LGB Alliance’s London address leaked as 55 Tufton Street, home of notorious right-wing groups
Anti-trans charity LGB Alliance has defended its office space in London, 55 Tufton Street, as “ideal”, despite it being shared with some of the UK’s most extreme right-wing conservative groups.
The address in Westminster houses organisations including Brexit Central, Global Warming Policy Foundation (which has been criticised as a climate change denial group), Leave Means Leave, anti-immigration group Migration Watch UK, and right-wing pressure group Taxpayers’ Alliance, among others.
LGB Alliance’s office space at 55 Tufton Street was revealed when a letter from Ofcom to the anti-trans organisation was shared online.
Due to the building’s links with fossil fuel lobby groups and climate change sceptic organisations, it was recently targeted by environmental activists Just Stop Oil, who spray-painted the townhouse and claimed the people who work there were “shady lobbyists”.
Protest group Led by Donkeys also recently demonstrated at the building, putting up a plaque reading, “the British economy crashed here”.
The LGB Alliance, however, claimed that it has no link to the groups, and simply uses the building because it “became available at the right time”.
In a statement on Twitter, the LGB Alliance said: “The office is fantastically well-served in terms of transport links. In addition, we spend a lot of time trying to make our case to politicians, and the office is just a few minutes’ walk from the Houses of Parliament.
“You will be unsurprised to learn that our detractors will seek to draw conspiratorial conclusions from our address. I can tell you that the office was chosen because it’s handy, flexible, and that it became available at the right time.”
Twitter users, however, have criticised the idea that the office space is simply convenient, with one saying: “It’s not just ‘some random office space that, oops, has some right-wing orgs in it’, it’s literally owned by a Tory party donor and only occupied by right-wing orgs.”
Another said: “It’s 55 Tufton Street, not a WeWork.”
The group’s charitable status has been appealed, with a number of tribunal hearings taking place over September and November this year to determine whether its charitable status should be stripped.
Trans children’s charity Mermaids made arguments on 7 November, where king’s counsel Michael Gibbon said LGB Alliance had LGBTQ+ organisations like Mermaids and Stonewall on “a hit list”.
In a statement supporting Mermaids, Good Law Project said “charitable status is for those who serve the public good”.
It added: “Campaigning to limit legal protections for trans people and criticising those who speak for them we believe to be the very opposite of a public good.”
The tribunal’s decision is expected in early 2023, according to openDemocracy.
PinkNews has contacted the LGB Alliance for further comment.