Hi Michele. Have tried to find the video of the Trans rally
that Sarah [sic] spoke at. Was it the Let Women Speak event, at which Parker Posey [sic] spoke and Graham Lenehan [sic] attended? If so this is more serious than I thought. I would like to email the chairs."

NC why is it serious that SM shared a platform with Posie Parker (PP)
MC because we don't want to be associated with extremist views, and it's not just here - there was someone else Jolene Bunting who was there wearing a at t-shirt with a gun to someone's head and a rainbow flag

MC saying know your enemy - that's awful
NC so if someone says something at an event that's beyond the pale that taints everyone
MC I don't believe in guilt by association
NC could you explain to the panel what LWS is - you understand the premise, presumably

MC Just before LWS was in Belfast they were supported by Nazi's sieg heiling and I'm not saying they wanted them there, but they attract extremes and they bring tension
MC we never said that Sara was guilty of anything it's about "getting dirty by association" with extremists

NC you are saying that if SM shared a platform with Posie Parker "it's even more serious than I thought"
MC yes we as a org need to express love to the community as an antidote to the LWS and extremist views being platformed

[we move on to MC's email to MD re his convo with SM on 25 June in a pub] He says:
"I found the whole thing troubling for several reasons. (1) There seemed to be the suggestion that Michele of spreading false information; I told Sara that I had heard reports of her speech from several sources including other board members. (2) There was no hint of regret for, or doubt about, what she did. As you'll know "I'm standing up for the rights of women" is the argument used by conservatives and religious people in several countries, and a new staple of the anti-LGBTQanti-lslamic right.

[we also go to a picture of MD in a t-shirt saying "TRANS INCLUSIONAL FEMINIST"]
NC what do you understand that mean
MC talks about the connection to liberation movements
[we get bogged down in terminology]
NC MD was announcing to the world for whom men who say they are women count as women
MC for whom Trans Women are Women

NC are you saying Trans Women are different from Women
MC there are trans women and trans men and men and women
NC so they're different
MC they are women, they're a type of women

NC so are you upset about her lack of regret
MC there are people who are extremist and there are people who aren't
NC so what did SM say that was toxic
MC I never said she was toxic, I said the event was toxic

NC so if MD attended an event with people holding flags saying if you see a terf, punch them and other toxic messages - if there was would that make MD's association as ill-judged as SM's attendance at LWS
MC it depends what the hypothetical message would be so I can't

... answer that.
NC you are holding SM to an impossibly high standard,
MC the problem is that the central speaker who had said toxic things in the part - such as "Islam... disgusting"
NC and that's SM's failing.
MC "I don't always believe in guilt by association"

NC goes back to his email about standing up for the rights of women and how it is a message for the far right
NC so you're saying that standing up for the rights of women is a far right
MC I'd just made a film about mussolini and met lots of far right men using that phrase

MC "standing up for womens rights" and it was scaring me. I probably shouldn't have put it in the email but I was hearing it a lot.
NC so going back to SM's speech what is wrong with it

MC I didn't like her naming partner organisations. "I have not got a problem with SM having this views, but its sharing them in this context concerned me" MC I was slightly haunted by that phrase - Tommy Robinson uses it as do the anti-immigrant people down south

MC I am a feminist and its the misappropriation of that phrase which is deeply troubling
NC what you are doing is smearing SM with a trope as MD did with her text about SM
MC "well that wasn't MD's finest hour" but she fires off so many jokes in texts, you'll see that I didn't respond with a smiley or anything

MC goes on to say that NC was "so far off beam" with what she suggested to MD yesterday about trying to get SM sacked. "I hadn't even thought of that"

[we go to 4 July - another email from MC about his encounter with SM]
"I'd like formally to tell you about an incident which concerns me as a
board member of Docs Ireland/Belfast Film Festival, and as passionate
believer in our diversity values."
NC why are you doing this again?

MC it was the first time I'd been touched by this personally and I think I want to put this on the record formally as the last email was more casual. "What particularly bothered me was that SM was saying her boss was misrepresenting the situation. I didn't think that was good thing to say that to a board member.

NC you're third point after complaining about the lack of regret SM expressed was "(3) If I remember
correctly, her child is a trans woman, so she is misgendering her here (I might
be wrong about that)."

NC you've never given birth
MC correct
NC do you think a mother might know the sex of the person they have given birth to
MC it's up to the trans person to say who they are and what they are
SD this is a very sensitive are and the C's child has no role in these proceedings

J why is this relevant
NC C has sex realist beliefs. the suggestion is that the R is fully signed up to paying lip service to this belief system and this is about whether C has suffered discrimination
SD it's nothing to do with her child

NC it's directly relevant to the accusation that the R discriminated
J why is it not in the list of issues
NC it's not at the heart of it - but it's relevant evidence - it's in his own WS - I must be entitled to q him on the contents of his own WS
J so what do you want to ask

NC I have a sequence of q's it makes it v difficult to tell you the end point
J give us the gist
NC that's the same question
J I'll allow it to a certain extent, but don't go into social argument again
NC thank you

NC I asked if a mother might give a birth to a boy or a girl
- would she know about the sex of the person
MC there comes a point at which a trans person psychologically in their identity knows who they are -
NC do you accept that the mother/child bond is profoundly powerful

MC yes of course
NC not just for the child but the mother too
MC yes
NC is it not massively authoritarian to change criticise a mother for using the real sex pronouns of her child
MC absolutely not
NC and is shows you were confident in doing this with colleagues on the board

MC absolutely not - I don't know the opinions of the board - you seem to think we had a phalanx of opinion - all lined up
NC we know where you stand, we know where MD stands - you may have GC colleagues, but you don't know who they are, do you?
MC just like I don't know the religion or sexuality of my colleagues

NC the reason you don't know your GC colleagues is that they are frightened
MC no
NC they're worried about expressing their view
MC no - that doesn't sound honest
NC your line about accelerating the process "I therefore feel that we need to accelerate the process by which this is sorted... We can't have an inclusion/diversity officer who, many weeks after making such an ill-advised speech, is still standing by her actions
completely."

NC you're trying to get rid of her
MC no that was my draw drop moment from yesterday
NC you're saying you can't have her as an inclusion officer - what are you going to do - make her the accountant?

MC my problem is her actions - not what she said "speaking in such an extremist context" - if she was going to stand by those actions we couldn't have an inclusion officer doing that. But the idea we were trying to move her out is "rubbish"

[we are taking a 5 minute break - I'll plough on with this thread till lunch as NC told J there was only 10 more mins with MC to go]

If you would like to read the last three days' tweet threads you can find them here:

genderblog.net/live-tweets/

And if... sorry to keep doing this, but if you find any of this useful and would like to get the nightly round up of the day's action (sorry, proceedings), please consider making a small donation here.

genderblog.net/donate/

Last night's took a mere five hours to pull together so they don't tend to come through till quite late, but I did a quick straw poll at the end of it and responses suggest most people prefer a comprehensive write up delivered late to a quick report on the whistle.

[we're back]
NC you said you wanted to pause encounters between groups SM criticised and those groups - that was a pretty sensible idea in the circs
MC imo yes
NC let everything die down
MC let us investigate
NC but don't inflame things
MC that was my opinion, yes

NC - MD's next move was the 3 July email - the email to the LGBTQ crown cc-ing SM including Alliance for Choice - that was one of the groups SM had mentioned in her speech. So this was an email just a few weeks later - what do you think of what MD did given you wanted to pause...

... encounters.
MC I'm a board member - but I heard yesterday something about SM agreeing to it
NC it was extraordinarily ill judged - at best
MC it was an attempt and bridge building and attempt at repair work
NC it didn't go well
MC you can't predict outcomes all the time
NC any fool could have seen this was poking a hornet's nest
MC well maybe I'm a fool then because I've just said I thought it was a bridge building exercise

NC it was obvious this email was going to poke up the hornet's nest - she at first damped things down it did all go quiet and then she sends out this email on 3 July - that was step 1 in the implementation of the "acceleration of the process" that you had called for on 25 June?

MC absolutely not
[go to par 12 of MC's WS]
"I don't understand why she could no-
foresee that, by associating herself with people who have said oppressive things, there would be a reaction "
NC that's a criticism
MC it's bewilderment

NC the whole subject of her speech at that event - was that women need to be able to talk about these things - 'we're being silenced, we're being shouted down and we must be allowed to speak'
MC yes

NC but you're saying that if one group of angry people is going to react to another group of people - they need to learn to shut up
MC not at all

NC your par 12 is a bully's charter isn't it
MC I was bullied at school and I work with a lot of anti-bullying charities and I find that question objectionable
NC could you answer it - is it s bully's charter?
MC absolutely not

[we have split for lunch. we are going to reconvene at 1.45pm to hear the remainder of Michele Devlin's evidence]

I'll start that on a new tweet thread. So that's the end of this one.

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