An excellent interview with Boris Johnson in the current edition of The Spectator.

[Note added 2.6.16: The last anti-MGM protest before the London conference will now take place outside the Head Office of the Crown Prosecution Service, not the Head Office of the NSPCC. Details here.]

Many proponents of MGM support it partly on the grounds of alleged potential or real health benefits, to men and/or their sexual partners. Does science support that position? For the answer, we refer you to a paper co-authored by Brian D Earp, a scientist and ethicist at the University of Oxford – here.

Two more anti-MGM protests will take place before the London Conference. One of the speakers at the conference will be the American researcher Tim Hammond, who’ll be giving a new talk on the Global Survey of Circumcision Harm.

Our first anti-MGM protest was outside the Conservative party conference (October 2015), the second in Parliament Square on International Men’s Day (November 2015).

The third (March 2016) was the largest anti-MGM protest ever held in the UK, outside the Thornhill Clinic, Luton – the largest private circumcision clinic in the UK. Our blog piece on the matter is here, a video (9:19) of the event here.

Last week we staged a highly successful protest in Golders Green. We’ll shortly be posting videos and still photographs from that protest, along with some commentary. One of the leaflets we handed out was designed by the people behind a website with no connection to this one, Jews Against Circumcision. From the website:

We are a group of educated and enlightened Jews who realize that the barbaric, primitive, torturous, and mutilating practice of circumcision has no place in modern Judaism.

Rabbi Moses Maimonides himself acknowledged that circumcision is done to desensitize the penis and curb masturbation.

Jews are some of the smartest people in the world. We are 1/3rd of 1% of the population, yet we hold 33% of Nobel prizes. We are smart enough to understand that mutilating a little boys’ penis is not an acceptable practice in modern times.

Our next protest will be over 1pm – 6pm on Wednesday 1 June, outside the Home Office – 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF – because the Home Office is responsible for the police, and the police (acting with the CPS) aren’t bringing prosecutions against the people carrying out the criminal offence of MGM. In the Home Office response to our FOI request last year, the department didn’t deny MGM is illegal, but evaded the question of why it doesn’t prosecute the criminals carrying out the procedure. A map of the area is here.

Our thanks to Ian for this. Our position on abortion was outlined in our 2015 general election manifesto (pp.5,6).

A number of MRAs – mostly, but not all, from the London area – travel most Sundays to Speakers’ Corner, in the north-east corner of Hyde Park, to talk about men’s issues, feminism etc. It’s without doubt the most famous location for free speech in the world.

For the first time, tomorrow, I’ll be joining them, and we plan to get there around 10am. Why not come along and show your support, and meet some of the most hard-working activists in the men’s rights movement? We’ll be taking plenty of photographs and video footage, for later publication.

The nearest tube station is Marble Arch.

In February we posted a link to a video (39:47) of some of the MRAs speaking, and engaging with a radical feminist. Enjoy.

Jordan Holbrook is a young MRA and blogger, who we’re going to hear a lot more from. He’s one of a number of stalwart MRAs who can be relied upon to turn up at protests, meetings etc. if humanly possible, often taking a day off work to be there. He was one of a number of MRAs who made valuable contributions to the video (6:30) of the protest against MGM in Parliament Square last International Men’s Day.

Jordan was one of the protesters in Golders Green two days ago, and he’s posted some reflections on the event – here. Although there was little animosity shown towards us, it’s inevitable that examples of animosity were among the more memorable moments in the afternoon, and much of his piece focuses on them. But anyone who was at the event will tell you such moments were rare. Between us we had hundreds of constructive discussions with passers-by, and handed out thousands of leaflets, including the leaflet designed by Jews Against Circumcision, a website with no connection to J4MB.

During yesterday’s protests in Golders Green we handed out a large number of leaflets developed by an organization unconnected with J4MB, Jews Against Circumcision. The leaflet content is here.

During the protests I wore a polo shirt demonstrating our party’s support for Brit Shalom, here. I invite you to order the shirt from our online store – it’s available in a large variety of sizes and colours – and email me mike@j4mb.org.uk if you’d like me to set up a T-shirt with the design, or a shirt with the design on the back rather than on the front. For every shirt sold, J4MB will receive £1.00 to support its work.

A tip of the hat to the Honey Badger Brigade for their piece pointing to an excellent video (3:28) by Chris Raygun.

Our thanks to A Voice for Men for this. An archived copy of Dr Hasan’s website is here.

A short note to report that we had a good turnout today for our protests in Golders Green, with one man flying from the Netherlands for the occasion. We protested outside Dr Martin Harris’s clinic, the offices of the Jewish Chronicle, and for four hours in the centre of Golders Green. We had some highly visible signs, and for the first time we employed our new 8′ x 3′ banner, bearing the party logo.

We were met with politeness throughout the afternoon – there were a few exceptions, inevitably – and many people stopped for conversations. Numerous people – both men and women – told us that while they were Jewish, they agreed with our position on male circumcision. Over the course of the afternoon we handed out thousands of leaflets including one on Brit Shalom, the circumcision-free naming ceremony alternative to Brit Milah, which involves ritual circumcision.

We’ll post details of the protests in the coming days, including photographs and short video pieces. In the meantime, we thank the good people of Golders Green for our friendly welcome today, and we thank the police for their presence and guidance throughout the afternoon.

The latest outstanding piece from William Collins. We agree fully with his analysis.

The HEPI report has two references linking to our website, #60 and #62 (p.36). We thank Steve for pointing out that The Independent today ran a piece on the HEPI report. From near the end:

The report has not gone down well with the National Union of Students (NUS), though. [Normally a reliable sign of a report’s quality, obviously.] Sorana Vieru, NUS vice president of higher education, said it takes a “complex and nuanced issue and turns it into a ‘battle of the sexes’.”

She added: “It obscures the socio-economic issues that impact young working class men’s progression after school into education and employment.

“The report bizarrely positions women teachers as the reason young men don’t do as well as young women in school, when there is no evidence of this.

“The report also relies on quotes from discredited sources such as Mike Buchanan, leader of the Justice for Men and Boys (and the women who love them) Party.”

Sorana Vieru is mistaken. The report doesn’t contain even one quote from me, nor from anyone associated with J4MB. It contains an extract from a Department for Education response to our FOI request to Nicky Morgan, Education Secretary, Minister for Women & Equalities (reference #62). William Collins’s piece links to that FOI request, and the DfE response.

That minor detail aside, I’m delighted that Ms Vieru described me as a ‘discredited source’. Had she said anything complimentary about me, I’d have been livid, and demanded a public apology.