The case against Rosie Duffield
by
author Julie Wassmer and Duffield ex-staffer Libby Bradshaw
Julie Wassmer writes:
I have been directed to seek legal advice following comments made by Rosie Duffield on her twitter/X page last week, and during an interview she gave to Andrew Neil for Times Radio – during which a manipulation of facts has created a totally false and fictional impression for her followers.
I learned from LGBTQ+ campaigners on 15 June that Duffield, now Canterbury’s Labour Parliamentary Candidate, had “Quote Tweeted” (QT’d) a tweet of mine to her own X followers, while knowing I was unable to either see or reply to this because Duffield had blocked me from her Twitter page several years ago.
My tweet concerned the anger of local residents in my home town of Whitstable, who had learned that, having bailed out of a hustings event claiming fears for her “security and wellbeing”, Duffield was back in town less than 24 hours later, posing for photographs on our beach, and in the local pub, in a planned photo opportunity for her election campaign.
Local residents were “livid” about this, including Anthony Rix, who, knowing of me as a Whitstable-based author and campaigner, messaged me to describe this as “absolutely shameless behaviour”. He then went on to explain that despite not wanting to see the “Tories” win in Canterbury, he was nevertheless transferring his vote from Labour to the Green Party.
Other Whitstable residents were also soon responding to photos tweeted by Labour Canterbury City councillor Mike Bland (Rosie Duffield’s former election campaign manager) which showed Duffield smiling on the beach with celebrity campaigner Feargal Sharkey, seemingly oblivious to any security fears. One resident’s ironic comment appeared on a retweet as “She looks absolutely terrified. The poor thing…“
On the night of the scheduled hustings event, I was at home and in the process of writing an article titled: “Why so many Canterbury Labour voters are turning Green” when a friend called to tell me that Duffield had cancelled her attendance. I wasn’t at all surprised as our MP hasn’t been known for turning up to many constituency events – especially in Whitstable.
In fact, claiming safety fears is not a new thing for Rosie Duffield – at the time of her electoral win in 2017, residents became frustrated by a lack of information about the new MP’s surgeries, or where they might take place, because they had been used to the former Tory incumbent, Julian Brazier, holding regular surgeries at the same location – to which constituents often turned up to protest over certain issues.
Labour Party members then began complaining that Duffield rarely attended local party meetings and that she’d made few appearances at Whitstable Labour Club, though she’d found time to pose with Harriet Harman behind the bar during her 2019 election campaign.
The veteran Labour campaigner, Anne Belworthy, wrote the following about Duffield in an article in 2020:
“I believe the statement she makes about being yelled at in a local party meeting in her latest list of accusations in an interview with the Jewish Telegraph on December 4 is highly suspect. If it really happened no one I know saw it…. And I know many in the party. It seems she uses this type of statement to cover up her poor attendance at local party meetings. She will not even engage in debate via social media. If she doesn’t like a question, correction, or debate of any kind, she refuses to discuss it but just bars those trying to question her from her pages.”
Anne Belworthy was later expelled from the Labour Party. She had been a member since 1956.
Hustings
As far as the local Whitstable hustings event was concerned, I had never actually planned to attend it for the following reasons:
- I had no wish to see Duffield in my own home town.
- I was writing my article and also taking care of my husband – a cancer patient.
I wasn’t at all surprised by Duffield’s reason for bailing out. Like Anne Belworthy, many are aware that Duffield has become a taskmaster at using accusations of “trolling”, “harassment” and “abuse” as a way of avoiding scrutiny by constituents – or indeed by anyone else.
Access to Rosie Duffield as MP has not been easy for constituents, particularly in the light of communication problems at her constituency office, and about which I complained, more than once, not only to Duffield herself but to several members of the local Labour Party, only to receive an email response from Duffield explaining that she had 18,000 unanswered emails from constituents in her inbox – the admission seeming like a burden rather than a responsibility. All of the above served to convince me that we had voted in either an inefficient or “lazy” MP – but certainly one who resented being held to account in their role of public servant. However, it wasn’t until 2020, after Duffield broke lockdown rules to meet her married lover, that I wrote about this fully in the following article:
It was LGBTQ+ campaigners who alerted me to the fact that Duffield had been “Quote Tweeting” me – something that’s considered generally to be reprehensible social media etiquette when the person concerned is blocked from an account. However, Rosie Duffield had done this to me, essentially taking over my own tweeted comment concerning the hustings event and sharing it on her own page with abuse.
She then went on as follows:
Duffield appears to be conducting an imaginary conversation with me, to which she knew I could never contribute – or take issue with – or respond to her abuse, ironically all while she assumes the role of victim. I was therefore advised to take action and block Duffield’s X account myself or expect that she would continue to use access to my page which she has clearly had for several years.
A few days later, news broke that the Labour peer, Michael Cashman, had lost the whip over a comment he’d made about Duffield being too “frit” or “lazy” to attend hustings. It was a personal opinion, to which Cashman was entitled, but following complaints the peer was then suspended. Michael had duly apologised, only to be booted out of Labour.
Michael Cashman had been an actor who had starred in the BBC series EastEnders in the ‘80s – a show for which I had written episodes over many years. Michael and I had met – not on set – but long after he had left the series when he arrived one day on my doorstep in Peckham while canvassing for Labour. I invited him in and we had a good conversation about the series – and politics.
Michael had always been a dedicated campaigner for Labour but had always used his powerful voice to speak up for LGBTQ+ rights. It was therefore only natural that those he had supported now spoke up for him and the treatment that had been doled out to him by a party to which he had always been loyal. It seemed a compounded offence that he should have lost the whip after making an apology for offering a view of Rosie Duffield with which others actually agreed.
In the midst of this fallout, Duffield then took the opportunity to speak to Andrew Neil in an interview on Times Radio about the security fears that had caused her to bail out of the hustings, citing a Canterbury protest that had taken place on the day of her campaign launch on 9 June. The timing of that launch had been considered cynical, if not provocative to the LGBTQ+ community in Canterbury, coming as it did during Pride weekend, and in light of Duffield’s controversial gender critical views and what had been described by two of her own staffers as “overtly transphobic comments”. Members of Canterbury’s LGBTQ+ community had duly planned and staged a peaceful protest outside the venue at Westgate Hall on the day of Duffield’s campaign launch.
Ironically, while Duffield finds time and energy to monster the trans community – a small and vulnerable group within our society – she’s continued to emphasise her own sense of vulnerability – a tactic identified as “cry bully” politics – and clearly employed two years ago, on the morning of Sunday 30 January when she suddenly declaimed to her social media followers that “personal, libellous, nasty and fictional crap” had been written about her. She offered no specific details but did choose to conflate a newly published online article with other “rubbish” she claimed she had been “subjected to” for several years – all of which was lumped together under the general label of “obsessive harassment”. The lack of clarification caused her followers to jump to an entirely wrong conclusion, assuming trans people were responsible for any “harassment” she claimed to have received that morning.
It wasn’t until late afternoon that day, that Duffield chose to explain that the “abuse” she had referred to was in no way related to her stance on “women’s rights.”
In fact, Duffield’s outrage was due to a Kent Labour Party member daring to question her performance as MP and state his concerns as to whether she even lived in the constituency. The article had been published anonymously because the man in question, not a Canterbury constituent but a long-standing Kent Labour Party member, did not want to risk either suspension or expulsion for stating his concerns.
A week after that article went online, Rosie Duffield finally gave an explanatory statement that she had bought a “holiday home” in Wrexham – a fact that could surely have been explained straight away – avoiding all the ensuing melodrama which included being tempted to defect to the Tories due to a lack of support from Labour. However, Duffield’s histrionics succeeded in rewarding her with national news headlines and the opportunity to share her grievances with Times Radio.
Her most recent interview for Times Radio, billed as “Rosie Duffield tells Andrew Neil the truth about her relationship with Keir Starmer” followed my own article having gone online a few days before, in which I criticised Duffield for opting out of the democratic process of hustings (and for which, if she was fearful for her security, she could always appear by video link). Interestingly, after the furore about her security fears failing to prevent her from taking up a photo op with Feargal Sharkey, Duffield now appeared to be redirecting attention away from any security fears from trans community protesters – and instead towards what she described as “a particular group of mostly former Labour members who were going to stage a few noisy protests against me and they did when they had my campaign launch…Those sort of people kept following me around and yelling…”
Importantly, this particular assertion is challenged by the following testimony from Whitstable residents Jean Fraser and her partner Rita O’Brien who were present at the Canterbury protest.
Statement from Jean Fraser and Rita O’Brien:
“We were both at the LGBTQ protest at Duffield’s campaign launch on Sunday 9 June. Lots of trans folk and their allies were present and we attended as trans allies NOT as disaffected ex-Labour members. We are terminated members and as far as we could see, we were the only ex-Labour people present.
“So, it was odd, to say the least, to hear Duffield tell Andrew Neil that it was mostly ex-Labour members present. Also it was quiet and perfectly respectful of those people who were attending Duffield’s event. There was some chanting but only at the end when people were leaving the hall and that was all, unless we missed some before midday when we arrived and when the event was due to begin. The chanting we heard was not personal to Duffield.
“We will be voting Green. Duffield opines that people like us don’t really believe in the Green party agenda, implying that this is just a gesture against her. For the record, quite apart from Duffield we cannot support Keir Starmer’s Labour Party which has moved so far to the right. The Green Party isn’t perfect but like many of our friends in this constituency, it’s the nearest to our political beliefs now.”
In the Times Radio interview, Duffield also talked of:
“a particular woman who kind of leads this group… who’s sort of leading a sort of hate campaign against me and has been doing that for about seven years as an ex-Corbyn supporter.”
The mention of “seven years” is important because it links to what Duffield had written to her X followers when she QT’d my tweet on which my name appeared. The clarification of ”ex-Corbyn supporter” is also worth noting as I have stated publicly on many occasions that while I have never joined any political party, I did become a paid-up supporter of Labour in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn as party leader.
For the record, for Rosie Duffield, her social media followers and Times Radio, on the day of the Canterbury protest against Rosie Duffield’s campaign launch I was at home, in Whitstable, with my husband who was recovering from recent cancer treatment – and I make this clear because the combination of Duffield’s comments to her X followers via QTs, and to Andrew Neil in her Times Radio interview, offer an entirely false and misleading impression, one that I’ve been advised may harm not only my own safety but my professional reputation as a TV writer, author and journalist. Duffield refers to me on her X feed as “utterly fixated” and “obsessive”; accusations that she regurgitates in the echo chamber of her social media account – and I understand not for the first time either.
Aside from my professional career, I have campaigned strongly on issues concerning human rights and the environment alongside Bianca Jagger. Residents in the Canterbury constituency know me as someone who has spoken up on important local issues and held MPs to account – including Julian Brazier and latterly Rosie Duffield. Far from being “fixated” with Rosie, I’m actually concerned with only one thing – the truth. Sadly, that seems to be something that Duffield’s followers may find as elusive as Canterbury resident, Ian Jasper, who recently remarked on a public social media post:
“I have listened to a few interviews with RD. If you can manage it, I would suggest the following experiment. Listen for as long as you can stand and try to find something more or less true in what she says. I have failed so far to find anything.”
Certainly, by manipulating the real facts, Duffield has promoted to her followers an entirely false impression of me as an “obsessed” individual who might cause her harm.
In reality, the only harm I’m willing to cause is to the Labour vote in Canterbury as long as Duffield remains Labour parliamentary candidate. This week I have had to tolerate not only Duffield’s scant respect for the truth but her “cry bullying” abuse, along with that from her former Campaign Manager, Mike Bland:
As James E Foster commented to Bland on X:
“Julie Wassmer has every right to express her views on Rosie Duffield, who, let’s hope, is replaced after the election in a couple of weeks.”
I give notice here that I will be seeking legal advice and making a formal complaint to both the Labour Party and to Ofcom about the Times Radio interview with Andrew Neil.
Libby Bradshaw writes:
Rosie Duffield’s interview with Andrew Neil on Times Radio on 18th June was her attempt to explain why she took the decision not to attend any election hustings in the constituency. Many of Duffield’s supporters were quick to say that she wouldn’t attend events because she was being threatened for her views on trans rights with JK Rowling commenting in a piece in The Times on 22nd June that Duffield “had been advised not to conduct hustings in person,” which was rather curious because she wrote that after Duffield’s interview with Andrew Neil where she did not say that she had been advised not to attend, but gave a garbled set of excuses which often contradicted each other.
During the interview Duffield said a group of “former Labour members” were going to stage “a few noisy protests” and did so at her campaign launch in Canterbury on 9th June, though luckily she was “kept safe” by her security team and the police. She was referring to the demonstration I organised as part of “Canterbury With the T” – a network of LGBTQ+ people and our allies who campaign against transphobia and homophobia. The demonstration itself was entirely peaceful and involved our group of protestors standing in the car park outside Westgate Hall, where her launch was taking place, and chanting while holding some banners and placards. We stayed at least 20 metres from the entrance where Duffield and her “guests” would be arriving and leaving. One of Duffield’s own supporters tweeted about our protest describing as “the most peaceful bunch I’ve come across in 3 years“. So contrary to Duffield’s assertion, nobody needed to be “kept safe” as we posed no threat and the police had no role in her “protection” other than two PCs who passed by, said hello to us, checked the hall, then moved on.
Duffield went on to talk about “online incitement” but also said “if those people kept on following me around and yelling” it would damage the process of hustings. This is confusing; is it online abuse that caused her to pull out, or people following her “yelling”? Nobody followed her at the demonstration on 9th June, and nobody threatened her.
The interview then got even more contradictory when Duffield went on to say that there is “one particular woman who leads this group who is intent on throwing off my chances and it doesn’t seem fair”. Firstly, throwing politicians “off their chances” by peacefully protesting is hardly a safety threat, but even with this being true the “one particular woman” she was referring to wasn’t me, even though I organised the protest. She described this woman as a Corbyn supporter who had been organising “a hate campaign” against her for seven years. I knew this couldn’t be me because I had only been involved with campaigning against Duffield since 2020. To me, and I’m sure many other people who have paid any attention to local politics over the past few years, it seemed obvious she was referring to local activist Julie Wassmer, which was confusing because Julie Wassmer had no hand in organising the protest at Duffield’s campaign launch nor was she even there.
It strikes me as no coincidence that Rosie Duffield ignores the fact that the people peacefully demonstrating at her launch were the local LGBTQ+ community and our allies. The assembled demonstrators were a diverse group including many members of the Canterbury Trans Network, lesbian mums and their kids, as well as gay, queer, bi, and straight allies, a large number of whom were middle-aged women (like myself) – the demographic that Duffield seems unable to believe disagree with her. Instead, Duffield has switched her focus onto some left-wing, Corbyn-centric presence, presumably led by Julie Wassmer, that follows her around yelling, despite no one having seen this happen.
Given the current Labour Party leadership’s disgust with all things Corbyn, it is no surprise that she has done this. It is safe to hate the left without getting in trouble with the party, while attacking the trans community and their allies, despite being her sole focus for the past four years, might get her in trouble with the party that is trying its hardest to sit on the fence about the issue.
Rosie Duffield’s unwillingness to attend any event where she will be asked questions is also entirely in keeping with my experiences of her, having worked as her constituency assistant in 2020. I found that trying to get her to commit to meetings (even those on Zoom during the pandemic) was excruciatingly difficult, as was trying to get her to attend to routine constituency work and in the six months I worked for her I think I can count the number of emails she responded to on one hand. This leads me to believe that Rosie Duffield is trying to insulate herself both from scrutiny and hard work, rather than any threat.
Anyone who has spent any time at all looking at Rosie Duffield’s output on Twitter/X over the past few years knows that she effectively became a single-issue mouthpiece in 2020 when she started to churn out so-called “Gender Critical” rhetoric. This was what led me to resign from her employment because, as a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community I could not work for someone whose views I believed to be thoroughly transphobic. Her radicalisation to the Gender Critical cause also coincided with a 20% decrease in attendance in the House of Commons, but a marked increase in her appearance on right-wing media such as GB News.
Given the fact that Duffield earns £91k pa of public money plus considerable expenses, including £24,000 a year on a rented flat in London, her avoidance of scrutiny and responsibility strikes me as an abuse of power and privilege. She was elected to represent the constituency of Canterbury and Whitstable but chose to represent her own interests and those of a number of transphobic lobby groups instead, and now local constituents are unable to challenge her on her performance. I do not think Rosie Duffield is afraid of what local people will do, but what they will say.
ABOUT:
Libby Bradshaw is a Whitstable resident and business owner who worked as Rosie Duffield’s Constituency Assistant in 2020. She has previous experience working in the House of Commons for 12 years as an inquiry manager and library researcher.
Julie Wassmer is a Whitstable-based author, TV writer and environmental campaigner.
She has successfully fought a number of environmental issues, including fracking in Kent and tree clearances by Network Rail. Her Whitstable Pearl crime novels are now a major TV series, starring Kerry Godliman.
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Not voting this time around. Every single politician seems to be self-serving and morally corrupt.
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So well written, thank you!
Somewhat ironic that she can complain about her safety fears but can afford paid security, unlike many of the trans people she and JK spread negative and fabricated rhetorics about.
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A great article, really clear and factual.
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