Exclusive: Tory MP’s Wikipedia entry ‘edited from Parliament’ to remove gay rights criticism
PinkNews Exclusive
The Wikipedia entry of Tory MP Stewart Jackson has been edited from inside Parliament to remove reference to a disdainful message he sent a lesbian constituent.
In April this year, the MP for Peterborough Stewart Jackson – a strong opponent of same-sex marriage – received a letter from a lesbian constituent asking him to stop contacting her, as she would not be voting for him.
Mr Jackson replied: “The feeling’s fully mutual. Please feel free to never bother me again. Yours, Stewart Jackson”
However, PinkNews can reveal that someone using an IP address registered to the Houses of Parliament (194.60.38.203) has repeatedly tried to scrub all record of the incident from Wikipedia.
The mystery Parliamentarian or aide making the edits attempted to remove part of Mr Jackson’s Wikipedia entry claiming:
In March 2015, Jackson attracted media attention for an “ill-advised” response to a constituent which was subsequently circulated on social media.[7] Jackson’s email told the constituent “The feeling’s fully mutual. Please feel free to never bother me again” after she requested to be removed from his campaign mailing list because she disagreed with his opposition to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013.
The change has been repeatedly reverted by other users. It is not possible to confirm the specific source of the edit, as the IP address is shared across Parliament.
Though the edit was reverted, a separate IP address (82.6.220.226) located in Peterborough has repeatedly attempted to make the same change, as recently as this month.
The second IP address has only ever attempted to edit the Wikipedia entry of Stewart Jackson, and made no other contributions to the website.
PinkNews has reached out to Mr Jackson for comment.
Wikipedia edit logs are entirely open to the public, as is a list of IP addresses used registered to the Houses of Parliament.
Despite this, mysterious Parliamentary edits to MPs’ articles are commonplace – with the Guardian accusing former Tory Chair Grant Shapps of anonymously using the platform to smear his rivals. Mr Shapps denied making the edits, and it later emerged that a Lib Dem activist was the source.
Other edits from inside Parliament found by PinkNews include someone removing vandalism from the page of the SNP’s Mhairi Black – who was described as “a lesbian (but not a fit one)”, and new Tory MP Ben Howlett being added to a list of LGBT politicians.
