Thanks to the Free Speech Union’s (FSU’s) intervention, a public sector employee who was sacked for “supporting far-right activity” on Facebook has now been reinstated. Their supposed offence? Liking a video posted by a local campaigner in the wake of the Southport stabbings, which raised concerns about unchecked illegal immigration and called for peaceful, democratic engagement with local councillors and police.
Our member, who needs to remain anonymous – and whose gender we’ve therefore had to withhold – will be referred to here as ‘Alex’. Alex had neither posted the video nor endorsed every word of it. They simply liked it, commented briefly in agreement with some of its content, and attended a local community meeting advertised by the same campaigner (of whom more shortly). That was enough to trigger an investigation by Alex’s employer.
Following that investigation, the organisation issued a disciplinary outcome letter alleging that Alex had “supported some viewpoints within the video that promoted far-right activities”, citing in particular our member’s apparent opposition to mass immigration, a desire to preserve British culture, unease about pressure on housing and public services, and a call for local residents to raise such concerns with elected officials.
According to the employer, this was enough to potentially expose Alex to criminal sanction (despite, er, no criminal activity having occurred), bring the organisation into disrepute, and justify dismissing our member for gross misconduct.
That a public authority saw fit to sack an employee over the expression of entirely lawful views – voiced not by Alex, lest we forget, but by someone else – speaks volumes about the priggish, censorial drift of contemporary workplace culture. Sadly, the public sector employer in question is no outlier in this regard. Across the country, a broader disciplinary concept creep is under way, as major institutions increasingly categorise lawful yet provocative, robust or contested concerns about immigration as “far-right”, “hateful”, or even “extremist”.
Even the Crown Prosecution Service appears to have embraced this expansive view of extremism. In a curious coincidence, the Facebook video Alex liked was recorded by another FSU member – let’s call him ‘Simon’ – who was prosecuted for inciting racial hatred. It was a serious charge, one that could have ended in a prison sentence. Perhaps the clearest indication of how weak the case was is the jury’s response: it took them less than 20 minutes to return a unanimous not guilty verdict. (The FSU paid Simon’s legal fees and arranged for him to be represented by a top-drawn barrister.)
You might think the obvious next step for an employee treated as egregiously as Alex would be to appeal to their trade union. But when Alex did just that, they were told case had – yep, you’ve guessed it – “far-right associations”, and was refused support.
Fortunately, Alex was also a member of the FSU. And unlike Alex’s sector-specific union, we were prepared to stand up for their right to lawful expression and to push back against the slow creep of workplace speech codes that now stretch far beyond what the law requires.
Having reviewed the case, we helped Alex draft a detailed appeal. The argument we constructed was threefold: factual, legal, and procedural.
First, the characterisation of the Facebook post and meeting as “far-right” was inaccurate. The views expressed are widely held and routinely debated in mainstream political discourse. As Alex noted in their appeal, such concerns have been echoed across the political spectrum — by senior civil servants, academic researchers, and, most recently, by Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister, who has shown little hesitation in branding opponents “far-right”, recently warned that the UK risks becoming an “island of strangers” without tighter immigration controls, as he announced plans to reduce overseas care worker numbers and raise English language requirements.
Second, the appeal stressed that the employer – a public authority – had failed to consider Alex’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That right protects not only popular ideas, but also speech that, as Lord Justice Sedley put it in Redmond-Bate v DPP, may “offend, shock or disturb”. Political speech receives particularly strong protection under Strasbourg case law, where the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly stressed that there is little scope under Article 10 for restrictions on political expression or on debate about matters of public interest. Any interference must be necessary and proportionate. In Alex’s case, it was neither.
Finally, the appeal exposed serious flaws in the disciplinary process itself. Alex was denied the ability to bring a friend to meetings despite repeatedly disclosing their mental health struggles. Not only was our member subject to aggressive and prolonged questioning, but the organisation appeared to approach the process with a fixed view of Alex’s guilt, interpreting every answer through the lens of presumed extremism. When Alex initially denied attending the meeting – out of what we now know was an entirely well-founded fear that any admission would be taken as confirmation of ‘far-right’ sympathies – their response was weaponised as evidence of dishonesty.
The outcome of the appeal vindicated Alex – and the FSU’s approach. Our member’s dismissal was overturned, and they were reinstated to their position.
While this case is a textbook example of the creeping overreach now endemic in many UK workplaces, it also serves as a reminder that the law still offers protection when properly understood and strategically applied. Alex’s employer tried to make an example of an employee. Instead, our member fought back, becoming a case study in why our work matters.
