Because the Spectator apparently doesn't believe in the right to reply
In response to a piece on Left Foot Forward questioning Labour’s links with the Henry Jackson Society, Douglas Murray attacked ‘certain critics’ in a piece for the Spectator. One of our writers responded to Murray’s attack but the Spectator chose not to print it. We’ve reproduced the letter here as we do believe in the right to reply.
Sir,
Douglas Murray’s personal attack on me (Spectator, 10 May 2013) involves a string of falsehoods. He claims ‘It is no one’s fault if they have not heard of Hoare. His opinions are largely self-published.’ Yet the outfit of which Murray is currently Associate Director, the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), published one of my reports on its website every month for most of the period that I worked for it (2005-2102); they were all erased a few months after Murray was appointed to the post. He accuses me of having ‘an unquenchable animus’ against him, and claims ‘This has been demonstrated in an endless stream of blogs and tweets.’ Yet I have mentioned Murray in only five of the 251 (at the time of writing) posts on my blog; one of these was only in passing and one was only in response to attacks on me by his HJS colleagues. He accuses me of ‘frequent abuse’; I have never abused him once, much less ‘frequently’.
Murray claims that my problem with him is ‘my [Murray’s] insistence on expressing my own opinions rather than his [Hoare’s].’ I have no problem with him expressing his own opinions; I simply frequently find the opinions he does express repellent, and exercise my right to say this. It’s called ‘freedom of speech’. He claims I object to his use of the term ‘white British’, and suggests ‘if he wants to continue his attempts to insinuate that I am racist because of this usage then he really ought to go the whole hog and accuse the authors, compilers and most participants in the 2011 census of being racists as well.’ But the problem is not his use of the term ‘white British’; it is his claim that ‘London has become a foreign country’ because ‘in 23 of London’s 33 boroughs “white Britons” are now in a minority’. This suggests the problem lies in there being too many British citizens with black, brown or yellow skin, or with white skin but whose families originate outside the UK. I don’t believe the authors of the 2011 census were saying anything like that.
Finally, Murray claims I was never a leading member of the HJS but merely ‘a freelance contributor to the website’. Yet as Greater Europe Co-Director, then European Neighbourhood Section Director, I appeared on the HJS staff list on the website from 2005 until the start of 2012; a screenshot of this staff list from around March 2008 can be found on my blog. I have documents in my possession proving that I was centrally involved in the organisation long before Murray joined, and helped formulate its leadership strategy in conjunction with its current President Brendan Simms, its current Executive Director Alan Mendoza, and others whose names have vanished from the website.
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11 Responses to “Because the Spectator apparently doesn’t believe in the right to reply”
Marko Attila Hoare
You see, a director of Chatham House, for example, would never turn up on an internet chat-room to hurl insults at former staff members – or indeed anyone else. I don’t think you quite understand the concept of ‘professional’. Though it’s certainly emblematic of the way you treat your staff. There are many words that could be used to describe how you treat them, but ‘nursing’ is not one of them…
Marko Attila Hoare
Oh, and nobody is ‘stalking your every move’, Alan; that statement just reflects your own paranoia.
Professionalism ! Lady Dalmeny, a student who has not yet completed her postgraduate studies, is last year appointed Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society, whose website describes her as ‘an expert in defence, military history and international relations’. This happens the year after her husband, Lord Harry Dalmeny, donated interest-free loans totalling £250,000 to the Henry Jackson Society.
I guess you can call that ‘professionalising your structure’, though it’s not how I would describe it.
Marko Attila Hoare
And just to put the final nail in the coffin of Mendoza’s claim that I was not a staff member but merely a ‘freelancer’, I have published the minutes of the meeting of the HJS of 29 November 2005, which show precisely who was centrally involved in running the organisation at the time:
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/document-the-henry-jackson-society-post-london-launch-meeting-minutes-29-november-2005/
Alan Mendoza
Are you enjoying your conversation with yourself Marko? 🙂 Three postings in a row. And he says he’s not an obsessed stalker.
I am pleased that he hoards old clippings however because we now know the basis for his Walter Mitty style fantasies. Hoare’s piece de resistance, his grand flourish, turns out to be…a piece of paper detailing some meeting notes. At a time when HJS existed in its early Cambridge form, he claims some seniority because he sat in a room. Not in recent memory even, but in 2005. Oh dear. Give them enough rope, and they always hang themselves.
So now to James Bloodworth: I understand from others that you are a nice guy who is just trying to make a name for yourself in Labour circles through your editorship of this blog. But now that Hoare has comprehensively debunked any limited credibility he claimed by his own hand, I hope that this will encourage you to check the credibility of your sources fully before allowing crackpots to defame others with their wild allegations and outlandish claims.
James Heartfield
Marko Hoare is very keen to advertise his association with the neo-conservatives of the Henry Jackson Society, and disappointed that they turned out to be a lot of racist bigots. But wasn’t that what everyone told him about his creepy friends at the time?