The Free Speech Union

A report published this week by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire and Rescue Services confirms that police actions such as ‘taking the knee’ or wearing rainbow lanyards are causing confusion amongst police officers and undermining public confidence. The review also suggested that police officers have been recording trivial matters such as non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) because of worries abo...

A graph of FSU membership growth up to the end of August was shared on our social media channels this week and it is impossible to miss the moment at which the new government began its crackdown on free expression in Britain. As listeners and viewers will already know, one of this government’s earliest anti-free expression decisions was to shelve the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. The T...

The government has this week continued its extrajudicial onslaught on civil liberties. As reported in  The Telegraph , the Home Secretary is now “committed to reversing the Tories’ decision to downgrade the monitoring of non-crime hate incidents, specifically in relation to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, so they can be logged by police”. But the underlying premise here isn’t true. Ms Braverman’s...

Given the ongoing civil unrest across the UK, we are worried that the new government is about to clamp down harder and faster on our free expression than we might have first thought. Specifically, over the weekend there has been a railing against online anonymity, something that Ben Sixsmith covers in a piece for the Critic . A hastily rolled-out ban on anonymity could be a dragnet that stifles en...

Last week, the new Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson issued a written statement to the House of Commons saying she intended to ‘pause’ the Freedom of Speech Act. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 was the one tangible thing the Conservatives did to defend free speech in the past 14 years. Indeed, it was thanks to the lobbying efforts of the Free Speech Union that this legislati...

After a week that included the attempted assassination of former President Trump and the breaking news that President Biden will no longer be standing in November’s US election, we discuss how political polarisation so rapidly fosters an environment in which cancel culture thrives. Of particular note is the manner in which many on the right are now calling for the cancellation of people making off...

On Tuesday 9 July, the Free Speech Union was honoured to bring together an expert panel that included whistleblowers Sue Evans and Dr David Bell from the Tavistock Clinic, who risked their careers and much more to pursue the truth. As anticipated, the evening was a unique opportunity for us to learn the core free expression lesson from the Cass Report and the Tavistock scandal: that open inquiry a...

While the FSU persists in its mission to remain politically non-partisan, we are worried that the new government could bring in laws that criminalise vast swathes of speech. Freddie Attenborough highlights these concerns in an article for our website and we begin today with a discussion around the five primary free expression issues that he identifies: the APPG definition of Islamophobia, Labour’s...

In January 2024, Amelia Sparrow (not her real name) was dismissed by a Liberal Democrat MP after only three full days in her role of Parliamentary Researcher. She believes this happened because of pressure from the Liberal Democrat Party after she gave voice to her belief that sex is real, immutable and important. Amelia has submitted a claim to the employment tribunal arguing that she was discrim...

The FSU has reviewed each of the main party manifestos ( Conservative , Labour , Liberal Democrat , Reform ) for what they have to say about the five freedoms that we defend: freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. In today’s episode, we compare and contrast the results of our review. Free expression topics covered include Leveson P...

The Free Speech Fates have woven a Greek thread through today’s episode, starting with the Olympic Games. A 33-page ‘Portrayal Guidelines’ document, published ahead of this summer’s Paris Games, states that a person’s sex is not assigned based on genetics alone. As reported by the Telegraph , the International Olympic Committee has been accused by Martina Navratilova of waging a 1984 version of wa...

As reported in the Mail , Durham university last week postponed a debate on whether “Palestinian Leadership is the Biggest Barrier to Peace”. According to the article, a 'mob' of pro-Palestine protesters locked students inside a chamber for more than two hours and created a human chain around the building. Mohab Ramadan, a speaker for the opposition and founder of the university’s Israeli-Palestin...

The Free Speech Union has responded to the Office for Students’ (OfS) consultation on its proposed new guidance for English universities on how best to uphold academic freedom and free speech on campus. Realistically, the OfS’s approach to freedom of speech is likely to be unpopular with universities and, as a result, could face legal challenge. Our response sets out why we think the OfS’s positio...

The first quarter of 2024 was the FSU’s busiest yet for free speech case work and we begin by reflecting on what insight this gives us into the state of cancel culture in the UK. Moving to the global scale, The Guardian last week revealed the headlines from Article 19’s Global Expression Report 2024 . According to the analysis, more than half of the world’s population cannot speak freely. We dig i...

Ben spoke at the launch of SEEN (Sex Equality and Equity Network) in Parliament last week and made the point that the FSU has handled over 700 cases relating to gender critical beliefs. It’s perhaps not surprising, therefore, that sex and gender feature in our first main item. The Telegraph reports how civil servant and FSU member Eleanor Frances is crowdfunding to pay for an employment tribunal a...

Today we take a slightly different tack and explore the 1999 film ‘The Matrix’, which imparts a deep well-spring of metaphors for describing cancel culture. In addition to being an action-packed blockbuster, the movie touches on philosophical ideas from such luminaries as Lewis Carroll, René Descartes, Plato and Immanuel Kant. Moving on to looming free speech battles, we were concerned to see Ali...

FSU General Secretary, Toby Young, was nearly abducted last week by the infamous Hate Monster during a visit to Scotland. Video footage shows Toby finally triumphing over the beast, which he describes as “a cartoon creature that looks like a hairy pepperoni”. The Pepperoni of Hate would doubtless approve of VisitBritain’s latest language guide. As reported in the Mail and by the FSU’s Communicatio...

We whizz through a couple of this week’s free speech headlines today before providing listeners with an update on Linzi Smith’s case against Newcastle United and the Premier League, a story which has now been picked up by the BBC . Linzi is crowdfunding to assist with her next legal stage under the relevant pre-action protocol. This is a David and Goliath situation as both organisations are well-f...

Toby Young has written a sobering piece in this week’s Spectator , surveying speech-restricting laws in the works across the world, from Poland to Canada – the latter threatening to establish a form of speech precrime. While it is troubling to see how far free expression has dropped down the priority list of governments, Toby ends with a call to practical action, “I think the time has come to set...

One of our recurring bugbears is the imperious messaging that has seeped into all corners of British society, lecturing us on what to think and say as we go about our business. A current TV advertising campaign against ageism is a case in point. No-one wants people of different ages to be excluded from society, but it is rather galling to be slapped on the wrist for using harmless phrases like, “y...

As Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act comes to the end of its first week, the number of ‘hate crimes’ reported to Police Scotland has ticked over the 8,000 mark . This was entirely predictable and no doubt reflects a combination of reporting by those keen to make use of the act’s censorious powers and mischievous attempts at exposing its almost comically authoritarian intent. What's also c...

By the time this episode of ‘That’s Debatable!’ is released, the not-so-new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act will have come into force. We mark the occasion with a dive into an excellent piece by a concerned Scot , writing under the pseudonym C.J. Strachan. The article reaches back to 17th century Scottish history – the case of Thomas Aikenhead – and includes the powerful words that the...

We’re in Jules Verne’s hands today as we travel around the woke world, from East Sussex in England to Scotland, the USA, the EU, China and beyond. We begin, though, with some research from Finland that was cited on X by Rolf Degen . He remarks on two large studies that suggest high critical social justice attitude scales are linked to anxiety, depression and a lack of happiness. Could this also ex...

It's the first birthday of ‘That’s Debatable!’. We hope listeners will indulge us as we take a moment at the beginning of today's episode to look back over one or two of the segments from the last twelve months that have particularly resonated. First up on today’s main menu, however, is the ‘Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act’, which will now be activated on April Fool’s Day, nearly three...

As reported in the  Telegraph and in detail on our website , University College London (UCL) has now launched an investigation into its decision to ban academic and FSU member Michelle Shipworth from teaching a “provocative” course involving China in order to protect its commercial interests. The twists and turns in the story are quite breathtaking and include the startling moment when a UCL profe...