Yes, although this is at our discretion. How much legal help we offer – assuming you require legal help – will depend on our assessment of the particulars of each case, and how strong we think your legal case is, i.e., how likely it is to succeed in court. However, if we think you have a legitimate free speech grievance and a winnable case, we will provide pro bono legal support and have done so on many occasions.

The FSU offers the following legal support to its members (at our discretion):

  • Helping members understand their legal rights and evaluate legal risks, as well as offering advice on potential legal remedies.

  • Providing members with solicitors and barristers. This can be expensive and, where appropriate, we will help members launch crowdfunders to cover legal expenses so they don’t end up out of pocket. We have helped individual members raise more than £70,000 to pay their legal expenses.

  • We often seek the advice of members of our Legal Advisory Council, who provide us with pro bono legal help.

If you need legal help, you can contact the Free Speech Union by filling out the form on the ‘Get in Touch’ page. A member of our case or legal team will then contact you.

A non-crime hate incident (NCHI) is not a criminal offence, but is an episode in which the ‘victim’ perceives that the ‘perpetrator’ is motivated wholly or partly by hostility towards them based on a protected characteristic, i.e., their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. The police often record NCHIs against people’s names after they’ve been accused of a ‘hate crime’, but in which the police conclude the threshold for criminal prosecution hasn’t been met (although the police don’t always inform people they’ve done this). Having an NCHI recorded against your name is serious because it can show up on your record if you’re asked by a prospective employer to carry out an enhanced criminal record check. It is possible to get NCHIs removed from your record and we have succeeded in doing that for some of our members. We have produced a comprehensive guide on NCHIs and how to get them removed, but you can only read it if you’re a member. If you’re already a member, click on ‘Resources’ on the main menu bar and then select ‘Guides’ in the drop-down menu.

While freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, not all forms of speech are protected under UK law. For instance, it is illegal under the Public Order Act 1986 to stir up hatred on the grounds of race, religion or sexual orientation. These ‘stirring up’ offences are sometimes referred to as ‘hate speech’ laws, but not everything described as ‘hate speech’ is illegal. For instance, it is not against the law to say something offensive (although we often have to remind the police of that). As Lord Justice Sedley said in Redmond-Bate v DPP [1999], “Freedom of speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative, provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

The FSU only defends people who get into trouble for exercising their right to lawful free speech. That means we cannot help people who’ve said or written something that breaks the law. However, we often help people we believe have been wrongly accused of saying or writing something unlawful and, occasionally, we help people we believe have been wrongly convicted of saying or writing something illegal.

In the UK, freedom of speech is protected by various laws, including:

• The Human Rights Act 1998: The HRA incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, including Article 10, which safeguards the right to freedom of expression.
• Common Law: British common law recognises and upholds the importance of free speech as a fundamental right.
• The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023: The HEFSA protects free speech and academic freedom on university and college campuses, but only in England.
• The Equality Act 2010: The Equality Act makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate against their employees on the basis of protected religion or belief.