Greta Thunberg, Tracey Emin and Gary Lineker are among more than 245 signatories of an open letter defending Southbank Centre chair Misan Harriman, after what they describe as a “dishonest smear campaign” by media outlets. The letter argues that Harriman has been unfairly accused of promoting conspiracy theories about the Golders Green attack and comparing Reform UK voters to Nazis.
Harriman, who has chaired the Southbank Centre’s board of governors since 2021, faced criticism from the Telegraph for sharing a social media post that questioned the amount of media coverage given to the Muslim victim of the Golders Green attack. Critics said the repost risked minimising the antisemitic nature of the attack. David Taylor, Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead, called the posts “incredibly inappropriate”.
Further controversy arose when Harriman quoted Susan Sontag in a video about Reform UK’s local election results, prompting the Telegraph to run a story headlined “Southbank Centre chief ‘compares Reform victory to Holocaust’”. Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, criticised the comparison, and Reform MP Robert Jenrick called for Harriman’s removal from his publicly funded role.
The open letter, also signed by actors Riz Ahmed and David Oyelowo, states that the “smear campaign” is intended to “traduce and marginalise” Harriman and to “send a message to others that if they speak out, they will be subject to harassment and threats”. It adds that “trying to silence responsible critics of Israel by smearing them as antisemitic does not protect Britain’s Jewish community”.
Harriman told the Guardian: “We have reached the point where truth itself is being crushed by the very institutions that are supposed to uphold it. I will never whisper about the oppressed.” The letter follows a campaign backed by 53,000 people to lobby the press regulator Ipso about the coverage.
A separate letter from parliamentarians, including peers Sayeeda Warsi and Labour MPs John McDonnell and Naz Shah, has been sent to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy. It warns against a “rising tendency to pressure institutions and public bodies to distance themselves from individuals who engage in legitimate public discourse” and condemns what it calls a “smear campaign” aimed at “engineering an ever-growing environment of cancel culture”.
