The Howard League

The Howard League is a U.K. based Prison Reform charity who formed in 1866. The previous Chief Executive, Frances Crook, had made previous observations that suggested she was aware of the kind of issues which arise when males are held in the female estate or male crimes were recorded as if they were committed by females.

I was minded to revisit the issue after seeing these tweets by the new Legal director, Gemma Abbott, qwho joined the Howard League in March of this year.

I managed to get a look at her bio, before she blocked me, and there was a clue. For anyone not aware the Good Law Project is the vehicle for an erstwhile tax lawyer, Jolyon Maugham, who, for reasons unclear, has determined that his white knighting is needed in the “trans” debate. He is also known for boasting that he battered a fox to death; whilst wearing his wife’s kimono.

Turns out that Gemma is an ex employee of the Good Law Project.

She also managed to secure a place on a government task force, run by the Government Equality Office, looking at period poverty.

She also was the director of this organisation and she can’t even bring herself to say the sex of the “children” who are vulnerable due to their periods. She is still listed as a director of Period Poverty Limited but the companies has applied to be struck of the register (source: Companies House).

I decided to have a look at the accounts for The Howard League to see if there were any clues in the Trustees, other staff, or their funders. What jumped out at me was the funding from Esmee Fairburn Foundation who have cropped up many times on this blog.

Esmee Fairbarn Foundation also and work with the Paul Hamlyn Foundationi (PHF). Paul Hamlyn Foundation have a history of funding trans Lobby Groups like Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence. PHF also shared a trustee with The Scott Trust, who oversee the Guardian Media Group. The Guardian was my paper so I did some digging to find out why they were so woeful about women’s sex based rights and I discovered the link to PHF and, via Julian Vigo, also realised that they had also take money from Open Society Foundation to do a series on “trans” people. You can read that series here:

THE GUARDIAN MEDIA GROUP

Oakdale Trust is the foundation of the Cadbury family and have a wide portfolio of grants with one interest being in penal reform. The other trusts who have made small contributions also appear to make grants across a range of charities the usual gender identity lobby groups are not among the recipients.

Here are the trustees of The Howard League.

Professor Ben Bradford’s biography and research interests was easy to locate.

Here are details of some oof his research projects, you will see that one of them is funded by Open Society Foundations. I am told that the grants from Open Society Foundations are made in a decentralised way and it is perfectly possible that the OSF does not bring any pressure to organisations to conform to Transgender Identity Ideology but it does worry me when I see the same foundations recur and I wonder if this creates a chilling effect on staff in these charities.

Here are a couple more of his projects.

Adrian Briggs’ profile shows him to be involved with Amnesty International. Once again we cannot deduce, from this, that he endorses every position of that organisation but Amnesty International are certainly, now, on the Gender Ideologue side of the debate. I wrote about that here:

Amnesty U.K. What’s going on?

Professor McNeill appears to be a He/Him according to his University of Glasgow profile but, to be fair to him, it is Scotland so he/him may. ot have any choice in the matter.

On the other hand Lord Ken McDonald is one of the hosts of the Double Jeopardy podcast who has hosted Professor Kathleen Stock although he did, apparently, advocate for men in women’s prisons. (I did try to locate this episode but it’s not currently available).

In conclusion, it is concerning that a senior member of staff is so utterly captured. It may be that there is internal dissent and resistance to the imposition of males on female prisoners. On balance I don’t think the signs are looking too positive.They have a twitter presence and they did put out a report reflecting negatively on girls, held with boys, in youth offending units. Worth engaging with them to encourage positives and embolden any internal dissenters.

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