Gary Lineker, Greta Thunberg and Tracey Emin have signed an open letter backing Misan Harriman, the chair of the Southbank Centre’s board of governors, after a string of newspaper stories about his comments and social media posts. The letter described the coverage as a dishonest smear campaign and said the attacks were meant to silence criticism of Israel.
More than 245 people signed the letter, including the actors Riz Ahmed and David Oyelowo, while several Jewish cultural figures also put their names to it, among them Benjamin Moser, Morgan Spector and Jillian Edelstein. The letter said that trying to silence responsible critics of Israel by smearing them as antisemitic does not protect Britain’s Jewish community, and warned that the purpose of the smear campaign was to traduce and marginalise Harriman.
The row has grown around two separate Telegraph stories. One accused Harriman of promoting conspiracy theories about the Golders Green attack after he shared a post questioning why so much coverage was given to the Muslim victim, Ishmail Hussein. Critics said that repost risked minimising the antisemitic nature of the attack. A second report said Harriman had compared Reform voters to Nazis after he quoted Susan Sontag in a video about the party’s historic local election results.
Harriman has chaired the Southbank Centre’s board since 2021, which is why the comments drew scrutiny well beyond the usual online argument. He was responding to the political climate after Reform’s local election gains when he said, in effect, that when thinking about the Holocaust, 10% of people in any population are cruel no matter what, 10% are merciful no matter what and the remaining 80% could be moved in either direction. Karen Pollock condemned the post and asked how yesterday’s election results could ever be compared with the Holocaust. Robert Jenrick went further, calling it disgusting and saying Harriman should be removed from his role at the publicly funded institution.
Harriman has rejected the characterisation of the coverage and cast the dispute as a wider fight over who gets to speak without being punished for it. He said: “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. I stand with truth, I stand by my right to use my voice to help others.”
The backlash has also moved beyond the newspaper stories themselves. A campaign to lobby the press regulator Ipso over the reporting has been backed by 53,000 people, underscoring how quickly the fight over Harriman has become a proxy battle over antisemitism, criticism of Israel and the limits of public speech. For the Southbank Centre, a cultural institution led by a chair under fire for political remarks, the pressure is now on whether the row fades or hardens into a lasting test of how public figures are judged when their words land in a charged national argument.
