Fresh off the back of sacking non-existent DEI staff and banning non-existent low traffic neighbourhoods, Reform is back again banning things that don’t exist in the first place.
This time it’s books.
Reform councillor Paul Webb shared on X that he’d been:
…. recently contacted by a concerned member of the public who found trans-ideological material and books in the children’s section of one of our libraries.
He apparently went on to fact-check it. And found that yes, it was true. He didn’t like it – so used the power of his position to get the book removed.
I’ve looked into this and this was the case. I’ve today issued instructions for them all to be removed from the children’s section of any of our libraries.
Why would it have been so dangerous to leave it in place? Well, by his telling, you’d think it was a book full of hatred and brainwashing.
They do not belong in the children’s section of our libraries. Our children do not need to be told they were born in the wrong body. So from today this will stop.
So what was the book in question? Luckily the Reform leader of Kent Council, Linden Kemkaran, shared the offending photographic proof in a cringe tweet claiming “🔥Another victory for #commonsenseinKent 🔥”.
So we know:
It was “The Autistic Trans Guide to Life“
The book describes itself as an:
…essential survival guide gives autistic trans and/or non-binary adults all the tools and strategies they need to live as their very best self.
Firstly, that sounds rather more like book that provides important life advice to folk who already know themselves to be both trans and autistic – promoting “pride, strength and authenticity” – rather than somehow trying to brainwash non-trans folk into believing that they were born in the wrong body.
Also, “gives autistic trans and/or non-binary adults“. Adults. The book is aimed at adults.
Kent libraries know this. Ed Jennings from Kent Current actually did some research and found that every copy of that book was listed in the library catalogue as being in an adult non-fiction section.
So why was displayed it in the children’s section of the library in the first place?
The inevitable answer of course is that the book was almost certainly never in the children’s section of any of Kent’s libraries in the first place. That claim was a lie.
Per The Guardian:
Paul Webb said he ensured books and material were pulled from children’s section of Kent libraries, but it emerges they were never there.
…
Kent council said it could confirm that no books aimed at adults about transgender issues had been held in the children’s sections of Kent libraries.
Jennings continued his valiant research efforts by watching virtual tours of Kent’s libraries online and found that the photo that Kemkaran shared was in fact not of the children’s section of their library, but rather a a themed Pride Month display.
Which is actually reinforced by Kemkaran’s more zoomed-out photo of the supposedly offending article:
So it is unclear precisely what Cllr Webb and his ‘instruction’ is supposed to have achieved. If he wants to claim a quick win by banning a book from a section it wasn’t in in the first place, that’s presumably up to him. But it is depressing that the leadership of a county council can make claims like this, even if there is no reality in them, which suggests an element of just trying to rile up the base rather than achieve anything meaningful.
I have no idea of a member of the public wrote to Paul Webb or not, but someone somewhere seems to have been lying – once again showing Reform councillors to be either incompetent, deceitful, or both.