Activist, trade unions, teachers and students came together last Saturday to protest against a far right group.
LGBTQ+ groups, university students, lecturers, teachers, Stand Up to Racism and anti-fascist activists, parents, grandparents and children of Lewisham community stood together in a day of protest to defend a drag queen storytelling event hosted in a local pub.
The Honor Oak Pub in St German’s Road, Forest Hill, runs drag storytelling afternoons at the pub. Parents can drop their kids off and they will be read their favourite story books by drag kings and queens.
The pub’s drag storytelling sessions have been opposed by the far right group Turning Point UK.
Micky Loebner, a teacher at Chelwood Nursery school in Lewisham said: “It was great to have everybody standing in unity with the drag queen story tellers and against the far right.
“ It’s our community, our streets and we don’t want them back with their hate.”
Turning Point UK has been linked to Donald Trump and QAnon. Its website describes its goal, to “challenge the left leaning bias in our institutions and wider society, expose the far left and end the tyranny of woke ideology.”
The group have also posted videos to their YoUTube account in which members ask university students if they think it is suitable for “scantily clad men dressed as women” to be allowed near children.
Ben Waller from Lewisham, who attended the protest, said: “Turning Point UK are making a ridiculous claim that drag queens are paedophiles.
“Children have been going to pantomimes at Christmas for years but they’ve chosen to target these events because they want to stir hatred in my local community”.
Turning Point UK has been approached for comment.
Pictured top: A protester in Lewisham defending a drag queen storytelling event hosted at the Honor Oak Pub (Picture: Jo Ellis-Holland)
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