Since tweets criticising Conway Halls handling of the situation of the cancellation of our booking, we have received correspondence from their Management stating they will pursue legal action against us if we do not remove videos and tweets criticising their actions (most of which were not made by us but others such as journalist Peter Hitchens) or a photograph of their cancellation email. We reject these threats of legal recourse, and threats against our right to speak the truth.
With the truth in mind, we produce below all of our written correspondence with Conway Hall regarding the booking of the venue for our No2Nato meeting on the 25th February.
In order to publish the emails in a correct timeline they are presented below as screenshots from oldest to newest. We have redacted all names and email addresses to protect the privacy of individuals, with the exception of Edward, a key organiser for the No2Nato event, who has given his permission to be named.
An initial enquiry with Conway Hall was made via their website which resulted in a phone call from one of their venue staff. This first email is our organiser Edward following up with the venue.
You will note from the above email that George Galloway is mentioned as a speaker very early on, and below you can see that the political nature of the meeting and the indicated speakers including George Galloway were run by the CEO of Conway Hall – and approved
In the following two emails we note the provision by Edward of an almost full list of speakers, followed by a response from Conway Hall stating “We are happy with the list of speakers too…”
Below is the email providing our organiser a fifty minute warning of public notice of cancellation. We note in particular the first paragraph states the intimidation Conway Hall has received being ‘unprecedented’
Following receipt of this email, our organiser Edward called Conway Hall and came to a verbal agreement about the statement announcing the cancellation, this was followed up in the email below.
The statement put out publicly announcing that Conway Hall would no longer host the No2Nato event clearly disregards the agreement made between Conway Hall and our organiser Edward. Conway Hall’s pitiful twitter statement is published below.
It is due to Conway Hall’s dishonest statement and lack of transparency around their decision to cancel our booking that we have taken the extraordinary measure to publish these emails.
We do not accept the detriment to our organisers and speakers’ reputations because Conway Hall will not publicly admit that they took our booking in full knowledge of what the event was and who speakers were, and cancelled because of pressure from online trolls, of whom we politely warned them in advance.
thanks for publishing these emails; it really gives a sense of integrity from your party (transparency).
The communications from Conway management seem ordinary and then spineless. British culture has chosen security above liberty; Conway Hall have buckled to intimidation without recognising the implication to liberty
I too am trying to organise a tour of two speakers to UK cities- a Rabbi from New York and a Muslim from Palestine- and the Conway Hall refused immediately to consider us. So much for freedom of speech! (www.onepalestine.land/rabbi-on-the-road-beyond-israel/ )