Canadian writer and presenter Lauren Southern was denied entry into the United Kingdom on Monday, after being stopped by the British Border Force while traveling on a bus from France. The British Home Office said Southern’s presence in the U.K. “was not conducive to the public good.” Southern said she was held and questioned under Schedule 7 of the U.K.’s Terrorism Act of 2000, which allows a person to be questioned for up to six hours. Southern posted a U.K. government
document on Twitter that said she was “not under arrest on suspicion of committing a criminal offence.”
The British Home Office confirmed to The Knife that Southern was “refused Leave to Enter the UK by Border Force in Coquelles this morning (Monday 12 March)” on “policy grounds that her presence in the UK was not conducive to the public good.” The Home Office did not respond to an inquiry as to why Southern was determined to be “not conductive to the public good.”
Southern has described herself as a “national capitalist” and “libertarian nationalist,” according to an interview on the Rubin Report. She is described as “right-wing” by outlets including Fox News.
Following the decision to deny her entry, Southern tweeted that she was “officially banned from the UK for ‘racism,’” adding that she was “doing fine.” Southern said she was denied entry for materials she had distributed on Feb. 24 in Luton, England, which she said a government document described as “racist” and “a threat to the fundamental interests of society and to the public policy” of the U.K.
Southern said the materials in question were posters that were part of a “social experiment” in which they distributed posters that said, “Allah is Gay, Allah is Trans, Allah is Lesbian, Allah is Intersex, Allah is Feminist, Allah is Queer, Allah is All of Us,” Fox reported. The network also reported that Southern’s “experiment” was in response to a Vice article, “Was Jesus gay?”
Southern had originally been scheduled to meet with two people in the U.K. on Sunday: Martin Sellner, leader of Austria’s Identitarian Movement, and American author Brittany Pettibone.
Pettibone and Sellner were also stopped and “refused Leave to Enter and Admission respectively at Luton Airport on Friday 9th March,” the Home Office confirmed. They were detained and removed from the U.K. on Sunday, and flew to Vienna.
Sellner, a member of the Generation Identity (GI) group, had been scheduled to speak at a free speech rally at Hyde Park in London. GI is a pan-European activist group that describes itself as a “non-violent youth movement” that aims to foster “open” discussion of immigration policies and to “stop the Islamisation of Europe.” Its stated goals include “preserving ethno-cultural identity,” having national governments “regain sovereignty over border policy,” and engaging in “development work” in Africa to “create options for people to remain and to develop in their own homeland” and discourage immigration to Europe, among other goals.
Pettibone had been scheduled to meet with GI member Tommy Robinson, who is also the founder of the U.K. movement English Defense League. Southern had said in a
video posted to Twitter on Mar. 10 that she also planned to meet with Robinson. A letter
posted by Robinson that appears to be from the Home Office called him a “far right leader whose materials and speeches incite racial hatred.”
