Julie Bindel: Row over author's trans views cost council £10,000

A council spent more than £10,000 on legal fees and handed out £570 in compensation after "unlawfully" banning an event hosted by an author.

A talk by feminist campaigner Julie Bindel was stopped by Nottingham City Council due to what it said were her views on transgender rights.

The event, at Aspley Library in June, instead took place outside.

The council said it was "taking steps" to ensure such a decision was "not taken in this way again".

The talk, organised by Nottingham Women for Change, had been due to take place on 25 June.

However, the day before the event, the group was told by the council it could not go ahead.

The authority said Ms Bindel's views "fly in the face" of its position on transgender rights.

Ms Bindel subsequently announced she would be taking legal action under the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998.

Following three months of pre-action correspondence, the parties reached agreement on mutually acceptable terms, including an apology, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

In October, the council apologised to Ms Bindel and admitted it had acted "unlawfully" in cancelling her talk.

Now it has emerged the authority spent £10,680 on legal fees and provided a £569.99 "settlement", which the council said was paid to the author, organisers and ticketholders "in respect to their reasonable losses".

Ms Bindel says she had not asked for compensation and the payout was for "out-of-pocket expenses" incurred.

"I'm a socialist so I would never take money from a cash-strapped council," she said.

"I wanted to teach them a lesson. I wanted them to know they were wrong.

"We could have screwed them into the ground, but they will have spent a lot of money on legal defence."

Elizabeth McGlone, partner and solicitor at Didlaw, which represented Ms Bindel, said: "It is the right outcome.

"I think the city council took the wrong approach de-platforming Julie Bindel."

A spokesman for the authority said: "Having accepted that our decision to cancel the event Julie Bindel was due to speak at was procedurally unlawful, we apologised to her and Nottingham Women for Change for the inconvenience caused and agreed to make payment to them and ticket holders to address reasonable losses they incurred."

The author has said she plans to return to Nottingham "in the new year".

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