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Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, has now managed to get Wikipedia to drop its description of the FSU, which over the 12 days of Christmas offered Anglican clergy in the UK a discount membership offer, as a ‘far-right’ organisation.
Julian Mann, Anglican Link, 21st January 2025.
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LAST FRIDAY, Facebook removed a Free Speech Union (FSU) post about YouTube’s deletion of a video about vaccine harms. So much for Mark Zuckerberg’s fancy talk about ‘free speech’. The post, which highlighted the stigma and, ironically, censorship faced by those injured by the covid vaccines, was of course entirely lawful. Indeed, it was made by a human rights lawyer who is giving evidence to the covid inquiry. Its removal raises questions about the extent to which the platform’s pivot to a ‘Community Notes’ system (as part of a broader, sector-wide turn towards user-based verification systems) is quite the historic moment for online free speech that some observers claim.
Dr Frederick Attenborough, TCW, 19th January 2025.
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Toby Young, Director of the Free Speech Union, commented: “The fact that the Civil Service has agreed to rip up its trans policy and start again shows just how poorly written it was in the first place. It’s another example of equality law being interpreted as woke activists would like it to be rather than as it is.”
The Christian Institute, 18th January 2025.
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The sorry saga of the UK’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act reached a desultory conclusion this week. While it had been passed in parliament under the previous Conservative government in response to growing concerns about cancel culture on campuses, it had not been implemented by the time of the General Election. Within days of the Labour government taking office in July, it was dumped by the new education secretary, Bridget Phillipson. Following a backlash from academics and threatened legal action from the Free Speech Union, the Freedom of Speech Act has now been revived, albeit in a watered-down form. Whether this new, de-fanged version will be enough to put an end to the No Platforming, cancelling and self-censorship that plagues our universities remains to be seen.
Joanna Williams, Spiked Online, 17th January 2025.
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Labour’s initial attempt to kick this late-term Tory legislation into the long grass by pressing the pause button is a worrying sign. It shows that the party is not seriously committed to protecting academic freedom when it inevitably collides with hurt feelings. As Government sources have alleged, the act was a “hate speech charter”. Ministers have only acted because of overwhelming opposition and lobbying from high-profile academics such as Richard Dawkins and an imminent judicial review brought by the Free Speech Union.
Eric Kaufmann, Unherd, 16th January 2025.
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The act’s introduction preempts a judicial review against its suspension, brought by the Free Speech Union, due to be held at the end of this month. There was an outcry from academics and high-profile campaigners against the act being paused. A letter to the Times, signed by hundreds of supporters, said that academics and students had been hounded, censured, silenced or even sacked over the past 20 years for expressing legal opinions.
Nicola Woolcock, Georgia Lambert, The Times, 15th January 2025.
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Ms Phillipson is facing legal action after the Free Speech Union (FSU) launched a High Court case against her suspension of the Act, with a judicial review set to take place on Jan 23. Losing would be a humiliating episode for the Government. The FSU has argued that Ms Phillipson’s decision to pause the legislation went beyond her ministerial powers.
Poppy Wood, The Telegraph, 14th January 2025.
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A well-reasoned intervention, you might think — especially considering the recent Employment Tribunal ruling in the case of Free Speech Union (FSU) member Sean Corby, which affirmed that opposition to CRT constitutes a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act 2010 (“EqA”). While this ruling emerged from the specific context of an Employment Tribunal, it’s an important precedent that reinforces the legal protections around philosophical beliefs, especially those challenging dominant ideologies.
Freddie Attenborough, The Critic, 14th January 2025.
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Christian Concern’s Tim Dieppe, in a briefing for the Free Speech Union (FSU) published last year, warned that such a definition could severely curtail free speech, with people biting their tongues for fear of being branded Islamophobic.
Freddie Attenborough, The Spectator, 12th January 2025.
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However, Free Speech Union founder Toby Young said: “This is woke hyper-sensitivity taken to ridiculous lengths. I’ve never met a Jew, a Muslim or an atheist offended by the words ‘Christian name’.”
Thomas Godfrey, The Sun, 12th January 2025.
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