In the Media

Articles That Mention the Free Speech Union

The shame of being debanked

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when I discovered that PayPal had also closed the accounts of the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic, both organisations I run, that initial wave of embarrassment was replaced by anger. And after going through the internal appeals processes, I decided to launch a public campaign to get the accounts reinstated. This worked, but I haven’t used PayPal since. Meanwhile, the Free Speech Union has been lobbying the UK Treasury for the past nine months to put a stop to this sinister new form of cancel culture.

Toby Young, Spiked, 12th July 2023.

Banks told to uphold free speech after blacklisting customers holding certain views

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Mr Young last night said he believed thousands of people have had their accounts closed.
He said: “I’m pleased this issue is on Jeremy Hunt’s radar, but I hope the investigation won’t take too long. There is no doubt that thousands of people are being penalised by banks and payment services providers for exercising their right to lawful free speech.”
“Indeed, the Free Speech Union has been lobbying the Treasury to change the payment services regulations for the last nine months and submitted reams of evidence about the scale of the problem. Since then, it has only got worse. The Treasury urgently needs to change the regulations to prohibit this new and sinister form of cancel culture.”

Simon Foy, Charles Hymas and Neil Johnston, The Telegraph, 2nd July 2023.

Yorkshire Building Society “closed vicar’s account after trans protest”

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Fothergill approached the Free Speech Union after his bank’s letter.
Toby Young, the union’s founder, told The Times: “People who’ve been debanked contact the Free Speech Union all the time, but even I was shocked by this story. If you respond to a bank’s request for feedback in good faith you shouldn’t lose your account if you say something it doesn’t like. That‘s the kind of thing we’d expect to happen in Communist China, not a supposedly free country like ours.”

James Beal, The Times, 1st July 2023.