Monthly Newsletter

Latest FSU research suggests public libraries breaching freedom of speech commitment!

It was great to see our hot off the press research briefing, Not on Our Shelves – Soft Censorship in Local Authority Libraries, gaining traction over the weekend. As the Telegraph rightly says, it’s the first widespread snapshot of the effect censorious trans activists are having on our public libraries.

The FSU’s Research Officer, Carrie Clark, randomly selected 49 English local authorities with searchable online library catalogues and searched them for 10 books – five titles written from a gender critical (GC) point of view and five from a trans rights (TR) point of view. We found that the libraries in our sample stock more TR books overall and stock more TR texts than is justified by the low demand from members of the public to borrow these titles and not enough GC titles, given the much higher demand for them.

So why did we undertake this research?

Members and supporters may recall that back in August it emerged that following receipt of a “formal grievance” from a single member of staff, Labour-run Calderdale Council (metropolitan borough population: 206,600) removed a variety of books – all critical of gender ideology and transgender activism – from public view at the Council’s 12 public libraries and placed them out of sight in an off-limits storage space.

It would be troubling enough were this ‘just’ an egregious, one-off aberration. But a guidance document issued to libraries across the country cites this DIY censorship approvingly while advising staff on how to prevent “LGBTIQ+ users” seeing “offensive” gender-critical books.

The “best practice” guidance, titled Welcoming LGBTIQ+ users: advice for public library workers, has been shared among council-run public libraries across the country and contains recommendations on how to handle “transphobic books”.

Produced in 2022 by an Islington-based “LGBTIQ+ library” called Book 28, the document urges librarians not to promote works by gender-critical authors and told them how to mitigate the “risk” that LGBT readers might encounter these “offensive” titles on shelves. The guidance also suggests that staff limit the number of gender-critical books they stock.

It was in this context that the FSU decided to take a closer look at how the public library sector is approaching freedom of speech on controversial issues of interest to the public.

While our findings do not constitute a formal statistical study, Carrie did identify patterns that suggest a bias towards TR over GC books in English libraries.

For instance, over two thirds (67%) of the local authority library catalogues sampled list more TR books than GC books.  

We also found that although library stock policies are more than matching TR book demand, they are failing to meet demand for GC books.

If our sample is representative of the wider sector, then there is a clear bias in England’s local authority libraries in favour of TR books and against GC books.

We think the source of that bias is the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the professional association for librarians which has been captured by critical social justice ideology and LGBT+ activist groups like Book 28.

There are of course many sensible librarians out there who believe public libraries shouldn’t take sides on contentious political issues. But unfortunately too many libraries have been captured by woke activists behaving like bespectacled zealots in the culture war.

Like many of our institutions, public libraries are losing sight of their original purpose – which was to serve the public in a politically neutral way – and embracing an ideology imported from the United States which prompts them to come down on one side of current political debates.

Can Words Really Hurt – event video now available!

Our Edinburgh Speakeasy was recorded live on Wednesday 25th October at The Counting House venue. Joining us to discuss the threat posed to free speech by growing attempts to police ‘hate speech’ were Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, Holly Lawford-Smith, the editor of Scottish Legal News, Kapil Summan, and Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Glasgow, Dr Michael Foran.

You can now watch the event on our YouTube channel by clicking here (and don’t forget to subscribe while you’re there).

Gender conversion therapy ban – use our campaigning tool to write to your MP!

Perhaps it was wishful thinking on my part, but I had assumed that the Government’s bill to ban conversion therapy had quietly been killed off, not least because time had all but run out to publish draft legislation before the King’s Speech in November.

Alas, reports of the bill’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The latest news, as reported in the Times, is that Rishi Sunak has now decided to resurrect the bill. This is disappointing news. As an organisation, we’ve been lobbying hard against this behind the scenes, while thousands of our members and supporters also joined the fight earlier this year, using our digital campaigning tool to email their MPs flagging up the unintended consequences of banning ‘conversion therapy’ if it’s defined too broadly. 

Because it’s the difficulty of defining ‘conversion therapy’ that creates the problem for anyone concerned about protecting free speech. After all, what most people think of as ‘conversion therapy’ – using force or sinister psychological techniques to try and ‘convert’ people away from being gay – is already against the law. It follows, therefore, that if the Government thinks it’s necessary to change the law to ban ‘conversion therapy’ it must have something broader in mind.

One obvious concern is that people of faith, particularly religious leaders, might become vulnerable to prosecution if they tried to dissuade a member of their community from becoming actively gay, or offered to pray for them, or invited other members of their community to pray for them. Provided such attempts at persuasion don’t extend beyond speech, why should they be banned? What right does the state have to police what people of faith say to other members of their communities?

In the state of Victoria in Australia, which banned ‘conversion therapy’ in 2021, it is a crime punishable by up to 10 years in jail for a religious leader to have a one-to-one conversation with a member of their congregation in which they pressurise them to practice celibacy rather than act on their feelings of same-sex attraction.

But even if you don’t share that concern, there are other risks associated with such a bill. We know that some advocates of the ban want it to cover any attempt to dissuade children suffering from gender dysphoria from having irreversible medical procedures, such as a double mastectomy. A bill that prevents parents from trying to talk their children out of such procedures is clearly unacceptable from a free speech point of view.

And what about doctors? In the past few years, a ‘gender affirmative model’ has become the norm in clinical settings like the Tavistock Clinic. Faced with cases of gender distress, this approach encourages clinicians to affirm rather than question a child’s chosen gender identity, before then putting them on a medical pathway that can have lifelong, irreversible consequences. We now know that even puberty blockers, intended to delay the onset of puberty so children suffering from gender dysphoria can have more time before deciding whether to have surgery, can cause lifelong harms, such as bone disease and infertility.

The risk is that a poorly drafted bill would effectively criminalise parents, teachers and doctors who deviate from the ‘affirmative’ approach. (In the state of Victoria, it’s a crime for a parent to refuse to support their child’s request for puberty blockers.) Even a carefully drafted bill would be in danger of being amended by members of the LGBTQ+ lobby as it went through parliament so it ended up banning ‘conversion therapy’ of that kind.

We are therefore asking our members and supporters to write to their MPs urging them to advise Rishi Sunak not to publish this bill. Why open this can of worms? Conversion therapy is already illegal in this country and any attempt to extend the ban in the vain hope of winning over ‘progressive’ voters would inevitably be hijacked by woke activists and end up having a chilling effect on free speech.

Please email your MP using our campaigning tool to share these concerns.

The link to the campaigning tool is here.

Christmas Comedy Benefit – tickets now available!

Our annual Comedy Benefit will take place just before Christmas on Wednesday 20th December. Our MC for the evening is FSU favourite Dominic Frisby and he’ll be joined on stage by a fantastic line-up: Francis Foster, Daniel O’Reilly, Tania Edwards and Alistair Williams. Come and let your hair down with the FSU staff as we celebrate another successful year defending free speech. Tickets here.

Westminster Declaration delivered to PM, warns of rise of ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’

It was great to see the Westminster Declaration gaining traction this month (NY Post, Telegraph, Times).

I was one of the signatories to the document which included figures from all sides of the political spectrum, including the biologist Richard Dawkins, historians Niall Ferguson and Robert Tombs, economist Yanis Varoufakis, philosopher Slavoj Zizek, comedian John Cleese, author Jordan Peterson and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Despite our fundamental political and ideological disagreements, we felt it was important to speak as one against “the encroaching forces of censorship”, as the Declaration puts it, so we can maintain our ability to openly debate and challenge one another

The Westminster Declaration Says:

Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex’.

This complex often operates through direct government policies. Authorities in India and Turkey have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany and the Supreme Court in Brazil are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland’s ‘Hate Speech’ Bill, Scotland’s Hate Crime Act, the UK’s Online Safety Bill, and Australia’s ‘Misinformation’ Bill threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect.

These are what you might call direct government policies, and, as such, are at least nominally subject to democratic votes. But they represent only the visible part of that much larger, insidious system that the Declaration refers to as the Censorship Industrial Complex.

Earlier this year, the journalist Matt Taibbi began compiling a top-50 style ranking of the ‘main players’ in the new global censorship eco-system.

You almost certainly haven’t heard of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), for instance, yet it sits at #23 in Matt’s list. As I point out in the Spectator this week, the TNI is a BBC-led consortium of the world’s most powerful news, social media and technology companies that seeks to cleanse the internet of ‘mis-’ and ‘disinformation’. It carries out this mission by doing its best to discredit sites that challenge the prevailing narrative on topics like lockdowns, Covid vaccines, electoral fraud, the Ukraine war, and climate change.

Then, at #37, we have the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a shadowy, UK-based, government-funded organisation that, according to Taibbi, “announces openly that its strategy is to push major digital marketing clients to redirect their online ad spending”. Taxpayers’ money is being funnelled through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to the GDI, which compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” – or “blocklist” – of mostly conservative publications and then feeds that list to advertising agencies with the aim of persuading them to steer clear.

I could go on. And on. But I won’t. At least, not here. Because on Wednesday 1st November, I’ll be delivering the Contrarian Prize lecture at Bayes Business School. During my talk, entitled, ‘Freedom of Speech and Censorship: Examining the Tensions between open discourse and harmful content’, I’ll be reflecting on the work the FSU is now engaged in, monitoring the rise of ‘disinformation trackers’ like the TNI and the GDI, and arguing that the efforts to suppress misinformation, disinformation and ‘hate speech’ nearly always backfire and undermine democratic discourse.

Responding to the lecture will be Dr Mark Honigsbaum, Senior Lecturer in Journalism at City, University of London, and Jemima Kelly, columnist at the Financial Times. The event will be chaired by Cindy Yu, Assistant Editor of the Spectator. The lecture is now sold out, but I’ll post a link to it online in the next monthly newsletter.

FSU’s weekly podcast now available!

The latest episode of the FSU’s weekly podcast, That’s Debatable! is now available to download for free – click here to listen to the episode in full.

This week’s talking points include Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley being called in by the Home Secretary for what civil servants used to call “a meeting without coffee” to explain his force’s light-touch policing of pro-Palestinian protests on the streets of London, where calls for “Muslim armies” to commence “Jihad” against Israel were clearly audible.

Hosts Tom and Ben also discuss the Westminster Declaration and review some of the latest trends from the FSU’s casework dataset. Over the past three years we’ve taken on 2,250+ cases of people who’ve been penalised for expressing their perfectly lawful views, so our case files constitute arguably the most complete and compelling evidence yet compiled on the phenomenon of cancel culture in an advanced Western liberal democracy.

New Free Speech Tsar for English Universities now in post!

There are “persistent and widespread concerns” that many in higher education are being silenced, “either by the activity of the university or by its inactivity”, the new freedom of speech champion for English universities, Prof Arif Ahmed, has warned.

In his first major speech as Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students (OfS) this month, Professor Ahmed set out his priorities for the role.

“Freedom of speech and academic freedom are fundamental to higher education,” he said, adding: “The core mission of universities and colleges is the pursuit of knowledge, and the principles of free speech and academic freedom are fundamental to this purpose.

“But there are now persistent and widespread concerns that many in higher education are being silenced, either by the activity of the university or by its inactivity.”

Prof Ahmed also said his team at the OfS will take a “broadly viewpoint neutral approach” and will protect the “lawful speech rights of speakers at universities”.

“It makes no difference at all,” he continued, “whether you are in favour of Brexit or against it, what side you take on statues or pronouns or colonialism, or abortion or animal rights, or Ulez – if you do it within the law.”

It’s great news that Prof Ahmed is now in post. His appointment by the Government earlier this year followed the passage into law of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act.

The legislation created an enforcement mechanism to uphold and promote free speech.

The appointment of a Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom to the Office for Students – i.e., the role Prof Ahmed now holds – creates a ‘first port of call’ for students and academics who believe their speech rights have been breached.

The Act also introduced a new statutory tort, whereby students and academics will be able to sue universities in the County Court if their speech rights are breached.

This vital piece of legislation is something the FSU campaigned for over the past three years. We lobbied for the Bill when the Government was weighing up whether it was needed, advised the Government on what to include in it, defended it from critics in both Houses of Parliament, helped to amend it and, finally, mobilised our allies in Parliament to get it over the line.

About 20% of the 2,250+ cases we’ve dealt with in the past three years have involved universities and in almost every one the student or academic who’s got into trouble would have been in a stronger position if this new law had been on the statute books.

The FSU’s first South West Speakeasy – tickets now available!

We are delighted to announce the details of our first Regional Speakeasy in the South West of England. FSU members and the wider public are invited to gather for a debate and a drink in Exeter on Wednesday 29th November. You can get your tickets here.

Our speakers will be Professor Doug Stokes of the University of Exeter and Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, the director of campaign group Don’t Divide Us. They’ll discuss what the campaign to ‘decolonise’ really means and consider its implications for truth-seeking, equality and freedom of expression.

We do hope that large numbers of members will be able to get to Exeter for this event, which will include a stimulating discussion and the chance to meet other free speech enthusiasts from the region. There will be a pay bar at the venue.

P.S. Members in the Cambridge area are invited to attend a gathering on Thursday 16th November of the Free Speech Cambridge group, where the special guest will be author and campaigner Laura Dodsworth. Tickets are free, but you must reserve a spot here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

War hero Dr Kelvin Wright cleared of wrongdoing by British Army for holding ‘gender critical’ views!

FSU member Dr Kelvin Wright, a colonel who was forced out of the army after being hit with a transphobia complaint for stating that “men cannot be women”, has been cleared of any wrongdoing by an official inquiry.

That’s a terrific outcome – the FSU has been supporting Dr Wright every step of the way during this Kafkaesque investigation and arranged for him to receive top-drawer legal advice while committing to foot any legal bills.

The freedom to express your views in the public square is a fundamental human right that the British Army is supposed to be defending, not attacking. It’s therefore reassuring to see that the inquiry’s findings are full of praise for Dr Wright and make clear that he has a legal right to express his gender critical beliefs.

Dr Wright joined Piers Morgan on TalkTV recently to talk about his ordeal. During a barnstorming appearance that gives a sense of the calibre of commanding officer the army has lost, he recounted how back in 2021 he’d shared a post on his private Facebook account from Fair Play for Women, a campaign group fighting to defend the integrity of women’s sport. The post consisted of a quote from Dr Helen Joyce, the Director of Advocacy at campaign group Sex Matters. Shared without any additional comment, it read: “If women cannot stand in a public place and say ‘men cannot be women’, then we do not have women’s rights at all.”

A solitary complaint then snowballed, and a group that Dr Wright describes as the Army’s “LGBT champions” subsequently drew up a seven-page dossier about his “substandard behaviour” – which he was never allowed to see.

However, we know that one of the complaints against Dr Wright was that he was prejudiced for banning pronouns badges from uniforms.

Another grievance related to Dr Wright’s wife saying of Strictly Come Dancing that she liked to see men and women dance together.

Unbelievably, a formal investigation was then opened, and could have led to Dr Wright being formally censured under the Army’s Major Administrative Action process.

I’m delighted that the investigation has now cleared Dr Wright of all wrongdoing, although the complaint against this army medic, who did tours of Afghanistan, should never have been taken seriously.

Live in conversation: Nigel Farage and Toby Young!

Please do join me for what looks set to be a fascinating late-night event in London on Monday 9th October at the Hippodrome where I’ll be in conversation with broadcaster and former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage. We’ll be discussing the latest threats to freedom of speech, including politically motivated financial censorship. Following Nigel’s de-banking by Coutts earlier this year and the closure of the Free Speech Union’s account by PayPal in 2022, we’ve both got plenty of what progressives like to call ‘lived experience’ of that particular issue.

There will, of course, be an audience Q and A. Tickets are £25 and include a free bar (wine and beer only) between 8 and 9pm. Tickets are available here.

Big legal victory for FSU member after workplace critical race theory dispute!

In a ground-breaking judgment against cancel culture, the Employment Tribunal has ruled that ACAS employee and FSU member Sean Corby was expressing a legitimate philosophical belief when he challenged Critical Race Theory (CRT) in his workplace!

It is believed to be the first time a judge has ruled that holding a contrary view to CRT is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.

This is a terrific result – the FSU has been supporting Mr Corby every step of the way in his dispute with ACAS and helped him secure top-drawer legal representation in the form of barrister Jon Holbrook.

Mr Corby had written on a workplace ‘Yammer’ forum that CRT is divisive because it portrays white people as racist and argued that a better approach to addressing racism in society is to follow the advice of Martin Luther King, who said people should be judged by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.

However, some of Mr Corby’s colleagues then complained to bosses that his comments “demonstrated a deep-rooted hatred towards black people” and “promoted racist ideas”.

Although ACAS dismissed these complaints, they instructed Mr Corby to remove the posts on the grounds that these complainants had found them offensive.

Mr Corby then took ACAS to an employment tribunal, claiming he had been unlawfully discriminated against and his views were protected under the Equality Act 2010, in the same way as his colleagues’ advocacy of CRT is protected.

Employment Judge Kirsty Ayre has now ruled in Corby’s favour, which means that his belief in a ‘colour blind’ approach to tackling racism amounts to a characteristic that will now be protected by the Equality Act.

That’s important for two reasons. First, it drastically improves Mr Corby’s chances of achieving a favourable outcome when the Tribunal resumes in April 2024 to consider whether ACAS unlawfully discriminated against him for expressing what are now his protected philosophical beliefs on race and racism.

Second, it sets an important legal precedent. While it’s true that the ruling is only a first-instance judgment, and not binding on others, it does nonetheless give some interesting indications of the way a tribunal can be expected to treat a similar case in future, particularly in instances where an employee expresses a ‘colour-blind’ critique of the woke or critical theory approach to racism so in vogue with ‘progressive’ employers, associations, accreditation bodies and professional regulators.

Employees have of course always been legally entitled to hold colour-blind ‘opinions’ on race and race equality – but in the wake of Mr Corby’s Employment Tribunal ruling, employers that have for too long been indulging the every whim of their woke, activist employees will have to confront the fact that manifesting those opinions through lawful speech and action has for the first time been granted protection under the Equality Act.

FSU re-arranges education conference panel for no-platformed academic!

On Saturday 23rd September, Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert was due to speak on a panel at the Rethinking Education conference in London, debating how we should distinguish education from indoctrination. However, two days before the event, Dr Sehgal Cuthbert was notified by the organisers that a handful of delegates had expressed concerns that their ‘psychological safety’ would be undermined by being in her presence, due to the campaigning work of her organisation Don’t Divide Us (DDU). DDU researches and challenges the divisive effect of identity politics in education and other policy fields.

Rather than explaining to the complainants that the purpose of the event was to debate challenging educational questions and that no ‘safety’ issues, psychological or otherwise, would be posed by Dr Cuthbert, the organisers decided to no-platform her. Commendably, her fellow panellists withdrew from the event in solidarity and the debate was cancelled.

When news of this incident broke, the FSU wrote to the conference organiser, urging him to respect free speech and reconsider his decision. (You can read our letter to the organiser here, in which we asked him to apologise).

The organiser did then issue an apology to Dr Sehgal Cuthbert, but alas this was after the conference had ended, which meant that delegates lost the opportunity to hear an open debate on this contested topic.

However, Dr Sehgal Cuthbert and all three of her psychologically resilient fellow panellists have agreed to speak at an alternative event organised by the FSU in partnership with DDU. The debate, ‘What is indoctrination within education and how might it be avoided?’ will go ahead on Monday 16th October at 7pm and FSU members can join the live audience by booking tickets here or join online here.

Online Safety Bill to receive Royal Assent in much improved form following FSU campaign work!

The UK’s controversial and long-awaited Online Safety Bill, which grants Ofcom sweeping new surveillance and censorship powers, has been passed by Parliament and will soon become law, the government has said.

The FSU is disappointed that the legislation has been passed. But thanks to our lobbying and campaign work, as well as the emails our members sent to their MPs to share their concerns using our digital campaigning tool, the version of the Bill reaching the statute books is a significant improvement on earlier versions.

The obligation on social media companies to “address” so-called ‘legal but harmful’ content, as set out in Clause 13 of previous iterations of the Bill, has now been removed. Our objection to this clause was that the phrase “address” risked becoming a euphemism for “remove”. If the government had published a list of legal content it considered harmful to adults – which a provision in an earlier version of the Bill enabled it to do – and imposed an obligation on in-scope providers to say how they intended to “address” this content, that would have nudged them to remove it. Thanks to our campaigning, however, that obligation (and that provision) has now been scrapped.

The new Harmful Communications Offence, which was to replace s127 of the Communications Act 2003 as well as the Malicious Communications Act, and could have seen people jailed for two years for sending or posting a message with the intention of causing “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”, has also gone. In other words, the legislation won’t now criminalise saying something, whether online or offline, that causes hurty feelings and we deserve some of the credit for that.

The original duty imposed on social media companies to “have regard” for freedom of expression has now been bumped up to “have particular regard”, another improvement we can claim credit for.

We were also well ahead of the curve in promoting user empowerment as an alternative to the de facto policing of ‘legal but harmful’ content by Silicon Valley based Big Tech companies — in the final iteration of the legislation, the locus of responsibility for online safety decisively shifts from ‘paternalist providers’ to ‘empowered users’. The result is that instead of saying how they intend to “address” harmful content in their terms of service, providers will now have to say what tools they’re going to make available to their users who don’t want to be exposed to it.

I should also stress that the passage of the Bill onto the statute book is not the end of the story as far as the FSU’s campaigning work goes.

Ofcom’s Chief Executive, Dame Melanie Dawes, has confirmed that the UK’s new regulator for online safety will shortly be setting out the first set of standards that it expects tech firms to meet when it comes to offering users the option to filter out ‘harmful’ content they don’t want to see.

The FSU will be watching closely to see how those ‘standards’ end up influencing the user empowerment tools that each social media platform offers to its users.

Can words really hurt? Tickets for our Edinburgh Speakeasy now available!

Join us on Wednesday October 25th in Edinburgh for the FSU’s next Speakeasy, where we’ll be discussing the threat posed to free speech by growing attempts to police ‘hate’. Our expert panel includes Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, Prof Holly Lawford-Smith, the editor of Scottish Legal News Kapil Summan, and Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Glasgow, Dr Michael Foran.

I doubt the panel will be short of things to talk about. Almost three years after receiving royal assent, Scotland’s controversial Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act – which FSU Scottish Advisory Council member Jamie Gillies describes as an “authoritarian mess” – is due to be activated in 2024. It was reported recently that Police Scotland are setting up a special unit to deal with the new hate crimes that are now codified in law and training is underway. Widespread concern about the chilling effect on free speech of this legislation was one of the reasons the FSU set up a dedicated Scottish office in 2021.

Tickets are £5 for FSU members and £10 for non-members. The link to purchase tickets is here.

FSU writes to Oxford University over “free speech stifling” trans inclusion policy!

In my capacity as the FSU’s General Secretary, I wrote to the Master of Regent’s Park College, Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, asking him to withdraw the College’s ‘Trans Inclusion Statement’ (the Statement), which we believe is based on a misunderstanding of the Equality Act 2010. The Times covered the story here.

Regent’s Park College published its 1,200-word statement in June, which all students and employees of the College have to comply with. The Statement stipulates that any “unlawful discriminatory behaviour, including transphobic harassment or bullying by individuals or groups, will be dealt with under the College’s Policy on Harassment and Bullying and within the relevant legislation, the Equality Act 2010”.

Examples of “harassment” supposedly prohibited by the Equality Act include “making jokes about trans people or their trans status” and “consistently using incorrect titles or pronouns or names to refer to a trans person (‘deadnaming’)”.

As I point out in the letter, however, the Equality Act imposes a duty on employers to protect their employees from harassment by other employees, not third parties – and for the purposes of the Equality Act, students are third parties. Consequently, the Equality Act doesn’t prohibit students from making jokes about trans people or using their non-preferred pronouns.

The Statement is also in direct conflict with the College’s Freedom of Speech Policy and the University of Oxford’s Free Speech Statement, which states: “Recognising the vital importance of free expression for the life of the mind, a university may make rules concerning the conduct of debate but should never prevent speech that is lawful. Inevitably, this will mean that members of the University/College are confronted with views that some find unsettling, extreme or offensive.”

In his response to my letter, Professor Evans insists that for a student with gender critical beliefs to be the victim of any form of harassment as a result of their holding or expressing their lawfully held views “would be a matter of concern under this policy in exactly the same way as would the harassment of a trans person”.

I’m grateful to Professor Evans for his reply and for giving that assurance. It’s certainly true that the Statement refers to the need to “uphold lawful freedom of expression” and protect “lawfully expressed gender-critical beliefs”. Nonetheless, any insistence that students comply with the College’s “commitment to trans inclusion” in all the ways set out in the Statement – that they affirm everything a trans person believes about their gender, for instance – still risks breaching the College’s legal duty to uphold free speech (a duty that, as explained above, is not diluted by the Equality Act).

That’s why we remain concerned that this Statement risks stifling free speech and may well encourage students to make complaints of harassment to silence those who express perfectly lawful beliefs that they disagree with.

Trans staff and students should, of course, be free from discrimination and harassment. But many people, not just gender critical feminists, reject the idea that sex is a social construct, and, according to the courts, the belief that sex is binary and immutable is a lawful and reasonable point-of-view, deserving of protection under the Equality Act, so we think the prohibitions set out in the Statement wouldn’t apply to the College’s employees either. They should not be compelled to make statements or endorse an ideology that they don’t subscribe to.

If a member of the College is penalised in any way for refusing to comply with any of the legally dubious prohibitions in the Statement, we will offer them our support, up to and including legal support.

Sibyl Ruth receives damages and an apology following sacking for gender critical tweets

Many of you will be familiar with the case of writer, editor and FSU member Sibyl Ruth. Sibyl was effectively terminated by Cornerstones Literary Consultancy without explanation or notice because she tweeted about her gender critical beliefs.

The FSU has been supporting Sibyl since she approached us about a year ago – we helped her in the early stages of her dispute with Cornerstones, linked her up with top notch employment solicitor Emma Hamnett of Doyle Clayton and set up a CrowdJustice page for her. Sibyl, whom Cornerstones argued was self-employed, was due to go to the Employment Tribunal on September 14th to argue that she was in fact a worker entitled to Equality Act protections. She needed to get over this hurdle to make her case that Cornerstones discriminated against her because of her age and beliefs.

However, we’re now pleased to announce that the case has been settled and Cornerstones has issued an apology. The apology recognises that Sibyl holds gender critical feminist beliefs, that she is “entitled to these views even if Cornerstones does not share aspects of those views” and that these are “worthy of respect in a democratic society”.

This is an excellent outcome for Sibyl who, after fighting for her right to express her lawful beliefs, can now move on with her life. The outcome of this case is not just a victory for Sibyl but for all gender critical feminists and it serves as an important reminder to businesses to treat all staff, no matter their age or beliefs, fairly and with respect.

Sibyl has posted an update to her crowdfunder page to share the news of her settlement and to thank the FSU and her legal team for all the work they’ve done on her case. Sibyl writes:

Most of all I am grateful to everyone who donated to this crowdfunder. This outcome would not have been possible without your support and help… My hope for the future is that arts organisations will recognise the rights of all precariously employed workers to express their lawful opinions outside the workplace.

You can read Sibyl’s full update on her crowdfunder page here. We’ve also clipped a section from her post-settlement appearance on Andrew Doyle’s GB News show Free Speech Nation here.

Big free speech victory as bill to ban conversion therapy is scrapped!

According to “sources” cited in the Sunday Times, the government is expected to formally announce that legislation to ban ‘conversion therapy’ will be scrapped.

This is a significant victory for free speech – and thanks in no small part to the thousands of FSU members and supporters who used our digital campaigning tool to email their MPs urging them to scrutinise the Government’s proposals and consider the unintended consequences for freedom of speech if ‘conversion therapy’ is defined too broadly.

Of course, there are some forms of ‘conversion therapy’ that few people would object to being banned, such as attempts to stop someone from being gay or transgender via exorcism, physical violence or food deprivation. No-one is disputing that ‘treatments’ of this kind have no place in a free society. But a bill isn’t required to ban them because such practices are already illegal in the UK.

The risk to free speech is that a poorly worded bill would effectively criminalise parents, teachers and doctors who deviated from an ‘affirmative’ approach to gender dysphoria in children and adolescents. Even a carefully drafted bill would be in danger of being amended by members of the LGBTQ+ lobby as it went through parliament, so it ended up banning ‘conversion therapy’ of that kind.

That might seem like an outlandish fear, but in the Australian state of Victoria, where ‘conversion therapy’ has been banned since 2021, a parent who refuses to support their child’s request for puberty blockers is at risk of prosecution.

The FSU has been lobbying hard against this bill for over a year and is delighted the government has listened — not just to us and our members, but to all the other advocacy groups concerned about the bill’s impact on freedom of expression.

The FSU’s Communications Officer, Freddie Attenborough, has written an excellent piece about this major victory for free speech in The Critic – you can read that here.

FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel gives evidence to Public Bill Committee

The FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel Dr Bryn Harris gave evidence in Parliament about the Economic Activities of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill. (You can watch footage of the meeting here.) The aim of the Bill is to prevent public authorities, such as councils and universities, from imposing their own boycotts on foreign countries on political or moral grounds. The Bill mainly, though not exclusively, targets the anti-Israeli BDS movement.

The FSU accepts that the powers of public bodies must and should be limited by law – there is no public interest in local authorities or universities using public funds to pursue their own foreign policy. The Bill goes too far, however, in restricting what public decision-makers can say about divestment. It prevents them from saying that they intend to impose a boycott in breach of the Bill and, most problematically, they would impose a boycott were the Bill not law. We believe this is unnecessary – existing and less intrusive laws restrain public bodies from carrying out proposed unlawful acts, and the law simply has no business prohibiting mere hypothetical statements.

We look forward to scrutinising this Bill as it passes through Parliament.

Latest episode of the FSU’s podcast available now!

The latest episode of the FSU’s weekly podcast is out now. This week the talking points include the parallels between last week’s letter from Dame Caroline Dinenage requesting on-line platforms to consider demonetising Russell Brand and the long but fascinating history of Acts of Attainder. The two hosts also discuss the victory of Dr Kelvin Wright and the no-platforming of Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert. The link to download the episode is available here.

FSU Australia launches!

I’m delighted to announce the launch of FSU Australia – a sister organisation and the latest addition to our growing family, which so far includes the FSU New Zealand and the FSU South Africa. You can find FSU Australia’s X (formerly Twitter) account here, and find its website here. In fact, we’re soon going to be announcing a fourth sister organisation – more details on that one in due course!

Kind regards,

Toby Young

There was speculation last week that the UK government’s bill to ban ‘conversion therapy’ has been quietly killed off, given that time had all but run out to publish draft legislation before the King’s Speech in November. When Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse asked on September 14th if the bill would be ready in time for the King’s Speech, Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt deftly sidestepped the question.

Now, however, ‘sources’ have told the Sunday Times that the government is expected to formally announce the legislation will no longer be brought forward, five years after Theresa May’s government first vowed to make conversation therapy a criminal offence, with ministers concluding it has proved problematic or ineffective in other countries (most notably Australia and Canada).

That’s a significant victory for free speech – and one that’s thanks in no small part to the thousands of FSU members and supporters that used our digital campaigning tool to email their MPs urging them to scrutinise the Government’s proposals and consider the unintended consequences for freedom of speech if ‘conversion therapy’ is defined too broadly.

One obvious concern is that people of faith, particularly religious leaders, would be vulnerable to prosecution if they tried to dissuade a member of their community from becoming actively gay, or offered to pray for them, or invited other members of their community to pray for them. Provided such attempts at persuasion don’t extend beyond speech and involve an element of coercion, what right does the state have to police what people of faith say to other members of their communities?

But even if you don’t share that concern, there are other risks associated with such a bill. We know that some advocates of the ban want it to cover any attempt to persuade children suffering from gender dysphoria not to have medical procedures that they may later come to regret, such as a double mastectomy. A bill that prevents parents from trying to talk their children out of such procedures is clearly unacceptable from a free speech point of view.

Of course, there are some forms of ‘conversion therapy’ that few people would object to being banned, such as attempts to stop someone from being gay or transgender via exorcism, physical violence or food deprivation. No-one is disputing that ‘treatments’ of this kind have no place in a free society, but a bill isn’t required to ban them. Such practices are already illegal in the UK.

Where things start to get more complicated is at the softer end of the spectrum if ‘conversion therapy’ is defined too broadly – specifically, practices that centre on children and adolescents. In the past few years, a ‘gender affirmative model’ has taken hold in clinical settings like the NHS’s controversial, soon-to-be-closed Tavistock Clinic. Faced with cases of gender distress, this model encourages clinicians to affirm rather than question a child’s chosen gender identity, before then putting them on a medical pathway that can have lifelong, irreversible consequences. We now know that even puberty blockers, intended to delay the onset of puberty so children suffering from gender dysphoria can have more time before deciding whether to have surgery, can cause lifelong harms, such as bone disease and infertility.

The risk, then, is that a poorly drafted bill would effectively criminalise parents, teachers and doctors who deviate from the ‘affirmative’ approach. Even a carefully drafted bill would be in danger of being amended by members of the LGBTQ+ lobby as it went through parliament so it ended up banning ‘conversion therapy’ of that kind. That might seem like an outlandish fear, but in the Australian state of Victoria, where ‘conversion therapy’ has been banned since 2021, a parent who refuses to support their child’s request for puberty blockers is at risk of prosecution.

Trans activists and trans lobby groups like Stonewall pooh-pooh this as scare-mongering, but anyone familiar with the fraught wrangling now taking place over the meaning of the word ‘sex’ in the 2010 Equality Act can attest to the unintended but profound consequences that an undefined word or phrase can have on the right to freedom of expression when it comes to society’s most controversial issues.

Canada’s Bill C-4, which two years ago made it an offence to “cause another person to undergo conversion therapy”, illustrates what’s at stake here. According to Canada’s criminal code, it is now a crime to “repress a person’s non-cisgender gender identity” or to “repress… a person’s gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth”.

Note the subtle inference here that ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ are not in fact contestable theoretical postulates, but cold, hard, unquestionable facts. In effect, Canadian parents who want to explore the many, varied reasons why their children are showing signs of gender confusion, or who might want to their child to see a psychotherapist before agreeing to irreversible medical procedures, now risk prosecution and up to five years in jail. By contrast, trans rights activists and health professionals who encourage children to change their gender – a form of ‘conversion therapy’, after all – have nothing to fear from the new law.

There’s a whiff of Soviet-era Lysenkoism about any state sanctioned attempt to protect a supposedly scientific framework from scrutiny, but given that ours is a culture in which tolerance of dissent from gender identity ideology is already in short supply, it’s easy to see how a ‘conversion therapy’ ban could quickly be weaponised by trans activists – witness the attempted cancellation of Irish singer Roisin Murphy for expressing her concerns about the over-prescription of puberty blockers.

Doctors have both a right and a duty to recommend what in their judgment is the best clinical pathway for a patient who identifies as trans, particularly if that patient is a minor. As per the findings of NHS England’s interim Cass Review last year, clinicians at the Tavistock said they felt under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach in a manner that was at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they had been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters. How much more pressure would they feel under to take this approach if a bill banning ‘conversion therapy’ was passed? Would it require them to break the Hippocratic oath on pain of prosecution?

For all those reasons, the FSU welcomes the government’s decision. We have been lobbying hard against this bill for over a year and are delighted the government has listened – not just to us and our members, but to all the other advocacy groups concerned about the bill’s impact on free speech. This is a major victory for free speech.

If you’re a supporter receiving this email, i.e., someone who has signed up to receive emails like this but hasn’t yet joined, please do consider joining by clicking here. Without your financial support we cannot engage in vital work such as this.

The FSU is going to be putting up its membership fees later this month, the first time they’ve been raised since we launched three years ago. They’ll only be going up by 20%, lower than the rate of inflation in those three years, but we need to increase them if we’re to continue offering our members the same benefits, which can include expensive legal support.

Which makes this an excellent time for supporters to join. Not only will you be able to join at the current rate, but you won’t be charged at the new rate until after 1st October 2024. That’s right – for all those who’ve already joined by the time the price goes up, we’ll be locking in the old price, which means you won’t be charged at the new higher rate for at least a year.

You can click here to watch the video I’ve recorded on X (formerly Twitter) inviting you to join us at the FSU!

As a member of the FSU, not only will you get top level support if you get into difficulty for exercising your right to lawful free speech, as well as invitations and discounted tickets to all our events and our weekly newsletters. You’ll also get exclusive access to our premium content.

At the moment, everything on our website is free, but when we relaunch it later this month we’re going to be restricting access to our premium content – such as our FAQs on what to do if you’ve been de-banked and our extended interviews with world famous free speech champions like Douglas Murray and Kathleen Stock – to our members.

So, if you’re a supporter who values the work we do and you want to join the fight the defend free speech, please join today. We’ll be relaunching the website and increasing our membership fees on Friday 15th September. And remember – if you join before the prices go up, you won’t be charged at the new rate for at least a year.

You can join by clicking here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

FSU wins substantial compensation for bank manager sacked in free speech row

The Free Speech Union racked up another significant legal victory at the employment tribunal (ET) last month, securing what promises to be a significant pay-out for a dyslexic Lloyds bank manager sacked in a free speech row!

Carl Borg-Neal, 57, was unfairly dismissed and subject to disability discrimination when Lloyds Bank sacked him for using a racial slur during a workplace-based diversity training session. He is now likely to recover damages for past loss of earnings, future loss of earnings, a pensions award, compensation for discrimination and compensation for personal injury, all amounting to a significant sum.

In July 2021, Mr Borg-Neal was one of around 100 senior Lloyd’s managers who logged on to an online training session entitled ‘Race Education for Line Managers’. Provided by an external organisation, the training formed part of the bank’s ‘Race Action Plan’, launched in the wake of George Floyd’s death the previous year.

Carl had worked for Lloyds Bank for 27 years without issue, was popular among colleagues, and had risen to a highly technical managerial role at head office. Far from being indifferent to racial equality, he had recently joined a new scheme mentoring young colleagues from ethnic minorities and was working with three mentees, one of African descent, one of Asian descent and one of European (non-UK) descent.

At the start of the session, the trainer read out a script that established the parameters for what was to follow. “When we talk about race, people often worry about saying the wrong thing,” she said. “Please understand that today is your opportunity to practice, learn and be clumsy… The goal is to start talking, so please speak freely, and forgive yourself and others when being clumsy today.”

At a relevant point during a subsequent discussion on ‘intent vs effect’, Mr Borg-Neal decided to take the trainer’s statement at face-value and “speak freely”. Thinking partly about rap music, he asked how as a line manager he should handle a situation where he heard someone from an ethnic minority use a word that might be considered offensive if used by a white person. Met with a puzzled look from the trainer, he added, “The most common example being use of the word n***** in the black community.”

Carl didn’t receive a response to his ‘clumsy’ question. In fact, he was angrily berated by the trainer. He tried to apologise for any offence, but was told if he spoke again he would be thrown off the course.

Other managers on the course complained that Carl’s question never received an answer – indeed, anonymous feedback collated after the session suggests the trainer’s behaviour was not particularly well-received. “I was shocked by the manner and tone used by one presenter to a colleague,” said a respondent. “After saying at the beginning this would be a safe environment and [acknowledging] we may make mistakes, she launched into a vitriolic attack… I believe [Mr Borg-Neal] was trying to ask a valid question to aid understanding.”

After the course, the trainer claimed she was so offended by use of the n-word that she was too sick to work and took five days off. The provider then complained to Lloyds Bank.

It was the fact that the trainer needed to take time off that triggered an investigation, with the bank subsequently accusing Carl of racism and launching a disciplinary process that led to his dismissal for gross misconduct.

After 27 years, his career lay in tatters.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to appeal Lloyd’s decision, Carl joined the Free Speech Union. Having reviewed the case, we instructed Doyle Clayton – an expert firm of employment solicitors – who brought a claim against Lloyds Bank in the Tribunal.

Something that emerged particularly strongly from the hearing was the extent to which Lloyd’s focused on Mr Carl Borg-Neal’s use of the n-word in isolation, irrespective of the context in which he’d used it.

For instance, the initial HR caseworker talked to colleagues from the bank’s Inclusion and Diversity team “to understand the impact of the word used on session attendees”. The disciplinary Hearing Manager then spoke to witnesses “to understand the impact of use of the term on the facilitator”. During the appeal process, the new Hearing Manager also focused on the impact that use of the n-word had had on the individual carrying out the training.

It was on the basis of this semantic fixation that the bank could concede that Mr Borg-Neal had not intended to cause any hurt, that he asked the question with no malice, and that the question itself was valid, but then still dismiss him for gross misconduct. The bank’s argument was that Mr Borg-Neal should have known better than “to use the full word in a professional environment”.

However, thanks to top-drawer representation from Doyle Clayton, we were successfully able to steer the panel towards an appreciation of the wider context in which the n-word had been uttered.

Explaining its unanimous decision to rule the dismissal unfair, the panel noted variously that: the incident had taken place during a race education session, and specifically during a discussion of ‘intent versus impact’; it was a well-intentioned relevant question regarding how to handle a situation of racially offensive language in the workplace; there was no suggestion that he was taking an opportunity to say an abusive term under cover of a question; and that his dyslexia affected his ability to formulate his question carefully.

Lloyds Bank also relied heavily on the suggestion that Mr Borg-Neal had demonstrated a lack of concern for the impact of his actions on others. According to the Hearing Manager, it was “because of the absence of any deeper acceptance as to why [Mr Borg-Neal’s] use of the word was so inappropriate [that it was] difficult to make the case that action short of dismissal such as further training or removing [him] from a position of influence as a role model would be sufficient”. 

The panel was distinctly unimpressed with this line of reasoning. “This is an unusual distinction given that the claimant had repeatedly apologised,” they wrote. “He told [the Hearing Manager] that he understood in hindsight that the trainer could be upset. He said a friend had told him use of the word was inappropriate and ‘I get that now’. He said he understood his conduct had fallen below expectation. One wonders what was expected of him.”

Almut Gadow fundraiser – show your support!

It’s heartening to see so many people making contributions to former law lecturer and Free Speech Union member Dr Almut Gadow’s legal crowdfunder. (Click here to take a look at the supportive comments that donors have been leaving on Dr Gadow’s page.)

Similarly encouraging is the fact that this case has gained traction both in the print press (GB News, Mail, Telegraph, Spiked) and the broadcast media (GBNews, Sky News Australia, TalkTV).

Supported by the Free Speech Union, Dr Gadow is bringing a case against the Open University (OU), arguing that she was harassed, discriminated against and unfairly dismissed because she rejects gender identity ideology.

Almut was sacked by the OU after questioning requirements to embed gender identity in the institution’s law curriculum. During the academic year 2021-22, the university’s equality, diversity and inclusion team announced plans to “incorporate its political ideologies” across the curriculum. The “liberating the curriculum” policy that resulted was, Almut says, “effectively a checklist of ideological compliance”.

Dr Gadow raised concerns about various requirements, including introducing diverse gender identities into the curriculum and teaching students to use offenders’ preferred pronouns. She argued that a criminal lawyer’s role “is to present facts” and that “sex is a relevant fact for offences involving perpetrators’ and/or victims’ bodies”. Dr Gadow also made the case that “no offender should be allowed to dictate the language of his case in a way which masks relevant facts”.

To her disbelief, managers who spotted these forum posts described her requests for engagement as “serious insubordination” and accused her of creating an environment not “inclusive, trans-friendly or respectful”. Months later, her posts were cited as reasons for her dismissal.

This is the Free Speech Union’s most ambitious crowdfunder yet, and for good reason: not only does Almut deserve justice for the egregious way she’s been treated, but this case provides the best opportunity yet to establish a legal precedent in favour of academic freedom that will protect all British academics.

The concept of academic freedom is robustly protected at an international level and includes protections for scholars who question curricula or criticise their institution. But the UK courts have yet to properly consider how this European case law applies at the domestic level.

In seeking judicial guidance from an English employment tribunal – and by arguing that belief in academic freedom should be a recognised protected belief under the Equality Act 2010 that is ‘worthy of respect’ – in the same way gender critical beliefs are – we hope to set a precedent which will entrench academic freedom protections domestically.

We also think that Almut’s case will give the tribunal an opportunity to explain how well-understood concepts of employment law, such as reasonableness and proportionality, are modulated and influenced by the significant international law protection for academic freedom in such a way as to make it harder to dismiss other academics in the future. 

Almut’s legal crowdfunder is now just £6,500 short of its initial £70,000 target. This first tranche of money will cover the cost of the preliminary hearing, disclosure of documents and preparation of a trial bundle.

If you can, please donate and help Almut launch a case that in the words of Prof Kathleen Stock, “will be of great significance, not just to University staff, but to the young minds they teach in future” – the link to the legal crowdfunder is here.

FSU releases new research briefing on the B Corps movement

It’s great to see our latest research briefing gain significant traction in the media (GB News, GB News, Telegraph, Times).

We’ve been investigating the chilling effect on workplace free speech of the B Corps movement, which counts nearly 2,000 companies operating in Britain among its members. (You can read our report here).

The movement originated with B Lab Global, an American non-profit set up in 2006. It now has branches called B Labs all over the world, including the UK.

To become a B Corp-certified company – a kite mark provided by your local B Lab, a bit like becoming a Stonewall Diversity Champion – the directors must go beyond maximising profits and commit to serving ‘people’ and the ‘planet’.

That sounds benign and well-meaning, but certification involves a company changing its Articles of Association to include a commitment to meeting social and environmental targets, both internally and externally. For instance, the B Corps framework assesses a company against B Lab’s principles of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion – or JEDI, for short.

Among other things, that means making a commitment to ‘racial justice’ and Net Zero and that, in turn, can lead to employees or customers who don’t share those values being penalised – a good example being Nigel Farage’s defenestration by Coutts, a B Corp-certified company.

The Free Speech Union is concerned that the B Corps phenomenon is accelerating the adoption by British companies of contentious political ideas like critical race theory and gender identity ideology.

We know from experience that this ideology is often enforced with authoritarian zeal.

What is particularly worrying is that B Lab UK, the British arm of this movement, is lobbying for a new Act of Parliament that would mean British businesses have to comply with this ideology and impose it on their employees and customers – even their suppliers.

If UK law is changed whereby all British companies have to incorporate B Corps principles into their operations, the Equality Act 2010 might have to be amended to dilute workplace protections for employees’ speech rights, so that certain beliefs – such as a belief in the reality of biological sex – would lose their ‘protected’ status.

NHS Trust responds to FSU over unlawful trans policy

Free Speech Union General Secretary Toby Young wrote to the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust last month in relation to its new ‘Transitioning at Work and Gender Diversity Policy’. The policy came into effect a few weeks ago and, having reviewed it, we believe it must be withdrawn and substantially amended as it appears to discriminate against NHS employees with gender critical beliefs. (You can read Toby’s letter here.)

One of the fundamental problems with the policy is its definition of the term ‘transphobia’: “The fear or dislike of someone based on the fact they are Trans, including denying their gender identity or refusing to accept it. Transphobia may be targeted at people who are, or who are perceived to be, Trans.”

Trans employees and service users should, of course, be free from discrimination and harassment. But given that the Trust says it “does not accept transphobia in any form”, an employee “refusing to accept” a trans person’s “gender identity” – e.g., a Muslim or a gender critical feminist – will face being disciplined or worse. This effectively creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for any employees who believe that sex is binary and immutable – a protected belief, don’t forget – which is contrary to Section 26 of the Equality Act 2010.

We think this definition of ‘transphobia’ is too broad and the accompanying statement that the Trust does not accept it “in any form” is, as a result, too dogmatic. It is perfectly possible to refuse to accept that a trans person has changed their gender because, according to your belief, sex is binary and immutable, but nevertheless treat that colleague with dignity and respect. It is that standard which the NHS should uphold, and not insist that employees should “accept” something that runs contrary to their beliefs.

The Trust creates further problems for itself by giving examples of ‘transphobic’ behaviour, which it says it will not tolerate “in any form”:

1. A trans-woman… referred to as ‘he’ despite having requested to use the pronoun ‘she’;
2. Refusing to use the same facilities as a Trans or Non-Binary member of the team;
3. Refusing to use the pronouns of the affirmed gender of a colleague.

Setting aside the fact that compelling employees to use the preferred pronouns of their trans or non-binary colleagues may be a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Trust is effectively saying that a female member of staff not wishing to use the same toilets as a biological man is ‘transphobic’ and could face losing her job.

In his response to our letter, the Trust’s Chief Executive, Ken Bremner, MBE, recognises that “there is a need to protect and to balance the competing rights of colleagues with different beliefs” and that “as part of that balancing exercise and process of continual review”, the Trust “will review the policy and consider your comments and suggested amendments when making any decisions regarding the content.”

That’s encouraging, and we look forward to seeing how South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust revise the policy. As per our letter, however, should it remain the same and any of the Trust’s employees find themselves being disciplined or worse because they fall foul of it, we stand ready to support them, including by helping them take the Trust to the Employment Tribunal.

New FSU briefing on threat to free speech posed by Carbon Literacy Training

We’ve just published a briefing on carbon literacy training by Thomas Harris, our Director of Data and Impact. We’re concerned that it will have a chilling effect on free speech in the workplace in the same way that unconscious bias training and anti-racism training does, with employees reluctant to challenge the ideas behind it for fear of jeopardising their careers.

Carbon literacy training is spreading rapidly across UK offices and places of study, with over 67,000 citizens certified as ‘carbon literate’ according to the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP), the main organisation behind the initiative. (Between financial year-end September 2021 and September 2022, CLP’s income grew from £183.8k to £637.7k, an increase of nearly 250%.) The training takes it for granted that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and recommends that employees embrace various radical solutions, including net zero.

The Free Speech Union is concerned that this training is embedding a particular orthodoxy about climate change in British workplaces, leaving employees feeling unable to challenge it. While it’s indisputable that average global temperatures have increased since the mid-nineteenth century, people hold a range of views about the causes and severity of climate change and that in turn influences their opinion about the best way to tackle it – or, indeed, whether tackling it is possible or necessary. Different solutions to the problems created by climate change are informed by different values and recommending one approach over another inevitably involves making a political choice. There is no-such thing as an apolitical, ‘scientific’ solution. Consequently, employees should not be put under pressure to endorse a particular approach or threatened with disciplinary action if they fail to adjust their behaviour to follow this approach, particularly in their private lives.

In those companies seeking accreditation as a ‘Carbon Literate Organisation’ (CLO), up to 80% of staff are expected to become ‘carbon literate’. Carbon literate accreditation requires employees to embrace a particular view about climate change and identify at least one action they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint, as well as at least one action involving other people. The Free Speech Union fears that employees may be penalised if they refuse to comply with these requirements because they do not share a particular point of view.

A Free Speech Union member contacted us because he was concerned about the repercussions on his career after he challenged the content of the training and provided alternative views and different insights on the topic. We believe he was right to be concerned. To secure CLP’s platinum, gold, and silver CLO accreditation, companies are expected to embed carbon literacy in the annual targets of staff members and evaluate their performance accordingly. This means that employees who don’t subscribe to a particular view on climate change could find themselves missing out on pay awards or promotion unless they self-censor or pretend to hold convictions they don’t have.

The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) is the national accreditation body for the United Kingdom. It is appointed by the government to assess and accredit organisations that provide services including certification, testing, inspection and calibration.

As carbon literacy accreditation schemes proliferate, particularly in the public sector, we believe it’s in the public interest for them to seek out UKAS accreditation. This would ensure that any concerns about the impact of these schemes on employees’ speech rights could be raised with an independent external body.

If you’re being forced to undergo carbon literacy training in your workplace and are worried you might get into trouble for challenging the climate activist agenda behind it, you can contact Thomas Harris at the Free Speech Union here.

Supporters – join now to avoid increased membership fees!

The Free Speech Union is going to be putting up its membership fees later this month, the first time they’ve been raised since we launched three years ago. They’ll only be going up by 20%, lower than the rate of inflation in those three years, but we need to increase them if we’re to continue offering our members the same benefits, which can include expensive legal support.

Which makes this an excellent time for supporters – those of you who have signed up to receive our monthly newsletters, but don’t currently pay membership dues – to join. Not only will you be able to join at the current rate, but you won’t be charged at the new rate until after 1st October 2024. That’s right – for all those who’ve already joined by the time the price goes up, we’ll be locking in the old price, which means you won’t be charged at the new higher rate for at least a year.

As a member of the Free Speech Union, not only will you get top level support if you get into difficulty for exercising your right to lawful free speech, as well as invitations and discounted tickets to all our events and our weekly newsletters. You’ll also get exclusive access to our premium content. At the moment, everything on our website is free, but when we relaunch it later this month we’re going to be restricting access to our premium content – such as our FAQs on what to do if you’ve been de-banked and our extended interviews with world famous free speech champions like Douglas Murray and Kathleen Stock – to our members.

So, if you’re a supporter who values the work we do and you want to join the fight the defend free speech, please join today. We’ll be relaunching the website and increasing our membership fees on Friday 15th September. And remember – if you join before the prices go up, you won’t be charged at the new rate for at least a year.

You can join by clicking here.

Is there a left way back from woke? Online tickets still available!

In-person tickets have now sold out for our next event, ‘Is there a left way back from woke?’, with Professor Umut Özkirimli on Wednesday 13th September in London. But if you’d like to attend virtually, you still can – watching the event online is free for Free Speech Union members.

The link to register for the Zoom feed is here.

In his provocative new book, Cancelled: The Left Way Back from Woke, Professor Özkirimli describes how the Left has been sucked into a spiral of toxic hatred and outrage-mongering, retreating from the democratic ideals of freedom, tolerance and pluralism that it purports to represent.

Professor Özkirimli will be joined in conversation by two eminent public intellectuals. Professor Alice Sullivan has been instrumental in providing evidence that clarifies the need to preserve sex-based social categories in data-collection and policy-making, while Dr Ashley Frawley is one of the most interesting contemporary critics of identity politics.

Latest episode of the FSU’s weekly podcast is out now!

Thank you to everyone who has helped That’s Debatable! pass the important milestone this month of 10,000 downloads!

On this week’s episode, hosts Tom and Ben interview Dr Almut Gadow about her impending legal battle with the Open University, and discuss Denmark’s proposed ban on burning the Koran and other religious texts, as well as the free speech concerns raised in our latest briefing paper on Carbon Literacy Training (interestingly – and revealingly – called Carbon Emergency Training in Scotland).

The episode is available to download for free by clicking here.

FSU’s assistance helps teacher resume career following crime report

Great news for our member, Will T. Will is a qualified teacher for whom a minor, random complaint (following a classroom discussion about religion) many years ago resulted in a local police report. Despite the fact that this report was closed quickly with no further action, Will found himself unable to continue in his profession because the existence of this report caused delays to the Enhanced DBS checks required when applying for teaching roles. With help from the Free Speech Union, this issue has now been resolved and Will is looking forward to resuming his career.

FSU writes to West Yorkshire Police over arrest of autistic girl for ‘hate crime’

A couple of weeks ago we wrote to the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, John Robins, outlining our concerns about the arrest of a 16 year-old autistic girl on suspicion of committing a ‘hate crime’ for telling a female officer: “You look like my lesbian nana.”

It’s good to see that Mr Robins has now responded – hours after receiving our letter, he did the right thing and announced that West Yorkshire Police had released the girl and was dropping its investigation (Telegraph).

As we pointed out in our letter, the fact that an arrest was made in the first place raises serious concerns about officers’ lack of understanding of free speech.

According to West Yorkshire Police, the girl was arrested for a “homophobic public order offence”.

However, the girl’s behaviour simply doesn’t meet the threshold for an offence under the Public Order Act. The WPC at the centre of this incident may well have felt irritated or insulted by the girl’s remark. But there’s no evidence that the comment was malicious, and irritation is not grounds for the arrest of an autistic child.

In addition, the comment was made in her own home and, as far as we can tell from the video, the police officer was also in her home at the time.

As per the Public Order Act, a defence if a person is accused of “intentional harassment, alarm or distress” is that the accused was “inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used… would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling”.

Since the exchange between the girl and the female officer took place inside the girl’s home, that defence is applicable in this case.

We also expressed concern about the possibility that a non-crime hate incident (or NCHI) had been recorded against the girl’s name.

Although the case against the girl has now been closed, we are seeking assurance from West Yorkshire Police that an NCHI wasn’t recorded.

As per our letter, we repeat our call for Mr Robins’s officers to now undergo training on Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 to help them better understand the importance of free speech.

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

Big FSU victory leads to UK banks making free speech commitment!

The heads of Britain’s biggest banks have committed to the principle of “non-discrimination based on lawful freedom of expression”, following a meeting with the financial services minister Andrew Griffith.

The news comes in the wake of Coutts’s politically motivated de-banking of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, an incident that captured the media’s attention and has shone a spotlight on the growing problem of politically motivated financial censorship in western liberal democracies.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Mr Griffith said that the bank bosses had committed to bring their policies into line with planned government reforms as soon as possible.

The reforms in question relate specifically to the UK Payment Services Regulations (i.e., the regulatory framework applied to over 1,000 banks and payment processors licensed to operate in the UK).

Some months ago, the government put in motion a review of the Regulations and sought evidence about politically motivated financial censorship. This followed a meeting between the FSU and Mr Griffith (see above) to discuss our own experience of being de-banked by PayPal. The Minister invited us to submit evidence to the Treasury about how widespread the de-banking phenomenon is. We duly did that, citing numerous cases – many of them members of the FSU.

The consultation culminated in the government’s announcement last week of new measures to protect customers. Under the new rules, banks will be forced to explain any decision to close an account and the notice period for a closure will be extended to 90 days, giving customers more opportunity to challenge the decision. The payment services providers have also agreed not to de-bank people simply for exercising their right to lawful free speech.

The government deserves a lot of credit for acting quicky and decisively. We started campaigning on this issue, the government listened – Nigel Farage also kicked up a stink when he was de-banked – and I’m happy to say it has done something about it.

FSU publishes new FAQs on what to do if you’ve been de-banked!

When Coutts told Nigel Farage it was closing his accounts it said it was for commercial reasons, but the CEO then told the BBC Business Editor Simon Jack that it was because he had insufficient funds in his account.

A subsequent Subject Access Request (SAR) made by Farage revealed the real reason: the bank had compiled a 36-page dossier on him and concluded that his views “were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation”. In other words, he was de-banked because Coutts disapproved of his perfectly lawful political beliefs.

Having found out the real reason Coutts closed his accounts via his SAR, Farage now has a range of options before him. He can can lodge a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Conduct Authority.

He can also sue Coutts for belief discrimination. Certain beliefs are protected by the Equality Act 2010, making it unlawful for companies to discriminate against you simply because you express those beliefs, and the government has indicated it’s going to revise the Payment Services Regulations 2017 to make it clear that banks and payment processors cannot discriminate against political figures such as Farage and, indeed, campaigning organisations such as the FSU. This is something we’ve been lobbying for since we were de-banked by PayPal last year.

I was a guest on Nigel’s GB News show last week, and he confessed that if I’d mentioned the words ‘Subject Access Request’ to him two months ago, he wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea what I was talking about. And yet, they’re one of the most powerful weapons we’ve got in the fight against politically motivated financial censorship.

That’s why the FSU has just published some FAQs about the steps you should take, including how to submit a Subject Access Request, and a template Subject Access Request you can copy and adapt. If you’re an FSU member who’s been de-banked you should contact our case team and they can help you follow the steps set out in these FAQs.

Gillian Philip case – show your support here!

FSU member Gillian Philip continues to fight for a woman’s right to state biological facts without fear of losing her job.

Gillian brought an Employment Tribunal claim against Working Partners and HarperCollins, arguing that she was unlawfully discriminated against when her contract to write children’s books was terminated because she expressed her support for JK Rowling on Twitter.

A preliminary hearing was held to determine whether Gillian’s claim had been filed in time and whether she had rights under the Equality Act 2010 as a worker or employee of Working Partners.

The judge at the Employment Tribunal described Gillian’s situation as unique. (The judgement can be found here.) Gillian won on the trickiest aspect of her case, delay in bringing a claim. The judge found that it was just and equitable to allow her case to be pleaded after the time limit because in the immediate aftermath of her sacking by Working Partners she was depressed following the death of her husband.

However, although Gillian won on the time question, she lost on the worker status question and so she is now appealing that part of the judgement to the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

In launching her appeal, Gillian will once again need your help. You can find out more about the case and pledge your support here.

FSU Events – an update!

Thank you to all members and supporters who have been to our series of recent events in London, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Manchester. We aim to create a network of free speech-loving people across the UK, meeting in person when possible and online when not.

We are taking a break in August but will be back with our next event on Wednesday 13th September, taking place in person at the Art Worker’s Guild in London and online via Zoom.

We have three speakers offering their perspectives on identity politics and cancel culture from a left-wing perspective. Inspired by the book Cancelled: The Left Way Back from Woke by political scientist and author Umut Ozkirimli, the event will feature Umut himself, Ashley Frawley and Alice Sullivan to consider how the Left can be persuaded to re-adopt free speech as a fundamental value.

Tickets will go on sale later this week, when we will also be in touch with members to offer a special discount code for this Autumn’s Battle of Ideas Festival, taking place on the 28th and 29th of October.

For access to the full range of FSU events and for discount tickets to our events and other people’s, do join the Free Speech Union. If you have suggestions for speakers or events you’d like to see, please email [email protected]

The latest episode of the FSU’s weekly podcast is out now!

In this week’s episode of That’s Debatable!, hosts Tom and Ben celebrate what is, arguably, our biggest victory to date – the changes to the Payment Services Regulations to make it much more difficult for banks and payment processors to cancel people’s accounts just because woke execs in the C-suite’s air-conditioned offices happen to find their lawful political beliefs ‘distasteful’. The link to listen in full – and for free! – is here.

Sibyl Ruth fundraiser – join the fight!

It’s been good to see the case of writer, editor and FSU member Sibyl Ruth gaining traction over the last few weeks (Express, Mail, Telegraph). Sibyl, who lost her job for pointing out that a man claiming to be a woman had a five o’clock shadow, is hoping to take her former employer to the Employment Tribunal in September – and needs your support.

You can find out more about the case and pledge your support here.

During a recent appearance on GB News’s Free Speech Nation with Andrew Doyle, Sibyl revealed a little more about what happened behind the scenes at Cornerstones, her former employer, in the lead-up to her contract termination. You can watch a clip of her interview here.

Institute of Actuaries’ respond to consultation on DEI

It was good to see Kemi Badenoch namechecking our organisation in the Sunday Times yesterday. The fact that we’ve supported more than 2,000 members who’ve lost their jobs or been disciplined at work for lawful free speech was cited by the Cabinet Minister as proof that a continuing obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies is contributing to a “Kafkaesque madness” in which people’s livelihoods are being threatened for exercising their right to lawful free speech.

As Kemi points out, the root of the problem is the way the Equality Act 2010 has essentially been weaponised, transmogrifying into a sword rather than the shield originally intended by Parliament. Although there are no protected groups in the legislation, only protected characteristics, activist employees are all too often allowed to proceed as if there were, which enables them to pressure companies into implementing affirmative DEI schemes that often fall foul of the law, while at the same time working in cahoots with HR departments to silence any employees who speak up against these deeply divisive policies.

In her article, Kemi limits herself to discussing companies, but upstream of companies are the many regulatory bodies that uphold professional standards in the workplace – and one of the UK’s biggest such organisations is now on the cusp of implementing a revised Code of Practice that will almost certainly end up playing into the hands of activist employees.

Back in April, the FSU responded to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries’ (IFoA) consultation on amending the Actuaries’ Code (AC) to include DEI requirements. Since then, we’ve been helping many members of the FSU who are also members of the IFoA to submit their own responses.

The AC is the profession’s ethical code of conduct and one of the foundational documents governing the behaviour of members of the IFoA, so any changes will have considerable ramifications – not least because the IFoA has 32,000 members, including 15,000 student members and 46 partner universities.

It’s clearly important for professionals to be held to high standards of behaviour, and as with many other, similar rules, the Code applies to members across a broad range of circumstances – wherever conduct could reasonably be considered to reflect upon the profession. So, for example, social media posts or political activity in members’ personal lives are covered by the Code.

That said, the proposed new guidelines in the IFoA’s consultation show worrying signs of mission creep.

I’m particularly concerned by principle 1.2: “Members should encourage diversity, equity and inclusion.”

What does the IFoA mean by ‘equity’? This isn’t equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome, and can all too easily be understood to require significant adjustments to create a level playing field, discriminating against certain groups of people in favour of another, usually to right some perceived historical wrong. Or, as the critical race theorist Ibram X Kendi explains: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”

It’s in this context that King’s College London’s otherwise baffling recent decision to exclude white people from certain classes, can be seen as an everyday example of equity-in-action.

There is of course the whiff of US-style ‘positive discrimination’ about this understanding of equity – something that, as Kemi points out, is illegal in the UK.

But is this what the IFoA actually means by ‘equity’? Throughout the consultation period, the regulatory body seemed unclear on the substantial difference between equality and equity, providing a definition of ‘equity’ that implies equality of outcome, but then offering up practical examples that seem to be examples of equality of opportunity.

This month, however, the IFoA’s Summary of Consultation Responses relating to the new AC’s proposed DEI requirements was published – and, worryingly, it looks as if the body has now shifted firmly towards a hard-edged, equality of outcome standpoint when it comes to ‘equity’.

Not only does principle 1.2 remain intact – but, in addition, principle 1.1, which, going into the consultation read as follow: “Members must show respect for everyone and treat others fairly,” has now been changed. “[B]ased on feedback”, it becomes: “Members must show respect for everyone.” The phrase “treat others fairly” has gone.

According to the IFoA, the “feedback” it received “commented that the requirement to act ‘fairly’ conflicted with the obligation to encourage equity, because it was their view that equity (i.e., potentially treating others differently to address an underlying inequity) is ‘inherently unfair’”. Ibrahim X Kendi couldn’t have put it better himself.

And what of the proposal for Members to be required to “encourage” equity? What might that look like in practice? On what basis will Members be considered to be doing enough to actively encourage equity? And will this ambiguity create the scope for unjustified allegations of misconduct?

According to the consultation document, the Board will now publish guidance to support Members in understanding how they might personally fulfil this requirement. We await publication of that document with interest.

Guidance or no guidance, the danger is that the revised AC will be weaponised by activist employees, with the ‘equity’ clause used as a way of pointing the finger and hounding out individuals from the IFoA (or putting them through unnecessary and expensive disciplinary processes) for not doing enough to secure equality of outcome between different identity groups.

Defence Secretary in free speech row over FSU member Colonel Wright

Members and supporters may remember the case of FSU member Kelvin Wright, which I highlighted in June’s newsletter.

There was an interesting addendum to that story during the first week of July, when Defence Secretary Ben Wallace dismissed as “rubbish and untrue” reports that Colonel Kelvin Wright was investigated by the Army over a post stating “men cannot be women”.

But he was. Dr Wright has now responded in full to Mr Wallace’s claim that the investigation had “nothing to do with his views” (Telegraph).

Dr Wright, who served two tours in Afghanistan during his 14 years in the Army Reserve, felt he had no option but to resign after being hit with a transphobia complaint by the Army’s “LGBT champions” and then dragged through a Kafkaesque investigation that he describes as “hellish”. All he’d done wrong was to quote the gender critical feminist Helen Joyce on his private Facebook account.

Mr Wallace tweeted: “His views are NOT contrary to Army policy. Col Wright’s administrative investigation stemmed from Army social media policy and had nothing to do with his views.”

Yet emails to Dr Wright, seen by the Telegraph (and our case team) show that the investigating officer in his case referred specifically to the Army’s transgender policy.

“I’m tasked simply to investigate and report on the Facebook post as a single matter, looking at the facts as found, considering potentially applicable regulations such as AGAI67 and JSP 889 (the latter cited by the complainant), and any relevant service principles, such as the Army’s values and standards and the service test,” said one message from the investigating officer.

JSP 889 is the policy for the recruitment and management of transgender personnel in the Armed Forces, which says “all employees should be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace irrespective of gender identity and/or reassignment”.

“At no point was the Army’s social media policy mentioned to me,” Dr Wright told the Telegraph. “But having reviewed that policy, I cannot see how I could be deemed to have breached it.”

“If the official line is now that I breached the social media policy, I await an explanation as to how I have done so. Every attempt I have made to see the complaint in its entirety and respond to it in full has been rebuffed.”

Dr Wright continued: “Having served my country for 14 years, to then be placed under investigation for a Facebook post defending women’s rights was in itself utterly intolerable. I therefore felt no choice but to resign. Now to have it claimed that reports of my account are ‘rubbish and untrue’ by the Defence Secretary sadly only confirms my decision.”

The Defence Secretary should tell the Army to drop the ongoing investigation into Dr Wright, to apologise for his shoddy treatment after 14 years of service and to thank him for risking his life for our country.

Our case team has been supporting Dr Wright since May. In addition to arranging for him to receive legal advice, we will be paying any legal bill.

We stand fully behind Dr Wright, and are ready, willing, and able to explore all available legal remedies as we support our member through this ordeal.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

Army Colonel who saved lives in Afghanistan cancelled for gender critical views

It’s been great to see the case of FSU member Dr Kelvin Wright, a former Colonel in the Army Reserve, gain media traction over the past few days (Express, GB News, Mail, Reclaim the Net, Telegraph).

Dr Wright was an NHS intensive care consultant when he joined the British Army back in 2009. He served two tours in Afghanistan during his subsequent 14 years’ unblemished service, risking his life to save critically injured soldiers and civilians. During the first of those tours, Dr Wright was placed in charge of a Medical Emergency Response Team, taking daily Chinook helicopter flights across enemy-held Helmand territory. When he returned for another three-month stint, it was to head up the emergency department at Camp Bastion as lead consultant. More recently, he led the army’s 306 Hospital Support Regiment, facilitating training for Ukrainian soldiers to help save lives after the Russian invasion.

In other words, Dr Wright is a distinguished commanding officer with a hugely impressive resume, and just the type of person whose services you’d think the British Army would be desperate to retain.

And yet Dr Wright has been forced to resign having been hit with a transphobia complaint by the army’s “LGBT champions” and then dragged through a Kafkaesque investigation that he describes as “hellish”. His ‘crime’? Reposting a Facebook post on his private Facebook account that stated: “men cannot be women”.

It’s a shocking story, and the Army’s top brass should be hanging their heads in shame that this was allowed to happen on their watch. The freedom to express your views in the public square is a fundamental human right that the British Army is supposed to be defending, not attacking.

The Army’s failings in that regard first became apparent back in May, after Dr Wright shared a post on his private Facebook account from Fair Play for Women, a campaign group that works with governing bodies to preserve women’s sport for those born female. The post consisted of a quote from Helen Joyce, the former Economist journalist turned feminist campaigner.

Shared without any additional comment, it read: “If women cannot stand in a public place and say, ‘men cannot be women’, then we do not have women’s rights at all.”

To Dr Wright, it was an innocuous act, intended to highlight the importance of freedom of speech around an issue which has become increasingly divisive in many Western countries.

But it prompted a junior officer to warn Dr Wright that his gender-critical views could be at odds with the Ministry of Defence’s transgender policies.

A solitary complaint then snowballed, and a group that Dr Wright describe as the Army’s “LGBT champions” subsequently drew up a seven-page dossier about his “substandard behaviour” – which he was never allowed to see. As Dr Wright told the Mail: “The accusations, and the secrecy which still shrouds them is a terrible slur on my honour.”

Unbelievably, a formal investigation was opened, and could have led to him being formally censured under the Army’s Major Administrative Action process. Rather than go through with this Kafkaesque trial, Dr Wright decided he had no choice but to retire six years earlier than planned, slashing his Army pension in the process.

“This attack on my honour made my position completely untenable,” he told the Telegraph. “I could no longer remain in an Army which treated its officers with such disrespect.”

He continued: “What message does it send to women in the army, that merely for noting the existence of women and women’s rights even a Colonel can be placed under investigation? I therefore feel there is no other choice but to make this matter public.”

I’m delighted finally to be able to report that our case team has been supporting Dr Wright since May as he seeks to clear his name. In addition to arranging for him to receive top-drawer legal advice, the FSU will be footing any legal bills.

It beggars belief that the Army would treat any of its soldiers in this way, let alone an officer who has been called “one of the best” and “inspirational” by his troops. The fact that the Army is continuing to hound him following his resignation – the investigation hasn’t been called off, in spite of his resignation – just adds insult to injury. If people risk their lives to serve our country, they should be given medals, not placed under investigation for defending women’s rights.

The Army needs to do the right thing now – apologise, thank Dr Wright for his service and close the case. However, if that doesn’t happen, it goes without saying that the FSU is ready, willing, and able to explore all available legal remedies as we support our member through this unconscionable ordeal.

On that note, I’d like to thank everyone who has donated to our fighting fund since this story broke. It’s because of your contributions that we’re able to support Dr Wright, and others like him. If you can, then please donate to our legal fighting fund and help us to continue to fight for the speech rights of our members – the link to the donation page is here.

FSU lobbying bears fruit as Jeremy Hunt tells banks they must respect customers’ free speech

The issue of politically motivated financial censorship was back in the news this week after Nigel Farage revealed the bank he’d been with since 1980 has informed him they’re closing his account. He also disclosed that his approaches to seven other banks to see if they’d open an account for him had all been rebuffed (Telegraph, Times, Mail).

The Free Speech Union has been lobbying the Government to change the financial regulations since we were ‘debanked’ by PayPal last year to make it impossible for banks and payment services providers to close customers’ accounts for purely political reasons and, today, it looks as if those efforts may bear fruit.

According to the Telegraph, banks and payment processors are to be told by the Treasury that they must protect free speech. Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, is said to be “deeply concerned” that overzealous lenders are closing down accounts because they disagree with customers’ opinions and has asked City minister Andrew Griffith to investigate the issue. A delegation from the Free Speech Union met with Mr Griffith earlier this year to urge him to tighten up the rules before this problem gets completely out of hand.

Whitehall sources told the Telegraph that results of a consultation on the subject – a consultation the FSU submitted evidence to – will be published within weeks, after it was launched earlier this year in the wake of PayPal blocking the Free Speech Union’s account.

If the Government does change the payment services regulations to stop people being censored in this way, I’d be tempted to call it our biggest victory to date. We simply cannot have financial companies, many of them based overseas, interfering in our right to freedom of expression in this way. In an increasingly cashless society, closing a person’s bank account leaves them virtually unable to function and the threat of that will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech.

People might be tempted to dismiss this as alarmist, but the FSU is aware of dozens of people and organisations this has happened to and we’ve shared a lot of that evidence with the Treasury. (We’ve put together a Twitter thread detailing a small selection of examples here.)

Just in the last month, HSBC Hong Kong has followed PayPal in closing the accounts of members of the League of Social Democrats, threatening the future of one of the few remaining pro-democracy parties that dares protest against China’s draconian security law and free speech crackdown in the Special Administrative Region territory.

Back in the UK, Barclays Bank was forced to pay over £20,000 compensation to the Christian organisation Core Issues Trust after it closed its accounts due to pressure from LGBTQ+ groups.

And last week, Henrik Overgaard Nielsen, a former MEP for the Brexit Party, was informed his account with MetroBank would be closed, and the Rev Richard Fothergill, a Church of England vicar and member of the FSU, was told by the Yorkshire Building Society that it would be closing his account after he responded to a request for feedback to complain about the bank’s promotion of Pride and what he considered a morally suspect trans agenda.

The issues at stake here go way beyond the politics of left or right, socialism or liberalism, Labour or Conservative. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you believe — this new, sinister form of cancel culture has no place in a Western liberal democracy.

If any of our members of supporters need to talk to someone about their own experiences of financial censorship, email our case team on [email protected].

Gillian Phillip fundraiser

FSU member Gillian Philip continues to fight for a woman’s right to state biological facts without fear of losing her job. Gillian initially brought an Employment Tribunal claim against publishers Working Partners and HarperCollins in 2021, arguing that she was unlawfully discriminated against when her contract to write children’s books was terminated when she added the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling to her Twitter account.

A preliminary hearing was held to determine whether Gillian’s claim had been filed in time and whether she had rights under the Equality Act 2010 as a worker or employee of Working Partners.

The judge at the Employment Tribunal described Gillian’s situation as unique. (The judgement can be found here.) Gillian won on the trickiest aspect of her case, delay in bringing a claim. The judge found that it was just and equitable to allow her case to be pleaded after the time limit because in the immediate aftermath of her sacking by Working Partners she was depressed following the death of her husband.

However, although Gillian won on the time question, she lost on the worker status question and so she is now appealing that part of the judgement to the Employment Appeal Tribunal

The point to be argued at appeal is whether Gillian was a ‘worker’ controlled by Working Partners. Gillian has no doubt she has already shown she had little discretion and worked under a strict creative regime entirely controlled by Working Partners under commission from HarperCollins.

But while the appeal is ostensibly on this narrow point of law about “control”, the issues at stake here are anything but narrow – this concerns the protection of thousands of precariously employed people who make their living through creative expression, especially women who believe in the reality of biological sex.

In launching her appeal, Gillian will once again need your help. You can find out more about the case and pledge your support here.

By the way, a playwright and journalist called Phelim McAleer has written a verbatim play based on transcripts of the tribunal hearing at which Mermaids tried – unsuccessfully – to get the Charity Commission to deregulate the LGB Alliance. Judging from Phelim’s previous work, it should be very funny. He is holding a staged reading at a theatre in Camden Town and those wishing to purchase tickets should click here.

Cancel culture survey – the results are in!

Thanks to all readers who answered our anonymous survey on cancel culture. The results are in, and they are illuminating. Here are a few key statistics from the 355 responses:

• Only 25% of those personally affected by cancel culture reported that the experience had had no significant effect on their wellbeing in either the short or long term. The undeniable mental health impact of cancellation is such an important, yet often neglected, element of the experience that the FSU is going to undertake some in-depth research into this whole area.
• Just 20% of respondents felt their experience of cancel culture was completely unexpected. This is positive in that people are perhaps steeling themselves for the cancellation experience and are thus better prepared, but it’s also rather depressing in that we have now come to expect the shutting down of free expression.
• Politically, 21% of respondents declared themselves to be centre or left of centre, while another 21% considered themselves politically homeless. While it’s true that most respondents (57%) described themselves as right of centre, these statistics do challenge the idea that cancel culture is simply a right-wing myth.

As ever, the freeform comments from people about their personal experience made for sobering reading, particularly when it came to the degree of self-censorship taking place. Here are just a handful of the most striking observations:

“I can’t answer the impact question as the issue is new and [ongoing]. I will say it was a shock and it’s having a negative impact on me. Scary, maddening, totally unfair, and affecting other areas of my life.”

“I joined the civil service in 2017 working on Brexit and found that the vast majority of my colleagues (including those at the more senior end) were surprisingly vocal about their political views and that this affected advice given in the department. There was an oppressive feeling that only one view (the right one) was allowed to be discussed. This extended to EDI including departmental all staff meetings where those of one view were extremely vocal and everyone else just shut up to save their jobs. I have since moved to an operationally separate agency which is better, but the IDE point remains.”

“I’m a teacher. I estimate that about 50% of staff and students fear raising certain perspectives for fear of being labelled. A sorry state of affairs!”

“I have managed to avoid being ‘cancelled’ so far because I’ve effectively self-censored – deleted all social media accounts, very reserved at work (or even out of work when socialising with current or former colleagues). I only express ideas when in the company of people I know to be reasonably trustworthy. So cancel culture has indirectly affected me (and no doubt many others in a similar position) – to avoid being cancelled, simply don’t say anything.”

FSU member Dr Roger Watson cleared in ‘disinformation’ probe by professional association

The FSU has had a glut of recent cases in which employees from a wide range of occupational backgrounds have got into trouble with their professional associations simply for expressing their entirely lawful beliefs outside the workplace. This month, however, an important blow was struck for the free speech rights of regulated professionals.

FSU member Dr Roger Watson is Academic Dean of Nursing at Southwest Medical University, China, and a longstanding critic of lockdown. For the past eight months he’s been under investigation by his professional body, the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC), on the basis that he had been “using his status as a registered nurse to promote incorrect information about COVID-19 and the nursing profession in general”.

The NMC investigation centred on a complaint from an anonymous person in relation to a co-authored article in the Daily Sceptic titled ‘Nurses Don’t Do Numbers’. The article was about a number of Covid-related issues where there is legitimate, evidence-based cause for concern, including: the efficacy and damaging effects of the lockdowns; the evidential basis for mask mandates; the reliability of Covid PCR testing; and the efficacy and safety of the Covid vaccines.

In my capacity as the FSU’s General Secretary I wrote to the NMC last November, urging that the matter be dropped. As I made clear, all the points Prof Watson made in his co-authored article were evidence-based, and a legitimate contribution to the debate about how the COVID-19 pandemic was and continues to be managed. On that basis, his contribution was clearly consistent with 9.3 of the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s code regarding the professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses, midwives, and nursing associates: “Deal with differences of professional opinion with colleagues by discussion and informed debate.”

Just in case that point didn’t land, however, I concluded by noting that should the NMC penalise Professor Watson for exercising his lawful right to free speech and contributing to this debate on a question of public interest, “the FSU will give him every possible assistance, up to and including legal support”.

Thankfully, however, we aren’t going to need to lawyer up because the NMC has now concluded its investigation and decided there is no case for Prof Watson to answer. Particularly encouraging about the reasoning the NMC case examiners give for their decision is the acknowledgment that “while some may not like or agree with your article, you are entitled to express your own person opinions” and that co-authorship of the article “can reasonably be regarded as an exercising of your right to freedom of expression”.

Well done to the NMC which has effectively struck a blow for free speech, offering hope for other nurses on their register currently under investigation for questioning the Covid narrative.

Victory for FSU member in dispute with the General Dental Council!

Speaking of professional bodies, one of our long-standing gold members, Dominic O, has just had a complaint against him dropped by the General Dental Council. This is one example of many that FSU are seeing, where regulators (notably of medical professions) are accepting meritless complaints following the expression of lawful and protected views. Dominic is grateful for FSU support, and we thank him for his continuing loyal membership.

Sharron Davies MBE Book Launch – See you there or join us online!

We were delighted to have been asked to host the official launch of Sharron Davies’s new book, Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sport, on Wednesday 5th July. In-person tickets have now sold out, but FSU members can join free of charge online by registering here and non-FSU members can pay £5 to register here.

FSU Summer Speakeasies – tickets now available!

Come and hear FSU member and former teacher, Ben Dybowski, in conversation with local group Free Speechers Wales and West in Cardiff on 13th July. Mr Dybowski, who has an unblemished 20-year career in the profession, was sacked from a school for sharing his Christian beliefs at a staff-only diversity and inclusion training seminar run by Diverse Cymru, an organisation that trains teachers on “unconscious bias” and “trans, gender identity and gender expression awareness”. Speaking to the Mail on Sunday about his case, he said he had never discussed his views with pupils and was always respectful of those with different opinions. His dismissal was, he added, “an attack on Christianity” and “an affront to freedom of speech and freedom of thought”.

Tickets are available here. There will, of course, be plenty of time for discussion and for socialising with fellow free speech supporters. Doors open at 6.45pm, speaker and discussion starts at 7.30pm.

If you can get to Edinburgh on Wednesday 19th July, please come to our Summer Speakeasy on the timely subject, Can the Arts Survive and Thrive in Scotland? Taking place just weeks before the Edinburgh Festival, where comedian Jerry Sadowitz will return with his show, in defiance of last year’s cancellation, and Joanna Cherry MP is due to speak after an attempted no-platforming. Our guest speakers, poet Jenny Lindsay, actress and producer Kirstin McLean and author Ewan Morrison, will take us through the free speech issues faced by artists, writers and performers north of the border, and discuss how we can stand up for the right of audiences to judge for themselves. Get your tickets here.

The following day, Thursday 20th July, we’ll be in Manchester with a fascinating event entitled ‘Free Speech: A Radical History’, with a particular focus on the city’s historic political struggles. We have two local historians, Michael Herbert of Red Flag Walks and Jonathan Schofield, tour guide and editor of Manchester Confidential, to share their knowledge. They’ll be joined by historian Dr Cheryl Hudson. Tickets are here.

New Culture Forum Locals Event in Norwich

Our friends at New Culture Forum extend an invitation to FSU members and supporters in the Norwich area to join them for an event on Saturday, 8th July. It will be comprised of two events. You are invited to attend one or both, free of charge:

• 2:00 – 3:45pm: Walking tour of Norwich for those who’d like to discover the city.
• 4:30 – 6:30pm:  NCF Locals Event (at a venue near Norwich railway station) with special guest speaker Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, Director of Don’t Divide Us.

You will have a chance to meet some of the NCF Team: Peter Whittle, Dr. Philip Kiszely and Rafe Heydel-Mankoo, as well as local NCF volunteers, who have kindly arranged this event. If you would like further details, email [email protected].

Kind regards,

Toby Young

News of a great victory for freedom of speech in the workplace broke yesterday in the Telegraph.

In the FSU’s biggest victory to date, we helped a civil servant get a £100,000 settlement after she was forced out of her department for raising the alarm about its embrace of Critical Race Theory and Gender Identity Ideology.

Anna Thomas, a 32-year-old single mother, was a work coach in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) who made a whistleblowing complaint about an all-staff memo from the Permanent Secretary saying he wanted the DWP to become an “anti-racist organisation” in the wake of George Floyd’s death. This was followed by materials being distributed across the Department via an “anti-racism hub” asking white employees to “assume” they were racist and quoting Ibram X Kendi’s dictum in How to be an Anti-Racist that it’s not enough to be non-racist, you need to be “anti-racist”. This is one of the core tenets of Critical Race Theory.

Anna also complained about the promotion of Stonewall-inspired Gender Identity Ideology in a departmental resource called “sexual orientation and language”. At the time, the DWP was a member of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme.

Anna told her managers she was worried that the DWP’s endorsement of these controversial theories was a breach of the Civil Service Code requiring them to be politically impartial and could lead to discrimination against white people. For this she was issued with a final written warning. Anna’s fears were realised when she was then asked to help the Department organise some recruitment sessions for the Metropolitan Police which excluded heterosexual white men.

When Anna raised a whistleblowing complaint, pointing out that this was discriminatory and probably a breach of the Equality Act 2010, she was placed under investigation. After a gruelling, six-month process, in which she was told her comments in the internal chat group had caused “offence”, Anna was fired for gross misconduct.

Luckily, Anna is a member of the FSU, and we were able to pull together a legal team to represent her, including our Chief Legal Counsel Dr Bryn Harris and the employment barrister Spencer Keen. With their help, Anna brought a case against the DWP in the Employment Tribunal for unfair dismissal, belief discrimination and harassment. Just before that was due to come to court, the DWP made a settlement offer of £100,000, which Anna accepted.

The DWP has refused to admit any wrongdoing, but in the run-up to the hearing it shared a note with Anna’s legal team from a departmental behavioural scientist saying that in her view Anna was right and the promotion of Critical Race Theory via the “anti-racism hub” was political and inappropriate. In addition, the DWP has since ended its relationship with Stonewall, implicitly accepting that Anna was right about that too.

I’m delighted for Anna, but she should never have been put in this position. (She very kindly agreed to do a filmed interview with us following the settlement, and you can watch clips from that interview here and here). Her case shows how little tolerance there is in the Civil Service for anyone who challenges the progressive agenda of the people running the departments. Whitehall activists are constantly going after those they consider their political enemies because they’ve supposedly breached the Civil Service Code, but they should look for the beam in their own eyes. That Code requires them to be politically impartial, but these days that’s a principle more honoured in the breach than the observance.

As Dr Bryn Harris, the FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel, says:

Anna was treated grossly unfairly by the DWP, with severe consequences for her health and career. She showed heroic moral courage in exposing wrongdoing by public servants, with the help of the FSU and, crucially, the specialist employment barrister Spencer Keen. A true whistleblower, Anna fought not just for herself but for all of us in upholding the key constitutional norm of civil service impartiality. The DWP’s promotion of a radical political agenda was unlawful and unconstitutional. For the DWP then to dismiss Anna for doing the right thing and speaking out was a betrayal of the standards we expect of our public servants. What we would like now is for the Government to investigate why the career of an articulate and intelligent young woman was destroyed in this way, leading to a pay-out of £100,000 of taxpayers’ money.

Anna Thomas says the decision to join the FSU was the best one she’s ever made (after the decision to have her daughter). If you’re not already a member, you can join here. Fees start at £2.49 a month.

The FSU’s Mactaggart Programme intervenes (again) on behalf of campus free speech!

It’s little more than two months since the FSU’s grant-giving project, the Mactaggart Programme, was established, and it’s already helping to fund the free speech fightback at UK universities. Administered by the FSU, the Mactaggart Programme exists to provide grants to individuals, societies and other groups that wish to provide opportunities for debate, open discussion and intellectual exploration.

As many members and supporters will be aware, when university bosses recently ordered Bristol’s Feminist Society to contribute £340 towards the security costs for a panel discussion on “advocating, litigating and protecting women’s rights” , the event nearly fell through. But in an important victory for free speech, the FSU was able to meet these costs thanks to the Mactaggart Programme. (For more on this story, see this article in the Telegraph.)

Then, earlier this month, when St John’s College Cambridge demanded that undergraduate Charlie Bentley-Astor pay all the security costs arising from a film screening that had attracted the wrath of student activists, the FSU stepped in and offered to pay the sum of £528 via the Mactaggart Programme.

Ms Bentley-Astor had invited the film’s director, Stephen Shaw, to discuss Birthgap, which explores why the birthrate is falling in so many Western countries, with students as part of the screening, which was due to take place on May 12th.

Student activists busied themselves with block booking tickets under false names and threatening loud protests outside – all because Shaw had previously appeared on Dr Jordan Peterson’s podcast, which, in the eyes of the students, make him “alt-Right adjacent”.

In addition to being attacked by student activists, Ms Bentley-Astor had to contend with increasingly onerous stipulations from St John’s officials, including a demand that she pay all the security costs related to the event.

As she was unable to cover these costs, the FSU stepped in.

Having met this demand, she was then asked to provide a risk assessment and to control any protest that might take place against her own event.

This Kafkaesque exchange became even more absurd when Ms Bentley-Astor duly submitted the risk assessment, only to be told that it had “further highlighted the large scale of the planned protest for this event and the disruption it would inevitably cause” and that the event would therefore have to be “postponed”.

In our letter to St John’s and the University of Cambridge, we point out that this bureaucratic decision-making process fails to uphold the College’s duties with respect to freedom of speech, or to observe University regulations on the same. (You can read our letter here). We also sought assurance that the event could go ahead and reiterated our commitment to meeting all relevant security costs.

As it happens, Ms Bentley-Astor was able to put together a much-curtailed version of the event, with 25 of the 160 originally registered attendees managing to squeeze themselves into the offices of a Fellow at another college who was so outraged at the cancellation that they offered up their rooms at the last minute. Although there wasn’t space or equipment for a screening to take place, the impromptu event did at least give students a valuable opportunity to discuss the film with its director.

If you’d like (or need) to apply to the Mactaggart Programme please contact us here – students, student societies and academics are all eligible.

FSU spearheads Oxford University fightback against attempt to no-platform Kathleen Stock

There is news of a heartening free speech fightback at Oxford University, as attempts by censorious student activists to no-platform gender critical philosopher Dr Kathleen Stock (above) and punish the society that invited her to speak on campus have been thwarted (Times, Telegraph).

That’s thanks in part to the FSU. We wrote to the University of Oxford to complain about the decision by the Oxford University Students’ Union (OUSU) to ban the world-famous Oxford Union Society (OU) from having a stall at the next freshers’ fair, seemingly in response to the OU’s refusal to no-platform Dr Kathleen Stock, whom it has invited to give a talk on May 30th. (You can read our letter in full here.)

The backstory to this latest outbreak of censorial student behaviour is fairly convoluted, but early signs of trouble emerged back in April when the University’s LGBTQ+ Society said it was “dismayed and appalled” that the debating society had “decided to platform the transphobic and trans exclusionary speaker Kathleen Stock”.

Pursuing a now well-worn cancellation tactic, in which the preservation of the student body’s psychological safety is positioned as the supreme categorical imperative, the LGBTQ+ Society accused the Union of “disregarding the welfare of its LGBTQ+ members under the guise of free speech”.

OUSU then upped the ante when it passed a motion to sever ties with the 200-year-old debating society. The move would have prevented the Union from having a stall at freshers’ fair, which accounts for about half the new members that sign up each year.

In our letter, we asked the University Proctors, who are responsible for maintaining student discipline, to investigate OUSU’s officers for having broken the University’s rules protecting free speech. As we pointed out, a minority of student activists should not get to silence dissenting views for everyone else.

Worth mentioning, too, that over 100 Oxford students wrote to the Telegraph to condemn the harassment, bullying and threats made against the Oxford Union for inviting Dr Stock to speak and said that those at the University who wish to silence free speech “do not speak for us”.

Forty-four Oxford dons also put their heads above the parapet and wrote an open letter in support of Dr Stock’s right to express her views. The academics, ranging from well-known professors such as Richard Dawkins to younger lecturers, are united in the belief that the right to free speech is sacred and has to be defended (Times).

Thanks to this pressure, Oxford’s new Vice-Chancellor intervened and said the event must go ahead. Pressure was applied by the Vice-Chancellor’s office to OUSU, which has since reversed its decision to ban the Union from freshers’ fair – although up to 1,000 protestors have said they’ll try to prevent students attending tomorrow afternoon’s event.

Let’s hope the local police and the OU’s security staff are able to make sure it goes ahead as planned. I’ll be attending to show my solidarity with Kathleen Stock.

Sharron Davies MBE Book Launch – tickets now available!

Of all the issues thrown up by the rise of gender ideology and the push for trans-inclusivity, safety and fairness in women’s sport is probably the one that has most grabbed mainstream public attention. And yet, too often, debate has been shut down and those who raise questions have been accused of ‘transphobia’. One of the most stalwart defenders of the integrity of women’s sports is the British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies MBE.

We are therefore delighted to have been asked to host the official launch of Sharron’s new book, Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sport, on Wednesday 5th July. Join us online or in-person in central London to hear from Sharron about why she wrote the book and the struggles she’s faced to get her arguments heard.

We have brought together a superb panel to discuss the issues with Sharron, including Dr Emma Hilton, the award-winning development biologist who has advised various sporting bodies on transgender policy, including World Rugby, and Cathy Devine, an independent researcher who has published widely in the areas of sport policy, equality and human rights for girls and women over the last 15 years.

In the chair will be the FSU’s Education and Events Director, Dr Jan Macvarish.

There will be an audience Q&A and plenty of time to socialise afterwards over a complimentary glass of wine, courtesy of Swift Press. The book will also be on sale on the night and Sharron will be signing copies.

In-person tickets with a discount price for FSU members can be purchased here. Members who prefer to watch the event online can register to join free of charge using the link supplied in Friday’s newsletter and in emails from our FSU Events team. And non-FSU members who prefer to watch online can pay £5 to register here.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill Receives Royal Assent

In a major victory for free speech on campus, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill got over the final hurdle in the House of Lords earlier this month and has now received Royal Assent.

This is something the FSU has been campaigning for for three years. We lobbied for the Bill when the Government was weighing up whether it was needed, advised the Government on what to include in it, defended it from critics in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, helped to amend it and, finally, mobilised our allies in Parliament to get it over the line.

The Bill does two things that will help secure academic freedom. 

First, it will impose a legal duty on higher education providers (HEPs) to uphold and promote free speech and extend that duty to students’ unions.

Second, it will create two new enforcement mechanisms, so HEPs aren’t able to ignore these duties. The first of these will be the appointment of a Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom to the Office for Students (OfS), whom students and academics can complain to if they believe their speech rights under the Higher Education Act 2023 have been breached. This new ‘free speech tsar’ has already been appointed – it’s Dr Arif Ahmed (above), a professor of philosophy at Cambridge with impeccable free speech credentials – and he will have the power to fine HEPs if he finds them at fault. The second enforcement mechanism is the creation of a new statutory tort, whereby students and academics will be able to sue HEPs in the County Court if their speech rights have been breached.

Taken together, this package of measures will go some way towards addressing the free speech crisis in our universities. About 20% of the 2,000+ cases we’ve dealt with in the past three years have involved universities, and we believe that in almost every one the student or academic who’s got into trouble would have been in a stronger position if this new law had been on the statute books. Indeed, the fact that the new law will shortly be activated played a part in OUSU’s u-turn over its ban on the Oxford Union from freshers’ fair.

Live event with Prof Matthew Goodwin – book your tickets here!

On Wednesday 7th June, we will be hosting ‘Whose values? Whose voices? Are we being silenced by a new elite?’ featuring Professor Matthew Goodwin, a member of our Advisory Council and the author of Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics.

We’ve brought together a great panel to discuss the book with Matt: Geoffrey Evans, Professor of the Sociology of Politics at Oxford University, Baroness Claire Fox and Telegraph columnist Sherelle Jacobs. FSU General Secretary Toby Young will be chairing the discussion. The event will take place at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster.

There will also be an audience Q&A and plenty of time to socialise afterwards. So if you can get to London, it’s a great opportunity to meet the speakers, as well as the FSU’s staff and other members. There won’t be a Zoom link on this occasion, although the event will be recorded. We therefore encourage you to book tickets to the live event. Tickets can be purchased here.

FSU Summer Speakeasies in Cambridge, Manchester and Edinburgh – tickets now available!

If you live in the Cambridge area, the first of our regional Summer Speakeasies will take place there on Thursday 15th June. Journalist and writer Jane Robins will interview me about my perspective on the battle for free speech, and much more. There will, of course, be plenty of time for socialising with fellow free speech supporters. FSU members can book tickets free of charge for themselves and their friends. Non-members pay £10. You can book your places here.

If you can get to Edinburgh on Wednesday 19th July, do please join us for our Summer Speakeasy on a particularly timely subject, ‘Can the Arts Survive and Thrive in Scotland?’ Taking place just weeks before the Edinburgh Festival, where comedian Jerry Sadowitz will return with his show in defiance of last year’s cancellation, and with Joanna Cherry MP due to speak after an unsuccessful attempt to no-platform her, our guest speakers, poet Jenny Lindsay, actress and producer Kirstin McLean and author Ewan Morrison, will take us through the free speech issues faced by artists, writers and performers, and discuss how we can stand up for the right of audiences to judge for themselves. Get your tickets here.

On Thursday 20th July, we’ll be in Manchester with what looks set to be a fascinating event, ‘Free Speech: A Radical History’, which will focus on the city’s historic political struggles. We’ve invited two local historians, Michael Herbert of Red Flag Walks and Jonathan Schofield, tour guide and editor of Manchester Confidential, to share their knowledge and they’ll be joined by historian of US political history, Dr Cheryl Hudson. Tickets are available here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

FSU pays security costs to help save Bristol University Feminist Society event!

News of a terrific FSU success at the University of Bristol broke over the weekend, courtesy of the Telegraph.

When university bosses ordered Bristol’s Feminist Society, Women Talk Back, to contribute to the security costs for a panel discussion on “advocating, litigating and protecting women’s rights”, the event nearly fell through – but in an important victory for free speech, the FSU was able to intervene to save the event thanks to our Mactaggart Programme (more on that in a moment).

One of the invited external speakers was Akua Reindorf KC, a barrister ranked in Tier 1 of the Legal 500 2023 for ‘Employment’, and, since last year, also a Commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

You might think that Ms Reindorf is exactly the type of high-profile, high calibre external speaker that a prestigious Russell Group university like Bristol would be proud to welcome onto campus.

Except, of course, that the employment, discrimination, and human rights law specialist had previously drawn the ire of transgender activists having criticised Stonewall in a report for the University of Essex on the no-platforming of two feminist law professors.

And once that fact became known, the institution’s response unfurled itself with all the grim inevitability of Greek tragedy, as senior administrators panicked themselves into imposing a series of strict conditions on the event, including that it “be limited to staff and students only on the grounds of health and safety and the deterrence of public disorder”. The feminist society was also ordered to pay £340 towards security costs, which left the group on the brink of axing the event.

Thankfully, the FSU has been able to strike a blow against this knee-jerk safetyism by funding a new venue off campus using money from our Mactaggart Programme.

The Mactaggart Programme was established very recently – so recently, in fact, that the contribution put forward to help secure the Women Talk Back event is the Programme’s first ever award. The Programme’s remit is to help foster a culture of open debate, independent thinking, and free expression amongst young people, and particularly students, by awarding grants to student societies.

I’m optimistic that English universities won’t use the ‘security costs’ excuse in an effort to cancel student events in future. That’s because the government last year accepted an amendment to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that the FSU had been campaigning for that will make it harder for English universities and students’ unions to pass on security costs to student societies other than in exceptional circumstances. (You can read my letter to the then Higher Education Minister and Education Secretary thanking them for introducing the amendment, and the Education Secretary’s subsequent reply, here.)

Bristol University has form on this issue. As the then Higher Education Minister Michelle Donelan pointed out at the time, a student society faced a £500 security bill from Bristol University’s students’ union to allow Mark Regev, then the Israeli Ambassador, to give a talk, while charging nothing to allow his Palestinian counterpart to do the same (Jewish News). But others are just as culpable. The Jewish Society at Lancaster University, for instance, was also recently asked to pay £1,500 towards ‘security costs’ as a condition of inviting Mark Regev. Because the Society couldn’t afford this, the event was cancelled (Telegraph).

If you’d like to apply to our grant-giving programme to promote free speech among young people and at universities, please contact us here – students, student societies and academics are all eligible.

FSU investigation reveals College of Policing watered down Home Secretary’s NCHI guidance

Back in March, the Home Office published its first ever Code of Practice on non-crime hate incidents (or NCHIs), after the Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she was “deeply concerned” about police “wrongly getting involved in lawful debate in this country” by focusing on hurty feelings. Under this new Code of Practice, police would be required to exercise their common sense and be mindful of people’s right to free speech before recording an NCHI.

Some 120,000 people had NCHIs recorded against them in England and Wales between 2014 and 2019, including children. Particularly troubling is the fact that they can show up during an enhanced criminal records checks that candidates are asked to produce when applying for certain jobs, such as teacher or carer.

Once the Code of Practice has been given the Parliamentary stamp of approval, police forces in England and Wales will have to wade through NCHIs in their databases and remove any that wouldn’t merit being recorded under the new guidelines, which we believe is the vast majority. Consequently, if you think an NCHI has been recorded against your name please contact us and we can start the process of getting it removed. You can see some guidance we’ve already published about that here. (And you can also read our 2021 briefing on NCHIs here.)

So, that’s the good news.

The bad news is that earlier this month the College of Policing, a taxpayer-funded quango that provides national advice to police forces in England and Wales and which came up with the concept of NCHIs in 2014, published its own ‘interpretation’ of the Code of Practice, referred to by the College as “authorised professional practice” (or APP).

At the time that struck the FSU as an odd decision. After all, the intention of the Home Office was for the Code of Practice to be adopted wholesale by the College as its new operational guidance, not as something that needed to be ‘interpreted’.

It turns out that we were right to be suspicious, because as FSU Research Officer Carrie Clark has since confirmed, the APP effectively gives a woke spin to Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s draft Code of Practice, with the result that police officers could now continue to arrest people for expressing controversial (yet nonetheless perfectly lawful) opinions.

It was while preparing the FSU’s submission to the College of Policing’s public consultation on its new guidance that Carrie spotted a number of significant discrepancies between that document and the Home Secretary’s Code of Practice. We passed this information to the Telegraph which then broke the story (here). 

One of the clearest benefits of the new Code of Practice is that it provides no less than 11 examples of potential scenarios police officers and staff may encounter when managing reports of non-criminal incidents, 63% of which advise the police explicitly not to record one. The examples cover all the protected characteristics, including believing in the reality of biological sex. That’s important because tens of thousands of NCHIs have been recorded against feminists for expressing that belief.

By contrast, the College of Policing’s version provides just eight examples, only 12.5% of which advise the police explicitly not to record. In addition, three of the examples concern the protected characteristic of disability, meaning that the examples are heavily skewed towards this particular protected characteristic.

While some examples included in the College of Policing’s version have been taken almost verbatim from the Code of Practice, others appear to have been edited so as to be extremely unhelpful to anyone trying to understand contemporary challenges faced by the police. This is particularly true of the only example that concerns gender critical belief.

Example C in the Code of Practice describes someone complaining to the police that a Tweet expressing the view that biological sex, not self-declared gender identity, should determine access to single sex spaces such as women’s changing rooms is ‘transphobic’. The Code recommends that this should not be recorded as an NCHI.

But in the College of Policing’s version, this has been inverted, with an example given of a gender critical feminist accusing a pro-trans local authority of committing a ‘hate incident’. The guidance advises the police not to record this as an NCHI. That is a bizarre inversion of the Code of Practice’s advice and is unlikely to lead to fewer NCHIs being recorded against gender critical feminists.

The intention of the Home Secretary couldn’t be clearer: she wants officers to stop policing our tweets and start policing our streets. But the College of Policing seems determined to thwart her. We will be keeping a close eye on this one.

Christian mayoral candidate wins damages for unfair dismissal

In an important victory for common sense, Maureen Martin, the housing association employee who was fired from her housing association for expressing orthodox Christian beliefs in an election leaflet when she stood for the mayoralty in her London borough, has just won a substantial out of court settlement from her former employer (Mail on Sunday).

I spoke about the need to remedy this injustice last year on GB News (here), as well as writing about it for the Mail on Sunday (here), so I’m delighted for Maureen. It takes guts to stick up for yourself in the way she has, and the result is she’s struck a major blow for free speech. Her substantial out-of-court settlement sends a clear message to employers who disapprove of an employee’s orthodox Christian beliefs: sack them at your peril.

Under the Equality Act 2010, it’s unlawful for employers to discriminate against employees based on a protected characteristic, and that includes religion or belief. Unfortunately, woke companies often disregard that when it comes to expressions of orthodox Christian beliefs, hoping their victims will go quietly. In Maureen’s case, they picked on the wrong woman.

This demonstrates exactly why the FSU is campaigning for an amendment to the Employment Rights Act 1996 to make it impossible for companies to discipline staff for saying non-woke things outside of the workplace. 

Christian Concern did a great job in helping Maureen take legal action against her former employer. But taking your case to an Employment Tribunal is a lengthy and often costly process. (The barrister Allison Bailey had to raise more than £500,000 to fund her recent legal case, for example.) That’s why we believe the Employment Rights Act needs amending to make it impossible for employers to sack employees who say something lawful outside the workplace.

As part of that amendment, we’d like to see a statute of limitations on what people can be investigated for, even if it’s something they said in the workplace. In recent times, we’ve seen the rise of what the author Freddie deBoer has called “offence archaeology”, where people go back many years to try and find things people have said that are supposedly offensive in order to get them disciplined, sacked or cancelled – as happened, for example, in the recent, high profile cases of the then leader of Northern Ireland’s UUP Party, Doug Beattie (Telegraph), schoolteacher Christian Webb (Spiked) and American comedian Kevin Hart (Spectator). Like libel and slander, we’re campaigning for a 12-month statute of limitations on what you can be investigated for.

FSU response to Institute of Actuaries’ consultation on DEI

The FSU has responded to the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries’ (IFoA) consultation on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Like many other professional and supervisory bodies, the IFoA is proposing to update its Code of Conduct to get its members to comply with EDI orthodoxy. We are concerned this will result in further suppression of members’ free speech, especially as the IFoA’s Code of Conduct has very broad application and applies to members’ private lives, i.e., their behaviour outside of work.

In our response, we highlight how the existing IFoA Code already contains extensive EDI provisions. If these new proposals were to be implemented, we fear the IFoA would be adopting an approach to EDI that risks scope creep and threatens to punish anyone who dissents from woke orthodoxy. Our experience at the FSU is that changing professional codes of conduct to prioritise EDI, while no doubt well-intentioned, leads to people being put through unnecessary and stressful disciplinary procedures.

You can read our response in full here.

Government shelves Worker Protection Bill in big free speech victory!

News of a big free speech victory emerged this month, when the government withdrew its support from the “draconian” Worker Protection (Amendment to Equality Act 2010) Bill following a Tory backlash (Telegraph). Members will recall that our Chief Legal Counsel, Dr Bryn Harris, produced a very thorough briefing note on the Bill and it’s this note, which we’ve circulated widely in Parliament, that prompted the rebellion.

If the Bill had reached the statute books in its current form, it would have introduced a legal requirement for companies and public bodies to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent their employees being harassed by third parties (i.e., customers or members of the public) in a way that related to a “protected characteristic” as defined by the Equality Act 2010 (such as sex, gender reassignment, age, race, religion, etc).

The obvious danger, apart from the compliance costs, is that the legislation would have caused an explosion in costly litigation, forcing pubs, bars and restaurants to expel clients for “banter” and other trivial, perfectly lawful incidents.

Another more subtle, but just as significant danger was the ‘chilling’ effect the Bill would have had – as the Tory peer Lord Strathcarron pointed out during the second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords. For instance, it would have meant bookshops not inviting authors such as JK Rowling and Helen Joyce to give talks “knowing that an employee could sue for hurt feelings”.

With Tory peers having tabled numerous amendments to the Bill, a government source has now confirmed that there won’t be enough time to debate them all before the end of the Parliamentary session – making “passage of the Bill impossible”.

According to the government source quoted in the Telegraph, the Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch (who was responsible for the Bill), is now looking to ensure any future legislation is focused solely on preventing the sexual harassment of employees by third parties – an element of the current Bill that commands broad support.

The FSU is relieved that the government has listened to our concerns and those expressed in the House of Lords and withdrawn its support for this piece of legislation. The Equality Act 2010 undoubtedly needs reforming, but not in a way that further erodes free speech.

You can read more about this important victory on our home page.

The FSU would love to hear about your experiences of cancel culture!  

Thanks to your support, we’ve been helping to defend our members’ free speech rights for more than three years.

In that time, our in-house legal team, working with our casework team, has assisted more than 2,000 individuals. As a result, we’ve gained a unique insight into cancel culture – and contrary to the tenets of woke millennial orthodoxy, we’re now in a position to state with absolute certainty that reports of its non-existence are greatly exaggerated.

That said, we’d like to gain even further insight by hearing from our newsletter recipients, both those who have been helped directly by our case team, and also any others who may have been affected by cancel culture.

The results of this survey will be used to help us engage more effectively in the public conversation and to inform our in-house case work. By cancel culture, we mean the general cultural background that leads to situations where our legal free speech rights as citizens are put at risk or actively curtailed, and unwarranted sanctions are applied.

Please follow this link to complete the anonymous survey: FSU Cancel Culture Survey.

It should take no more than five minutes and we will share a summary of the results of this survey in a future FSU newsletter.

Tickets now available for our live event with Prof Matthew Goodwin

We’re delighted to announce the first events in our summer season. Members receive discounts for live events and exclusive access to online content, so do consider joining the FSU. Membership starts from as little as £2.49 per month. 

On Wednesday 7th June, we will be hosting “Whose values? Whose voices? Are we being silenced by a ‘new elite’?” featuring Professor Matthew Goodwin, a member of our Advisory Council.

Professor Goodwin’s latest book, Values, Voices and Virtue: The New British Politics, has stirred up lively discussion about whether a ‘new elite’, with values alien to the majority, is becoming a dominant cultural and political force in Britain. Stepping into the middle of the culture wars and offering an analysis that is critical of both left and right, the book has succeeded in opening up debate about the causes and impact of populism, the nature of power and class identity, whether society can cohere around shared values, and how democracy can be revived.

We have brought together a great panel to discuss the book with Matthew: Professor Geoffrey Evans of Oxford University, Baroness Claire Fox and journalist Sherelle Jacobs. I’ll be chairing the discussion. 

There will be an audience Q & A and plenty of time to socialise afterwards, so if you can get to London, it’s a great opportunity to meet the speakers, as well as the FSU staff and other members. A welcome drink is included in the ticket price and the bar will stay open after the debate. The book will be on sale on the night. Tickets can be purchased here.

FSU Summer Regional Speakeasy in Cambridge – book your tickets here!

If you live in the Cambridge area, the first of our Summer Regional Speakeasies will take place there on Thursday 15th June. Journalist and writer Jane Robins will interview me about my perspective on the battle for free speech, and much more. There will, of course, be plenty of time for socialising with fellow free speech supporters. FSU members can book tickets FREE of charge for themselves and their friends. Non-members pay £10. You can book your places here.

FSU event on the return of blasphemy laws – snaffle the last few tickets here!

A few in-person tickets remain for our next event, “Blasphemy Law by the Back Door?”, which takes place in central London on Wednesday 10th May. Book your tickets now to avoid disappointment. Members who cannot get to London can join online – please see recent FSU Events emails or weekly newsletters for the link. All are welcome to attend in person, and tickets can be purchased here.

The Weekly Sceptic Live and the Lockdown Files Live

Finally, you can now also purchase tickets to two live events I’ll be appearing at.

The first is a live recording of the Weekly Sceptic – the regular podcast of the Daily Sceptic, my news publishing website, featuring stand-up comic and GB News presenter Nick Dixon, Daily Sceptic editor Will Jones and me. It’s at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster on 20th May. The two-hour show starts at 7.30pm and includes an audience Q&A, along with a section called ‘Peak Woke’ in which Nick and I compete to see who can find the most egregious example of woke gobbledygook in the past seven days. Guaranteed laughs. Tickets are only £25 and available here – but hurry if you’d like to go. They’re selling fast.

The second is the Lockdown Files Live, an exclusive, one-off event on 10th June in which I’ll be interviewing Isabel Oakeshott on stage about Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages which she leaked to the Telegraph and became the basis of the paper’s Lockdown Files. The evening, which is also at the Emmanuel Centre, will include a series of readings from the WhatsApp messages featuring actor and leader of the Reclaim Party Laurence Fox as Matt Hancock. Doors open at 7pm (as does the bar) and the two-hour show starts at 7.30pm (including an Audience Q&A). You can find out more and book your tickets (also £25) here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

Growing Parliamentary revolt over Worker Protection Bill

The FSU has been briefing supporters across both Houses of Parliament on the Worker Protection (Amendment to Equality Act 2010) Bill and it’s good to see that our efforts to flag up the threat this legislation poses to free speech and freedom of expression are starting to gain media traction.

Yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph carried a front-page piece on a growing Tory revolt over the government’s backing for the bill, while a strong editorial in that same paper urged Rishi Sunak to think again, pointing out that if the proposed legislation reaches the statute books unamended it will “cause havoc both for private-sector business and for public services, including the police and the NHS”.

This legislation – a private members’ bill – seeks to expand the legal duty set out in the Equality Act 2010 that requires employers to protect workers from harassment by other employees defined as “unwanted conduct relating to a protected characteristic” (i.e., age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation) where that conduct has the purpose or effect of “creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”. 

With the government’s backing, the bill’s two Lib Dem sponsors – Wera Hobhouse MP and Baroness Burt of Solihull – want to make bosses additionally liable for harassment of their employees by members of the public that they come into contact with while doing their jobs.

This requirement presents a particular challenge to employers with public-facing staff because it makes them legally liable if they fail to take what Clause 1 of the Bill as drafted describes as “all reasonable steps to prevent third-parties” from harassing their employees.

Following pressure from the FSU, the government has amended the Bill so speech that involves “an expression of opinion on a political, moral, religious or social matter” is protected. That’s better, but still not great. What about pub banter and football chants, for instance?

And as Lord Strathcarron pointed out in a terrific speech in the House of Lords last week, what will become of book launches? “Would Waterstones, for example, risk an in-store book signing by JK Rowling or Helen Joyce on the off-chance that one of the author’s fans might be wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘Woman Equals Adult Human Female’, knowing that an employee could sue for hurt feelings – real or vexatious?” he asked.

You might think a government led by Rishi Sunak would be a little more circumspect when it comes to supporting legislation that will turbo-charge the Equality Act’s ineluctable “mission creep” – he was, after all, the candidate during last year’s Conservative Party leadership election who went out of his way to describe that legislation as “a Trojan horse that has allowed every kind of woke nonsense to permeate public life”.

And yet much like the inhabitants of Troy, cheerily wheeling their ‘gift of peace’ back behind the city walls, Mr Sunak’s government appears oblivious to the threat posed by this legislation, simply waving it through the Commons without a vote on a Friday sitting when most MPs weren’t in Westminster but back in their constituencies.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, senior Tories are now warning that the free speech protections included in the amended legislation do not go far enough.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Business Secretary, said establishments that “serve the public can expect to run a police state in their business”, while Sir John Hayes, the chairman of the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs, said it had “sinister implications”. Another Conservative MP, Craig Mackinlay, said he believed the change was “draconian”. FSU Advisory Council member Lord David Frost described the Bill as a “woke, socialist measure” that would “have a chilling effect on every conversation in a workplace”.

The FSU is calling on the Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch, to rethink the bill. With hospitality venues struggling to survive rising energy costs, soaring inflation and a rise in corporation tax, more red tape is the last thing they need. At the very least, the Government should make commencement of all the clauses other than the ones dealing with sexual harassment contingent on a proper consultation with all the sectors likely to be affected.

You can read our briefing note on the Worker Protection Bill here.

Charity Commission to investigate mosque at centre of school Quran row following FSU intervention

Jamia Masjid Swafia, the Wakefield mosque at the centre of a row about a Quran being accidentally damaged at a local secondary school, is being investigated by the charities watchdog (Times). This is a significant regulatory intervention on behalf of free speech, freedom of expression and the separation of religion from civil affairs – and it’s thanks to the FSU. 

Members may recall that we wrote to West Yorkshire Police earlier this month, asking them to remove the ‘non-crime hate incidents’ that had been recorded against the names of four boys at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield after one of the boys, a 14-year-old who is on the autistic spectrum, brought a copy of the Quran into school and accidentally dropped it, causing minor damage. In a completely disproportionate response, the police decided to treat this episode as a ‘non-crime hate incident’ and recorded it as such. You can read that letter here.

We followed up with a letter to Helen Stephenson, the CEO of the Charity Commission, asking her to open an investigation into Jamia Masjid Swafia after video footage emerged of one of the boy’s mothers appearing there shortly after the episode, dressed in a Muslim headscarf, seemingly in an effort to protect her son, who had been receiving death threats. You can read our letter urging the Charity Commission to open an investigation into the mosque here.

Writing in the Times, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, described this meeting as “look[ing] more like a sharia law trial, inappropriately held at a mosque instead of a neutral setting”.

It’s difficult to disagree. We’ve reviewed the footage posted on social media and it’s pretty alarming.

While the boy’s mother sat on a panel, modestly bowing her head, the Imam warned that the Muslim community wouldn’t tolerate any disrespect shown to the Quran and if necessary would defend its honour with their lives. “When it comes to the honour of the Quran we will stand and we will defend the honour of the Quran no matter what it takes,” he said. “The slightest bit of disrespect [to the Quran] is not accepted and it is not going to be tolerated at any point, in any city, in any country by any Muslim and that’s the fact of the matter.”

He continued: “The difficulty that we have in this incident is that these are not adults that have carried out this act. Had it been, for example, a teacher who had disrespected the holy Quran – had it been, let’s say, an adult that had thrown the holy Quran – then the matter would be different. We probably wouldn’t be sitting in the [mosque] right now, we’d probably be standing outside that school and voicing our concerns without any doubt whatsoever.”

As we pointed out in our letter to the Charity Commission, the Jamia Masjid Swafia mosque is a registered charity and we think these remarks constitute a breach of one of the mosque’s charitable objects, namely, “promoting good community relations and cohesion between Muslims and non-Muslims”.

Responding to our letter, a Charity Commission spokeswoman confirmed to the Times that the regulator has “opened a regulatory compliance case to assess concerns raised with us about Jamia Masjid Swafia”. She added: “We are carefully considering the issues raised to determine our next steps.”

New FSU report reveals police failing to teach officers about free speech

The FSU’s latest research briefing on the free speech crisis in British policing was published earlier this month, and we’re delighted to report that it has since gained significant media traction (e.g., Christian Institute, Epoch Times, Spiked, Sunday Times, Times). 

Authored by our Research Officer, Carrie Clark, the briefing reveals that a majority of police forces provide next to no training to officers on freedom of speech while a huge amount of time is spent on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) training. Partly as a result, the police have neglected the protection for freedom of expression in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as common law free speech protections, when investigating and recording ‘non-crime hate incidents’. (You can watch a clip of me discussing the findings on GB News here.)

The FSU submitted Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to all 41 English and Welsh police forces, excluding the British Transport Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary and Ministry of Defence Police. Nine forces failed to respond within the statutory deadline or notified us that their response was indefinitely delayed, 10 forces provided partial information, and 22 answered in full.

Based on these responses, Carrie calculated that 78% of the police forces who responded to our requests are providing no training at all on Article 10, or providing no more than one line on it. The remainder did not answer the question.

By contrast, 32 forces answered a question asking for details of the training carried out in relation to EDI. One force claimed to hold no information on the subject and a further four stated that EDI was so highly integrated into every aspect of their training that it would exceed the cost limit of the Freedom of Information Act to provide the necessary information. Fourteen forces described EDI training as a “golden thread” running through every part of their training or reported that EDI was integral to standard training.

This means that for 56% of the police forces we surveyed, EDI is inextricably embedded in their training.

If Suella Braverman is serious about wanting to rein in the police’s nasty habit of recording NCHIs against anyone accused of saying something politically incorrect, it is essential that England and Wales’s 41 police forces receive proper free speech training.

You can read the FSU’s report here.

New FSU event on the return of blasphemy laws – book your tickets here!

The FSU is delighted to announce a new event, ‘Blasphemy law by the back door?’ Speakers include Director of Common Sense Society UK Emma Webb, researcher and author Dr Rakib Ehsan, Steven Evans of the National Secular Society, and Ben Jones, our Deputy Case Director.

Although the offence of blasphemy was abolished in England and Wales in 2008, the disturbing case of the Batley Grammar School teacher – still in hiding two years after showing a picture of Mohammed to an RE class – and the recent punishment of four schoolboys in Wakefield for lightly scuffing a copy of the Quran suggests that de facto blasphemy laws are still being enforced in the UK, just not on behalf of Christians.

In this climate, are we seeing the return of blasphemy laws by the back door? How might we strike a balance between tolerance for diverse beliefs and the right to ridicule or criticise religion? And can we defend the right to criticise Islam, when our institutions routinely censure dissent from woke liturgy?  

Join us in-person – or online if you’re an FSU member – on Wednesday 10th May from 7:30pm as our impressive panel addresses one of the most pressing threats to freedom of speech in western, liberal democracies.

Full details and a link to purchase in-person tickets can be found on our Events page. If you can’t get to London, then join us via Zoom – it’s free of charge for FSU members, so please check back through your recent emails from our Events team for the link to register. (If you’re receiving this newsletter as a supporter, but haven’t yet joined, you can join the FSU for as little as £2.49 a month here.)

The FSU launches its new podcast ‘That’s Debatable!’

We were very excited to launch our new podcast last month, with weekly dispatches from the frontline of the free speech wars. That’s Debatable! is co-hosted by Tom Harris and Ben Jones, two members of the FSU’s staff. Ben’s day job as Deputy Case Management Director is to help our members who get into trouble for speaking their minds, and Tom, our Data Director, sees the facts and figures that prove how big the free speech crisis is.

The team will discuss the free speech issues of the week, answer your questions, and let you know what we’re doing to protect people’s speech rights in the workplace and the public sphere. The podcast comes out each Tuesday, and is available on all the major podcasting platforms.

Click here to listen to the podcast – and don’t forget to search for That’s Debatable! on your favourite podcasting app and hit ‘subscribe’ so you don’t miss next week’s episode.

Online Speakeasy with Simon Fanshawe – register for tickets here!

On Tuesday 18th April, Toby Young will be joined in conversation at an exclusive, members only Online Speakeasy with writer and broadcaster Simon Fanshawe OBE. Simon has had a career that stretches from being an award-winning comic (Perrier Award 1989) to a Sunday Times feature writer, as well as a broadcaster and columnist. He is also the author of the best-selling book The Power of Difference, which has just been awarded Management Book of the Year 2022. Further details about the event are available here. If you’re an FSU member, Zoom registration is free of charge, so please check back through your recent emails from our Events team for the link to register.

FSU member Vanessa Warwick in SLAPPs case – show your support here!

Meanwhile, in potential SLAPPs case news, FSU member Vanessa Warwick is facing the largest ever damages claim for defamation in the history of UK courts – £5.4million. She is being sued in the High Court by property trainer Samuel Leeds and his company. Vanessa was represented in court earlier this month by specialist defamation counsel Jonathan Price of Doughty Chambers who represented her on a low-bono basis.

“I am so immensely grateful to Jonathan, my solicitor Carmine Procaccini of Anthony Gold, Index on Censorship, and the FSU for their support during this stressful ordeal,” Vanessa told us. “I am also grateful to CrowdJustice for hosting my fund-raising campaign page, which is helping me raise the funds to continue with my defence.”

You can find out more about the case and donate to Vanessa’s CrowdJustice fundraiser here.

Dis-/misinformation Speakeasy – full video of our latest event available now!

The video of the FSU’s most recent in-person Speakeasy – ‘Disinformation, Misinformation and the Freedom to Dissent’ – is now available in full on our YouTube channel. It was a terrific event, with more or less a full house at the Art Workers’ Guild in London, and over 500 people joining us online via Zoom.

So-called disinformation and misinformation have been singled out by many governments, institutions, charities and commercial businesses as a threat to democracy, requiring widespread censorship. Is this a genuine concern, or just an excuse by the authorities to suppress dissenting points of view on issues like the lockdowns, mRNA vaccines, the war in Ukraine and climate change? And even if the threat is real and the concern genuine, how can we trust these agencies to accurately identify disinformation and misinformation?

To discuss these issues, we brought together a fantastic panel of experts, including Silkie Carlo of Big Brother Watch, writer and broadcaster Timandra Harkness, and two of the people recently identified by a British Army 77th Brigade whistleblower as having been monitored by the secretive unit for criticising the government’s pandemic response – the journalist Peter Hitchens and myself.

As the Twitter Files have made clear, the weaponisation of concepts like ‘misinformation’ and ’disinformation’ by Big Tech (and Big Government) is one of the most pernicious threats to free speech that we currently face – so if you weren’t able to join us for the live event, this video is well worth a watch. The link is here – and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel while you’re there.

Academic freedom for feminists – show your support for Laura Favaro here!

Dr Laura Favaro is a feminist sociologist who is taking her ex-employer – City University – to an Employment Tribunal for discrimination, harassment, victimisation, and whistleblowing detriment.

In September 2022, Favaro wrote an article for Times Higher Education that described the vilification and ostracism experienced by female academics who question gender identity ideology. After interviewing 50 gender studies academics about their views and experiences of the ‘gender wars’, Laura concluded that a culture of fear had taken hold across universities in England when it comes to this topic.

In her article, Dr Favaro recounts being told that “certain doors in academic may quietly close” if she proceeded with her research – which is exactly what happened. Colleagues quickly moved to denounce her research as an “attack piece on trans people” that had been “intended to cause harm”, while high-profile, well-remunerated Professors who had originally acted as participants in her study began announcing that they would be taking ‘action‘ against her, in spite of the fact that she was a precariously employed migrant.

City University subsequently received complaints alleging that Dr Favaro had been unethical during her research. As Laura points out, these complaints were baseless: City investigated and could find no ethical wrongdoing on her part. Despite this, Dr Favaro was still let go by City University. She further alleges that prior to her termination, her research project was suspended, all access to her research data was withdrawn, and she was vilified and ostracised by colleagues. 

In an interview with the Sunday Times’s Hadley Freeman, Dr Favaro admitted to being “terrified” about her tribunal case, but also determined to see it through: “The time has come to speak up, because I don’t want other women to go through this. Silence will not protect us.”

You can find out more about Laura’s crowdfunder and show your support for this brave and principled early career academic by clicking here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young