Monthly Newsletter

FSU calls on West Yorkshire Police to wipe records of ‘Quran-gate’ pupils

As widely reported, the FSU has written to West Yorkshire Police, urging them to delete the ‘non-crime hate incidents’ (or NCHIs) from the records of four pupils at a school in Wakefield who were suspended over minor, accidental damage caused to a copy of the Quran (Epoch Times, Epoch Times, Mail, Mail, Times).

The schoolchildren were suspended from Kettlethorpe High School last week after a student (who happens to be autistic) reportedly brought a copy of the Quran into school “on a dare” having lost a game of Call of Duty with his mates. He and his friends read aloud from it out on the school’s tennis courts, then walked back inside the school, where another pupil knocked it out of their hands and on to the floor. Apparently, it sustained a small tear and a smudged page.

For this, the four students were suspended, and the police were called in. At a meeting with irate ‘community leaders’ at a local Mosque, Chief Inspector Andy Thornton – who is leading the investigation into this dreadful crime – said the students’ treatment of the book has been recorded as an NCHI. As our Deputy Case Director, Ben Jones, remarked on TalkTV, it’s the sort of scenario that if you’d predicted it 20 years ago, you’d immediately have been denounced as an Islamophobic bigot.

In my letter to Inspector Thornton, I asked for assurance that the boys at the centre of the story have not had NCHIs recorded against their names and, if they have, to remove them immediately.

Last July, the professional body for the police in England and Wales, the College of Policing (CoP), issued new interim guidance on the recording of NCHIs following the judgement in the case of Miller v The College of Policing [2021] EWCA Civ 1926. According to the CoP: “Not all incidents reported need to be recorded. A record should only be made where it meets the threshold” set out in the National Standard for Incident Recording Counting Rules (NSIR). Those rules define a ‘hate incident’ as: “Any incident, which may or may not constitute a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate.”

Given that the school has said there was no “malicious intent” on the part of the four children involved (BBC), the recording of a non-crime hate incident is prima facie inconsistent with the definition contained in the NSIR, as there was no motivation of prejudice or hate (although it will now be perceived as such following the recording of it as a ‘hate incident’). What’s perhaps most troubling about this is that unlike actual crimes, NCHIs recorded against children’s names remain on their records when they reach adulthood.

As an organisation, the FSU is hard pressed to imagine a sequence of events more likely to chill public debate and freedom of expression than recording this episode as a ‘hate incident’ and attaching that data to the children’s records, in spite of the absence of any malicious intent.

Last week, a source close to the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, told the Times: “These are very concerning reports. The Home Secretary is clear that the police response should always be proportionate and consider the welfare of young children as a priority over any perceived insults.”

It’s encouraging to hear Ms Braverman refer to the need for ‘proportionality’, not least because she now has the option to issue a statutory Code of Practice on the recording of NCHIs that will supersede the CoP’s interim guidance – and the Telegraph confirmed yesterday evening that she intends to exercise that option later this month. That she has the power to do this is thanks in no small part to the FSU’s Parliamentary work.

Last year, we worked with Lord Moylan and other peers on an amendment to the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill that would have put an end to the practice of recording NCHIs in such a way that they can show up in an enhanced criminal record check. However, that amendment was withdrawn when the Government agreed to make its own amendment granting the Home Secretary the option to produce statutory guidance on the recording and retention of personal data relating to NCHIs. Following the passing of that Bill, the Home Office said the Secretary of State would at some point go ahead and issue this guidance.

No doubt hoping to get out in front of the Home Secretary and demonstrate that no further governmental intervention would be necessary, the CoP then rushed out its own, interim guidance on the recording of NCHIs which was an improvement on the previous iteration.

But with constabulary in West Yorkshire – as well as South Wales, Hampshire and Sussex – so openly flouting the CoP’s guidance, the FSU is delighted that the Home Secretary is now going to issue the new Code of Practice.

You can read my letter to West Yorkshire Police in full here.

If you’d like to know more, the FSU’s detailed briefing on NCHIs can be accessed here. Or alternatively, for a quick, five-minute read on the topic, our FAQs on NCHIs is here.

Online Speakeasy with Simon Fanshawe – register for tickets here!

I’m delighted to announce that on Tuesday 18th April I’ll be joined in conversation at an exclusive, FSU 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 the author of the best-selling book The Power of Difference, which brings together his own experiences and the latest research to explain why inclusion is more than just being nice to people, why unconscious bias training isn’t the fix we need and why listening to all individual voices, not assuming that different groups of people have a single homogenous viewpoint, is key. He was one of the co-founders of Stonewall, but resigned from the organisation in 2019 because he believes it was going about promoting diversity in the wrong way.

This is an online event and FSU members will be sent a link separately so they can attend via Zoom – look out for the email, as this is going to be a great discussion! You can find out more about the event here.

If you’re not yet a member but would like to attend this and the other similar events we organise please join here.

The Worker Protection Bill and the spectre of the ‘banter police’

The FSU has been briefing MPs on the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill, a little-known Private Members’ Bill proposed by Lib Dem MP Wera Hobhouse, which will have disastrous consequences for free speech and impose huge compliance costs on Britain’s one-and-a-half million businesses.

You can read our briefing document in full here.

In my capacity as FSU General Secretary, I’ve written to the Business Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities, Kemi Badenoch, asking her to press pause on this legislation, not least because all the businesses affected by it should be properly consulted and the public should have an opportunity to debate such a significant expansion of the Equality Act before it becomes law.

One of the (many) things the Equality Act 2010 did was to impose a legal duty on 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”. 

However, the Hobhouse bill will expand that duty, rendering bosses additionally liable for harassment of their employees by members of the public that they come into contact with while doing their jobs. If we were just talking about sexual harassment, that would be one thing. But this bill actually seeks to extend third-party liability to every type of ‘unwanted conduct’ already prohibited by the Equality Act, including overheard conversations. In other words, if the bill becomes law, employers will have a duty to protect their workers from overhearing ‘upsetting’ remarks made not only by their colleagues, but by members of the public as well.

Following pressure from the FSU, the Government amended the Bill at report stage to create a narrow exemption. Under the amendment, employers will not be liable for a failure to prevent harassment of an employee by a third party where the conduct is:

1. merely overheard by the employee, and not directed at him or her;
2. an opinion on a political, moral, religious or social matter;
3. not an indecent or grossly offensive opinion; and
4. unintentional, rather than intentional harassment.

I’m grateful that the Government has tried to mitigate the harm the Bill will do to British businesses by backing this amendment. But given that all four conditions will have to apply for the speech in question to be protected – just one applying will be no good – this is an extremely narrow exemption, only likely to protect a small sub-set of speech. Humour and sports chat fall outside the exception, quite arbitrarily, as do philosophy, academic discussion and artistic or literary or critical speech, unless these are caught by the mysterious term ‘social matters’. The exception will also fail if the speech is ‘indecent or grossly offensive’ – a formulation which, in the opinion of the Law Commission of England and Wales, is unacceptably subjective and which, in our opinion, should not be disseminated more widely through the statute book.

What about pub banter or football chants? Notwithstanding the Government’s amendment, if a barmaid or stadium steward overhears something they find upsetting that relates to a protected characteristic, even if it isn’t addressed to them, they can still sue their employers for harassment.

The Bill 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 harassing their employees. Will employers be required to proactively prevent anything that might constitute harassment? And what might that look like in practice? Will pubs be expected to put up signs saying, ‘No banter allowed’? (You can watch me discuss these points on GB News here). Setting aside the chilling effect this will have on free speech, there are the eye-watering compliance costs to consider. What sort of impact are they likely to have on British pubs, many of which are already struggling to survive?

As I say in my letter to Ms Badenoch: “[The FSU] would like, at the very least, the Bill to be paused so it can receive proper scrutiny. I am sure you will agree that all the businesses affected by it should be properly consulted and the public should have an opportunity to debate such a significant expansion to the scope of the Equality Act 2010.”

Online speakeasy with Meghan Murphy – register for tickets here!

Our next members-only Online Speakeasy is ‘Defeating Twitter Bans and Defending Free Speech’, where I’ll be joined in conversation with Canadian journalist, writer and podcaster Meghan Murphy. Please do join us on Zoom at 7.30pm on Wednesday 8th March for what looks set to be a really interesting discussion. You can register for the event here.

Meghan is the founder and editor of Feminist Current, a feminist website and podcast, and host of YouTube channel The Same Drugs. She has spoken up about the issue of gender identity legislation and women’s rights, including in the Canadian senate and the Scottish Parliament, and has had to endure repeated threats of death, rape, violence and censorship (Telegraph). On the topic of censorship, Meghan was permanently banned from Twitter in 2018 for saying that men are not women. Thankfully, the ban was lifted by Twitter’s new owner and CEO, Elon Musk, in November 2022.

You can find Meghan on Twitter here and Substack here. To whet your appetite for the FSU’s Speakeasy, you can listen to Meghan’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience here and her TRIGGERnometry appearance here.

If you’re not yet a member but would like to attend this and the many similar events we organise, please join here.

Statutory tort restored to Higher Education Bill in victory for free speech

The Lords Amendments to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill were debated in the House of Commons in February and there was a terrific outcome for academic freedom at England’s universities. Following the Government’s announcement that it would support the statutory tort in the bill as originally drafted, Lords Amendment 10 – which sought to remove the right of students and staff to sue universities that breach their speech rights in the County Court – was rejected at division by 283 votes to 161 (Times Higher).

This is a big victory and one the FSU can take the lion’s share of the credit for. When the Lords rejected the tort, we swung into action, contacting all the MPs we know, writing to the Education Secretary and her ministers, and urging academics who support the tort to write to them too.

In technical, legislative terms, clause 4 of the legislation as drafted creates a new statutory tort that will allow aggrieved parties to take legal action against universities in the County Court. In the FSU’s view, it is this tort which gives the legislation’s new free speech duties teeth.

Claire Coutinho, the Under Secretary of State for Education and the minister responsible for the Bill, is the member of the Government we have to thank for restoring the tort. Writing in the Telegraph, she said it “will allow those who have suffered any loss – financial or otherwise – to seek redress through the courts where needed. I’ve spoken to many leading academics who share my belief that the tort is necessary to secure the cultural change needed on campus.”

It was this aspect of the legislation that met with strong opposition in the House of Lords, where critics voted to strip out clause 4 in its entirety. Their main criticism of the tort was that it would subject higher education providers to costly, time consuming and unmeritorious or vexatious claims.

As we pointed out in our most recent briefing on the Higher Education Bill (here), criticisms of that kind were oblivious to both the legal architecture proposed by the legislation, and, in addition, the considerable power courts have to manage cases and prevent vexatious or misconceived claims from proceeding.

The first port of call under the Bill for anyone who believes their right to free speech has been infringed will be a specialist adjudicator (the new free speech champion at the Office for Students) who will deal solely with university free speech cases. This is intended as an informal, inexpensive, and less risky alternative to taking a university to court.

Moreover, what the Bill’s critics in the House of Lords seem not to understand is that the courts will assign cases to various ‘tracks’ depending on the value of the claim, thus ensuring the burden of litigation is proportionate to the interests at stake. A student who has missed a term of teaching due to an unlawful attempt to discipline him, for instance, might be put on the County Court small-claims track, while an academic dismissed from her well-paid professorship might well be assigned to the High Court.

The FSU is aware of dozens of academics who’ve been at the sharp end of cancel culture in British universities who have contacted Ms Coutinho over the past few weeks to tell her why they think the tort is essential. It is greatly to her credit that she has listened not to them and not to the panjandrums of the higher education establishment in the House of Lords.

Dis-/misinformation and the freedom to dissent – book your tickets here!

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

The FSU is bringing together a panel of experts to discuss these issues, including the Director of Big Brother Watch Silkie Carlo, writer and broadcaster Timandra Harkness, and two people identified by a 77th Brigade whistle-blower as having been flagged for disseminating ‘misinformation’ about the Government’s pandemic response – myself and the journalist Peter Hitchens.

Why not join us to discuss what lessons we should learn about how to counter the mis/disinformation police and defend the freedom to dissent.

In-person tickets for the event are now sold out, but you can join the waiting list in case places become available. Alternatively, if you’re an FSU member you can use the Zoom option to attend virtually – please register using the Zoom link supplied in recent emails from FSU events, or by clicking here.

If you’re not yet a member but would like to attend this and the many other events we organise please join here.

Help protect workplace freedom of speech – donate to Karen Sunderland’s fundraiser!

Karen Sunderland is suing her former employer after falling victim to ‘offence archaeology’. In 2018, when Karen was a Conservative candidate in the local elections, iNews dug up some tweets she’d posted in 2017 and managed to get her suspended by the party. The tweets reflected her sincere belief that aspects of Islamic doctrine are illiberal and unfair to women.

Four years later, when Karen was embarking on a new career, someone tipped off her employer about this episode and she was fired. Karen believes her comments were protected political speech, and that her dismissal was unfair and discriminatory. Her claim makes two important legal arguments.

First, her dismissal was either directly or indirectly because of her belief in conservatism, a belief protected by the Equality Act 2010. Establishing that conservatism is a protected belief would bring balance to the law: while there is case law protecting democratic socialism there are no equivalent protections for its right-wing counterpart. If she succeeds in winning this argument, the judgement would protect employees with conservative views which, while wholly lawful, are often distasteful to HR officers.

Second, Karen argues that she was dismissed because of her belief in freedom of speech. In short, free-thinkers attract controversy, and always have – and employers who put rigid speech codes in place are adversely affecting employees who believe in free speech. A finding that freedom of speech is a protected belief would give legal protection to other employees who manifest that belief by speaking their minds and testing received wisdom.

Karen’s trial begins on 28th March. She is being represented by barrister Francis Hoar, acting on a direct access basis. Francis is one of England’s best barristers when it comes to freedom of speech cases and party-political matters: in 2021 he published In Protection of Freedom of Speech, with a Foreword by Lord Sumption.

You can donate to Karen’s fundraiser here.

Discounted tickets available to Comedy Unleashed in Leeds

If any of our members or supporters live in or near Leeds, Comedy Unleashed is bringing its refreshing brand of stand-up comedy to The HiFi Club next month.

If a comedian gets cancelled, Comedy Unleashed puts them on. It believes the audience should be the only judge of whether something is funny. Sometimes we need to fight for free speech, and sometimes we just need kick back and enjoy its pleasures.

The line up includes:

• Andrew Doyle – Stand-up comedian, inventor of spoof social justice warrior Titania McGrath and the host of Free Speech Nation and Headliners on GB News
• Lewis Shaffer – An American, now living in England, Lewis is a Comedy Unleashed favourite: unpredictable, spontaneously surreal and utterly maverick.
• Cressida Wetton – Cressida appears regularly on Headliners and has appeared on BBC Radio 4 Extra and numerous shows at the Edinburgh Fringe including Small Town Fools, a show about provincial life in Gloucestershire, one of her favourite topics.

FSU members and supporters are entitled to 25% off tickets. If you’d like to take advantage of that offer, click here, then click on ‘Book Here’ and enter the code word SAMIZDAT.

FSU is three years-old!

Believe it or not, the FSU was founded more than three years ago, in mid-February 2020. We’ve come a long way in that time. We’ve taken on over 2,000 cases and now have 16 employees and 11,000 members. We could not have grown so quickly without the support of our members and supporters, so a heartfelt thanks to all of you. If you’d like to give us a birthday present, you can make a donation here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

The FSU’s legal battle against PayPal – an update

The FSU is continuing its fightback against PayPal following the company’s attempt to demonetise us last year. In a bid to find out why our account was suspended without prior warning, meaningful explanation, or recourse to a proper appeals process, we’ve engaged in lengthy legal correspondence with PayPal. Sadly, the company that professes on its Twitter page to be “open for all” has decided to adopt a policy of non-engagement, so our next step will be to write formal letters of complaint to the Financial Conduct Authority and the Competition and Markets Authority.

As it happens, PayPal’s decision to give us the brush-off is a useful piece of intel, not least because the Government has just begun its review of the UK Payment Services Regulations. In the review’s accompanying ‘call for evidence’, the Government makes clear its view that “as a minimum” and “without deviation, a notice-period and fair and open communication with a customer must apply in situations which relate to termination on grounds other than suspected or actual criminal offences, or when otherwise allowed by law”. It goes without saying that the FSU’s view of PayPal’s approach to “fair and open communication” will be included in our submission to the government consultation.

Speaking of which, the FSU needs your help to make its submission as compelling as possible. We’re looking for examples of politically motivated financial censorship that you, or anyone you know, may have experienced or heard about. Many of our members and supporters will know the backstory to this public consultation.

In the wake of PayPal’s attempt to deplatform our organisation, Sally-Ann Hart and Andrew Lewer tabled an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill. The amendment addressed “refusal to provide services for reasons connected with freedom of expression” and stated that: “No payment service provider providing a relevant service may refuse to supply that service to any other person in the United Kingdom if the reason for the refusal is significantly related to the customer exercising his or her right to freedom of expression.”

However, the amendment was withdrawn after the City Minister, Andrew Griffith, promised Ms Hart and Mr Lewer that the issue they were seeking to address would be included in the terms of reference of a forthcoming statutory consultation about the Payment Services Regulations.

All of which brings the story up to date – and with the consultation having now begun, it’s great to see that it will cover the regulatory framework currently applied to over 1,000 firms authorised as payment and e-money services in the UK. The existing rules, which Britain adopted when it was part of the EU, already require payment companies to give customers notice when they terminate an account. But, as per the agreement with Ms Hart and Mr Lewer, the Review will now assess whether clearer guidelines are needed on when companies can withhold or withdraw services from customers and will pay particular attention to the issue of politically motivated financial censorship.

We think this could be an important moment – the Government appears keen to keep an open-mind on the matter, which means there’s now a window of opportunity for us to shape an aspect of public policy that will help to check the creeping trend towards a Chinese-style social system in countries like ours.

On the subject of the Government’s open-mind, it’s particularly encouraging to see in the consultation that the Government makes it “very clear” that “the legitimate expression of differing views, is an important British liberty”, that it “does not support ‘cancel culture’” and that “regulations must respect the balance of rights between users’ and service providers’ obligations, including in relation to protecting the freedom of expression of anyone expressing lawful views”.

In order to provide the Government with as many instances of financial censorship as we can, we’re asking our members and supporters to send us any examples they may have come across, particularly if it involves them. To be clear, we’re after examples of financial services companies (such as high street banks), payment processors (like PayPal) and crowdfunding platforms (IndieGoGo) either withholding or withdrawing services from customers because they disapprove of their perfectly lawful views.

You can get in touch via our email address: [email protected]. Alternatively, you can direct message us on Facebook (here), Instagram (here) or Twitter (here).

FSU to fight legal battles to protect the speech rights of writers

Since we launched in February 2020, a growing number of writers have come to us for advice and support – Gillian Philip, Julie Burchill, Helen Joyce, Allison Pearson and Holly Lawford-Smith – and around 300 authors have now joined as members. It’s becoming increasingly clear that freedom of expression is under severe pressure within the literary world, with publishers and literary agents often failing to defend their authors when their speech rights come under attack.

Two of the FSU’s ongoing cases highlight some of the biggest threats that writers face in an increasingly politicised literary landscape.

Sibyl Ruth worked for the literary agency Cornerstone as an editor, purportedly on a self-employed basis, until she was dismissed for tweeting lawful and innocuous gender-critical views. With the FSU’s help, she’s now filed a claim for discrimination and is currently preparing for an upcoming hearing.

In the publishing industry, self-employment and/or temporary contract work of this kind is rife and, as Sibyl’s case demonstrates, empowers employers to side-step employment protections. As the author Nick Tyrone pointed out in Spiked recently, the fact that so many authors are getting “openly ripped off” and left with few if any workers’ rights, is becoming a “major problem” in the publishing industry.

Whether writers like Sibyl are contractually employed is therefore an important question of law, as without such status they don’t benefit from employment legislation preventing unfair dismissal. If the FSU can take a case like Sibyl’s to court and get a ruling that ‘self-employed’ authors are in fact workers, it will be of ground-breaking importance for pay and conditions in the industry.

And not just for pay and conditions, because when publishers designate freelancers and other precariously employed people as ‘independent’, they don’t just “rip them off”, as Nick Tyrone puts it – they also gain the power to silence them. The ruling handed down in Maya Forstater’s Employment Tribunal last year established that gender critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act 2010, but that judgement is rendered meaningless if gender critical authors like Sibyl Ruth can simply be described as ‘contractors’ and deprived of its protections.

Similar issues are at stake – and capable of legal resolution – in the case of former children’s author and gender critical feminist Gillian Philip.

With the generous help of FSU supporters, Gillian last year began a legal claim for unlawful discrimination against her former publishers, Working Partners and HarperCollins, on the grounds that they terminated her contract to write children’s books because she stood up for JK Rowling on Twitter. She convinced the Employment Tribunal that her claim for discrimination was submitted in time, but lost on her claim that book packager Working Partners employed her as a ‘worker’ rather than a ‘contract writer’ and therefore wasn’t entitled to protection under the Equality Act 2010.

Gillian now has leave to appeal that judgement in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, with a hearing scheduled for September 2023. A win would be a game changer – across the UK, the publishing industry would be required to treat assembly-line writers as ‘employees’, with all the attendant employment protections and protections against unlawful discrimination that follow.

It’s time these high-handed employment tactics of the UK publishing industry were challenged, and the FSU is proud to be leading the charge in the fight to defend the legal rights of thousands of precariously employed people who make their living through creative expression.

We hope that as many authors as possible will join the FSU, whether to protect themselves, to defend their peers or to build a public voice capable of putting the case for freedom of expression as robustly as possible, and to that end we’ve set up a Writers’ Advisory Council. If you know of anyone that might be interested in this offer, please do direct them to this page.

Professional regulatory bodies and the slow creep of members’ speech codes

The only chartered professional body for actuaries in the UK, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA), has begun a consultation on amending the Actuaries’ Code (AC) to include ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ – or DEI – requirements. 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 codes, the Code applies to members across a very 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.

I get that the IFoA wants to encourage decorum and politeness among its members, and the current AC does appear like the modern equivalent of an ‘etiquette code’, which any reasonable person might be expected to conform. However, the proposed new guidelines in the IFoA’s consultation show worrying signs of mission creep.

Take the proposed amendment that “members must show respect for everyone and treat others fairly”. At first glance, that might seem reasonable. But the problem with words like ‘respect’ is that their meaning is potentially – sometimes designedly – vague and subjective. Is the IFoA talking about ‘respecting’ individuals as fellow members of society, for instance, or ‘respecting’ their self-declared identity? The two aren’t equivalent – the latter might require members of the IFoA to use the preferred gender pronouns of trans people, for instance.

And what about other people’s views? Will IFoA members be expected to respect them? When Richard Dawkins opines on religion, his manner may well be respectful, if by respectful we mean ‘polite and courteous’. But individuals with strongly held religious views may not find him at all respectful, if by respectful we mean ‘deferential and unquestioning’. So could an IFoA member be found to be in breach of the new Code simply for showing support for a public figure who expresses perfectly lawful criticisms of other peoples’ beliefs?

Then there’s the stipulation that “members should encourage diversity, equity and inclusion”.

Many individuals and groups consider equity, in particular, to be a divisive concept – certainly in the way it is most usually interpreted in our public discourse. One need only look at ongoing debates in the political arena on related topics such as ‘white privilege’, ‘anti-racism’ and ‘unconscious bias’ to see how damaging it could be to impose this requirement on members. If this requirement were to be incorporated in the Code, it could be used as a way of pointing the finger and hounding out individuals from the IFoA (or putting them through unnecessary and expensive disciplinary processes) simply for expressing perfectly lawful and reasonable political views. I fear that this proposal, if implemented, could have a very chilling effect on debate and discussion within actuarial communities. Ultimately, a person’s understanding and interpretation of DEI is a matter of conscience, and therefore ‘encouragement’ of DEI should remain a matter of conscience.

If any FSU members who are also members of the IFoA are thinking of submitting a response to the consultation and want to discuss the issues at stake, then please do feel free to get in touch with the team via [email protected].

The IFoA’s initial instincts highlight the changing role of professional organisations in regulating the behaviour – and speech – of their members. Where once these bodies would restrict themselves to upholding professional standards in the workplace, they now seem intent on collapsing entirely the distinction between occupational and private life.

In Canada alone, for instance, the Law Society of Ontario has been pushing for a mandatory diversity pledge for all lawyers, while the province of British Columbia recently passed a law that can result in doctors being jailed for up to two years if they are found to have spread certain types of “false or misleading information”, e.g. saying that face masks don’t prevent transmission of Covid-19.

Here in the UK, the FSU has also 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.

Social worker and FSU member Rachel Meade was recently sanctioned by Social Work England (SWE), the regulatory body for social workers, for Facebook posts on her private account that criticised some aspects of the transgender rights movement. SWE found Rachel Meade’s “fitness to practice was impaired by way of misconduct”, and argued that her actions had the potential to undermine public confidence in social workers even though there was no evidence her work had been affected (Mail, Times).

Barrister Sarah Phillimore was investigated by the Bar Standards Board over a period of two years over complaints that she had caused ‘offence’ by tweeting about her gender critical beliefs – thanks, in part, to our help those allegations have now been dismissed.

Then there’s James Esses, a former barrister who we’ve helped in the past. James recently won the right to sue the UK Council for Psychotherapy for discrimination over allegations the regulator instructed the Metanoia Institute in London, where he was studying, to have him thrown off his Masters course in psychotherapy for expressing gender critical views (Mail).

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. Increasingly we’re finding that it isn’t HR departments per se, but external professional bodies and regulators that give the policing of this out-of-office behaviour the momentum that it otherwise might not have.

Regional Speakeasies – book your tickets here!

Having held very lively regional Speakeasies in Cardiff, Manchester and Edinburgh, the FSU continues its ‘national tour’ in February, with events in Oxford (7th February), Cambridge (8th February), Birmingham (15th February) and Brighton (20th February).

Come along to hear FSU staff members Ben Jones (Oxford), Karolien Celie (Cambridge), Tom Harris (Birmingham) and me (Brighton) discuss why free speech is worth fighting for. The Regional Speakeasies are a great opportunity to hear how our work is developing across many different fronts, including case work, research, campaigning and lobbying. In addition, there’ll be plenty of time for discussion, as well as socialising with fellow free speech supporters. Do come along to one and bring curious friends and colleagues, not forgetting to book your places via our Events page, which you can find here.

Speakeasy with Meghan Murphy

Our next members-only Online Speakeasy is ‘Defeating Twitter Bans and Defending Free Speech’, featuring me in conversation with Meghan Murphy. Join us on Zoom at 7.30pm on Wednesday 8th March for this online Speakeasy with Canadian journalist, writer and podcaster Meghan Murphy.

If you’re an FSU member, you can find the link to register for this event in last Friday’s newsletter and it will be emailed again in coming weeks. If you are not yet a member, please consider joining the FSU to secure a place at exclusive events such as this.

Meghan is the founder and editor of a feminist website and the host of YouTube channel The Same Drugs. She has spoken up about the issue of gender identity legislation and women’s rights, including in the Canadian senate and the Scottish Parliament, and has had to endure repeated threats of death, rape, violence and censorship (Telegraph). On the topic of censorship, Meghan was permanently banned from Twitter in 2018 for saying that men are not women. Thankfully, the ban was lifted by Twitter’s new owner and CEO, Elon Musk in November 2022.

The focus of her work for many years was on cultural analysis from a feminist and socialist perspective, though in a recent interview with Spiked she admitted that one of the things she gained from being banned from Twitter was “connecting with people who had been advocating for free speech for a long time” and she has since switched her focus to the fight for free speech. “You would hope people would understand why censorship and controlling speech for political purposes are dangerous,” she says, “but so many people don’t seem to get it.”

You can find Meghan on Twitter here and Substack here. To whet your appetite for the FSU’s Speakeasy, you can listen to Meghan’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience here and her Triggernometry podcast appearance here.  

Oxford Union debate on woke culture

I participated in a debate at the Oxford Union, arguing for the motion: “This House believes woke culture has gone too far.” In spite of the members of the Union all being students, my side won by 60 votes, which was very gratifying.

You may have already seen the excellent speech in favour of the motion by Konstantin Kisin, the co-host of Triggernometry and author of An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West. It went viral on Twitter, being watched by over 20 million people, and he subsequently appeared on Fox News to talk about it.

My speech wasn’t quite the barnstormer that Konstantin’s was, but it’s worth a watch nevertheless. You can find it on YouTube here.

FSU member Karen Sunderland falls victim to ‘offence archaeology’

Karen Sunderland is suing her former employer after falling victim to ‘offence archaeology’. In 2018, when Karen was a Conservative candidate in the local elections, iNews dug up some tweets she’d posted in 2017 and managed to get her suspended by the party. The tweets reflected her sincere belief that aspects of Islamic doctrine are illiberal and unfair to women.

Four years later, when Karen was embarking on a new career, someone tipped off her employer about this episode and she was fired. Karen believes her comments were protected political speech, and that her dismissal was unfair and discriminatory. Her claim makes two important legal arguments.

First, her dismissal was either directly or indirectly because of her belief in conservatism, a belief protected by the Equality Act 2010. Establishing that conservatism is a protected belief would bring balance to the law: while there is case law protecting left-wing democratic socialism there are no equivalent protections for its right-wing counterpart. If she succeeds in winning this argument, the judgement would protect employees with conservative views which, while wholly lawful, are distasteful to HR officers.

Second, Karen argues that she was dismissed because of her belief in freedom of speech. In short, free-thinkers attract controversy, and always have – and employers who put rigid speech codes in place are disproportionately affecting those who believe in free speech. A finding that freedom of speech is a protected belief would give legal protection to other employees who manifest that belief by speaking their minds and testing received wisdom.

Karen’s trial begins on 28 March 2023. She is being represented by barrister Francis Hoar, acting on a direct access basis. Francis is one of England’s best barristers when it comes to freedom of speech cases and party-political matters: in 2021 he published In Protection of Freedom of Speech, with a Foreword by Lord Sumption.

The Free Speech Union will be launching a crowd-funder imminently to raise funds for this case.

Case update

Our case team has been inundated since the start of the university term, with universities making up 20% of our case work. Higher education institutions continue to impose a gamut of free speech restrictions on staff and students, from lists of proscribed words to compulsory equality and unconscious bias ‘training’. The liturgy of EDI continues to be zealously imposed, like a new Book of Common Prayer, and we’ve got our work cut out helping the dissenters keep their jobs, university places and livelihoods.

In the last year we’ve noticed a big increase in the number of people contacting us who work in the public sector, particularly hospitals, the civil service and schools, usually to complain about their employers’ efforts to ‘woke-ify’ their workplaces. Whether it’s indoctrination masquerading as training, ludicrous pronoun policies or punishment of heretical thought, we’d encourage people to push back however they can – in reasonable, professional terms. We’ve now accumulated a lot of experience in these areas and often secure successful outcomes for our members in the public sector. So if you’re concerned about something, you can contact our case team in complete confidence for some advice, an informal discussion and some pointers. Just email [email protected].

Sharing the newsletter

As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. (Alternatively, you can buy a year’s membership for a friend here.) You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below and help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

P.S. Don’t forget to sign our petition urging the CEO of ITV not to cancel Jeremy Clarkson. It’s already got over 60,000 signatures.

Happy New Year from the FSU’s staff!

Welcome to a special end-of-year edition of the Monthly Newsletter. We thought we’d do what other campaigning groups do at this time of year, namely, summarise what we’ve achieved in the past 12 months and urge people to join or donate. Here, then, is what we’ve been able to accomplish in 2022.

Case Work

We have two full time case officers on staff, as well as two full time lawyers, and nearly all their time is taken up with case work. In a busy week, we get 50 requests for help and at any one time we’ll have around 75 cases on the go. These are cases where people have been punished, sacked, bullied, harassed, investigated, or disciplined for speaking their mind – or because a colleague prowled through their personal social media profiles in an effort to find something ‘offensive’ to complain about. In a typical week the case team will be kept busy drafting letters to employers to shut down sham investigations, advising members about the rules and procedures governing internal investigations, and counselling people through what are always extremely stressful situations. Members seeking our assistance this year have included teachers, civil servants, manual workers, academics and celebrities.

We only publicise a fraction of our cases. That’s either because the other side has insisted on confidentiality as a condition of agreeing a generous settlement, or because we’ve helped our members resolve their disputes with their employers and they don’t want to antagonise them by going to the press, or because they don’t want the allegation to pop up if someone Googles their name in case it jeopardises future employment.

But we have been able to talk about some of our successes.

For instance, FSU member Simon Isherwood won his Employment Tribunal case against West Midlands Trains (WMT), with the judgement handed down in August. The rail conductor was dismissed for gross misconduct after asking his wife whether indigenous populations in African countries enjoy ‘black privilege’ following a training session on ‘white privilege’ with around 80 other staff members via Teams. He thought he’d disconnected but he hadn’t and one of his colleagues complained. Instead of dismissing the complaint, WMT suspended him, subjected him to a lengthy investigation and then dismissed him for ‘gross misconduct’.

Simon’s Employment Tribunal hearing took place in May before Judge Stephen Wyeth. In addition to paying Simon’s legal fees, the FSU drafted in leading civil rights barrister Paul Diamond to represent him. In a landmark victory, Judge Wyeth decided that Mr Isherwood had been unfairly dismissed. The judgement reasserted the fact that “freedom of expression, including a qualified right to offend when expressing views and beliefs (in this case on social issues), is a fundamental right in a democratic society”. Particularly important in terms of workers’ speech rights was the clear distinction the judgement drew between the public and the private sphere, noting that in Simon’s case, “the expression of his private view of the course to his wife in the confines of his own home was not blameworthy or culpable conduct that could amount to contributory conduct”.

We also won an important victory over Essex University. Three years ago, Professor Jo Phoenix and Professor Rosa Freedman, both gender critical feminists, were disinvited from two separate events at the University following protests from LGBTQ+ activists who claimed that allowing them to speak would be a breach of various University policies, including one entitled ‘Harassment and Bullying: Our Zero Tolerance Approach’. Among other things, these policies set out the University’s legal duty to protect minority students from being harassed or discriminated against under the Equality Act 2010. The protestors claimed that merely allowing these two gender critical feminists on campus, even if they spoke about something entirely unrelated to trans rights, would be against the law.

This double no-platforming provoked widespread condemnation and the University commissioned the equalities barrister Akua Reindorf to review its policies. She concluded that the University was in breach of its statutory duty to ensure freedom of speech for visiting speakers, as well as its regulatory obligations, duties under charity law and – in all probability – its legal duties as set out in the Equality Act 2010. Reindorf said that the University’s policies that had been invoked to no-platform Professors Phoenix and Freedman interpreted the law “as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is”. It goes without saying that Essex is a member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme.

The report made 28 recommendations, some of them concerning Essex’s policies which, according to Reindorf, were based on a misunderstanding of the Equality Act arising from Stonewall’s dodgy legal advice. The University duly apologised to Professors Phoenix and Freedman and agreed to implement Reindorf’s recommendations – but when the LGBTQ+ activists complained that the apology made them feel ‘unsafe’, the University then issued a second apology apologising for the first, which didn’t bode well. Sure enough, it then dragged its feet over making the changes it had promised to make.

We wrote to Essex last November threatening it with a Judicial Review if it didn’t amend its policies to ensure they accurately stated the law and weren’t in breach of the University’s free speech duties. Essex wrote back, agreeing to do some of the things we’d asked, although it claimed it was intending to do them anyway, but disputing that it was legally required to comply with all our demands. We then wrote again, extracting a few more concessions… and on and on it went until, eventually, the University agreed to do more or less everything we’d asked. As a coda to this victory, the Office for Students issued some free speech guidance earlier this month which stressed that the Equality Act shouldn’t be interpreted in the way it had been by Essex.

In addition:

• We helped our member Hatun Tash, an evangelical street preacher, secure £10,000 in damages from the Metropolitan Police, as well as an apology, after she was wrongly arrested at Speakers’ Corner in June.
• We forced the Home Office to back down in April after one of its senior managers insisted that all employees had to include their preferred gender pronouns in their email signatures.
• In June, we helped secure an apology from Worcester College to Christian Concern, whom it had falsely accused of harassing LGBTQ+ students when it hosted a summer school at the College in 2021.
• We helped raise £20,000 to fund an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Joseph Kelly, a Scotsman convicted of being ‘grossly offensive’ for a tasteless tweet he posted about Captain Tom.
• We launched a petition in November urging Elon Musk to restore the Twitter accounts of several of our members – and most of them have now been restored.

PayPal

Perhaps our biggest victory of the year was over PayPal, the multi-billion dollar payment processor.

On 15th September, PayPal notified me that it was permanently closing my personal account, as well as the accounts of the Daily Sceptic – a news publishing site I own – and the FSU. The reason cited in all three cases was that the accounts had violated PayPal’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’.

When pressed for specifics, PayPal couldn’t decide why it had closed the accounts – it alternated between telling me I’d breached its policy about not promoting “hate, violence or racial intolerance” and telling newspapers my accounts had been closed because I was spreading “Covid-19 misinformation”.

My suspicion is that someone at PayPal simply doesn’t like my politics and had my accounts removed for that reason, without bothering to create a proper alibi. In other words, this was a prime example of someone being punished by a financial services company for expressing non-conformist views and, in the case of the FSU, defending people for expressing such views.

And I’m not the only one. PayPal has closed numerous accounts because it dislikes the politics of the individuals or organisations linked to them, from Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist who challenges trans rights dogma, to UsForThem, a group of mums that campaigned against school closures during the lockdowns. So I went to war with PayPal, appearing on GB News virtually every day to tell its viewers what had happened, writing about it in the Spectator, the Telegraph and Spiked, and, along with UsForThem, persuading 42 peers and MPs to write to Jacob Rees-Mogg, then the Business Secretary, and Mel Stride, the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, urging them to hold PayPal to account. After he received the letter, Rees-Mogg described PayPal’s actions as a sinister new form of cancel culture.

All this pressure became too much for the California-based company. On 27th September, PayPal apologised to me and restored all the accounts. It explained that it had changed its mind after ‘input’ from its ‘customers and stakeholders’– by which it probably meant all the people that had cancelled their PayPal accounts in solidarity with the FSU.

It goes without saying that we won’t be using PayPal’s services again. The US company’s behaviour wasn’t some brief moment of madness – an inexplicable yet temporary deviation from standard financial practice. As we hurtle towards a cashless economy, it’s part of a global trend towards weaponising Big Tech and financial services to suppress dissent of every kind. We saw it most obviously in the case of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shutting down the Freedom Convoy earlier this year. But there are numerous examples of organisations with dissenting views being deplatformed by financial services companies, such as the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance, an organisation that campaigned against vaccine mandates.

That’s why the FSU – with the help of its members and supporters – has been lobbying the Government to develop a legislative mechanism capable of preventing Big Tech companies from censoring people or campaign groups expressing legal but dissenting views (or, as in the case of the FSU, simply defending those who express legal but dissenting views). This is an ongoing campaign and we’ll be asking for your help again next year.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering what payment processor is safe to use, we produced a briefing on how free speech friendly the major payment processors and crowdfunding platforms are.

Online Safety Bill

Another significant victory was that when the Online Safety Bill returned to the House of Commons in December, having been placed on hold after Boris’s resignation in July, the ‘legal but harmful’ clause, which we’d been campaigning against for over a year, had been scrapped. In the previous version, the big social media companies were required to say in their terms of service how they intended to ‘address’ content that’s legal but harmful to adults – and the Government was planning to come up with a list of this ‘lawful but awful’ content in supplementary legislation. We were concerned that this would ‘nudge’ companies like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to remove content that the Government disapproved of, such as criticism of the mRNA vaccines or the Net Zero policy. That clause has now gone and in the latest version of the Bill the big providers are only required to say what tools they’ll provide their users with so they can block ‘legal but harmful’ content if they don’t want to see it.

Another improvement to the Bill is that plans to introduce a new harmful communications offence in England and Wales, making it a crime punishable by up to two years in jail to post a message online (or send one in the post) with the intention of causing “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”, have also been scrapped. That was also something we’d been campaigning against.

Those are both positive changes, but there’s still a great deal in the Bill that causes us a great deal of concern and we’ll be putting forward some amendments – and urging our members and supporters to write to their MPs asking them to support them – in 2023.

Non-Crime Hate Incidents

With our help, ex-copper Harry Miller won a landmark victory in the Court of Appeal in December 2021. It ruled that the College of Policing’s guidance requiring the police in England and Wales to investigate reports of ‘hate incidents’ and, if they concluded no crime had been committed, to make a record of the fact that the person-in-question had been investigated in a police database, was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

We thought this would mark the beginning of the end of this Orwellian practice, but many police forces just carried on as if nothing has changed. Consequently, we helped secure an amendment to the the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act which grants the Home Secretary the option of bringing forward a statutory instrument that will introduce a Code of Practice with respect to the recording and retention of Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHIs), bringing the number down from hundreds of thousands to, we hope, a few hundred. We also encouraged any of our members who think an NCHI has been recorded against their name to contact us so we could help get it removed.

We’re hopeful that Suella Braverman will avail herself of that option in 2023, not least because Chris Philp, the Policing Minister, told a meeting of the Oxford University Conservative Association in December that he was planning to tell all Chief Constables to stop recording NCHIs.

FAQs and Briefings

If you suspect you have an NCHI recorded against your name and want to get it removed, check out our FAQs on the subject, one of several FAQs we produced this year.

In addition, we produced FAQs on:

• Social Media and the Workplace
• The Government’s proposed reforms to the Human Rights Act
• What to do if you’re asked to declare your preferred gender pronouns in the workplace
• How to make a Freedom of Information Request
• Proposed Hate Crime Legislation in Northern Ireland

Our research team also produced a number of briefing documents on important areas of legislation:

• The Online Safety Bill
• The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill
• The Bill of Rights
• The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Part II)

Speakeasies and Events

We’ve organised a plethora of speakeasies and events, both in person and online, including two comedy nights, over half-a-dozen online speakeasies, two book launches and several in-person regional speakeasies up and down the country.

Highlights of our members-only speakeasies include conversations with:

• Douglas Murray
• Harry Miller
• Andrew Doyle
• Joanna Williams
• Helen Joyce
• Jack Dee

If you’d like to attend any of the regional speakeasies we’ve organised in 2023 in Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh, Oxford, Cambridge, Birmingham or Brighton, check out our Events page.

Launch of FSU Scotland, the South African FSU and the Writers’ Advisory Council

Finally, we expanded our operations in a number of key areas.

In response to demand from our Scottish members, we opened an office in Scotland which we unveiled at an event in April with Jacob Mchangama, the internationally renowned free speech advocate and author of the highly acclaimed new book Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media. You can watch highlights from that event on our FSU Scotland page.

In July, we welcomed a new addition to the growing family of overseas sister organisations in the form of the South African FSU. Check out its website for more details.

And this month we launched our Writers’ Advisory Council and crafted a special offer to authors who are worried that their right to freedom of expression is under threat. You can watch a testimonial from Holly Lawford-Smith, a writer whom we helped recently, here, and see the members of the Council here.

Please join or donate (or both)

I hope you’ll agree this is an impressive list of achievements. If you’re not yet a member, please join – membership fees start at £2.49 a month – and if you’re already a member please consider making a donation, either to the FSU in general, or to our legal fund. Every little helps.

I’m going to take the next few days off, but I’ll be back at the coal face, along with the FSU’s team of dedicated free speech warriors, on 2nd January. Here’s hoping that 2023 is an even more successful year for us than 2022 – which, with your help, it will be.

Happy New Year.

Toby Young

The FSU responds to the new version of the Online Safety Bill

The new version of the Online Safety Bill returns to the Commons today and the latest iteration of the legislation seems, on the face of it, to be an improvement on the previous version (thanks, in large part, to our lobbying). We’ll know more when we’ve read it – all we have to go on at the time of writing is a DCMS press release and some amendments moved by Michelle Donelan, the Digital Secretary and architect of the new Bill. The devil will be in the detail.

Something that hasn’t had that much press coverage, but is still important from a free speech perspective, is that plans to introduce a new harmful communications offence in England and Wales, making it a crime punishable by up to two years in jail to post a message online (or send one in the post) with the intention of causing “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress”, have been scrapped.

That’s good news and something we’ve been campaigning for. It means the new version of the Online Safety Bill won’t criminalise saying something, whether online or offline, that causes “hurt feeling”. The bad news is, the new communications offence was intended to replace some of the more egregious offences in the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003 (henceforth ‘MCA’ and ‘CA’). As things stand, the offences in the MCA will be repealed, but not s127 of the CA, which is the offence Count Dankula was prosecuted for.  

The latter will remain on the statute books, and the FSU will continue to campaign for its removal. The restrictions imposed on what you can say, whether online or offline, by the CA are, we believe, out of date and may, in part, be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights — that’s a claim we’re hoping to test in Strasbourg as part of Joe Kelly’s forthcoming appeal against his conviction and sentencing for posting a tweet that contravened the CA, section 127(1)(b). (You can read about that case here, donate to Joe Kelly’s CrowdJustice fundraiser here, and read our latest briefing document on the CA here.)

Another positive in Culture Secretary Michelle Donelan’s revised version of the Bill is that clause 13, which would have forced the big social media companies to set out in their terms of service how they intended to ‘address’ content that’s legal but harmful to adults, has now been scrapped. Instead, they’ll have to set out what tools they’ll provide their users with so they can block that content if they don’t want to see it – what’s being referred to as the ‘user empowerment’ model. That’s an improvement, but we shouldn’t exaggerate how much of a win this is.

The Times, for instance, reported that “the Government has dropped plans to force social media and search sites to take down material that is considered harmful but not illegal,” but it never planned to force sites to do that.  

The FSU’s objection to clause 13 was always more nuanced. It was that if the Government published a list of legal content it considered harmful to adults and created an obligation on providers to say how they intended to ‘address’ it, that would ‘nudge’ them to remove it. Even though the option to do nothing was available to providers in the previous version of the Bill, it would have been a brave social media company that chose this route, given that the Government had designated the content as harmful to adults. 

That’s why back in July the FSU successfully lobbied for an amendment to the previous version of the Bill that would have made it clear that one of the ways providers could ‘address’ this content would have been to do nothing. (You can watch Adam Afriyie MP setting out that amendment in the House of Commons here.) Our main concern about the new ‘user empowerment’ model is that the default settings on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., will be the ultra-safe settings, which may mean that politically contentious content is blocked unless you ‘opt in’ to see it. That could amount to a form of censorship, particularly if it’s not easy to adjust the settings.

There’s another respect in which free speech will be better protected in the new version. The previous one said providers would have “a duty to have regard to the importance of protecting users’ right to freedom of expression within the law”. That was pretty toothless since ‘have regard’ is the least onerous of the legal duties. In the new version, we’re told, that has been beefed up to ‘have particular regard’, which is something the FSU has been lobbying for.

Taken as a whole, we think this is an improvement on the previous version. Michelle Donelan has had to steer a difficult path between those of us lobbying for more free speech protections and a vast array of groups petitioning her to make the Bill more restrictive, including factions within her own party.

Nevertheless, we still have concerns about the Bill and will be scrutinising it carefully today. If, as we suspect, the duties to protect content of democratic importance and journalistic content have lost some of their force – two vital free speech protections – we will work with parliamentarians in the Commons and the Lords to reinvigorate them – and, as usual, we’ll be asking for the help of our members and supporters to get their MPs on side.

You can read our more considered views on the new version of the Online Safety Bill on our home page.

FSU’s New Year Regional Speakeasies announced

The FSU will be kicking off 2023 with a new series of Regional Speakeasies. Each event will include an address from a senior member of FSU staff on the topic, ‘Why Free Speech is Worth Fighting For’ — I’ll be joining our Education and Events Director, Dr Jan Macvarish, at the Speakeasy in Brighton on Tuesday 7th February. The events are a great chance to find out why everyone at the FSU is so passionate about defending free speech and to hear about the many ways our work is having an impact across various fronts, from case work and campaigning to parliamentary lobbying and policy research. They also provide an important opportunity for us to thank members in person for their continued support. There will, of course, be plenty of time for socialising with fellow free speech supporters. All event details will be listed here later in the week. Doors open at 7pm, and we kick things off at 7.30pm.

Letter to the Education Secretary about the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

In a letter coordinated by the FSU and sent to the Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, more than 50 academics urged the Government not to water down the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill in response to intense lobbying from the higher education sector (Telegraph).

We decided to pull this letter together in response to news that the government was considering making concessions to universities regarding powers contained in clause 4 of the legislation that would enable academics and students to sue institutions for breaching their free speech rights. There are several laws protecting academic free speech already on the statute books, but the problem is that they are usually ignored because there are now adequate enforcement mechanisms. Presently, for instance, academics can seek a judicial review if their rights are violated, but that typically costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, which clearly isn’t viable for most academic staff.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is particularly promising in that regard because it contains plans to create a robust mechanism for enforcing those existing laws via the introduction of a statutory tort to allow civil claims to be brought in the County Court against Higher Education Providers and Student Unions if they breach their new free speech obligations. That’s a key enforcement mechanism if higher education providers are to take their new free speech duties, as set out in the Bill, seriously. As our Chief Legal Counsel Bryn Harris pointed out to the Times Higher, the functional significance of the tort is that rather than making disputes costlier and nastier, it would, simply by dint of existing, deter universities from riding roughshod over free speech.

As an organisation we feel strongly about this. The FSU gets about 50 cries for help a week, many of them from students and academics who got into trouble simply for exercising their lawful right to free speech on campus. If the Bill is passed as it stands — i.e., with the statutory tort remedy in place — then the vast majority of students and academics who find themselves in a similar situation in the future will undoubtedly be in a stronger position.

Signatories of the FSU coordinated letter include Prof Kathleen Stock, the philosophy professor who was hounded out of Sussex University due to her gender critical beliefs (Unherd), and Prof John Finnis, an Oxford law professor who faced calls to be removed from his post because of his views on homosexuality (Oxford Mail). They also include Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans, who was no-platformed by university students at King’s College London after she discussed transgender issues on a radio show (Times).

In the letter, the academics say that critics of the Bill “underestimate the scale of the free speech crisis in our universities” because “for the most part” they are “ideologically aligned with the enforcers of intellectual orthodoxy and therefore have not had to self-censor or contend with prolonged investigations merely for expressing their opinions, let alone the bullying and intimidation faced by academics who challenge the prevailing wisdom on campus about trans rights”.

Stirring stuff, of course, and we think it dissuaded the Government from scrapping the tort altogether, which the higher education sector has been furiously lobbying for. Instead, the Government tabled an amendment to the Bill in the Lords seeking to strike a compromise with its critics (the amendment can be found here, close to the top of page 3). The amendment won’t ditch the statutory tort entirely, but will instead reduce it to a weapon of last resort, whereby students and academics can only sue universities if they’ve exhausted all the complaints procedures. That is worrying since it gives universities the whip hand. As Professor Jo Phoenix, who was defended by the FSU after she was no-platformed by Essex University, pointed out to the Telegraph, that would be “an excellent way that university managers can kick the problem in our universities into the long grass”.

One of the other things the Bill will do is create a Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom role in the Office for Students. This new office holder will have the power to investigate complaints, which is obviously welcome. But the government amendment, by making it harder to sue universities, makes the enforcement of the new free speech duties in the Bill contingent on whoever is appointed to that new role. We have no guarantee it will be someone who cares about free speech, which of course brings us back to Professor Phoenix’s point — if the culture at the top of the proposed new regulatory system is one in which safetyism is favoured above academic freedom, then it’s likely to make it easier for university managers to, as Jo puts it, kick the problem “into the long grass”.

The FSU’s position is clear — the only way to make sure universities uphold the new free speech duties in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is to give aggrieved parties the option of suing them in the county court. Without that, the Bill is unlikely to make much more difference than the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, which imposed a legal duty on universities to uphold free speech, but was never taken seriously by the sector. Why? Because there was no accompanying enforcement mechanism.

The FSU ranks payment processors and crowdfunding platforms

When payment processing company PayPal orchestrated a wave of partisan cancellations in September 2022, withdrawing services from numerous organisations including the FSU, thousands of our supporters cancelled their PayPal accounts in an incredible show of solidarity and support for freedom of expression. In the face of mass account closures, PayPal was forced to do a U-turn.

In light of what happened, we thought we’d publish an analysis of the terms and conditions of the major payment processors and crowdfunding platforms, giving each company a score out of 10 according to how friendly they are towards free speech it was. That briefing came out last month.

The link to the briefing is here. Unfortunately, the overall picture is fairly bleak. Six of the nine platforms we investigated get a score of 4/10 or below. The only crowdfunding platform we recommend for users concerned about protecting their free speech is Donorbox (8/10), although it’s not perfect. When it comes to payment processors, the only companies we’d recommend are Worldpay (8/10) and Stripe (7/10).

The difficulty we’ve identified is that the majority of payment processors and crowdfunding platforms rely on subjective language that can easily be interpreted to withdraw service from users for purely political reasons.

And this is in fact what’s happening, with numerous providers de-platforming users because they disapprove of their perfectly lawful political beliefs. Some of these companies even grant themselves the right to withdraw their services – even helping themselves to your funds – based on speech that’s completely unconnected to the platform, e.g., things you’ve said on social media.

If you add in choice of law issues, which frequently define users’ rights according to legal systems on the other side of the world, and a hierarchy of increasingly opaque business-to-business user agreements, it is virtually impossible for customers to foresee precisely what they are and aren’t allowed to say. In other words, the hammer could come down with no warning and no real explanation, as it did for the FSU – which is why we’re lobbying the Government to amend the Financial Services and Markets Bill to make it illegal for financial companies to withhold or withdraw service from customers for purely political reasons.

You can take a look at the briefing here.

Policing Minister orders Chief Constables to stop recording non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs)

During an appearance at the Oxford University Conservative Association this month, Policing Minister Chris Philp was asked whether he’d give a personal commitment to enforce Miller v College of Policing (2021), the landmark legal case that ruled that the then current College of Policing (CoP) guidelines on the recording of NCHIs were unlawful and should be replaced. The minister duly obliged, explaining that he’d recently met with the CEO of the CoP, Chief Constable Andy Marsh, and was in the process of arranging to meet all Chief Constables to tell them to stop recording NCHIs. If they didn’t listen, he added, then he would be prepared to use next year’s Police Reform Bill to force them to do so.

That’s encouraging news. NCHIs are/were a threat to free speech in this country. The FSU knows that better than most — over the last two-and-a-half years we’ve supported plenty of people who’ve fallen foul of this sinister form of thought policing. Take FSU member Kevin Mills, for instance. Two years ago, Kevin was handed a NCHI by the police after refusing to work with a customer who he feared wouldn’t pay the bill. The FSU intervened and Kent Police deleted his record earlier this year.

So how did we get here? Back in 2014, the CoP’s original guidelines defined NCHIs as incidents perceived by the victim or any bystanders to be motivated by hostility or prejudice to the victim based on a ‘protected’ characteristic (e.g., the colour of their skin). According to the guidance, NCHIs could be reported by the victim or by any other person who witnessed the incident and the police would then have to investigate them, irrespective of whether there was any objective evidence to identify the hate element. If the police concluded no crime had been committed, the NCHI would then be recorded against the accused’s name and could show up if a prospective employer carried out an enhanced criminal records check. Astonishingly, an average of 30,000 NCHIs have been recorded every year since then.

The FSU worked with Lord Moylan and other peers earlier this year to secure an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Act 2022 that gave the Home Secretary the option of placing the recording of NCHIs and the retention of the data on a statutory footing, governed by a Code of Practice approved by Parliament instead of the say-so of an unelected quango. The Home Secretary has yet to avail herself of this option, but the fact she has it in her back pocket undoubtedly helped give the Policing Minister the confidence to tell chief constables to stop recording NCHIs.

The next step, after we’ve reined in this practice, is to start getting the NCHIs already recorded against people’s names removed. If you want to know how to find out if you have one against your record, or how you might go about getting one deleted, the FSU has produced a short FAQ on NCHIs which you can access here.

FSU Members Survey – the results are in!

We promised that we would get back to our members and supporters with the headline messages from our membership survey at the end of October/early November.

We had a great response, with around a third of FSU members completing the survey, enough for us to draw some credible inferences. We were happy to read so many positive comments from members highlighting what the FSU has achieved since its creation. The overall satisfaction score with the FSU was 89%!

The top priority for members is for the FSU to keep lobbying the Government to better protect free speech – and we are seen as a unique vehicle to achieve that. We agree and will not be taking any pressure off our lawmakers when it comes to issues such as the Online Safety Bill, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, the Financial Services and Markets Bill, or any future bill that has an impact on free speech. 

We asked members why they joined the FSU and those in employment are particularly concerned about the ever-growing threat of being cancelled. This continues to be a top priority and we now have four people working in our case team. At any one time, we can have up to 75 open cases on our system.

There is a wide range of professions represented across our membership.  The chart below highlights some of the sectors that we see repeatedly in our case work (education, for example, in green).

We’ve taken on board the message that more regional events would be appreciated, and we will continue to try to get the balance right between in-person and online events. Those working in particular professions – education, the arts – said they’d like us to organise more sector-specific events and we will aim to organise some next year. 

The open-ended final question (general suggestions for how the FSU could be even better) yielded over 1,125 comments! Here is just a flavour of what you said to us.

All in all, it feels like we’re on the right track, but our members would like us to do more. The UK’s free speech crisis shows little sign of letting up and we will take the best ideas forward. Resources are tight, but the mission is far too important for us not to continue listening to our members and harnessing their expertise. The executive summary in our internal report on the survey was structured around two words: retention and growth. Both are essential if we are to win the free speech war!

The FSU Christmas Special – a festive comedy extravaganza!

The FSU’s live Christmas Comedy Special takes place on Monday 12th December, and looks like being a sell-out event. So if you’d like to attend, please do round up your friends and family today – you can book tickets here. The event takes place at the Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green from 7pm onwards. Comedy legend Bobby Davro will be the Master of Ceremonies, and he’ll be joined on stage by stand-up comedian and GB News presenter Leo Kearse, Comedy Unleashed favourite Mary Bourke, and comedian and Radio 4 ‘personality’ Simon Evans.

Join us for the FSU Christmas Review!

If you can’t make it to London for the Comedy Special, not to worry – you can join us online on Tuesday 13th December for our annual Christmas Review. The Review is a great opportunity for FSU staff and members to vote for 2022’s free speech heroes and villains and to discuss the year’s free speech ‘highs’, as well as ‘lows’. Please note that this event starts slightly earlier than usual, at 6pm, so as not to clash with the World Cup semi-final at 7pm which – based on last night’s easy victory over Senegal – England might be in. You can register for the event by clicking here.

Sharing the newsletter

As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below and help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

PayPal amendment to the Financial Services Bill needs your support

As many of you will know, last month PayPal closed the account of the FSU with no notice and no real explanation. Because about a third of our members pay their recurring membership dues via PayPal, that placed a huge question mark over the future of the organisation. We kicked up an almighty fuss and about two weeks later a bloody and bruised PayPal raised the white flag and restored our account.

That’s great, obviously, but there are plenty of other individuals and groups whose accounts have been closed by the company for what appear to be purely political reasons and we need to put a stop to this kind of censorship if we can.

Encouragingly, the Telegraph reported last month that Conservative backbenchers were “considering launching an amendment” to a Parliamentary bill that would effectively ban companies like PayPal from deplatforming customers because it doesn’t like their politics. Suitably buoyed by this news, the FSU has been lobbying the Government to develop a legislative mechanism capable of stopping Big Tech companies censoring people for expressing legal but dissenting views (or, as in the case of the FSU, for defending those who express legal but dissenting views).

An amendment has now been brought to the Financial Services and Markets Bill after 42 peers and MPs wrote to Andrew Griffith, the minister responsible for this Bill, to express their concern about PayPal Europe’s decision to close without notice or explanation the accounts of several advocacy, campaigning and journalistic groups in the UK, including the FSU, UsForThem and The Daily Sceptic.

New Clause 15 has been tabled by Sally-Ann Hart MP and will make it illegal for payment services providers to refuse service to customers in the UK because they have said something, or supported a cause, which the provider disapproves of, even though it’s perfectly legal.

This is the amendment we need to stop the emergence of a Chinese-style social credit system in the UK. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. At present, New Clause 15 has been tabled but not yet accepted. To ensure that Sally-Ann Hart’s proposal is adopted by the Government, we need to keep up the pressure on legislators, mobilising the extraordinary public opposition to PayPal’s recent behaviour.

So please use the FSU’s campaigning tool to write to your MP and urge to tell their whip that they support New Clause 15 of the Financial Services and Markets Bill.

The link to the tool is here and it only take a couple of minutes to fill out the form and send an email to your MP. The more people that click the link and get involved, the more likely we are to check the creeping trend of Big Tech platforms financially censoring people who express dissenting views before it starts to become institutionally normalised.

If you’re not a member yet, please sign up and join the fight against these censorious financial services companies.

If you’re already a member, please make a donation so we can devote the time and resources we need to win this battle. This the new front in the ongoing war against free speech and if we lose this one then free speech as we know will effectively be dead.

Neil Oliver

On 9th November I’ll be joined in conversation by historian, author and television presenter Neil Oliver. After a successful career as a TV historian, Neil has become one of GB News’s most popular presenters, with social media clips of his monologues often clocking up several million views. He was an outspoken critic of the UK’s lockdown policy and has subsequently raised questions about the efficacy and safety of the mRNA Covid vaccines. I’m looking forward to hearing Neil’s thoughts on his transformation from pillar of the Establishment to anti-Establishment rebel. Our online events are exclusive to FSU members. Members can find the link to register and receive the Zoom link in last Friday’s weekly Round-Up or in the regular emails from FSU Events. If you’re not receiving those, please email [email protected].

FSU helps secure apology and £10,000 damages for Christian Activist Hatun Tash

The Met Police has paid £10,000 in damages and apologised to the evangelical Christian activist and FSU member Hatun Tash, who was wrongly arrested at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, of all places. A letter from Inspector Andy O’Donnell, from the Met’s professional standards directorate, apologised to her “for the distress that you have suffered”. He said he was “satisfied that on these occasions the level of service did fall below the requisite standard”.

Although welcome, Inspector O’Donnell’s apology is long overdue. Over the past few years, Hatun has had to endure some truly appalling treatment at the hands of the police.

The FSU first wrote to the Met on Hatun’s behalf in 2021 after she was slashed in the face with a knife at Speakers’ Corner. (You can read that letter here). We urged the then Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick CBE, to do more to protect Ms Tash.

The second time we wrote to the Met was after I’d visited Speakers’ Corner in June of this year in my capacity as General Secretary of the Free Speech Union to celebrate its 150th anniversary, only to discover that she had been arrested her in the same spot the previous day. (I wrote about that episode for the Spectator.)

In a scandalous miscarriage of justice, Hatun was arrested and dragged away from the scene after being robbed — yes, you read that correctly — and taken into police custody for 24 hours where she was needlessly strip searched, interviewed, kept overnight in a cell, and then released without charge. She was later told by the police that the reason she’d been arrested was because she was wearing an ‘offensive’ t-shirt — it reproduced one of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

We wrote to the Acting Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Stephen House, asking him to justify this appalling treatment and, if he could not, to apologise to Hatun. (You can read that letter here). I’m delighted that the Met has, belatedly, done the right thing and that Ms Tash has now received an apology.

Thanks to the efforts of the Christian Legal Centre, who helped her bring a legal case against the Met, Hatun has also now been paid £10,000 in damages (which she has given to Christian Concern).

Joseph Kelly fundraiser – help stop the creep of blasphemy laws by another name in the UK

One of our most high-profile current cases is a good test of anyone’s free speech credentials. In fact, it’s probably best if you read this one with Lord Justice Sedley’s statement that free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the “heretical, unwelcome and provocative” fresh in your mind.

Joe Kelly was convicted and sentenced in Scotland for contravening the Communications Act 2003, section 127(1)(b), which makes it a criminal offence to make an electronic post which is “grossly offensive”. Mr Kelly was at home on 3 February, 2021, when he tweeted “the only good Brit soldier is a deed [i.e., dead] one, burn auld fella buuuuurn” in response to the news that Captain Tom, the 99-year-old former British Army officer who raised money for charity during the first Covid-19 lockdown, had died. The tweet was only visible to his handful of followers for 20 minutes before he began to receive threats directed against him and his family and deleted it. It wasn’t fast enough, however: someone had already reported Joe to the police for his tweet. So began a long legal process (Spiked have the full story and context).

The Scottish authorities decided to prosecute Joe, and despite his counsel’s best attempts to defend his right to free speech he was convicted and sentenced to a community payback order. Having had his appeal denied by the Scottish Courts and having been labelled an “example case” to deter others from “pressing the blue button”, i.e., posting offensive content on Twitter, Joe is now trying to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Yes, Kelly’s tweet was offensive. But so what? The right to offend is a crucial element of free speech, and it shouldn’t be the business of the police or the courts to protect people from hurty feelings.

The strength of free speech, the foundation of liberal democratic societies, is measured exactly by how tolerant we are of speech that we find reprehensible and offensive. Now more than ever, we should resist the urge of the state to criminalise expressions of dissent which relate to society’s ‘sacred cows’ — we cannot allow the development of blasphemy laws by another name.

That’s why this particular case is about much more than Joe Kelly’s own fight for justice. It’s about ensuring this punishment beating administered to deter others from speaking their minds does not achieve its aim.

Any donations made to Joe’s crowdfunder are to fund the legal expenses associated with preparation of an application to the European Court of Human Rights. We believe it’s a case that’s worth supporting — you can pledge your support here.

The FSU complains to Gonville and Caius’s College Council and Cambridge University’s Vice-Chancellor about the Master’s Email denouncing Dr Helen Joyce

As the Telegraph reported over the weekend, the FSU has written to Cambridge University’s Vice-Chancellor, as well as Gonville & Caius’s College Council, regarding the free speech implications of the astonishing email sent to all students last week by the College’s Master and Senior Tutor denouncing FSU Advisory Council member Dr Helen Joyce.

In their email, the Master of the College, Professor Pippa Rogerson, and Senior Tutor, Dr Andrew Spencer, dismissed Helen’s work as “polemics”, described her gender-critical views as “insulting and hateful to members of our community”, and declared that they would not be attending the talk she was due to give at Caius. On the eve of the event, the head of Cambridge’s sociology faculty also decided to apologise to students for the “distress caused” by sending them an email invitation to the talk.

No doubt encouraged by these expressions of disdain for Dr Joyce’s work, around a hundred protesters, some masked, gathered outside the talk chanting “trans rights are human rights” and banging drums. Witnesses claimed a fire door was hit and microphones had to be turned to full volume because Ms Joyce was becoming impossible to hear.

The first complaint the FSU has made is to the College Council, Caius’s governing body. As I pointed out to the Council, the email looks like it may have been a breach of the College’s Statement on Freedom of Speech. I also pointed out that “the inhospitable reception of Dr Joyce has turned the attention of the world on the College”, and that the College Council really “must now decide whether the College supports freedom of speech, or whether it is merely play-acting at being an institution of learning”.

The second letter we’ve sent was to Dr Anthony Freeling, Cambridge’s Acting Vice-Chancellor, arguing that the email, which was sent by the Master using her University email address, may have been a breach of her duty under s43 of the Education Act 1986 to uphold free speech on campus, which applies to all officers of English universities. We argued that Prof Rogerson’s email was at odds with the University’s own free speech policy and that she “must bear some responsibility for the intolerant and discourteous” protests that “rendered Dr Joyce inaudible at times”.

You can read both of the FSU’s letters here and watch FSU Advisory Council member Professor Douglas Stokes taking about the episode on GB News here.

FSU member Rachel Meade’s “Orwellian Nightmare” is finally over

As reported by the Mail this month, the year-long “Orwellian nightmare” of social worker and FSU member Rachel Meade, who was suspended for posting gender critical views on her private Facebook account, is over. The dedicated social worker with an unblemished 20-year record was suspended from her job at Westminster City Council after a single complaint was made by a Mr Aedan Wolton, then a colleague of hers and now Sport England’s ‘Diversity Champion’ about allegedly “transphobic” posts on her private Facebook page.

According to Mr Wolton, Rachel’s “transphobia” was evidenced by the fact that she shared links to news articles, including one from The Mail on Sunday, about transgender issues, as well as to blogs and petitions surrounding the national debate over whether it should be made easier for people to legally change their gender. Mr Wolton’s single complaint to the regulator Social Work England led to Rachel being suspended from her job for a year. She also faced being struck off by the watchdog at a ‘fitness to practice’ hearing. Legal proceedings hung over her for almost two years.

In a humiliating climbdown, Social Work England has now dropped its case against Rachel, who told the Mail that the “last two years have been nothing short of an Orwellian nightmare for me and my family”. She added: “My apparent crime was to share some news articles and petitions about the self-ID gender debate to fewer than 50 friends on Facebook. I found myself wrongly accused of holding abhorrent transphobic views.” Ms Meade’s solicitor, Shazia Khan, has, unsurprisingly, accused Social Work England of failing to uphold freedom of speech and called for a public apology. So far, they have declined.

It’s utterly ridiculous that Social Work England put Rachel through this ordeal on the strength of a single complaint from an ex-colleague. That said, I’m pleased that the FSU were able to support Rachel with her case and it’s good to hear that she will now be free to resume the career that she loves.

It’s probably also worth pointing out that Rachel’s “Orwellian Nightmare” demonstrates exactly why one strand of the FSU’s Parliamentary and lobbying work is now focused on persuading ministers and senior officials to amend the Employment Rights Act 1996 to make it impossible for companies to discipline staff for saying entirely lawful but contentious things outside the workplace. (You can watch me make the case for this amendment on GB News here.)

The FSU writes to the National Education Union regarding its definition of “transphobia”

Earlier this month I wrote to the National Education Union (NEU), Britain’s largest teaching union, after a whistleblower leaked a document to our organisation containing the NEU’s proposed definition of “transphobia” (LBC, iNews, Unherd). The definition has been drafted after a resolution to develop a definition of transphobia was passed at the last annual NEU conference in the spring, and now looks likely to be adopted.

The proposal suggests that anyone who expects trans people “to participate in discussion or debate about their rights and/or identities” is transphobic, and cites “propagating ideas, concepts and misinformation harmful to trans people and which erase and ignore trans history” as examples of transphobic behaviour (while neglecting to define what is meant by “trans history” nor what “ideas, concepts and misinformation” would be considered harmful). It further defines transphobia as a “rejection of trans identity and a refusal to acknowledge that those identities are real or valid” or the “incorrect use of pronouns” (Telegraph).

While protecting trans pupils, trans teachers and trans support staff from harassment is a worthy aim, it’s clear that this proposal goes way beyond compliance with equalities law and would have the effect of rendering any challenge to gender critical ideology or the agenda of trans rights activists as a legitimate reason to sack a teacher. So much for trade unions protecting their members rights.

The NEU is effectively saying to all its dues-paying members that don’t want to go along with gender identity ideology that it regards them as transphobic and no longer wants to represent them or defend their rights. As member relations campaigns go, it’s certainly bold.

And what about the policy’s effect on staffrooms up and down the country? The Telegraph spoke to a whistleblower in the teaching union who is concerned that it will stop people speaking out on this issue. “I am extremely worried,” he told the paper. “I’m from a Left-wing background and I hate this nonsense. We need free speech. Women need safe spaces. If this definition is accepted, anyone who says: ‘You can’t logically self-identify as the opposite sex’, you’ll be a transphobe.” The source added: “I think it will mean that teachers will be too scared to speak up in schools and they will go along with the NEU policy.”

FSU Chairman’s Lecture on Decolonisation

The FSU’s Chairman, Professor Nigel Biggar, explained to a packed Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford last week why he believes the cultural revolutionary version of decolonisation is based on several false premises, starting with the claim that Britain is “systemically racist”. I was in the audience and thoroughly recommend you watch the YouTube video of this lecture (available here). The discussion afterwards with FSU Director Douglas Murray is also worth watching.

Sharing the newsletter

As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below and help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

FSU launches campaign against politically motivated financial censorship

On 15th September, PayPal notified me that it was permanently closing my personal account, as well as the accounts of the Daily Sceptic – a news publishing site I run – and the Free Speech Union. The reason cited in all three cases was that the accounts had violated PayPal’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’. Not that that really gave any clue as to the specifics of the alleged misdemeanour, because the policy contains numerous prohibited activities including transactions involving illegal drugs and stolen goods.

PayPal told me it had permanently closed all three accounts and appeals in all three cases had been unsuccessful. It couldn’t quite decide why it had closed the accounts – it alternated between telling me I’d breached its policy about not promoting “hate, violence or racial intolerance” and telling newspapers my accounts had been closed because I was spreading “Covid-19 misinformation”. But it had definitely decided to close them.

My suspicion is that someone at PayPal simply doesn’t like my politics and had my accounts removed for that reason, without bothering to create a proper alibi. In other words, this was a prime example of someone being punished by a financial-services company for expressing non-conformist views and, in the case of the FSU, defending people for expressing such views.

That is completely unacceptable, obviously. And I’m not the only one. PayPal has closed numerous accounts because it dislikes the politics of the individuals or organisations linked to them, from Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist who challenges trans rights dogma, to UsForThem, a group of mums that campaigned against school closures during the lockdowns. So I went to war with PayPal, appearing on GB News virtually every day to tell its viewers what had happened, writing about it in the Spectator, the Telegraph and Spiked, and encouraging MPs and peers to write to Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Business Secretary, and Mel Stride, the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, urging them to hold PayPal to account.

Then, on 27th September, PayPal notified me it had restored all of my accounts. After ‘input’ from its ‘customers and stakeholders’– by which I suspect it meant all the people that had cancelled their PayPal accounts in solidarity with the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic – it has decided I’m kosher after all.

It goes without saying that I won’t be using PayPal’s services again. I made the mistake of trusting PayPal when I set up the FSU, embedding its software into our payment processing systems. Given what I know now – that it can demonetise you on a whim, seemingly without any proper justification – I’m not going to make that mistake again.

The US company’s behaviour wasn’t some brief moment of madness — an inexplicable yet temporary deviation from standard financial practice. As we hurtle towards a cashless economy, it’s part of a global trend towards weaponising Big Tech and financial services systems to suppress dissent of every kind. We saw it most obviously in the case of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shutting down the Freedom Convoy earlier this year. But there are numerous examples of organisations with dissenting views being deplatformed by financial services companies, such as the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance, an organisation that raises perfectly lawful questions about the Covid vaccines.

That’s why the FSU will now lobby the Government to develop a legislative mechanism capable of preventing Big Tech companies headquartered outside the U.K. from censoring people or groups in this country for the expression of legal but dissenting views (or, as in the case of the FSU, for simply defending those who express legal but dissenting views).

If there’s a positive to come out of this unseemly episode, it’s that the publicity generated by PayPal’s actions has brought the wider issue of financial censorship to the attention of both Houses of Parliament. The Telegraph reported that financial services companies could soon “be banned from blocking the accounts of campaign groups for political reasons”. That’s because Conservative backbenchers are apparently “considering launching an amendment” to a Parliamentary bill that would effectively ban companies from freezing campaigners’ accounts. One source quoted in that Telegraph article said that ministers are likely to accept an amendment. If that’s true, then this could be a big moment in the fightback against financial censorship. Needless to say, the FSU will be at the forefront of campaigning for that amendment.

But legislative work takes time, which means that we need to keep that pressure up, mobilising the extraordinary public opposition to PayPal’s recent behaviour to tell our politicians that we don’t want a Chinese-style social credit system to be rolled out across the West (the only difference being that instead of the Chinese Communist Party enforcing ideological dogma, it’s woke capitalist corporations based in California).

Use the FSU’s campaigning tool to write to your MP to remind him or her that there are strong feeling on this issue among the public. If you’re as outraged as we are by PayPal’s attempt to cancel the FSU and other groups, please use this tool to send a template email to your MP, telling him or her that we need a change to the law to make this kind of financial censorship illegal. The process only takes two minutes and the link is here.

If you’re not a member yet, please join the fight against these censorious financial services companies.

If you’re already a member, make a donation so we can devote the time and resources we need to win this battle. This the new front in the ongoing war against free speech and if we lose this one then free speech as we know will effectively be dead.

FSU member Simon Isherwood’s remedy hearing begins – a case update

Earlier this year, FSU member Simon Isherwood won his Employment Tribunal case against West Midlands Trains (WMT). The rail conductor was dismissed for gross misconduct after asking his wife whether indigenous populations in African countries enjoy ‘black privilege’ following a training session on ‘white privilege’ with around 80 other staff members via Teams. He thought he’d disconnected but he hadn’t and one of his colleagues complained. Instead of dismissing the complaint, WMT suspended him, investigated him and dismissed him for ‘gross misconduct’.

Taking your employer to an Employment Tribunal is a lengthy and costly process (Allison Bailey had to raise more than £500,000 to fund her much publicised recent legal case, for instance). Thanks to our help, though, Simon was able to hold WMT to account for its actions, and his hearing took place before Judge Stephen Wyeth in the Watford Employment Tribunal. In addition to paying Simon’s legal fees, the FSU drafted in leading civil rights barrister Paul Diamond to represent him. Paul has fought landmark cases in the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights, and as might be expected from someone of that calibre, was unrelenting in picking apart the other side’s evidence. He convinced the Judge that the freedom of speech issues in this case required close attention. Indeed, it was for that reason that the judge reserved judgment, rather than giving it extempore.

In a landmark victory, Judge Wyeth decided that Mr Isherwood had been unfairly dismissed. The judgement reasserted the fact that “freedom of expression, including a qualified right to offend when expressing views and beliefs (in this case on social issues), is a fundamental right in a democratic society”. Particularly important in terms of workers’ speech rights was the clear distinction the judgement drew between the public and the private sphere, noting that in Simon’s case, “the expression of his private view of the course to his wife in the confines of his own home was not blameworthy or culpable conduct that could amount to contributory conduct”.

This month, the remedy hearing to decide compensation began. Paul Diamond and our Chief Legal Counsel, Bryn Harris, are fighting hard on Simon’s behalf, and prospects are good that we’ll get a good settlement for Simon. That’s great news, but it’s a bittersweet victory. What we’re talking about here is an employee with an unblemished career track record who’s lost his livelihood simply because he voiced an entirely lawful opinion within the confines of his own home that woke activists just happen to regard as ‘offensive’.

No-one should ever be placed in that position, which is exactly why one strand of the FSU’s Parliamentary and lobbying work is now focused on persuading ministers and senior officials to amend the Employment Rights Act 1996 to make it impossible for companies to discipline staff for saying politically contentious things outside the workplace. You can watch me make the case for this amendment on GB News here. I’ve also written about it for the Mail here.  

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill – amendments tabled

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will soon resume its journey through Parliament in the House of Lords, and I’m delighted to report that several amendments have now been tabled to make it even stronger. The Bill aims to strengthen protections for free speech and academic freedom in English universities by imposing more robust legal duties on higher education providers to protect the free speech of academic staff, non-academic staff, students and visitors to universities, as well as to actively promote freedom of speech.

The FSU wholeheartedly supports the legislation. We’ve intervened in many cases involving students or academics where those individuals would have been in a stronger position had this new law been in place.

That said, unless the Bill’s current free speech ‘protections’ are strengthened there’s a danger they will be undermined by the open-ended definition of “harassment” contained within the Equality Act 2010, which doesn’t make exceptions for discussions that take place for scientific or academic purposes. In other words the Bill as currently proposed won’t be able to prevent higher education institutions from continuing to place limits on academic freedom by invoking their public sector equality duty under section 26 of the Equality Act to protect members of the university with certain characteristics from “harassment”. While that duty might sound uncontroversial, some universities define “harassment” so broadly as to encompass allowing people to express perfectly lawful points of view that some members of protected groups find objectionable. Back in 2019, for instance, two law professors – Rosa Freedman and Jo Phoenix – were no-platformed by Essex University on the grounds that inviting them on campus to argue that transwomen shouldn’t be treated as if they were legally indistinguishable from biological women would have constituted “harassment” of trans students.

This is the context in which the FSU has been working with allies in the House of Lords to develop an amendment capable of ensuring that – in the amendment paper’s words – “the duties imposed by the Bill are consistent with, and not overridden by, the Equality Act public sector equality duty”. You can read that amendment here.

We’re also hoping two other amendments are made to the Bill, which you can read here and here. We’re hopeful that all of these amendments will be accepted, and that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that reaches the statute books really is a game-changer for academic freedom and freedom of speech at English universities.

You can find our recent Parliamentary briefing on the Bill here, and our latest research papers here and here.

Gillian Philips – case update

Thanks to the generous support of FSU members and supporters, and the sterling work of Gillian’s legal team (Shah Qureshi of Irwin Mitchell and barrister David Mitchell), permission has now been granted for Gillian to bring her case to the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Gillian will now have the chance to persuade a superior court of record that in writing novels under the close control of her publishers she was a worker, entitled to the protections of the Equality Act 2010. This is a timely opportunity to secure protection from discrimination for precarious workers in an increasingly intolerant sector.

FSU members and supporters may remember Gillian’s case. Gillian is the author who brought an Employment Tribunal claim against her former publishers, Working Partners and HarperCollins, because they terminated her contract to write children’s books after she stood up for JK Rowling on Twitter. She alleges unlawful discrimination and the case is a landmark in the fight for the right of women to state biological facts without fear of losing their jobs. Gender critical writers such as Kate Clanchy, Julie Burchill and Jenny Lindsay have all faced threats to their livelihood as a result of expressing gender critical views. 

An update on the FSU’s current caseload

Following our resounding victory against PayPal, we’ve seen an uptick in members of the public writing to alert us to similar cases. This includes Conservatives for Women, the campaign group we are currently assisting in their campaign to get their Ko-fi account reinstated after the fundraising service axed them because their gender critical views allegedly “target” and “undermine” trans people. This may well become a legal battle. If you or someone you know has been cut-off by a financial services company because of their views, do please get in touch ([email protected]).

The trans issue continues to take up about a quarter of the time of our case team, with victims silenced by advocates of gender ideology… unless we get there first. We have about 65 live cases open right now, of all kinds – and that doesn’t include the vast number of resolved cases where we’ve helped members in what are often extremely serious difficulties. Members seeking our assistance this month included teachers, civil servants, manual workers, academics and celebrities. The high number of cries for help our case team deals with makes a compelling argument for legislative change to protect free speech for employees and in universities. While most of our case work remains strictly confidential, we anticipate several cases becoming public this month. Be sure to read our weekly newsletter.

The start of the academic year typically brings a deluge of new cases, from students compelled to take ideological instruction disguised as diversity training, to academics chastised for a toe out of line in today’s intolerant academy. The FSU made major interventions last year to challenge these schemes (as here, for example), and we stand ready to assist any students currently resisting university administrators who haven’t yet got the message.

The FSU’s packed schedule of autumn events!

If you’re not yet a member of the FSU, we hope you’ll join the FSU so you can participate in our forthcoming Online Speakeasies. The first is with comedian, writer, actor and presenter Jack Dee on Wednesday 12th October and the second with historian, author and television presenter Neil Oliver on Wednesday 9th November. We also have our upcoming, members-only Christmas party at the Backyard Comedy Club. Members have been sent a separate email containing links to register for these events. If you have not received this, do check your inbox, including your junk folder, and get in touch if you can’t find it, using [email protected].

You can also see a calendar on our Events page. As that is a public page, you cannot book members-only events via that route, so do join the FSU today to access those invitations, along with all the other benefits of membership.

We have two excellent sessions at the Battle of Ideas Festival taking place in London on the weekend of the 15th and 16th of October. I will be speaking on a packed panel, debating Online Safety vs Free Speech on Saturday afternoon, and the Free Speech Champions will discuss Winning Young Hearts and Minds on Sunday afternoon, with panellists including Professor Alice Sullivan and Rod Liddle. Members can access special discount tickets (we’ll be sending you an email about that) and a link to register was also in last Friday’s newsletter. Do come and say hello to us at our stall, find out more about supporting the work we do and buy one of our new T-shirts, featuring the excellent work of cartoonist Bob Moran.

Roger Scruton Memorial Lectures – register for free tickets here!

Oxford University’s annual ‘Roger Scruton Memorial Lectures’ are fast approaching. All events are free to attend, although registration is required.

On 17th October, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission Katherine Birbalsingh CBE will be in conversation with the founder of the 30% club, Baroness Helena Morrissey, and Dr Marie Daouda (Oriel College, Oxford). Register here. On 19th October, one of Britain’s most distinguished historians, Andrew Roberts, will be in conversation with Professor Robert Tombs, now Professor Emeritus of French History at the University of Cambridge. Register here. On 24th October, journalist and writer Peter Hitchens will be in conversation with former Conservative MEP Lord Daniel Hannan and Professor Sir Noel Malcolm (All Souls College, Oxford). Register here. Finally, on 26th October, FSU Chairman Professor Nigel Biggar (Christ Church College, Oxford) will be in conversation with the Secretary of State for International Trade the Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch, and Professor Ali Ansari (University of St Andrews). Register here.

Sharing the newsletter

As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below and help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

FSU campaign pushed free speech to top of Tory leadership race agenda!

The Conservative Party leadership contest had only just started when the results of an independent opinion poll commissioned by the FSU were published. They showed that people in this country strongly support our five-point Free Speech Manifesto (available here). The headline finding was that only 2% of the public strongly agree that the Government is doing a good job of standing up for free speech. (Interestingly, that figure falls to just 1% among 25-49-year-olds).

In light of that poll, we decided to launch a campaign to get supporters who are also members of the Conservative Party to use our new campaigning tool to email the leadership candidates, and urge them to do more to protect free speech.

Last week the contest entered its final phase, as Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak completed their 12th and final hustings. With the ballot now closed, and the next leader of the Conservative Party – and country – to be announced today, it’s worth reflecting on just how successful the FSU’s first digitally enhanced campaign has been.

Our campaigning tool was used to send over 4,000 emails to the leadership candidates, and it’s clear from the tone and tenor of the contest that FSU members have helped catapult free speech issues that might otherwise have been overlooked to the forefront of contest.

The free speech commitments FSU members helped win from leadership contenders – a re-cap

Nowhere is the impact of the FSU’s campaign clearer than in the case of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs). The email urged the two candidates to end the investigation and recording of NCHIs by the police.

During the campaign, Ms Truss – who will almost certainly be crowned Prime Minister later today – unveiled plans to ban police training focused on identity politics and to reduce the time officers spend investigating trivial online comments. Drilling down into policy specifics, Ms Truss went on to say that as Prime Minister she would make sure the NCHI code of practice that the next Home Secretary will issue (thanks to an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 that the FSU worked on, details of which you can read about here) will robustly defend free speech.

Rishi Sunak also made clear that “our police forces must be fully focused on fighting actual crime in people’s neighbourhoods and not policing bad jokes” (Telegraph). A spokesperson for Mr Sunak took this commitment a little further than Ms Truss with the suggestion that “on NCHIs we don’t need a code of practice”. Things “are either illegal or legal”, he said, and because “free speech is legal” it follows that “the police should not be wasting time getting involved, and they won’t in a Rishi Sunak Government” (GB News).

It seems unlikely that this esoteric policing technique would have become such a prominent issue in the leadership contest were it not for the sheer weight of FSU-inspired emails pinging into candidates’ inboxes over the past eight weeks.

Another issue the email urged candidates to commit to was ditching those clauses in the Online Safety Bill that pose a threat to freedom of expression. During the first few weeks of the contest, both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss expressed reservations about the Bill’s likely impact on free speech. As the campaign wore on, those reservations crystallised into firm policy pledges, with both candidates making clear they will either scrap or significantly amend clause 13 of the Bill, which aims to regulate so-called ‘legal but harmful’ content.

Mr Sunak also spoke in favour of another Free Speech Manifesto commitment, namely, amending the Equality Act 2010 so it cannot be misused to push an ideological agenda and degrade liberal values – one of the five points in our Free Speech Manifesto. In response to a student who stood up during the Manchester hustings to tell how his college had reprimanded him for posting messages on Twitter in support of the Government’s Rwanda deal, the former Chancellor said: “I want to change the public sector equality duty so that universities are ‘forced’ to uphold free speech on campus” (Metro).

What does the FSU want from the next Prime Minister?

It’s encouraging to see that both candidates have addressed the FSU’s concerns regarding the Equality Act 2010 and the Orwellian ‘thought policing’ tool that is the non-crime hate incident report. What we need from the next Prime Minister are similarly robust commitments to engage with the other issues raised in our Free Speech Manifesto.

On workers’ rights, for instance, we want to see new workplace speech rights introduced and existing legal protections strengthened to ensure employees cannot be disciplined or sacked for refusing to attend diversity training courses or declare their gender pronouns.

On education, we want to see an end to the political indoctrination of children in schools.

On the legislative front, we want to see the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill progress on to the statute books so that free speech and academic freedom are better protected on campus, and we want to see freedom of expression given a preeminent place in the new Bill of Rights Bill so that artists, novelists, dancers, poets, playwrights and comedians can speak truth to power without fear of being cancelled.

Finally, on the “censor’s charter” that is the Online Safety Bill, we want to see the next Prime Minster do more to protect free speech online. It’s great that both candidates have committed to looking again at clause 13 of the Bill, but there are other aspects of the Bill that also pose a threat to free speech.

At present, for instance, it requires providers like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to remove in every part of the United Kingdom content that’s illegal in any part of the United Kingdom. So if something is illegal to say in Scotland, but not in the rest of the UK, the big social media companies would have to remove it in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Do we really want to empower Nicola Sturgeon to dictate what the entire British population is allowed to see and say online? That seems insane, particularly as Scotland has just passed the Hate Crime and Public Order Act – a piece of legislation that will make it illegal to say a large number of things that are currently lawful to say in the rest of the UK. (FSU Scottish Advisory Council member Jamie Gillies describes the Act as an “authoritarian mess”.)

With the Online Safety Bill set to return to Parliament, it’s going to be more important than ever to keep up the pressure on legislators over the coming months. Now that the leadership contest is over, one very effective way for members to do so will be to use our website’s template email generator to write to their MP and ask that he or she look again at the Bill (the campaigning tool is here).

The FSU is hiring – Legislative Affairs Director

In the last year, the FSU has seen sister organisations set up in the US, New Zealand and South Africa, with further expansion to come. We have an exciting journey ahead and we’re looking for talented individuals to join our organisation. As we expand our parliamentary work, we’re looking for a Legislative Affairs Director. (Full details here.) This individual will help drive our lobbying, campaigning and advocacy work, with a view to strengthening legislative protections of free speech, seeing off legislative challenges to free speech and persuading ministers and senior officials to protect free speech through mechanisms like, for instance, departmental guidance. If you’re committed to the defence of free speech and freedom of expression and have experience of working with parliamentarians and government officials to influence policy, lobbying and campaigning, overseeing submissions to public consultations and inquiries, and helping to steer bills through parliament and amending existing bills, then we’d like to hear from you. In the first instance, please send a CV and introductory letter to: [email protected].

The FSU publishes its new briefing paper on the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

It’s all but certain that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will resume its journey through Parliament once Liz Truss has been sworn in as the new Prime Minister. The Bill is designed to strengthen protections for free speech and academic freedom in English universities, and my view is that it cannot be passed soon enough. The FSU gets about a dozen requests for help each week from university students or academics who have got into trouble for exercising their lawful right to free speech, and in almost every case the individuals in question would have been in a stronger position to fight back had this new legislation been in place.

Back in July, the Bill had its second reading in the House of Lords, and while it was heartening to see the Free Speech Union’s casework and policy briefings getting referenced during the debate (interventions you can watch on our Twitter channel here), it was a little disappointing to see various unfounded criticisms of the Bill being aired. Of course, like any legislation the Bill can be improved, but many of the criticisms at second reading relied on common misunderstandings of the problems facing English universities and are easily rebutted.

It’s for that reason that the FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel, Dr Bryn Harris, has been working with Professors Arif Ahmed (University of Cambridge), Nigel Biggar (University of Oxford), Eric Kaufmann (Birkbeck College, London), and Doug Stokes (University of Exeter) – all members of our Advisory Council – to prepare an FSU briefing note in which the principal criticisms raised by peers are answered. (The Hansard record of the second reading debate can be found here.)

The FSU is anxious to ensure that further debate of the Bill is informed by relevant evidence of the free speech problem at English universities, and strong arguments for how it can be resolved. That’s why we’re now circulating this briefing to allies in both Houses of Parliament. Over the next few weeks – hopefully not months! – we’re looking forward to engaging with those allies to make sure that the free speech protections contained in the Bill are as robust as possible.

The briefing note is here. You can find our previous briefings on the Bill here and here.

The letter I sent in my capacity as FSU General Secretary to the then Secretary of State for Education, Nadhim Zahawi, and the Minister for Universities, Michelle Donelan, thanking them for introducing two essential amendments to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that we campaigned for is here, as is the response we received from the new Education Secretary, James Cleverly, thanking us for the support we’ve given the Bill.

Our next online event – Teaching tolerance: Understanding free speech issues in schools

The FSU’s schedule of online and in-person events for September to December kicks off on Tuesday 13th September with an Online In-Depth on free speech in schools. I’ll be chairing the event, and, unlike our usual members-only events, this one will be open to anyone who is interested in this issue – so please feel free to share the details with anyone you think might be interested. You can register here to receive the Zoom link.  

Our panel of experts includes anti-racist campaigner Adrian Hart of Don’t Divide Us, critic of gender ideology and co-founder of Conservatives for Women, Caroline Ffiske, and Clare Page, a London parent who raised the alarm over highly politicised teaching materials being used at her child’s school. The common thread uniting our panellists is the fact that they are all campaigning for the right of parents to access and challenge ideologically driven teaching materials in English schools.

One issue I’m particularly looking forward to discussing with the panel is why free speech issues crop up so frequently now in primary and secondary schools. There have obviously long been clashes over sex education, often pitting religious parents against their children’s schools, but in recent years we’ve seen a marked increase in instances of parents and schools coming into conflict over the interpretation of more secular values such as ‘anti-racism’ and ‘inclusivity’, and even over the teaching of history, literature and biology. Many of the parents that contact the FSU for advice on these issues are concerned that the range of views considered up for debate within schools is too narrow and that, as a result, there may be repercussions, from teachers or pupils, should they or their children ever dare to question beliefs that are currently fashionable.

The FSU’s packed schedule of events this autumn!

Our packed schedule of Autumn events programme will be emailed to members on Wednesday 7th September, so do look out for that (and let [email protected] know if you don’t receive it). If you aren’t yet a member, being part of our exclusive online and in-person events and getting to interact with guest speakers like Joanna Williams, Douglas Murray, Quentin Letts, Baroness Fox of Buckley, Helen Joyce and Professor Kathleen Stock is a great reason to join.

Upcoming members-only events include a live, in-person launch of Andrew Doyle’s brilliant new book The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World. The comedian, author, and presenter of GB News’s Free Speech Nation will join me on-stage in London on 27th September to discuss how we can push back against cancel culture and start reinstating liberal democratic values. There’ll be plenty of time for an audience Q&A, as well as for audience members to purchase signed copies of The New Puritans. Technology permitting, we’re hoping to livestream this event for members who can’t attend in person – we’ll be in touch about that in due course. The event will be followed by a members-only launch party of the book.

I’m also delighted to announce that on 12th October I’ll be joined in conversation at an exclusive Online Speakeasy by stand-up comedian, actor, writer and presenter Jack Dee. You can watch Jack’s video message inviting you to the event by clicking here. This, too, is a members-only event.

Members will also be offered discount tickets to the Battle of Ideas Festival 2022 (15th and 16th October). During that event, I’ll be speaking on a panel the FSU is sponsoring on the Online Safety Bill. The Free Speech Champions will also be partnering on a session about how young people can be persuaded to join the defence of freedom of speech. 

On 5th October we’ll be holding our second Online Annual Convention. This event is exclusively for Gold and Founder members, so do consider joining now as a Gold member or upgrading your current membership package (full instructions will be provided in Wednesday’s Events email). The Convention affords senior staff and the Directors of the FSU the opportunity to thank members for their continuing support and to report back on highlights from the past year – e.g., legal victories, case-work successes and the impact our behind-the-scenes legislative and policy work is having. It’s also a great opportunity for Gold and Founder members to participate in a Q&A where they get to have their say about the work we’re doing.

An update on the FSU’s current caseload

High profile university cases tend to capture the media headlines – only this month, for instance, the case of an FSU member at the University of Sheffield was reported in the Telegraph, while the legal action another FSU member is bringing against the BIMM Institute received widespread media attention (Mail, Spiked, Telegraph, Times). Unfortunately, that’s just the tip of a rather large iceberg. Much of the FSU’s casework takes place beyond the higher education sector, and this month we’ve been assisting members drawn from all walks of life, including NHS clinicians, cleaners, police officers, parents, and countless employees of private businesses in a huge variety of sectors.

We get an average of 50 requests for help a week and at any one time we’ll have around 100 cases on the go. These are cases where people have been punished, sacked, bullied, harassed, investigated, or disciplined for speaking their mind – or because a colleague prowled through their personal social media profiles in an effort to find ‘offensive’ material. In a typical week the case team will be kept busy drafting letters to employers to shut down sham investigations, advising members about the rules and procedures governing internal investigations, and counselling people through what are always extremely stressful situations.

Because of the privacy concerns at stake we can’t always publicise our successes, but this month, armed with our handy FAQs, members have succeeded in challenging the pronoun policies creeping into work places, reminding bosses that employees have the right to their own opinions. Each small battle like this is part of a broader fightback for free speech, and case by case we’re working to end the stifling culture that’s engulfed many workplaces.

General fighting fund

This month we’ve helped people from all walks of life, with cases ranging from people being kicked off social media for questioning gender ideology, to members losing their jobs and livelihoods for comments made outside of work. People contact us every week who never imagined they’d need our support. Help us to help them: if you can, please donate to our general fighting fund.

Sharing the newsletter

As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below and help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

FSU member Simon Isherwood wins landmark free speech victory for workers all over the country

With the FSU’s help, Simon Isherwood won his Employment Tribunal case against West Midlands Trains (WMT) last week. The rail conductor was dismissed last year for gross misconduct after asking whether indigenous populations in African countries enjoy ‘black privilege’ following a training session on ‘white privilege’ with around 80 other staff members via Teams. At the end of the session, Simon accidentally left his microphone on and was overheard telling his wife: “I couldn’t be arsed because I thought, ‘You know what, I’ll just get f***ing angry.’ You know what I really wanted to ask? … and I wish I had, ‘Do they have black privilege in other countries? So, if you’re in Ghana? …’”

Despite making these comments in his home when he had a reasonable expectation of privacy, Simon was suspended from duty that same day. After an internal disciplinary probe, WMT sacked Mr Isherwood, claiming the comments “caused offence, brought the company into disrepute and breached our equality, diversity and inclusion policy and the code of conduct”. As reported by the Telegraph, Mail, GB News, Reclaim the Net and Zero Hedge, the hearing took place on 5th and 6th May before Judge Stephen Wyeth in the Watford Employment Tribunal. In addition to paying Simon’s legal fees, the FSU drafted in leading civil civil rights barrister Paul Diamond to represent him. Paul has fought landmark cases in the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights, and, as might be expected from someone of that calibre, was unrelenting in picking apart the other side’s evidence. He convinced the Judge that the freedom of speech issues in this case required close attention. Indeed, it was for that reason that the judge reserved judgment, rather than giving it extempore.

In a landmark victory for free speech, Judge Wyeth declared last week that Mr Isherwood was unfairly dismissed. In a ruling handed down on Tuesday – and picked up by Breitbart, the Epoch Times, MailOnline, the print edition of the Mail, Mail+, the print edition of the Telegraph and Reclaim the Net – the Tribunal found that Simon’s comments did not constitute misconduct, that he did not bring his employer into disrepute, and that “on any reasonable view, the degree of culpability on the part of the claimant was extremely limited”. “In essence,” the ruling continued, his only misconduct was failing to log off from Teams after the training session had ended. The Judge went on to make clear that “[h]owever contentious or odious some might regard the claimant’s comments to be, the expression of his private view of the course to his wife in the confines of his own home was not blameworthy or culpable conduct that could amount to contributory conduct”.

In relation to WMT, Judge Wyeth found that the company “adopted a rigid and blinkered approach to the issue of sanction and certainly did not test or explore the appropriateness of alternatives to dismissal with the claimant in any way”. As to “the crux of this case”, namely whether the decision to dismiss “fell within the band of reasonable responses of a reasonable employer”, the judge stated that he was “in no doubt that it did not”.

As noted, Mr Isherwood’s barrister, Paul Diamond, convinced Judge Wyeth that WMT breached Simon’s speech rights, as the judgement makes clear: “Freedom of expression, including a qualified right to offend when expressing views and beliefs (in this case on social issues), is a fundamental right in a democratic society and one that is protected by the Convention rights under the Human Rights Act 1998. In this instance however there is the added significance that these views were being expressed in the privacy of the claimant’s home to his wife. They were never intended to be heard by those who attended or ran the course… Whilst undoubtedly contentious, the remarks he expressed (albeit in an unguarded fashion because they were made to his wife) were akin to expressions of views not infrequently heard on radio and television or read in some newspapers.” A date for a remedy hearing to decide compensation, which is likely to be a five-figure sum, or whether Mr Isherwood can have his job back, has yet to be set.

The FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel, Dr Bryn Harris, described the ruling as “a tremendous victory for Simon and for free speech. The judge could not have been clearer – it is not reasonable or lawful to dismiss employees for expressing their own private views, including in relation to training about company ‘values’. Simon showed huge moral courage in standing up against this appalling mistreatment – in doing so he has won a victory for workers all over the country.”

Speaking to the Mail+ Mr Isherwood said, “The only thing that’s kept me going is the support of my family, friends, colleagues, the FSU and my barrister, Paul Diamond — all those who know the real me. They’ve never doubted me or believed I could ever do what I was being accused of. That means the world to me.”

I’m delighted for Simon, but he should never have been put in this position. Too many employers think that saying something that woke activists deem to be ‘offensive’, even if it comes nowhere near to being unlawful, is grounds for dismissal. It isn’t, as the judge in this case has made clear. Forget about diversity training for employees. What we need is free speech training for employers.

The FSU launches its five-point free speech manifesto

We’ve identified our top five policy commitments for the next Prime Minister, and this month we’ve been asking Conservative party members to reach out to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak with the aid of our new campaigning tool to see where they stand on each of these issues. After all, one of them will be our next Prime Minister and this could be our best chance of extracting a commitment from them that they’ll do everything in their power to defend free speech when they’re in 10 Downing Street.

So far, nearly 4,000 emails have now been sent by our members and supporters over the course of the Conservative leadership campaign. Thanks to the pressure they have been able to exert using this new tool, free speech issues that might have been overlooked have been forced to the forefront of the contest.

Last weekend, for instance, Rishi Sunak attempted to revive his faltering campaign by attacking “woke nonsense”. As reported in the Evening Standard, Mr Sunak said during a speech in West Sussex that he was determined to “protect British freedoms” if he becomes Prime Minister. He then pledged to review the 2010 Equality Act and clarify that gender self-identification does not have legal force, strengthen statutory guidance for schools on how they teach issues of sex and relationships so that pupils are “shielded from inappropriate material”, and protect free speech by amending the Public Sector Equality Duty to “put a stop to practices such as no-platforming” and ensure that organisations “are open and welcoming” to people with differing political opinions and religious and philosophical world views.

I welcome Rishi Sunak’s proposals for “protect[ing] British freedoms” that speak so directly to the issues outlined in our free speech manifesto. He’s right to think these positions are popular – not just among Conservative Party members, but with the general public. This month we commissioned Professor Matt Goodwin to do some polling for us and we published the results here. The headlines are:

When asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement ‘The Government is doing a good job of protecting free speech’, only two per cent say they ‘completely agree’, with 12% saying they ‘somewhat agree’. Among 25–49-year-olds, the number who completely agree falls to just one per cent.

On the Online Safety Bill, which the FSU has been campaigning against, 45% of respondents think that social media companies should not remove or restrict lawful speech, while just 14% think they should.

Fifty-six per cent of people agree with our proposal that free speech should be included among the British values taught in schools, with only seven per cent disagreeing.

The public is broadly supportive of our proposal that there should be stronger legal protections for workers’ rights so employees cannot be disciplined for refusing to take a diversity training course, with 34% agreeing and 26% disagreeing.

On Non-Crime Hate Incidents, 33% agree that investigating people for ‘non-crimes’ takes the police away from more important work, and 29% disagree.

Whatever you think of Rishi Sunak, if you support free speech, you should welcome his attack on “woke nonsense” and his pledge to defend “British freedoms”. Now we just need Liz Truss to make a similar commitment to promoting free speech – although she has already urged the police to spend less time investigating politically incorrect posts on social media and more time on solving real crimes. If you’re a member of the Conservative Party, please take two minutes to email both candidates, using our campaigning tool, and urge them to support our manifesto. If you’re a member of the Conservative Party and you’ve already used the tool, remember that the template can be tweaked to accommodate whatever free speech issues you’d now like to raise with the candidates.

FSU-backed amendment to the Online Safety Bill Accepted by the Government

The FSU, along with other civil liberties groups, is deeply concerned about the Online Safety Bill (you can read our briefing documents here, here and here). For the Government to try to suppress ‘legal but harmful’ content is a breach of a fundamental principle of English Common Law, which is that unless something is explicitly prohibited by law then it is permitted. Moreover, each successive government will be able to add more and more things to this list, creating an anti-free speech ratchet effect.

That’s why during the first week of July, with the bill at a ‘hair’s breadth’ away from the statute book, we wrote to all FSU members and supporters urging them to use our website’s new online campaigning tool to write to their MPs and ask them to urge the Government to postpone the Parliamentary passage of the Bill so the new leader would have a chance to review it (the page is here). The Bill was then at report stage and scheduled to be debated one last time in the Commons before moving to the Lords when we pressed the ‘send’ button on that request for support. The following day, the Government announced the Bill would, indeed, be held over – making it one of the most successful campaigns we’ve ever waged. The FSU believes that in the circumstances it was the right thing to do. This is a complicated, far-reaching piece of legislation that will have a huge impact on what people can (and can’t) say online, and it was surely madness to try to railroad it through while a leadership contest was taking place.

Will the temporary postponement quietly segue into complete abandonment? Much now depends on the focus of our next Prime Minister. If Nadine Dorries is to be believed, the candidate she’s supporting for Party leader, Liz Truss, wants to continue with the Bill ‘as is’ if she becomes Prime Minister (Times), while Rishi Sunak has talked about there being a need to “refine” the legislation (Spectator). My guess is that, sadly, we’ll see the Bill back before Parliament in the Autumn, but probably in some watered-down form.

The fact that it has been delayed is, nevertheless, great news. It provides organisations like the FSU with valuable additional time to keep up the pressure on legislators. Some MPs have already raised concerns about the Bill, including David Davis, Steve Baker and Sir Graham Brady. If members and supporters of the FSU continue to use our new campaigning tool to write to their local MPs, many more will join them. Just click here, copy and paste our template email and send it to your MP, whose contact details our tool can find automatically. It only takes two minutes.

In the meantime, the FSU is looking forward to engaging with the FSU’s allies in both chambers of Parliament to ensure that any final version of the Bill includes much more robust protections for freedom of speech and expression. We have form in this regard, too. Just before the Bill’s progress through parliament was suspended, for instance, several FSU-backed amendments reached the report stage amendment paper and were introduced on the floor of the House of Commons by Adam Afriyie MP.

We’ve been working with Adam on these changes for some time and if the Bill does return we’re hopeful that some of these amendments will be accepted. The Government has accepted one already. Adam tabled an amendment which would make it clear to online providers that they don’t have to do anything about content the Government has designated “legal but harmful”. If they choose, they can just do nothing. And a day later, the Government accepted this amendment – a huge step forward. You can watch Adam introduce all the amendments here, here and here.

The FSU receives a response from the Secretary of State for Education

Back in June, I wrote to the then Secretary of State for Education, Nadhim Zahawi, and the Minister for Universities, Michelle Donelan, to thank them for introducing two essential amendments to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that we campaigned for – removing the caveat “within their field of expertise” from Clause 1, so the new free speech protections apply to academics regardless of whether their speaking or writing about something within their field of expertise or not, and making it harder for “security costs” to be cited by universities or student unions to justify no-platforming a controversial speaker. We’ve now received a reply from the new Education Secretary, the Rt Hon. James Cleverly MP, thanking us for the support we have given the Bill. You can read our original letter and the Secretary of State’s reply here. Over the next few weeks, we’re looking forward to engaging with the FSU’s allies in both chambers of Parliament to ensure that the final version of the Bill includes even more robust protections for freedom of speech and academic freedom.

The long, slow death of non-crime hate incidents

We were partly responsible for another victory last week when the College of Policing unveiled its new guidance on the investigation and recording of non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), advising the police to exercise more common sense and not intervene in “trivial or irrational” online incidents simply because someone is offended. Earlier this year, the FSU worked with Lord Moylan and other peers on an amendment to the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill that would have put an end to the practice of recording NCHIs in such a way that they can show up in an enhanced criminal record check. That amendment was withdrawn when the Government agreed to make its own amendment granting the Home Secretary the option to produce statutory guidance (a “code of practice”) on the recording and retention of personal data relating to NCHIs. Following the passing of that Bill, the Home Office has said the Secretary of State will go ahead and issue this guidance, so the reason the College of Policing has issued new interim guidance is partly to get out in front of this new statutory guidance.

Unfortunately, Hampshire Police didn’t get the memo – and last week dispatched five officers to arrest Darren Brady, an army veteran who’d reposted a meme created by Laurence Fox depicting the Pride flag as a swastika in an unsubtle attempt to highlight the authoritarian way in which the LGBTQ+ agenda is sometimes promoted. Fox himself hasn’t been investigated by the police for posting this meme on Twitter and nor has the Daily Mail for reproducing it. But when Mr Brady posted it on Twitter, someone complained to the police and they duly arrested him. As one officer told him when he was being handcuffed: “Someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post. That is why you have been arrested.”

It wasn’t just Mr Brady who was arrested. When he asked for help from Harry Miller – the ex-copper who took Humberside Police to court when he was investigated for retweeting a comic verse about trans women and won – Harry took off for Hampshire, stood outside Darren’s house and tried to prevent the police arresting him, pointing out that he hadn’t broken the law. The officers responded by arresting Harry as well. (You can read an article in the Daily Sceptic by FSU co-founder Ian Rons about the incident here.)

But I doubt either Darren or Harry will be charged. Donna Miller, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire, issued a statement shortly after the double arrest condemning her officers’ conduct. “When incidents on social media receive not one but two visits from police officers, but burglaries and non-domestic break-ins don’t always get a police response, something is wrong,” she said.

Let’s hope the combination of the new statutory guidance from the Home Secretary and Harry Miller’s continuing heroics spell the end of NCHIs.

FSU research suggests little public appetite for new Hate Crime Bill in Northern Ireland

Following Judge Desmond Marrinan’s Independent Review of Hate Crime legislation in Northern Ireland, the NI Department of Justice set up a public consultation process to “inform the development of a Hate Crime Bill”, as the Belfast News Letter put it this week. The consultation ended on 28th March, although policy makers surely must take into account the findings from a new opinion poll carried out by LucidTalk on behalf of the Free Speech Union. The headline news is that there’s little public appetite for a Hate Bill in Northern Ireland and considerable anxiety that it would have a chilling effect on free speech: 81% of respondents said they have not been a victim of a hate crime in the last 12 months; 79% felt that some people being offended some of the time is a price worth paying for freedom of speech, and when asked whether they think people being too easily offended is a problem in Northern Ireland, only 10% said it isn’t a problem, with 44% saying it’s a major problem.

Just as concerning is the finding that the Bill would likely exacerbate sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland and endanger the peace process. Our poll revealed a significant gulf in the attitude of nationalists and unionists towards the proposed legislation: 85% of Sinn Féin voters supported more severe punishment for crimes motivated by hatred of a victim’s protected characteristics, compared to just 44% of DUP voters; 90% of DUP respondents felt less free to express their personal beliefs than they were 10 years ago, compared to just 43% of Sinn Féin voters; and 85% of Sinn Féin voters supported more severe punishment for crimes motivated by hatred of a victim’s protected characteristics compared to just 44% of DUP voters. What’s particularly worrying is that the Bill would make some forms of sectarianism a hate crime – and DUP voters think they’re much more likely to get into trouble for saying something which is misinterpreted as ‘hate speech’ (83%) than Sinn Féin voters (35%).

The FSU writes to Lancaster City Council regarding the no-platforming of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown

We’ve written to the Leader of Lancaster City Council, Councillor Jackson, urging her to reconsider the cancellation of Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown’s forthcoming performance in Morecambe. As the Mail reported earlier this month, the controversial 77-year-old comedian was due to perform at a council-run venue in August, but the show was cancelled after a total of 59 people signed a petition calling for Chubby Brown to be no-platformed.

As we pointed out in our letter, the FSU take no view on Chubby Brown’s comedy routine, just as we do not advocate for specific points of view. What we do believe, however, is that unless laws are being broken, as opposed to some people finding something distasteful, members of the general public are mature enough to make up their own minds on what they wish to watch, read or listen to. The Lancaster Post and Lancs Live have both now reported on the FSU’s intervention and we hope that this local press coverage will encourage Lancaster Council to do the right thing and allow the people of Morecambe to decide for themselves whether Chubby Brown’s set is worth the price of a ticket or not. You can read our letter in full here.

Maureen Martin and the case for amending the Employment Rights Act 1996

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. The case of Maureen Martin demonstrates exactly why that change is needed. As I explained on GB News (and also in the Mail), Maureen was fired from her job at housing association L&Q because she said things about marriage that some people judged politically incorrect. Ms Martin was campaigning to become mayor of Lewisham in South-East London when she published a ‘six-point plan’ of action that was posted to the borough’s 205,000 registered voters. One of those six points expressed the orthodox Christian view that “natural marriage between a man and a woman is the fundamental building block for a successful society, and the safest environment for raising children”. Sensing an opportunity, local LGBT activists eagerly moved in for the cancel, reproducing an image of her leaflet on Twitter, accusing her of ‘hate speech’ and demanding she be dismissed. Despite an unblemished 13-year-record, her employer duly obliged, sacking Maureen for breaching the company’s social-media policy and bringing L&Q into disrepute. Needless to say, L&Q is a member of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme.

As FSU Deputy Director Ben Jones pointed out – also on GB News – the details may differ, but the pattern is becoming very common: “This week alone, we have more than 80 live cases where we are helping people in situations like Maureen’s, where they’ve lost their job for expressing often very mild views.” Last year, for instance, we helped Jeremy Sleath, who’d been fired by West Midlands Trains for celebrating the reopening of the pubs on ‘Freedom Day’ by saying on Facebook that he didn’t want to live in a ‘Muslim alcohol-free caliphate’ for the rest of his life. It didn’t matter that he’d said it outside the workplace on a personal account. Like Maureen, he was dismissed for breaching social-media policy and bringing the company into disrepute. With our help, Jeremy fought back in court and got a judgement of ‘unfair dismissal’ – just like Simon Isherwood.

The organisation Christian Concern is currently helping Maureen take legal action against L&Q, and I suspect they’ll be equally successful, not least because under the Equality Act 2010 expressions of religion or belief are protected, meaning you cannot be fired for expressing an orthodox religious view, however distasteful some might find it. That said, taking your employer to an Employment Tribunal is a lengthy and costly process. (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. Something else we’d like to see is a statute of limitations on what people can be investigated for even if they say it in the workplace. In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of what the author Freddie deBoer has called “offence archaeology”, with people going back many years to try and find things people have said that are supposedly offensive in order to get them disciplined, sacked or cancelled. (Telegraph, Spiked, Spectator). Like libel and slander, we’d like to see a 12-month statute of limitations on what you can be investigated for.

General fighting fund

This month we’ve helped people from all walks of life, with cases ranging from people being kicked off social media for questioning gender ideology, to members losing their jobs and livelihoods for comments made outside of work. People contact us every week who never imagined they’d need our support. Help us to help them: if you can, please donate to our general fighting fund.

Sharing the newsletter

As with all our work, this newsletter depends on the support of our members and donors, so if you’re not already a paying member please sign up today or encourage a friend to join, and help us turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons below to help us spread the word. If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Kind regards,

Toby Young

The Free Speech Union, along with other civil liberties groups, is deeply concerned about the Online Safety Bill. For the Government to try to suppress ‘legal but harmful’ content is a breach of a fundamental principle of English Common Law, which is that unless something is explicitly prohibited by law then it is permitted. Moreover, each successive government will be able to add more and more things to this list, creating an anti-free speech ratchet effect.

We urge you to write to your MP asking him or her to rethink this Bill. At the very least, MPs could ask the current Government to hold it over until the Autumn when there will be a new Government in place. This is a complicated, far-reaching piece of legislation that will have a huge impact on what we can say online and it’s madness to rush it through when a leadership contest is taking place. Some MPs have already raised concerns about the Bill, including David Davis, Steve Baker and Sir Graham Brady. With your help, many more will join them. Please send your MP an email today.

We have just launched an online tool that makes this quick and easy. Just click on the link below, enter your postcode on the page it takes you to and then send the email as written or adapt it to stress things you’re particularly concerned about. Thanks in advance for your help.

The link is here: Contact Your Local MP – The Free Speech Union

Kind regards,

Toby Young,

General Secretary.