THE London Irish Centre, run by a charity funded by the Irish government, has withdrawn permission for a group of feminists to hire out its conference venue in Camden, north London. The move follows complaints that some speakers advocate violence against men and are “transphobic”.

The RadFem conference was to have been held in June at the 57-year-old centre, the oldest and largest Irish organisation outside Ireland. Last year RadFem’s plans for a conference at Conway Hall, a convention centre in central London, had been vetoed after it was discovered that the group intended to deny entry to transgender women by restricting tickets to “women born as women and living as women”.

The London Irish Centre provides welfare services for Irish emigrants in the British