Chat records and other documents obtained by Logically show that a U.K. group of lockdown-skeptic political activists and health professionals have been coordinating efforts to lobby MPs and gain political and media influence, with an aim to “wrestle control back from SAGE.”
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Logically obtained the HART chat logs via a tip from someone inside the group. The person behind the leak, who spoke to Logically on the condition of anonymity, said that they had been researching the group after a friend shared links from HART.
“I tried to convince this friend that that site was not a good source of information,” they said. “I became a bit obsessed with the HART group. I wanted to understand them. I wanted to be able to show people, with evidence, why the HART group should not be taken seriously.”
After discovering that a subdomain on the HART website linked to the group’s Rocket.Chat, a popular Slack alternative, they found that the chat was accessible to anyone who registered an account. Later, realizing that they hadn’t been removed from the group, they began saving the messages, automatically archiving redacted message content every hour and uploading it to the internet.
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The history of the chat logs reveal a clear and well organized lobbying campaign. One spreadsheet contained a complete list of members of the House of Commons, including their email addresses, Twitter handles, and lockdown voting history, highlighting those who most often voted against lockdowns. Roles within HART were also well defined. A document listing the HART group’s organizational structure shows specific areas for members to work on, including an executive coordinator role for Anna Rayner, who due to her “working in a maligned area of healthcare” wanted to remain “in the shadows.” "My role is to get us noticed at Westminster,” wrote Bernie de Haldevang, introducing himself to new members of the group in January, “the more we are the stronger we become, so a very warm welcome to you and I hope to get to know you all shortly."
HART members are critical of policies such as lockdowns, mask-wearing, and vaccination while also claiming that COVID is not a pandemic but an endemic. While the group does not believe, by and large, that the vaccines don’t work or that COVID doesn’t exist, they do frequently recommend alternative treatments such as ivermectin and vitamin D, at times claiming “the vaccine isn’t a vaccine,” as well as laundering views from more extreme and questionable sources such as the Daily Expose, Children’s Health Defense (a known anti-vax group in the U.S.), and dubious news sources.
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Businessman and prominent Keir Starmer supporter Narice Bernard describes the group’s communications strategy in a post, saying “We don‚'t (sic) exist to engage the public this a (sic) a top down strategy. Engagement with the public would make us campaigners and doors will close very fast largely because it would be a threatening posture to the government. We do have a plan nonetheless of engagement with the public which is to update them as people join and any strategic discussions which are noteworthy.” Bernard also appears keen to engage Labour MPs as well as Conservative ones, in order to avoid “appropriation” by an existing anti-lockdown group of Tory MPs.
Though some members of the group are keen to resist associating themselves with conspiracy theory figures, this resistance is usually based on a desire to seem palatable to the outside world, rather than a hostility to those beliefs as such. For example, when discussing whether to attempt to recruit Dr. Thomas Binder, a Swiss cardiologist who was detained under mental health legislation in April, a co-chair of HART wrote, “Binder is extremely outspoken and quite controversial on a number of levels. If you want a headline like ‘member of anti lockdown group is 9/11 conspiracy theorist’ then go ahead, otherwise I'd avoid,” before going on to describe Binder’s conspiratorial views, such as WEF and Great Reset conspiracy theories. “[These views] are an extreme version of ours,” the co-chair adds, “Again, some of us here may have those views as well but they aren't going to get us mainstream attention."
The majority of the documents exchanged by the group members were hosted on Google Drive with publicly accessible open sharing settings, while others were attached to the Rocket.Chat messages themselves or reshared from the HART’s former Slack group.
Among the files shared were copies of letters and briefings the group drafted to send to politicians, members of the press, and in one case, the University of Edinburgh. In the letter, signed by only one group member, the author called for the dismissal of University of Edinburgh professor Devi Sridhar, for “promoting propaganda on vaccines to innocent children,” adding, “I would call this taking part in a genocide program.” Nearing the end of the letter the author writes “not only is [their] behaviour unethical but criminal. This is a crime against humanity.”
Upon sharing the draft letter with the group, members workshopped it, “I would strongly suggest removing terms like genocide and [Bill] Gates stuff - it is unnecessary. The university will be concerned about reputational risk,” wrote one of the organisation’s co-chairs. “If we hit the universities, this is where they’re getting paid from. Cut off their source of oxygen,” replied the original author. It’s not clear whether this letter was eventually sent, but another letter did make it to the University of Edinburgh from UsForThem Scotland. A copy of the reply was shared with the HART group. The UK Medical Freedom Alliance (UKMFA) also sent an open letter to Sridhar, which was then also uploaded to the Children’s Health Defense website. Around the same time, an article criticizing Sridhar was posted to the Conservative Woman, a website that regularly re-packages extremist viewpoints, exclusively quoting Ros Jones of HART, as well as referring to the UKMFA, of which HART member Liz Evans is listed as a founder. Evans introduces herself in the HART channels as “running UK Medical Freedom Alliance.”
Logically reached out the members of HART mentioned in this investigation, they issued a joint response which we have printed in full:
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It is disappointing to discover that the trust we place in our members, that allows free expression in those chats, has been breached. For Logically to compound the matter by extracting statements out of context for seemingly defamatory purposes is a sad reflection of the censorship and harassment experienced by individuals and organisations who question the Government’s narrative and scientific orthodoxy. (lol)