Day 1 of protesting Scientology’s UK shindig goes off without a hitch
Last night, Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige was scheduled to give another of his hours-long addresses to a gathering of at least a few thousand of his followers under a big tent in the English countryside at a place called Saint Hill Manor.
It was the first night of the annual celebration of the International Association of Scientologists, the church’s membership organization, and marking 40 years since the IAS was founded. We expect it will take a little time before we learn something about what Miscavige said, and whether celebrities like Tom Cruise and Jenna Elfman were there.
But what we do know was that outside the grounds of Saint Hill, former London staffer “Apostate Alex” Barnes-Ross was holding a demonstration to follow up on three days of protests he organized for the event last year, and we, along with many of our readers, had followed along on live video streams of his progress.
After Alex had some time for a pint at the local pub, he gave us a ring.
“It was a really positive experience,” he said. “It was peaceful. It was everything we wanted it to be.”
He said it was a smaller group this year, about 18 people wearing reflective safety vests and carrying eye-catching and professionally printed banners, but we could understand why Alex was focused on it being a calm and peaceful demonstration. He knew that observers from local government were watching and gathering information because Scientology has requested an exception that would make protesting in that location illegal for the next three years. So the demonstrators were mindful of it.
Alex said they had met in East Grinstead and walked to the Manor. He reminded us that the church had tried to block the public way the previous year with devious methods like planting hedges strategically.
“That was all taken care of,” Alex said, thanks largely to his own vigilance with local officials. “There was nothing obstructing the pathway to the entrance, which was fantastic.”
But then, right at the entrance to the property, Scientology had put up a metal barrier and some employees were standing there with large umbrellas to keep people in arriving cars from seeing the protesters.
Alex said that when they pointed out to police that it was unsafe and illegal, the Scientologists countered that they were standing on privately-owned land.
Alex had suspected they might pull something like that, and he produced documents showing that the area was actually public property. But the Scientologists told the police the documents had been doctored.
“The police didn't want to get into an argument over who owned the land,” Alex said.
Meanwhile, as the protesters were careful to stay on the side of the road, it was Scientologists who were walking in the road itself. “We left plenty of room for them, but they walked in the road anyway,” he said.
But the police could see who was following the rules, and Alex said he got along with them very well. “I talked to one officer who said there was no evidence of harassment by us.”
And again, that’s important because the local district will be taking evidence of this protest before deciding whether to ban future ones.
Overall, Alex said, the logistics and access and operation of the protest was “a massive improvement” over the year before.
We asked him, though, if he suspected that Scientology had tried to send in any agents provocateur in order to disrupt things while data was being gathered.
“There were these two guys who showed up at the pub who I immediately ID'd as PIs,” he said. “They came over and claimed they were journalists for ITN. They had press passes.”
But everything they did seemed suspicious to him, Alex said. Where they had chosen to stand to watch the protest. That they said they were just waiting to see celebrities. (But were waiting where they couldn’t possibly see any.) And that when they asked him for an interview, proposed to do so with a smartphone and then asked him to make an odd delay before answering questions.
And then they kept asking him whether he had any contacts inside the gathering, and how many? Alex refused to say.
“They kept pressing on that point. I was convinced they were either OSA operatives, or working for Scientology in some way,” he said.
His other concern was that the council observers who were gathering the crucial evidence for the legal proposal were stationed on the opposite side of the road where they couldn’t see the protest, and were handing out forms for people to fill out.
Alex said he understood what they were doing, but they couldn’t actually see the demonstration from where they were.
“They got really combative. And I said, what's the point of you being here if you're here to observe the protest and you're not observing it?”
Well, that’s a bit troubling. But otherwise things went pretty smoothly. At least for Alex and his fellow protesters, if not the locals who were otherwise driving through the area and had to negotiate a collision.
“The traffic was a real issue. But the traffic was due to Scientology and not our protest,” Alex said.
Again, Alex was positive about how things had worked out with police, and he looked forward to clearing up the property issue today with a different sergeant who would be in charge.
With Miscavige’s big Friday night speech out of the way, Scientology will rearrange the seating in the big tent, moving out rows of chairs in favor of tables for a banquet setting. Saturday is the Patron’s Ball, when the IAS recognizes the big donors who have achieved new “statuses” this year with their giving.
Alex and his friends will be out there again, agitating against Scientology’s abuses but offering a message of hope to the people who will arrive in their tuxedoes and glittering dresses.
Hip, hip, hooray!
Want to help?
Please consider joining the Underground Bunker as a paid subscriber. Your $7 a month will go a long way to helping this news project stay independent, and you’ll get access to our special material for subscribers. Or, you can support the Underground Bunker with a Paypal contribution to bunkerfund@tonyortega.org, an account administered by the Bunker’s attorney, Scott Pilutik. And by request, this is our Venmo link, and for Zelle, please use (tonyo94 AT gmail). E-mail tips to tonyo94@gmail.com.
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain
Here’s the link to today’s post at tonyortega.org
And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning.
Paid subscribers get access to a special podcast series…
Group Therapy: Our round table of rowdy regulars on the week’s news
Alex, please make sure that you carefully document where the council observers are and what they're doing. I'm betting that they're purposefully out of your sight so that you can't see what they're doing, and that they're passing out forms to "passers-by" who will most likely mainly be Scientologists. Then, they'll rule for Scientology to ban your protests based on the input from these forms, which of course will be largely complaints by "community members" who couldn't even see what you were doing (unless, of course, you're being incredibly noisy, which I imagine you are not). So it'll be important, when they try to do that, to demonstrate both that they were not observing the protest, and that they were taking input from people who weren't as impacted by your protest as would be people who were actually in the area of the protest (in sight of it).
Just for the record, the three days of the IAS event from the inside (with the caveat that the last time I did it was in 2003, lots of things have changed)
For a week or more before the event, rehearsals and brutality. In those days there were other speakers besides Dave and of course they were all doing it all wrong. Hours of folks like Mike Rinder and Guillaume Lesevre trying to give speeches and being berated by Dave, changes to the scripts, all kinds of abuse.
The last few days they rehearse in full makeup and lights with three cameras or more. This makes it possible to edit together a perfect event video even if they screw it up at the live show.
The main event was in the Great Hall and the tent was just overflow with a video feed. We showed the famous horsey film opening on 35mm film using John Travolta's old Shinkyo projector. Then the motorized screen goes up, the podium rises from the scissor lift in the stage and Dave comes on to open the show. Lots of ways for things to go wrong. But we usually pulled it off OK.
A football truck, set up to broadcast soccer or cricket, was overstuffed with BetaCam Pro recorders for the nine-camera shoot. Piles of audio gear stuffed backstage and at the rear of the hall (called ironically the Front of House). Three speaker stacks in front and two delays blasted the sound. Probably a rental bill in the $100,000s. Miles of cable. Huge projectors for the side screens and in the tent. Even more sound reinforcement there.
Anyway, back to the timeline - do the event. Then the phone bank starts up. Maybe 30 high-powered registrars, including the voiceover talent Jeff Pomerantz, man the phones to drum up donations. This is all done in the basement offices of the Castle. It goes pretty much all night long. Last chance to get a new status before the Patron's Ball! They are expected to pull in at least a ten million dollars in those few hours while the iron is hot. Sometimes a lot more.
While the money is being raked in, the crew is kept up doing a ritual called "pickups". Gary Wiese in the Truck, as event director, reviews all the footage from the live show. If there are mistakes, like a slurred word or somebody misreading the prompter, Gary finds and flags them. Then the miscreant who flubbed goes back on stage in full makeup and lights and redoes the lines. The entire crew has to be on station for this, all the cameras etc. except of course the audience boom camera. No audience! This can go on for many hours into the night.
During the day Saturday there are seminars and tours of Saint Hill. OT Committee meetings. Lots of activities but not that many people. One year we did a demo of the wind-up record player and titanium records in the Monkey Room for example. As if anyone after a nuclear disaster is going to understand Hubbard's idiosyncratic 50s lecture style and long outdated cultural references a hundred years from now. Will they even speak English???
Meanwhile the crew is frantically getting ready for the big music show at the Patron's Ball. More cash for more equipment and cranky sleep-deprived musicians. Then the Ball itself, a chance to show off your money and how much you gave away. Catered meals and a chance to rub elbows with the rich and powerful. Then the awards ceremony, still shots by Film and Equipment In-Charge CMO Gold Jeff Baker on actual film! Then the actual music show with headliners like Kate Ceberano and Doug E. Fresh. Backed up by the long-suffering Gold Musicians.
Saturday night, everyone is exhausted but we still have to set up for the Charity Concert Sunday night. In those days it was back in the Great Hall, tons more equipment and more rehearsals with lesser acts like the Jive Aces. Large checks are presented to local mayors etc. with ridiculous chains of office making them look like rappers.
Finally it is time to pack it all up and go home. Sometimes Dave would award us with a day off in London, which was sometimes pretty cool and sometimes insane. I think his father sort of shamed him into it, because of course when Dave is in England he spends lots of time doing the nights on the town in London bit. In between harassing the other "top executives" and getting his hair done. By his personal hairdresser, flown in from the States just for his personal use.
I guess it is a lot simpler now that it has all settled into a dull repeatable routine and it is all just Dave. Probably the Great Hall is just video overflow and they show the horseys on video too. With me gone there is no one to set up that old cranky Shinkyo anyway, and it is nowhere near bright enough for the big screens in the tent.
But we can be sure that the registrars are still busy making insane deals and crush regging. That has probably been refined to a high art now. It was always all about the money.