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In the Media

Articles That Mention the Free Speech Union

Police should delete any data held on on autistic 14-year-old boy who “faces death threats” after a Quran was dropped “accidentally”, say campaigners who slam officers for recording it as “hate incident”

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This decision was criticised today by the Free Speech Union, which warned that if the boys’ names were recorded in the incident reports they could show up years later on enhanced criminal records checks.
Toby Young, its general secretary, noted that new rules from the College of Policing require there to be a motivation of prejudice or hate before police record an event as a “non-crime hate incident”.

Rory Tingle, Elizabeth Haigh and Chris Brooke, Daily Mail, 2nd March 2023.

“Pupils who damaged Quran should have records wiped”

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The Free Speech Union also questioned why West Yorkshire police had recorded the episode as a “non-crime hate incident”, which it said contradicted national guidance because it appeared to be a trivial matter.
Toby Young, general secretary of the union, sought an assurance that no data had been recorded about the four boys involved or, if it had, to request its immediate deletion. As the school said there had been no “malicious intent”, the recording was inconsistent with rules set by the College of Policing, the national standards body, Young wrote.
Young wrote: “We are hard pressed to imagine a sequence of events more likely to chill public debate and freedom of expression than recording this episode as a ‘hate incident’ and attaching that data to the children’s records, in spite of the absence of any malicious intent.”

Fiona Hamilton and Ben Ellery, The Times, 1st March 2023.

New harassment laws will “turn business owners into banter police”

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Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, has written to Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, to urge her to change course.
He said: “The Equality Act has poisoned the atmosphere in workplaces up and down the country. Why on earth is a Conservative Government extending the scope of the Equality Act, so when we’re in pubs, bars, restaurants, nightclubs and sports grounds we’ll have to constantly be looking over our shoulders to make sure we’re not being overheard by the banter police? This is the opposite of the ‘war on woke’. It’s extending the writ of the woke thought police to every nook and cranny of British society.”

Camilla Turner, The Telegraph, 26th February 2023.

University sparks language row as it advises students to refer to each other as “they” until the person reveals their preferred pronouns to create “culture of inclusion”

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Toby Young, the founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said: “The problem with demanding that all staff and students declare their pronouns and, presumably, use each other’s preferred pronouns, is that it requires some of them – gender critical feminists, orthodox Christians – to affirm something they don’t believe to be true, i.e., that it’s possible for a person to change sex.”

Oliver Price, Daily Mail, 23rd February 2023.

WOKE JOKE Woke university slammed for saying use of phrase “Christian name” is offensive

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Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, said the advice illustrated that the “woke movement” was trying to cleanse the English language of terms it deemed offensive.
He said the phenomenon had been imported from American colleges.
He said: “You might even say we’ve been colonised . . .  policing language is a hallmark of every totalitarian society.”

Stephen Moyes, The Sun, 15th February 2023.

BBC apologises after failing to protect JK Rowling from “baseless” transphobia smears

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Benjamin Jones, a spokesperson for the Free Speech Union told Express.co.uk Henley’s comments on BBC were part of a long-term “campaign” to “smear” and “bully” people who do not agree with what he calls the “trans ideology”.
Talking about the recent incident, Mr Jones said: “It’s a completely baseless accusation and it’s part of a long-running pattern we see at the Free Speech Union where people are smeared or bullied if they don’t agree with trans ideology.
“JK Rowling has shown tremendous moral courage in speaking out about these issues. But for people who don’t have wealth the consequences can be devastating: you can lose your job and find you can’t pay the mortgage, just because you don’t agree with the beliefs of trans rights activists.”

Luke Whelan, Express.co.uk, 6th February 2023.

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