Weekly Briefing

Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. A particular welcome to all those members who joined before our membership fees went up. Since you got in under the wire, you won’t be charged the new rate for at least a year – and the same goes for all our existing members.

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 turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Understanding Tyranny and Liberty – tickets now available for our next live event!

Our Autumn/Winter events programme kicked off last week with Is There a Left Way Back from Woke? – the video of which is now available in full on our YouTube channel (here).

There are many more events to come, including, for the first time, events in Belfast and Exeter. Full details will be shared soon.

Our next event is on Tuesday 3rd October at the Art Workers’ Guild in London, when Professor Jeremy Jennings will deliver a guest lecture on the topic Understanding Tyranny and Liberty: Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville and J.S. Mill, followed by a Q and A and audience discussion, with FSU General Secretary Toby Young in the chair. The lecture will explore what lessons we can draw from Tocqueville’s insights into the social pressure to conform as well as John Stuart Mill’s, captured by the phrase “the tyranny of the majority”.

In-person tickets are available here, to join on Zoom, register here.

Battle of Ideas Festival 2023 – get your special FSU discount tickets now!

The Battle of Ideas festival returns to Church House, Westminster on 28th and 29th October. As ever the festival motto is: “Free speech allowed, free thinkers welcome.” There’s plenty to discuss, from the cultural and corporate wars on free speech to the rise of apocalyptic thinking around climate change and artificial intelligence. There will be debates on the resurgence of populism and the crisis in our schools – plus much more across 100+ sessions.

The FSU will be there all weekend with our stall and will be hosting this session on Saturday – Online Censorship: An International Clampdown? – as part of the Free Speech Strand. FSU members can get 20% off weekend standard, weekend concession, one-day standard and one-day concession tickets by clicking here.

Together event – discounted tickets available for FSU members

Together’s second anniversary event takes place in London on 29th September and FSU members can get £5 off tickets by using the code “FSU” at the checkout – you can find out more and book your tickets here.

Since its founding, Together has been at the forefront of many of the battles to defend freedom in the UK, mobilising its supporters against Covid lockdowns, de-banking and 15 minute cities. The group’s second anniversary event at Piranesian Central Hall in Westminster will welcome over a thousand people to discuss how we can preserve our hard-won civil rights.

Confirmed speakers include: Dr Jay Bhattacharya, Matt Goodwin, Sherelle Jacobs and Julia Hartley-Brewer.

FSU attend House of Lords free speech event!

On Wednesday, FSU staff along with some well-known and familiar faces (such as Maya Forstater, Helen Joyce and Baroness Ann Jenkin) were invited to the second annual parliamentary event in support of freedom of expression. MC’d by FSU Advisory Council member Andrew Doyle, the event was a great opportunity for pro-free-speech groups to get together, including Battle of Ideas, Big Brother Watch, Don’t Divide Us, Freedom in the Arts, LGB Alliance, Together and We Are Fair Cop. Each organisation gave a short elevator pitch, outlining their biggest achievements over the past 12 months and what they see as the biggest threats to free speech on- and offline in the coming year.

FSU Chief Legal counsel, Dr Bryn Harris, updated the room on our priorities for the next 12 months, namely, defending workers compelled to abide by the ‘progressive’ values of their employers, pushing the courts to recognise that academic freedom is a fundamental right and working with friends and supporters in Parliament to reform public order legislation (being offensive really shouldn’t bean offence).

The FSU’s new Events and Ian Mactaggart Programme Officer, Vinay Kapoor, also outlined the work we’ve been doing to defend free speech at universities thanks to the Ian Mactaggart Programme, which provides grants to individuals, societies and other groups defending academic freedom.

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

On this week’s episode of ‘That’s Debatable’, the talking points include the news Sibyl Ruth has settled her legal case with her former employer, Cornerstones Literary Agency, and the company has now issued an apology! Hosts Tom and Ben also discuss the Canadian public high school library that has removed all books published before 2008 amid confusion around a new equity-based ‘weeding’ process, and some recent research from our friends at the campaign group Alumni for Free Speech, which shows that around 214 times as much money is being spent by the UK’s top universities on equity, diversity and inclusion than on free speech protection.

Well worth a listen – the link to download the latest episode in full and for free is here.

UK Parliament finally passes censorial Online Safety Bill

The UK’s controversial and long-awaited Online Safety Bill, which contains sweeping new surveillance and censorship measures, concluded its final Parliamentary debate on Tuesday and will soon achieve Royal Assent, meaning it will then become law (BBC, Reuters, Times).

The FSU is disappointed that the legislation has been passed. But thanks to our lobbying and campaigning, as well as our members who contacted their MP to express their misgivings abtou the Bill, the version of reaching the statute books is at least an improvement on earlier versions.

In particular, the obligation on social media companies to “address” so-called ‘legal but harmful’ content, as set out in Clause 13 of the original legislation, has now been removed. Our objection to this clause was essentially that the phrase “address” risked becoming a euphemism for “remove”. If the Government had published a list of legal content it considered harmful to adults and imposed an obligation on social media companies to say how they intended to “address” it, that would have nudged them to remove it. But thanks to the lobbying of the FSU, that obligation has now been dropped.

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

In addition, the original duty imposed on social media companies to “have regard” for freedom of expression – which is so undemanding, it’s virtually pointless – has now been bumped up to “have particular regard”, thanks to us.

Finally, we were ahead of the curve in promoting user empowerment as an alternative to the de facto removal of ‘legal but harmful’ content – in the final iteration of the legislation, the locus of responsibility for online safety has shifted from paternalist providers to empowered users. The result is that instead of saying how they intend to “address” harmful content in their terms of service, companies like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) will now have to say what tools they’re going to make available to their users so they can act as their own content moderators.

It’s important to note that the passage of the Bill onto the statute book is not the end of the story as far as the FSU’s campaigning work goes.

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

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

There is, for instance, a significant risk that the big providers will establish a ‘safe’ mode as their default setting, so that if adult users want to see ‘lawful but awful’ content they will have to ‘opt in’.

That may mean perfectly lawful yet politically contentious views – e.g., an article in the Spectator by a gender critical feminist – will be blocked by default since woke victim groups will argue that any such views constitute incitement to hatred based on their protected characteristics. 

Of course, users will have the option of adjusting their settings so they can see that content, but some won’t want to in case, say, a colleague sees something ‘hateful’ over their shoulder and reports them to HR for ‘harassment’. 

And what about those who won’t even be aware they have a choice, or are aware but don’t know how to do anything about it?   

We know that that’s likely to be a lot of people thanks to research carried out by behavioural scientists on what’s known as ‘choice architecture’ – i.e., the way in which customers are presented with choices will influence their subsequent decision-making. As countless studies in this area have now demonstrated, one of the most powerful tools available to organisations wishing to ‘nudge’ consumers down certain behavioural pathways is the humble ‘default setting’. That’s because consumers tend to be too lazy to revise those settings or don’t know how.

The devil will be in the detail of what each social media platform’s version of ‘safe browsing’ looks like. If a platform’s ‘safe mode’ becomes the default setting, how easy will it be to switch it off? As one recent study put it, “If defaults have an effect because consumers are not aware that they have choices… [they] impinge on liberty.”

FCA in firing line over “whitewash” review into recent de-banking scandal

The City watchdog has “serious questions” to answer after overseeing what has been dubbed a “whitewash” review into the recent de-banking scandal, MPs have said (Mail, Telegraph, Times)

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) claimed that it found “no evidence” that customers have been debanked for their political views after conducting a weeks-long review into the matter.

The inquiry was prompted by the revelation that back in June, Coutts bank had closed former UKIP-leader Nigel Farage’s account because his views on issues like LGBT rights, Net Zero and Brexit did not, as an internal document put it, “align with our values”.

The FCA has confirmed that its report considered the period between July 2022 and June 2023. However, when asked specifically about Mr Farage’s case, one senior regulator at the FCA refused to repeat the right-wing former Brexiteer’s name, but did concede that there was a “high-profile example” that was being looked at separately by the bank involved, before adding that the case “fell outside of the reporting period”.

It is unclear how the FCA reached that conclusion given that Mr Farage first announced he had been debanked by Coutts on Friday 30th June, 2023.

The admission that the very case that prompted the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, to ask the FCA to urgently investigate whether the practice of de-banking was widespread was not considered by the financial regulator prompted an immediate backlash from politicians and some in the City who accused the City watchdog of failing to conduct a thorough review.

Speaking anonymously, one minister said: “It’s a whitewash. But we shouldn’t be too surprised that the body charged with preventing de-banking has failed to find evidence of it and be self-critical.”

Mr Farage himself described the review as “a total stich-up” and said: “We need wholesale change of the personnel running the FCA.” (Telegraph).

On that note, a group of prominent Conservatives and former financial industry figures wrote to the Chancellor back in July, raising their concerns that the FCA’s encouragement of what is known as “environmental, social, and governance”, or ESG policies, may have inadvertently encouraged the culture within banking that led to Nigel Farage losing his Coutts account (Telegraph).

However, the FCA’s executive director for consumers and competition, Sheldon Mills has since denied that the watchdog’s inclusivity initiatives could be held responsible for subtly cultivating a culture in which de-banking a customer like Nigel Farage, who holds dissenting views on issues like LGBT rights, could come to seem not just legitimate, but socially and morally just.

Mr Mills, who helped draw up guidelines on gender identity for major companies while previously the chairman of controversial pro-transgender charity Stonewall, said: “We are very clear that banks should not be terminating current accounts on the basis of political views or opinions which are legally held.” (Telegraph).

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. 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 turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Sibyl Ruth – major case update!

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

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

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

We acknowledge and accept that the way in which her work was brought to an end could have been handled less abruptly. Cornerstones ought to have more firmly encouraged an open dialogue with her before taking any action. It is a matter of regret to us that we advised a client whose manuscript she had begun to work on that she had become unavailable.

We regret that we that we did not encourage the opportunity to subsequently engage in dialogue with her. We accept that our actions must have been distressing to Sibyl. We accept that we were wrong in this regard, and apologise for our actions.

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

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

Most of all I am grateful to everyone who donated to this crowdfunder. This outcome would not have been possible without your support and help. The funds from the crowdfunder have been used solely to pay my legal expenses. Any money that is now left will be re-allocated to Gillian Phillip’s crowdfunder (find it here). Like me, Gillian is fighting for free speech protections in the arts world. My hope for the future is that arts organisations will recognise the rights of all precariously employed workers to express their lawful opinions outside the workplace.

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

FSU Autumn/Winter events programme – book your tickets here!

Our Autumn/Winter events programme kicked off on Wednesday night with Is There a Left Way Back from Woke? – the video of which will be available soon. There are many more events to come, including, for the first time, events in Belfast and Exeter. Full details will be shared soon.

Our next event is on Tuesday 3rd October, when Professor Jeremy Jennings will deliver a guest lecture on the topic Understanding Tyranny and Liberty: Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville and J.S. Mill, followed by Q and A and discussion, with FSU General Secretary Toby Young in the chair. The event will take place at 7.30pm at the Art Workers’ Guild in London and tickets include a free glass of wine. Places are limited, so book early by clicking here to avoid missing out.

We realise that getting to London is not possible for everyone, so members can also register to join, free of charge, on Zoom by clicking here.

Battle of Ideas Festival 2023 – get your special FSU discount tickets now!

The Battle of Ideas festival returns to Church House, Westminster on 28th and 29th October. As ever the festival motto is: ‘Free speech allowed, free thinkers welcome.’ There’s plenty to discuss, from the cultural and corporate wars on free speech to the rise of apocalyptic thinking around climate change or artificial intelligence. There will be debates on the continuing upsurges in populism and the crises in the arts world and schools – plus much more across 100+ sessions.

With an election likely to come in 2024, but party politics suffering from a vacuum of ideas, this is the festival that goes beyond left and right to bring together critics, thinkers, campaigners and the public itself. The FSU will be there all weekend with our stall and will be partnering on this session on Saturday – Online Censorship: An International Clampdown? – as part of the Free Speech Strand.

FSU members can get 20% off weekend standard, weekend concession, one-day standard and one-day concession tickets by clicking here.

UK universities spend 214 times as much on EDI as free speech

Our friends at Alumni for Free Speech (AFFS) have submitted FoI requests to Britain’s leading universities to discover how much they’re spending on teaching students about free speech and how much on equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). We knew it wouldn’t be an equal amount, but even we were shocked by the difference (Evening Standard).

Responses to the FoI requests have revealed a massive disparity.

The 47 universities that provided relevant information employ 515 dedicated EDI staff – that’s an average of 11 each.

The total EDI cost across the 42 universities that provided financial information was £19.5 million: £17.9 million on staff and £1.6 million on external resources.

In contrast, of the 43 universities that provided information about free speech, only two said they employed anyone with specific freedom of speech responsibilities. These two between them employed not more than five people. One reported staffing costs of £71,000, while the other said it spent just over £20,000 on external free speech resources.

Overall, therefore, around 214 times as much money appears to be being spent by our leading universities on EDI as on free speech protection.

Institutional neutrality about arguable and contested issues was once the norm at UK universities. But as AFFS points out, this neutrality has recently been abandoned as EDI departments, which seem to be growing inexorably, push controversial agendas involving gender identity ideology, critical race theory and the need to decolonise curricula.

These agendas are ideologically driven, politically contested, have little basis in fact and science and do not reflect what the majority of people think. They are also often at odds with universities’ obligations to protect free speech.

Nonetheless, these agendas, often involving participation in programmes promoted by external campaign groups like Stonewall and Advance HE, are sanctioned at the highest management levels. So-called training for both students and staff often requires agreement with the contested views embedded in the EDI agenda.

Small wonder, then, that a recent report from Policy Exchange shows that self-censorship in British academia is over twice as high among conservative academics in the social sciences and humanities (50%) as among those on the Left (23%).

You can read the report from AFFS, and sign up to support the vital work they do standing up for academic freedom, on their website – the link is here!

BBC axes Roisin Murphy from 6 Music special after singer commits wrongthink

The BBC, whose Director General Tim Davie told staff back in 2021 that “it’s a serious issue if [we are] perceived as transphobic”, has been forced to deny blacklisting Roisin Murphy after she was mobbed by trans activists following comments on her private Facebook account criticising the practice of giving puberty blockers to children (Telegraph, Times).

In an attempt to reassure licence-fee payers that the public service broadcaster takes its duty to impartiality seriously, an insider has insisted that the corporation “does not ban artists”, and that the decision to axe a tribute to her had nothing to do with her ‘gender critical’ views.

The Irish singer has had several gigs cancelled, and all marketing and promotion of her long-awaited new album halted by her record company after saying that puberty blockers are “f***ed, absolutely desolate” and that they should not be used on “little mixed-up kids” who are “vulnerable” and “need to be protected”.

As the mob erected its latest stake and busied itself searching for kindling, Murphy felt she had little option but to apologise for “stepping out of line”, with comments that may have been “hurtful to many of you”.

As Kathleen Stock remarked on Times Radio, Roisin was merely stating the current policy of NHS England, which has pulled back on the use of puberty blockers for children with gender dysphoria over concerns about the physical and psychological side effects of the treatment, including depression and weaker bones.

Archive interviews and highlights from the singer’s live shows were set to air on BBC 6 Music on September 26th following the release of her new album, but these were suddenly replaced by a selection of appearances by the rapper Little Simz.

An insider at the public service broadcaster, which has previously been accused of giving its LGBT staff network “unwarranted influence” over content, insisted that the corporation “does not ban artists”.

Archive materials are “regularly on rotation”, explained the spokesperson for an organisation where editors recently attended training seminars hosted by the trans lobby group behind the disputed ‘Genderbread person’ graphic, before adding that scheduled items “frequently change to reflect station-wide initiatives as they get confirmed”.

A follow-up statement from the corporation, which critics argue has long since been captured by gender ideology, appeared to suggest that this was why Little Simz’s archive performances had suddenly been added to the station’s annual, long since confirmed poetry-themed Way With Words initiative, and that there was “no other reason” for cancelling Roisin Murphy.

If that’s the corporation’s story, then no doubt it’s wise to stick to it. But it doesn’t explain why 6 Music, as a radio station that previously featured Ms Murphy’s tracks on a regular basis, hasn’t found time to play anything from her back catalogue since September 1st, three days after her private Facebook comments were first leaked to the press (Mail).

On a happier note, Murphy’s album went straight into the British album charts at number two, suggesting attempts to cancel her have failed. If you feel like supporting the Irish singer, you can buy her album here.

We’re not interested in white, abled-bodied stories, literary agents tell aspiring authors

Literary agencies are choosing people of colour, disabled or LGBTQ+ writers while others are becoming “ostracised” due to their perceived “privilege”, according to the Telegraph.

An investigation by the paper has found examples of literary agencies making clear their preference for authors deemed under-represented or marginalised – normally meaning people of colour, disabled writers and those from the LGBTQ+ community – prompting concern that authors who do not meet the criteria are becoming “ostracised”.

Ash Literary, an agency looking “for extraordinary stories for children that reflect and celebrate the diversity of our world”, states on its submissions page: “We are not interested in stories about white able-bodied WW2 evacuees but would welcome that story from a disabled, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC [black, indigenous, and other people of colour] perspective.”

It adds: “If your book is about an identity that is not yours, we will not be a good fit. This includes books based [sic] the experiences of family members and friends.”

On Ms Wishlist, a website in which literary agents state the types of literature they’re after, one writes that “BIPOC, queer and minority groups are always the most welcome”, and another said that he is “specifically looking for [works] written by LGBTQIA + and/or BIPOC authors”.

Commenting on the Telegraph’s revelations, Toby Young said: “It seems the ideal client from the point of view of these literary agencies is a non-binary person of colour with a disability and a trust fund. Whether or not they can write seems largely immaterial.”

The stultifyingly pale, male and stale author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People continued: “The problem is, the book-buying public knows when they pick up a book by an unknown author from an ‘under-represented group’ that, nine times out 10, it’s been published because of the identity boxes the author ticks and not because it’s any good. Consequently, they’re unlikely to buy it. I worry that if the woke capture of the UK publishing industry continues unabated, the UK won’t have a publishing industry left in about 10 years.”

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. 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 turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

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

The FSU has written to the Master of Regent’s Park College asking him to withdraw the College’s ‘Trans Inclusion Statement’ (the Statement), which is based on a misunderstanding of the Equality Act 2010 (Times). You can read our letter here.

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

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

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

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

Although the Statement refers to the need to “uphold lawful freedom of expression” and protect “lawfully expressed gender-critical beliefs” – which we welcome – any insistence that students comply with the College’s “commitment to trans inclusion” in all the ways set out in the Statement – that they affirm everything a trans person believes about their gender, for instance – would be a breach of the College’s legal duty to uphold free speech and this duty is not diluted by the Equality Act, as explained above.

As such, this Statement risks stifling free speech and may well encourage students to make complaints of harassment to silence those who express perfectly lawful beliefs that they disagree with.

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

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

British academic has gender critical book dropped by academic publisher

A British academic has said that the “radioactive” issue of transgender identity issue is threatening to stifle debate after Oxford University Press (OUP) dropped his book on the subject.

Having come up with the premise of a book to sort out the fundamental questions around sex and gender “once and for all”, Alex Byrne, a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, signed a contract with OUP, the largest university press in the world. Work began on Trouble with Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions in 2021, with one OUP editor telling him that the book promised to be an “important one”.

However, after he submitted a manuscript – replete with 16,000 words of endnotes and substantial bibliography – the academic publisher said it did not address the subject in “a sufficiently serious or respectful way”.

Prof Byrne, who has since found another publisher, believes OUP declined to print his book because it contained a critical analysis of gender identity.

“There is clearly a faction in OUP somewhere which disapproves greatly of publishing books by people who are on the gender critical side,” Prof Byrne said, adding: “I wouldn’t even say I’m gender-critical, but… I’m not a full-on transgender activist. I have some sympathy with Dr Kathleen Stock: that is enough to mark me.”

Last year, when a manuscript by the political philosopher Dr Holly Lawford-Smith incurred the wrath of trans activists, the OUP told her that it wouldn’t be going ahead with publication. Signatories of a petition against Smith included those who claimed to be “members of the OUP USA Guild”. Thankfully, however, the FSU was able to intervene, and with our help Holly resolved the matter and OUP published her book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On this week’s episode, hosts Tom and Ben celebrate another significant victory for the FSU! Carl Borg-Neal, 57, was unfairly dismissed and subject to disability discrimination when Lloyds Bank sacked him for using a racial slur during a workplace-based diversity training session. He came to the FSU for help and, following the first-class support of Doyle Clayton in the Employment Tribunal, Carl is now likely to recover a significant sum for damages. Not for the first time, at the heart of the incident was a supposed ‘safe space’ that turned out to be anything but.

Tom and Ben also discuss a very worrying case in Finland. Päivi Räsänen, a former politician, is on trial for hate speech after criticising her city’s Pride festival, as well as writing a pamphlet 20 years ago setting out her orthodox Christian views about gay marriage. This follows a 2019 police decision that she had committed no crime and a 2022 acquittal by judges in her first trial. Tom and Ben initially consider the implications of Päivi’s case for free speech across Europe, before moving on to discuss hate speech more generally, wondering how the concept has come to be used as an excuse for censorship. What is the line between hate speech, thought crime and even, in an Irish context, pre-crime?

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

Legal Crowdfunders — join the fight!

If you can, then please pledge your support to our two live crowdfunders, both of which need one final push.

Former law-lecturer Dr Almut Gadow is bringing a legal case against the Open University, having been fired after questioning requirements to embed gender identity theory within the institution’s law curriculum. Almut’s crowdfunder is currently just £1,500 short of its stretch target of £70,000. This first tranche of money will cover the cost of the preliminary hearing, disclosure of documents, and preparation of a trial bundle. If you can, please donate by clicking here.

Bestselling children’s author Gillian Philip continues to fight for a woman’s right to state biological facts without fear of losing her job. Her crowdfunder is now just £3,500 short of the money she needs for her imminent appeal hearing on 20th September. You can find out more about the case and donate to her cause here. (Gillian was also a recent guest on our weekly podcast, That’s Debatable! — you can listen here).

Non-crime hate incident record for elderly photography enthusiast

Suella Braverman has voiced concern at the case of a pensioner quizzed by the police on suspicion of a hate crime. Her crime? She stopped while out on a walk to take a photo of a sticker on a Pride poster that carried a ‘gender critical’ message (GB News, Mail, Telegraph). You read that right: she didn’t put the sticker on the poster, she just took a picture of it.

The Home Secretary highlighted the episode as an example of police “straying into politically contentious matters”.

The woman’s ordeal began while out walking around Hebden Bridge earlier this year. Having noticed a small sticker, which read “Keep Males Out Of Women-Only Spaces”, sitting on top of a large trans pride poster outside Happy Valley Pride, a Hebden Bridge pride organization, she took a photo of it before continuing on her way. She did not subsequently share the image on social media – not that that would have made her guilty of a hate crime either.

Four weeks later, officers from West Yorkshire Police Force swooped on her home while she was caring for her seriously ill female partner in order to question her about the photo. She had been identified from CCTV footage, they said, before explaining that they were investigating a complaint made on behalf of Happy Valley Pride because of “the sensitivity… for members of the LGBT community.”

The officers proceeded to question the 73-year-old thought criminal over her recreational camera use for the next 30 minutes, apparently in an attempt to determine if she’d been the individual responsible for placing the sticker on the trans pride poster.

After the interrogation, the police advised the septuagenarian that in taking a photograph of an inanimate object on a public pavement outside a building, “no crime had taken place”. Well done detectives!

However, thanks to a Data Access Request the woman later submitted, she learnt that the investigation had in fact been catalogued as a non-crime hate incident (or NCHI) by West Yorkshire Police (an NCHI is any non-crime incident “which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice”).

The police log entry released to the woman – who does not wish to be named due to fear of reprisals from trans activists – also records that: “Words of advice were given regards the harassment and alarm that this sticker could potentially cause the community.” Or, as the woman herself described it to Reduxx, the officers “gave a sermon”.

“I think they wanted to correct my thinking,” she said. “They are getting involved in a very divided and toxic debate, but it’s not their role to arbitrate political disagreements. I felt as if they were trying to gag a dissenting voice by harassing me in my own home.”

Posting on the X social media site, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: “This is exactly what I had in mind when writing to police chiefs and commissioning the @HMICFRS [His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services] review over forces straying into politically contentious matters.”

Last month, the FSU wrote to the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police, John Robins, outlining our concerns about the arrest by seven officers of a 16 year-old autistic girl on suspicion of committing a ‘hate crime’ for telling a female officer: “You look like my lesbian nana.” We continue to seek assurance from West Yorkshire Police that an NCHI wasn’t recorded against her name.

In our letter, we called for Mr Robins’s officers to undergo urgently needed training on Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 to help them better understand the importance of free speech and check this growing tendency within the force – his force in particular, it would seem – toward pursuing frivolous cases against anyone who’s had a little too much to think and ends up expressing perfectly lawful but dissenting views.

West Yorkshire Police Force has the second-highest crime rate in the UK, with more than 90% of cases going unsolved in the area. Last year, 80% of all burglaries reported to the Force were closed without a suspect being identified. Of the 14,272 total burglaries reported to the force, just 6% (856) resulted in a suspect being charged or summonsed.

Irish singer Róisín Murphy cancelled, apologises, continues to be cancelled

The Irish singer Róisín Murphy has been pressured into apologising to a trans-activist mob after being bombarded with abuse for expressing her opinion, on a private Facebook account, that puberty blockers are “f***ed, absolutely desolate” and should not be used on “little mixed-up kids” who are “vulnerable” and “need to be protected” (Critic, Spectator, Spiked).

As the FSU often tells its members who get into difficulty, apologising in the hope that a show of contrition might make the mob disperse is rarely a good idea. In fact, it tends to have the opposite effect, whetting its appetite for more hardcore pitchfork action.

So it has proved in this case. Since issuing her apology, Ms Murphy has had several gigs cancelled, while the record label behind her long-awaited upcoming album has halted all marketing and promotion of her work. Perversely – some might say ‘sadistically’ – the company has also committed to donating all profits from the album to pro-trans groups.

What’s particularly troubling about this story is the fact that someone Ms Murphy knew and presumably trusted initiated the pile-on, taking a screenshot of a message she’d written on her private Facebook account and then sharing it publicly.

As Suzanne Moore points out for the Telegraph, that’s how the Stasi operated: getting ordinary people to inform on each other, neighbour against neighbour, child against parent. There was constant surveillance of every activity. There could be no private space.

In Manchester, another private conversation resulted in similar trouble recently. In a hotel during the city’s Pride festival, Dev Mistry, a burlesque performer, overheard a member of staff talking about trans people. He had to take his headphones out to hear precisely what they were saying. “It was not necessarily malicious, but it was that ‘men are men’ and ‘women are women’ and there’s no in between,” Mistry said. He complained to reception and the employee reportedly apologised for causing offence, but Mistry had made sure his complaint went to the hotel’s head office. HR was informed and agreed that staff needed to have more training on LGBTQ issues.

Some of the calls for cancellation that arose during the Edinburgh Festival also involved sieving through someone’s tweets. A couple of wrong “likes” were enough to cause the Royal Lyceum Theatre’s David Greig to issue a grovelling apology for “careless and harmful” behaviour. The tweets he had liked were perceived to be transphobic.

“Who is on the central committee that now governs arts and culture whereby rigid gender ideology must be so enforced and never questioned?” Suzanne asks. “The very place where we should be able to discuss issues is utterly closed. The Stonewall tactic of “No Debate” has served to make the arts a place where people can inform on each other for wrongthink.”

Join the FSU before its membership fees go up!

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

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

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

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

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

They can join by clicking here.

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. 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 turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

The Digital Services Act and the EU’s bureaucratic assault on free speech

The European Union’s (EU) Digital Services Act (DSA) came into force on Friday 25th August, establishing a regulatory framework that critics have likened to an “incoherent, multilevel censorship regime” (LA Times) that will have a “chilling effect on free speech” (Spiked), “momentous and disastrous implications for freedom of speech worldwide” (Brownstone) and will ultimately cause “the death of free speech online” (Spiked).

The DSA is designed to function in combination with the EU’s so-called ‘Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation’ (the Code), which now requires online platforms with more than 45 million monthly active users – i.e., companies like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – to swiftly censor ‘mis-‘ and ‘disinformation’, and provide regular updates – or ‘transparency reports’ – on all the work they are doing “to fight disinformation”, as the EU’s new ‘transparency centre’ website puts it.

Thanks to the DSA, the European Commission (EC) also has at its disposal an aggressive enforcement regime, such that if Big Tech companies fail to abide by the Code, they can be fined up to 6% of their annual global revenue, investigated by the Commission, and potentially even prevented from operating in the EU altogether.

Unfortunately, the fact the UK is now no longer an EU member-state won’t do much to protect social media users in this country from this new law. The so-called ‘Brussels Effect’, whereby firms wishing to operate in the world’s second-largest market quickly come to apply the EU’s strict regulatory standards outside as well as inside the EU is well-known. (Witness the evolution of GDPR, from newly minted EU regulation in 2018, to global standard today.) What’s particularly striking about the first raft of transparency reports submitted to the EC earlier this year is their focus on fighting disinformation globally: i.e., Big Tech’s efforts to meet the EC’s censorship expectations do not only affect the accounts of users based in the EU, but of users all around the world.

So who is to say if something is dis- or misinformation? In the case of social media platforms operating within the EU, the EC’s unelected bureaucrats are the arbiter of that, since it is the Commission that will decide if platforms like Facebook are doing enough to combat it. (It is the EU’s executive body, the EC, that is invested by the DSA with the exclusive power to assess compliance with the Code and apply penalties if a platform is found wanting.)

And what kind of speech is the DSA expected to police? The Code defines disinformation as “false or misleading content that is spread with an intention to deceive or secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm”. That sounds innocent and apolitical enough. Yet the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), which was launched by the EC in June 2020 and aims to “identify disinformation, uproot its sources or dilute its impact”, appears to adopt a much broader, deeply politicised understanding of the term “misleading content”.

Consider, for instance, some of the “disinformation trends” listed in EDMO’s recent 2023 briefing on disinformation in Ireland. They include “nativist narratives” that “oppose migration” (bye bye Nigel Farage) and “gender and sexuality narratives” that touch on trans issues as “part of a wider ‘anti-woke’ narrative that mocks social justice campaigns and efforts to promote diversity and inclusion” (farewell Titania McGrath). In the section on “science and environment”, posts in which “Greta Thunberg is a frequent target for abusive language and humour relating to climate change” are cited as disinformation, as are those in which “Met Éireann [the state meteorological service] weather warnings are viewed with suspicion” (au revoir to the Global Warming Policy Foundation).

As Laurie Wastell points out for the European Conservative, what is common to these supposedly ‘harmful’ narratives is not that they contain ‘disinformation’ in the sense outlined in the Code (i.e., “false information intended to mislead”). Rather, they represent opposition by the public to unpopular policies favoured by elites – in this case, mass migration, transgender ideology and Net Zero eco-austerity.

That’s concerning given that the EDMO sits on the Code’s ‘Permanent Taskforce’ (stated aim: keeping the Code “future-proof and fit-for-purpose”), and nearly every company that submitted a transparency report to the EC earlier this year cited EDMO as a partner organisation.

In the words of EC President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU considers it vital that companies censor disinformation of the kind identified by EDMO to “ensure that the online environment remains a safe space”.

Safe for whom, one wonders – politicians or citizens?

Dr Almut Gadow’s legal fundraiser – show your support!

Writing in the Spectator, Prof Alice Sullivan described the case of former-law lecturer and FSU member Dr Almut Gadow as “perhaps the most shocking” of the three legal challenges the Open University (OU) is currently facing from staff and students who say they’ve been discriminated against for expressing the ‘gender critical’ beliefs.

In Dr Gadow’s case, the claim is that she was sacked by the OU after questioning requirements to embed gender identity within the law curriculum.

Supported by the FSU, Almut is bringing a case against the OU, arguing that she was harassed, discriminated against and unfairly dismissed because she rejects gender identity ideology, and this breached human rights protections for academic freedom.

During the academic year 2021-22, the university’s equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) team announced plans to incorporate its political ideologies across the curriculum. The “liberating the curriculum” policy that resulted was, Almut says, “effectively a checklist of ideological compliance”.

Dr Gadow raised concerns about various requirements, including introducing numerous gender identities into the curriculum and teaching students to use offenders’ preferred pronouns.

She argued that a criminal lawyer’s role “is to present facts” and that “sex is a relevant fact for offences involving perpetrators’ and/or victims’ bodies”.

Dr Gadow also made the case that “no offender should be allowed to dictate the language of his case in a way which masks relevant facts”.

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

This is the FSU’s most ambitious crowdfunder yet, and for good reason: not only does Almut deserve justice for the egregious way she’s been treated, but this case provides the best opportunity yet to establish a strong legal precedent in favour of academic freedom that will protect all the staff of British universities, especially those who believe in the reality of biological sex.

We’ve just passed £60,000 on our way to the initial target of £70,000, which will cover the cost of the preliminary hearing, disclosure of documents and preparation of a trial bundle. That’s good news – but there’s still a long way to go.

Click here to read Almut’s legal Crowdfunder statement – and if you can, please share the page and make a donation.

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

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

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

The radical subjectivism of the Irish hate speech bill

How is it that Ireland can have witnessed a sharp rise in the reporting of hate crime and hate-related incidents just as the Irish Government’s own survey data indicates the country is becoming an increasingly tolerant country, where eight in 10 people feel “very comfortable” living next door to people with different nationalities, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, religious beliefs (or lack thereof) and marital statuses?

As the Irish journalist Ben Scallan points out in an article that caught Elon Musk’s eye this week, a clue lies in the fact that an increase in ‘reporting’ is not the same thing as an increase in actual hatred.

All that’s required for the Garda to log a reported hate crime (a crime motivated by hatred), or non-crime hate incident (behaviour motivated by hatred), is that the ‘victim’ – or any other person who witnessed the incident – perceives that the ‘perpetrator’ was motivated by hostility or prejudice towards one or more of the victim’s protected characteristics.

The distinction between perceived and actual hatred is deliberately glossed over by the identikit woke graduates with degrees in all sorts of ghastly sounding subjects like ‘sustainable development’, ‘social justice and community action’ and ‘global ethics and justice’ that now comprise the workforce at the NGOs with links to George Soros’s Open Society Foundation that operate in Ireland.

In Ben Scallan’s view, these organisations have been manipulating the statistics and waging campaigns to lower the threshold for hate crime reporting in Ireland, while encouraging citizens to report instances of perfectly lawful speech that happen not to align with their doctrinaire ideological worldview as ‘hate incidents’.

The Garda does at least acknowledge that things may not be quite as they seem, having conceded that a “very low threshold of perception” currently applies to hate crime reporting. Yet methodological sophistication of this kind has been curiously absent from proposals put forward by Ireland’s governing classes that argue for a new and allegedly desperately needed hate crime law that will restrict free speech and open up new pathways for political persecution.

In those proposals, the distinction between perceived and actual hatred has all but collapsed: ‘increased reporting’ is breezily conflated with ‘increased hatred’ such that for politicians like Justice Minister Helen McEntee and Senator Pauline O’Reilly the need for intensified state censorship of perfectly lawful but dissenting speech that certain sub-sections of Irish society happen to regard as ‘hateful’ now seems completely unarguable.

Nor is this confusion simply to be found in the debating chambers of the Dáil and Seanad Éireann. It constitutes the underlying philosophy of the country’s Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, where the “communication” of material or speech that might “incite hatred” against people with certain protected characteristics is punishable by up to five years in prison, and where simply to “possess” such material on a computer or a phone is a crime with a maximum tariff of two years.

The proposed legislation contains no definition of ‘hate’, which means that once the Bill is passed it will effectively be the Garda that determines what constitutes hatred based on its current, capacious definition of a hate crime as “perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice, based on actual or perceived age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender”.

Critics of the Bill – like Free Speech Ireland – are concerned that this perception-based definition will leave the public unaware that in speaking about certain issues in certain ways that may in future unwittingly be committing a crime.

Looked at from the opposite perspective, however, it’s precisely this lack of clarity that will allow every perpetually offended woke scold south of the Irish border to trust to their perceptions and report every street preacher proselytising their faith on the streets of Dublin, the ‘transphobia’ of every gender critical feminist arguing the importance of biological sex on social media, the ‘offensive colonial condescension’ of every white male momentarily raising an eyebrow during a workplace team meeting to the Garda. It is after all the stated policy of the country’s national police force that when it comes to hatred, “[t]he perception test is the defining factor, no additional evidence is required at the reporting stage”.

As Ben Scallan goes on to point out, under the Garda’s perception-based definition of hate crime, you don’t even have to be the victim of an alleged hate incident to report it: “A random bystander who has nothing to do with the event can say, ‘I think it was based on prejudice,’ and it will be categorised as such.”

Of course, it won’t be “random bystanders” with a priggish manner, flapping ears, and a little too much time on their hands that end up weaponising this definition. The real danger is posed by activist groups and George Soros-funded NGOs bent on criminalising perfectly lawful views that they happen to disapprove of for doctrinaire ideological reasons.

“Will mocking memes be tolerated?” asked independent senator Ronan Mullen during a debate on the proposed legislation in the Senate earlier this year. “Will carrying a placard stating, ‘Men cannot breastfeed’ warrant a hate-speech investigation or up to five years’ imprisonment, a lifelong label as a criminal hater, and all of the stigma and life limitation that goes with that? Nobody actually knows.”

Nobody actually knows, no. But each of Mr Mullen’s hypothetical scenarios could potentially lead to a ‘hate crime’ investigation, which would then feature in the Garda’s annual reporting dataset, which would then perpetuate the myth that Ireland is becoming less tolerant, which would then lead to calls from Soros-backed NGOs for even more draconian hate speech laws, which would then… and so on and so forth, in an endless cycle of intensifying state censorship.

Gillian Philip case – show your support here!

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

Gillian brought an Employment Tribunal claim against publishers Working Partners and HarperCollins, arguing that she was unlawfully discriminated against when her contract to write children’s books was terminated because she included #IStandWithJKRowling in her Twitter bio.

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

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

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

In launching her appeal, Gillian will once again need your help. You can find out more about the case and donate to her cause here. (Gillian was also a recent guest on our weekly podcast, That’s Debatable! – you can listen here).

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

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

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

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

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. 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 turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

FSU releases new research briefing on Carbon Literacy Training!

The FSU has just published a research briefing by Thomas Harris, our Director of Data and Impact, on the threat posed to workplace freedom of speech by the rise of carbon literacy training. (You can read it here.)

Carbon literacy training, which is often embedded within an organisation’s broader Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy, is now spreading rapidly across UK workplaces, with over 67,000 employees certified as ‘carbon literate’ according to the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP), the main organisation behind the initiative.

We’re concerned that it will have a chilling effect on free speech in the same way that unconscious bias training and anti-racism training does, with employees reluctant to challenge the ideas behind it for fear of jeopardising their careers.

While it’s indisputable that average global temperatures have increased since the mid-nineteenth century, people hold a range of views about the causes and severity of climate change and that in turn influences their opinion about the best way to tackle it – or, indeed, whether tackling it is possible or necessary.

Different solutions to the problems thrown up by climate change are informed by different values and recommending one approach over another inevitably involves making a political choice. There is no-such thing as an apolitical, ‘scientific’ solution.

Yet the CLP doesn’t appear to adopt a similarly pluralistic approach, with its training programmes simply taking it for granted that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and recommending that employees embrace various radical solutions, including net zero.

On its website, for instance, CLP has published its Introduction to Carbon Literacy pack. The document explains how we “need to change the culture as well as the technology” if we are “to cut carbon emissions by the kind of reduction targets demanded by science, by 2050”.

The phrase “demanded by science” is worrying, suggesting that the CLP is trying to smuggle a particular ideology into Britain’s workplaces by pretending it aligns with ‘science’, when in fact it aligns with a particular set of political values. A recent article in the New Yorker referred to this rhetorical sleight of hand as ‘moralistic scientism’ and defined it as the pretence that science infallibly validates left-wing moral sensibilities.

We don’t believe that employees should be put under pressure to endorse a particular approach to tackling climate change or threatened with disciplinary action if they fail to adjust their behaviour to follow this approach, particularly outside the workplace.

But there are signs that that is exactly what’s happening.

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

Also concerning is the fact that in those companies seeking accreditation as CLOs, up to 80% of staff are expected to become ‘carbon literate’.

Carbon literate accreditation requires employees to embrace a particular view about climate change and identify at least one action they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint, as well as at least one action involving other people.

The FSU fears that employees may be penalised if they refuse to comply with these requirements because they do not share a particular point of view.

Gillian Philip case – show your support here!

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

Gillian brought an Employment Tribunal claim against publishers Working Partners and HarperCollins, arguing that she was unlawfully discriminated against when her contract to write children’s books was terminated because of her gender critical beliefs.

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

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

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

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

Dr Almut Gadow’s legal fundraiser gains significant media traction!

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

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

Supported by the FSU, Dr Gadow is bringing a case against the Open University (OU), arguing that she was harassed, discriminated against, and unfairly dismissed because she rejects gender identity ideology, and this breached human rights protections for academic freedom.

Almut’s claim is that she was sacked by the OU after questioning requirements to embed gender identity within the institution’s law curriculum.

During academic year 2021-22, the university’s equality, diversity and inclusion team announced plans to “incorporate its political ideologies” across the curriculum. The “liberating the curriculum” policy that resulted was, Almut says, “effectively a checklist of ideological compliance”.

Dr Gadow raised concerns about various requirements, including introducing diverse gender identities into the curriculum and teaching students to use offenders’ preferred pronouns.

She argued that a criminal lawyer’s role “is to present facts” and that “sex is a relevant fact for offences involving perpetrators’ and/or victims’ bodies”.

Dr Gadow also made the case that “no offender should be allowed to dictate the language of his case in a way which masks relevant facts”.

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

This is the FSU’s most ambitious crowdfunder yet, and for good reason: not only does Almut deserve justice for the egregious way she’s been treated, but this case provides the best opportunity yet to establish a strong legal precedent in favour of academic free expression that will protect all UK academics, especially those who believe in the reality of biological sex.

We’re now over halfway to the initial target of £70,000, which will cover the cost of the preliminary hearing, disclosure of documents and preparation of a trial bundle. But there’s still a long way to go.

Click here to read Almut’s legal Crowdfunder statement – and if you can, please share the page, and make a donation. It’s a hugely important case.

Royal Navy Officers told to declare preferred pronouns, attack white privilege

Amid escalating Chinese belligerence in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, the threat to international shipping posed by piracy in the Indian Ocean, near daily incursions into British maritime waters by Russian submarines, and a sharp rise in the number of gangs involved in people smuggling across the English Channel, the British Navy’s top brass has decided to really let rip, flex its muscles, and remind the country’s enemies exactly who it is that rules the waves… by issuing new guidance to officers on preferred pronoun usage, the integration of critical race theory into leadership, and how the pathology of ‘white privilege’ can be overcome.

The Express carried news of Navy HQ’s new ‘Divisional Officers and Troop Commanders Briefing Notes’ this week, courtesy of a tip-off from the FSU.

Issued earlier this summer, the Briefing Notes urge officers to “routinely share” their chosen pronouns, suggesting this could be an “act of allyship”.

The document also advises officers to avoid saying “good morning, guys”, instead using the gender neutral ‘everyone’ or ‘team’.

Elsewhere, the document explains the importance of a concept drawn from critical race theory: ‘lived experience’, that great incontestable of the woke age, in which the engagement with day-to-day life of certain pre-identified groups is filtered through a pre-written script of systemic oppression.

Navy officers are told they need to understand how race, class, gender and other badges of victimhood impact on a person’s identity and “to recognise and appreciate the lived experience” of the oppressed guys in their team.

“Before you voice your opinion on another person,” officers in command of sailors aboard commissioned ships operating in fast-paced, high-risk environments are told, “you should stop to think about whether you have the right to speak about them from a position of no direct expertise and consider whether your behaviour is contributing to or alleviating their existing disadvantage.”

As if the image thus conjured of Blighty’s new generation of nerveless, amphibious killing machines wasn’t already enough to fill the hearts of Vladmir Putin’s inner circle with terror, the Briefing Notes go on to address the issue of ‘white privilege’, and how it impacts Navy officer themselves, the vast majority of whom are white males.

“The term ‘white privilege’ has been talked about in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests,” the document says, adding: “It refers to the idea that skin colour can affect your lived experience such that it can either give you an advantage or be a barrier to almost all areas of life.

“Therefore, if you are ‘white’, whatever situation you are in, it is almost always the case that the outcome has not been affected by your skin colour” – a statement that will no doubt one day be of great comfort to the Captain of a lone British frigate locked in a tense stand-off with a fleet of Chinese warships as they begin manoeuvring themselves into an attack formation a few miles off the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

An anonymous serviceman told the Express: “Many service personnel are angry, confused and insulted although few will formally complain as this language has become commonplace.”

FSU General Secretary Toby Young said: “The woke mind virus has infected every branch of Britain’s armed forces, including the Royal Navy. It won’t be long before the White Ensign is replaced with a Pride flag, and HMS Queen Elizabeth is renamed HMS Meghan Markle. If I was a Falkland Islander, I’d be thinking very seriously about relocating.”

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

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

On the latest episode, hosts Tom and Ben are delighted to be joined by writer, editor and FSU member Sibyl Ruth.

As many of our members will know, Sibyl lost her job for tweeting that a man claiming to be a woman had a five o’clock shadow and is hoping to take her former employer to the Employment Tribunal in September.

As Sibyl recounts during the podcast, she had had been working for Cornerstones Literary Agency as one of their Core Editors without issue when “really suddenly” the company stopped sending her work in spite of positive feedback.

First, management told her a client she had been working for no longer required her services. Then, when she decided to tweak her profile on the company’s website, she realised she’d been “disappeared” from the editors’ page. Finally, she was told it was “unlikely” that any more projects would come her way.

Thanks to a Subject Access Request (SAR) which we urged her to submit, Sibyl discovered that a member of staff had objected to her expressing gender critical beliefs on Twitter. Sadly, by the time Sibyl received these details, it was too late – Cornerstones had already stopped all her work and effectively terminated her.

The link to listen and download the podcast – for free – is here. And if you can, please join the fight and donate to Sibyl’s crowdfunder here.

PM urged to intervene over threat to free speech and media plurality

Nearly 50 Conservative MPs and Peers have written to the Prime Minister, urging the government to distance itself from the Conscious Advertising Network (CAN), an organisation “with a history of partisan behaviour” that has links to activists who orchestrate boycotts of centre-Right news outlets (Express, Mail, Telegraph, Times)

The Parliamentarians intervened after a consultation document issued by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) praised CAN as an organisation that helps to “protect brand safety through stopping advertising abuse and ensuring the supply chain uses good practice”.

Responding to the DCMS’s praise, the MPs, including former Home Secretary Priti Patel and ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss, said that CAN’s approach “is having a chilling effect on free speech and media plurality. As more and more companies feel that they have no choice but to bend the knee to [CAN] activists, we will be left with a media that does not reflect the diversity of views of modern Britain.”

Another signatory, the former Brexit secretary David Davis, told the Telegraph: “It is not for officials at DCMS to encourage a proxy cancel culture by nominating private agencies like CAN as arbiters of vague and misleading concepts like ‘brand safety’ – particularly if those agencies have a history of partisan behaviour.”

One of CAN’s co-founders, Jake Dubbins, was an “unpaid advisor” to Stop Funding Hate, and the pressure group helped to draft CAN’s code on hate speech.

Stop Funding Hate has led boycotts against right-of-centre news outlets such as the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Sun. Back in 2021, Stop Funding Hate called on advertisers to boycott GB News before the channel had even launched, leading to an excoriating riposte from the channel’s then Chairman, Andrew Neil, in which he criticised businesses that “took the knee and cowed” to these “far-Left agitators and cranks”, and suggested they were turning themselves into the “useful idiots” of “bigots bent on censorship”. 

The network counts the UK’s five biggest advertising agencies among its members, while other household names in its ranks include Virgin Media, O2, British Gas and Innocent.

In their letter, the Parliamentarians describe CAN as employing “the same insidious tactics as Stonewall” – where the latter seeks to influence corporate behaviour through its Diversity Champions Scheme and Workplace Equality Index, CAN has seven “manifestos” that it requires members to include in “all agency briefs and requests for proposals”.

The manifesto on ‘mis/disinformation’ is particularly noteworthy from a free speech perspective. Having told advertisers that they “can play a key role in defunding dis/misinformation and promoting quality journalism”, the manifesto then warns: “The differentiation between subjective, partisan journalism and fake, irresponsible, and low-quality journalism is not clear-cut, and subjective decisions will have to be made.”

The solution? Crossmatching any in-house list of ‘mis/disinformation’ sites against lists “such as those maintained by The Global Disinformation Index” (GDI), an organisation which offers advice to large, media-buying companies about which news publishing sites are ‘safe’ for their clients to advertise on – or, as DCMS might put it, which sites will “protect brand safety”.

GDI’s advice comes in the form of a “dynamic exclusion list” – or ‘blocklist’ – of publications, which it feeds to advertisers with the aim of defunding them and shutting them down. So what type of brand safety information might UK-based members of CAN be receiving from the GDI?

What we know for sure is that publications on the GDI’s list of the 10 ‘riskiest’ news publishing sites in the U.S. include the American Spectator, Breitbart, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, American Conservative, Real Clear Politics, the New York Post and Reason. As will no doubt immediately be obvious, these ‘risky’ sites are right-of-centre with the exception of Reason, one of the few prominent press critics of organised censorship, while the New York Post was of course the only mainstream newspaper in the U.S. to publicise the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Needless to say, the news publishing sites ranked the most reliable by GDI were, with one exception, left-of-centre: NPR, The Associated Press, the New York Times, ProPublica, Insider, USA Today, the Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, the Wall Street Journal, and the Huffington Post.

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

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

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

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

Battle of Ideas Festival 2023 – special FSU discounted tickets on sale now!

The Battle of Ideas festival returns to Church House, Westminster on 28th and 29th October. As ever the festival motto is: “Free speech allowed, free thinkers welcome.”

There’s plenty to discuss, from the cultural and corporate wars on free speech to the rise of apocalyptic thinking around climate change and artificial intelligence. There will be debates on the continuing upsurges in populism and the crises in the arts world and schools – plus much more across 100+ sessions.

We’ll be there all weekend with our stall and will be partnering on a session on Saturday as part of the Free Speech Strand. FSU members can get 20% off weekend standard, weekend concession, one-day standard and one-day concession tickets by clicking here.

SLAPPs – join the fightback and show your support for two crowdfunders

The UK government is increasingly concerned that Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation – or ‘Slapps’ as they are more commonly known – represent a growing threat to free speech. And with good reason. According to the Times, Britain is now the “global capital for Slapps, with more court cases initiated here than in America and the European Union combined”.

The complicated acronym in fact hides a remarkably simple tactic. According to the Ministry of Justice’s recent consultation on the challenges presented by the increasing use of this form of litigation, Slapps are libel or privacy cases brought by wealthy companies or individuals where the primary objective is not to win the legal action – which may in fact be all but guaranteed to fail – but to “harass, intimidate and financially and psychologically exhaust one’s opponent via improper means”.

It’s in this context that the FSU has decided to share details of legal crowdfunders set up by two separate parties – Andrew Burgess and Vanessa Warwick. Both Andrew and Vanessa are currently being sued by the same person for defamation in what look like Slapp cases. The person bringing the lawsuits is Samuel Leeds, a businessman behind Property Investors, a company that was the subject of a recent BBC ‘Inside Out’ investigation.

While we do not necessarily accept either defendant’s view of their respective cases – that is a matter for the Court – we believe that they should be able to defend themselves. To find out more about each case and to show your support should you want to give it, click here and here.

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. 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 turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

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

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

It’s good to see that Mr Robins has now listened – late on Friday evening, West Yorkshire Police Force did the right thing and announced that it had released the girl and was dropping its investigation (Telegraph).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help Dr Almut Gadow stand against indoctrination and for academic freedom!

This week we’re excited to be launching a legal Crowdfunder for our member, ex-law lecturer at the Open University (OU) Dr Almut Gadow. This is our most ambitious Crowdfunder yet, and for good reason: not only does Dr Gadow deserve justice for the egregious way she has been treated, but in the words of Kathleen Stock this case “will be of great significance, not just to University staff, but to the young minds they teach in future”.

With a legal team provided free of charge by the FSU, Dr Gadow is launching a legal claim in the Employment Tribunal, arguing, among other things, that she was unfairly dismissed, harassed, and discriminated against because she questioned the introduction of gender identity ideology into the OU’s law curriculum, and stood up for the right to academic freedom.

When Dr Gadow was told she needed to play her part in ‘liberating the curriculum’ – by, for example, teaching students to use the preferred pronouns of fictional protagonists included in criminal law teaching materials – she raised some concerns. She suggested, in a private OU staff forum, that this might be an unnecessary distraction, potentially unwise and even unlawful.

To her disbelief, her questions and requests for engagement on the matter were described as unreasonable and as creating an environment that is not “inclusive, trans-friendly or respectful” by managers who spotted her posts on the forum. Months later, her contributions to this online forum would be cited as reasons for her dismissal.

Academic free expression is at the heart of Dr Gadow’s tribunal case. Academic freedom is protected by Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights and is set out in a string of judgments by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The ECtHR has held that Article 10 protects academics who question their institutions or curricula.

UK courts have yet to properly consider ECtHR case law on academic freedom and, in seeking judicial guidance on this from an English employment tribunal by way of Dr Gadow’s case, we’re hopeful that these Article 10 protections can be entrenched in domestic law. Dr Gadow is also arguing that valuing academic freedom is itself a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010. Establishing this in law could protect many other academics whose careers are threatened by the rising tide of intolerance on UK campuses.

In the words of Dr Bryn Harris, the FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel, “This case provides the best opportunity yet to establish a strong legal precedent in favour of academic free expression that will protect all UK academics under threat because of their lawful views, especially those who believe in the reality of biological sex.”

Please read Dr Gadow’s full story here, and if possible pledge your support here.

Scotland CAN B

The Free Speech Union published its Woke, Ltd. paper on Friday 11th August, exposing the efforts of an American nonprofit to export woke ideology to companies around the world, including the UK. We received a considerable amount of press, which prompted us to continue our research in the area (GB News, Telegraph, Times).

The discovery of Scotland CAN B, a partner of B Lab UK’s, was of particular concern to Tom Harris, the author of the report, who mentioned it on the Farage show on GB News Monday 14th August. Scotland CAN B describes its work as “helping to position Scotland at the vanguard of economic systems change”.

Scotland CAN B’s own website describes its mission as follows:

Scotland CAN B was launched in 2018 by the First Minister for Scotland in a unique partnership with B Lab UK (the non-profit behind the global B Corp movement) with the aim of catalysing a fundamental shift in the nation’s approach to business.

Conceived as a sister initiative to Scotland Can Do, and ahead of changing market forces where business accountability for social and environmental impact is increasingly essential; [sic] Scotland CAN B was created to explore what happens when you combine the entrepreneurial, innovative, and business [sic] for good ambitions [sic] of one country.

Scotland CAN B further describes its relationship with B Lab UK:

[The] initiative was conceived when B Lab co-founder Bart Houlahan visited Scotland in 2016. Speaking at a Scotland Can Do assembly, Bart asked “How might an entire nation learn to be, think, and behave like a B Corp?… Today, drawing on the rich heritage of B Lab’s Impact Assessment tools and community of certified B Corps as leading case studies; [sic] the Scotland CAN B initiative looks beyond B Corp certification to ask – “How might we build a nationwide culture of business as a force for good?”

Quite apart from the basic illiteracy of CAN B’s website, it’s concerning that the Scottish branch of B Lab UK draws on the B Impact Assessment tools, already discussed at length in our Woke, Ltd. paper, to export an American left-wing ideology into the Scottish corporate sector.

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

The latest episode of the FSU’s podcast is out now and this week the talking points include: our recent research briefing that details the chilling effect on workplace free speech of the ‘B Corps’ movement; how a police force can arrest an autistic 16 year-old girl on suspicion of a ‘hate crime’ because she compared a WPC to her “lesbian nana”; and the ‘woke privilege’ of those employees who worship at the altar of ‘intolerant progressivism’, safe in the knowledge that they remain free to express their right-on views whenever and wherever they please – without any detriment to their career.

The link to download the episode in full – and for free – is here!

Last week, hosts Tom and Ben were joined by former British Olympic Swimmer Sharron Davies MBE, to discuss cancel culture, trans athletes and unfairness in women’s sport.

The link to download that episode is here.

In this clip from the show, Sharron explains why she’s now campaigning for the Equality Act to be rewritten to make it easier to bar trans people from female sports and single-sex spaces. At present, the Equality Act states that people can be protected on the basis of their “sex”, but some have since interpreted this to mean the gender someone identifies as rather than their biological sex.

Is there a left way back from woke? A few in-person tickets still available!

There are now less than 20 in-person tickets left for our next live event, ‘Is there a left way back from woke?’, with Professor Umut Özkirimli on Wednesday 13th September in London. So if you’d like to attend in person, but haven’t yet purchased your tickets, now would be a good time to click here – all tickets include a free glass of wine on arrival!

Watching the event online is free for FSU members – the link to register for the Zoom link is here.

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

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

Encroaching censorship on the Emerald Isle – Free Speech Ireland event!

With the recently published Irish Hate Crime Bill proving to be among the most controversial pieces of legislation in the country’s history, many are deeply concerned about the state of free speech and encroaching censorship on the Emerald Isle.

In response to this legislation, campaign group Free Speech Ireland has organised a conference and seminar in Dublin’s RDS on the 16th September. The event will feature a variety of expert speakers who will explain why this censorship is happening, where it is coming from, and what we can do about it. Speakers include Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger, author and journalist Dr Helen Joyce, the Editor of Gript John McGirk, Irish Independent Senator Sharon Keogan and the artist and former TV presenter Kevin Sharkey.

You can book tickets by clicking here.

Sibyl Ruth fundraiser – join the fight!

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

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

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

Sharer Ali fundraiser – show your support!

At the risk of overwhelming you with requests for help, can we mention just one more crowdfunder? This one’s for Sharer Ali, the former Deputy Leader of the Green Party, who’s suing the Greens for getting rid of him because of his gender critical beliefs. His case is about to come to court, and he needs to raise another £5,000 to meet all his legal expenses. It’s a worthy cause, which you can read more about in the Daily Sceptic. If you want to donate to his crowdfunder, click here.

Battle of Ideas Festival 2023 – get your special FSU discount here!

The Battle of Ideas festival returns to Church House, Westminster on the 28th and 29th of October. As ever, the festival’s motto is: “Free speech allowed, free thinkers welcome.” There’s plenty to discuss, from the corporate wars on free speech to the rise of apocalyptic thinking around climate change and artificial intelligence. There will be debates on the continuing outbreaks of populism in Europe and the crisis in the arts world – plus much more across 100+ sessions.

We’ll be there all weekend with our stall and will be organising a panel on Saturday as part of the Free Speech Strand.

FSU members can get 20% off tickets by using this link.

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

New FSU briefing on threat to free speech posed by B Corps movement!

We’ve just published a briefing called Woke, Ltd. by Thomas Harris, our Director of Data and Impact, about the B Corps movement, which we think is having a chilling effect on free speech. You can read about the report in the Times.

The movement originated with B Lab Global, an American non-profit set up in 2006. It now has branches called B Labs all over the world, including the UK. Indeed, the number of B Corps in the UK is growing exponentially, with more than the rest of Europe combined (as of 2022). To date, more than 1,900 companies operating in Britain have become B Corps.

To become a B Corp-certified company – a kite mark provided by your local B Lab, a bit like becoming a Stonewall Diversity Champion – the directors must go beyond maximising profits and commit to serving ‘people’ and the ‘planet’. In the words of B Lab Global, a B Corp is a “designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply-chain practices and input materials”.

That sounds benign and well-meaning, but certification involves a company changing its Articles of Association to include a commitment to meeting social and environmental targets, both internally and externally. For instance, the B Corps framework assesses a company against B Lab’s principles of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion – or JEDI, for short. Among other things, that means making a commitment to ‘racial justice’ and Net Zero and that, in turn, can lead to employees or customers who don’t share those values being penalised – a good example being Nigel Farage’s defenestration by Coutts, a B Corp-certified company.

We are concerned that the B Corps phenomenon is accelerating the adoption by British companies of contentious political ideas that originated in ‘grievance studies’ departments in American universities (gender studies, queer studies, whiteness studies), e.g. critical race theory (including the idea that all white people are privileged and it’s not enough for them to be non-racist, they must be ‘anti-racist’) and gender identity ideology. We know from experience that this ideology is often enforced with authoritarian zeal.

What is particularly worrying is that B Lab UK, the British arm of this movement, is lobbying for a new Act of Parliament that would mean British businesses have to comply with this ideology and impose it on their employees and customers – even their suppliers. If UK law is changed whereby all British companies have to incorporate B Corps principles into their operations, the Equality Act 2010 might have to be amended to dilute workplace protections for employees’ speech rights, so that certain beliefs – such as a belief in the reality of biological sex – would lose their ‘protected’ status.

As Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg says in the Foreword to the briefing, there is no need for companies to change their ‘purpose’ so they’re focusing on ‘people’ and the ‘planet’, in addition to profit. Adam Smith’s famous words in The Wealth of Nations remain as true today as they did in 1776: “Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

Sibyl Ruth fundraiser – join the fight!

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

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

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

Elon Musk makes “game-changing” offer to users of X!

Self-styled “free-speech absolutist” Elon Musk has mooted the possibility of funding legal bills for any users of X that are “treated unfairly” by employers due to their activity on the platform, and suggested that in such cases he “will go after the boards of directors of the companies too” (Evening Standard, Mail, Reuters, Times).

Mr Musk has been vocal about his commitment to freedom of speech in the past, and shortly after acquiring Twitter, tweeted: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

Over the weekend, however, he went further, firing a shot across the bows of censorious employers who claim the right to police the lawful speech of employees outside the workplace, tweeting: “If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” adding that there will be “no limits” to the bills he’s prepared to fund.

Reacting to the announcement on GB News, Toby Young said it was a potential “game-changer”, but did also caution that we would need to see the details of Musk’s proposal before anyone from the FSU’s legal team gets to work dictating the terms of surrender for the massing forces of cancel culture.

We know of course that Mr Musk looks askance at any form of censorship that goes beyond the law, which suggests X Corp’s legal team may already have a well-defined understanding of what it believes constitutes “unfair treatment”. But does he intend to apply his nascent policy to X from this point forth, or will it be applied retrospectively to cover the period since April 2022, when he bought the platform, then known as Twitter? Is his legal commitment to service users to be applied outside the jurisdiction of the United States, where X is headquartered? And what about cases like those of FSU members Gillian Philip and Sibyl Ruth, where firms employ workers on precarious contracts, and then label them as ‘independent contractors’ rather than ‘employees’?

These details aside, the very fact that Musk has intimated a desire to legally defend the free speech rights of X’s users will no doubt already have given company directors across the western world pause for thought.

Allowing your firm’s uber woke, maliciously progressive Head of HR a certain ‘artistic licence’ on the disciplinary front is all well and good when it comes to bullying dissenting members of staff who you know can’t possibly afford to take you to an Employment Tribunal (the barrister and co-founder of the LGB Alliance Allison Bailey had to raise more than £500,000 to fund her recent legal case, for example).

But in circumstances where the second richest man in the world suddenly steps into the fray on the side of employees who’ve been treated unfairly for expressing perfectly lawful beliefs and starts threatening to spray fifty-pound notes like a fountain, it would be entirely understandable if board members began to question whether having activist employees congratulate them for remaining “on the right side of history” is necessarily always as important as running a business that remains “on the credit side of the ledger”.

The FSU sees an enormous number of cases of employees being punished for something perfectly lawful that they’ve said on social media, and usually on X.

This can include recently posted comments, or even comments that have been dredged up by ‘offence archaeologists’ in a targeted attempt to harm someone’s reputation – as happened, for example, in the recent, high profile cases of the then leader of Northern Ireland’s UUP Party, Doug Beattie (Telegraph), schoolteacher Christian Webb (Spiked), American comedian Kevin Hart (Spectator), and current FSU case Karen Sunderland (iNews).

If Elon makes good on this offer, it could be a real wake-up call to HR departments. You only have to look through our case files to see that at present, they are massively overestimating what constitutes an employer’s business.

The fact is that a huge amount of what happens on X has got nothing to do with a person’s job, or the contractually defined employment relationship they’ve entered into, and won’t feasibly harm an employer’s brand or reputation. As the FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel Bryn Harris pointed out on GB News this week, that needs to be the test – did the post in question actually harm the employer – but too often HR investigation teams make moral, normative (and, yes, deeply political) judgements about what employees should and should not say outside the workplace.

Is there a left way back from woke? Tickets for our next live event now available!

Our next event with Professor Umut Özkirimli will take place on Wednesday 13th September, both in-person in London and online. In-person tickets for ‘Is there a left way back from woke?’ can be purchased here and include a free glass of wine on arrival! Watching it online is free for FSU members – the link to register is here.

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

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

The panel will discuss Professor Özkirimli’s book and how those on the Left, as well as the politically homeless, can be encouraged to reject the divisiveness of ‘woke’ politics and stand up for freedom of speech and democratic values. As ever, there will be plenty of time for audience Q and A!

Gender critical website blocked for promoting “hate and terrorism”

The website of the gender critical human rights organisation Sex Matters, which stands up for women’s single-sex spaces, as well as campaigning for clarity on the concept of biological sex in law and policy, has been blocked on Great Western Railway’s (GWR’s) Wi-Fi network for promoting “terrorism and hate” (Mail, Reclaim the Net, Telegraph, Times).

GWR passengers attempting to access the website of the group founded by Maya Forstater (who in 2021 established a binding legal precedent that gender critical beliefs are protected by the Equality Act), received a message that stated: “The domain is blocked by GWR because it’s associated with the terrorism and hate category.”

Dr Helen Joyce, the author of best-selling gender-critical work Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality and a director of Sex Matters, said: “Why does GWR classify a human rights organisation as so dangerous that travellers have to be protected from accessing its website? Sex Matters stands up for women’s single-sex spaces, child safeguarding and freedom of belief and speech. What is there to object to about that?”

Sadly, if you’re a radical trans activist, and you view any dissent from the basic tenets of gender identity ideology as ‘hate speech’, and any criticism of your actions as ‘transphobic’, then the answer to that question is “quite a lot”.

Last week, for instance, it emerged that a guidance document recently issued to public libraries across the country advises librarians to censor, hide or limit the purchase of “offensive” and “transphobic” gender-critical books – including Dr Joyce’s bestseller – to avoid “upsetting” LGBTIQ+ service users.

Earlier this year, a large group of trans activist students and their academic ‘allies’ at Edinburgh University were twice able to prevent the screening of Adult Human Female, a documentary which explores the impact of self-ID on the lives of women from the perspective of female prisoners, lesbians and academics, on the grounds that it is “hateful” and “transphobic” (Scottish Daily Express).

When Professor Kathleen Stock was due to speak at Oxford University in May, the university’s LGBTQ+ society urged the Oxford Union to rescind its “misguided” invitation to this “transphobic” academic, whose views they regard as tantamount to “hate speech” (Telegraph).

Just this week, the SNP’s sepulchral Deputy Leader in Westminster, Mhairi Black, claimed gender critical campaigners who defend women’s sex-based rights are comparable to white supremacists, and that any “50 year-old Karens” who disagree with her extreme views on transgender rights cannot be “decent” people (Spectator).

And so on and so forth, the infinite agony of life in a pluralist liberal democracy stretching out before this maladjusted sub-section of society like some grim, industrialised conveyor belt, leading ineluctably to the Gulags.

In the case of GWR’s Wi-Fi network issues, the policing of sites that passengers are allowed to access is apparently managed for the train service by an outside provider that uses AI to scan websites and block them if they fall foul of a number of criteria, namely “hacking”, “adult content”, and “terrorism or hate”.

According to a statement issued by GWR, Sex Matters may have been blocked because AI incorrectly categorised it as adult content due to the number of times the word “sex” appears on the campaign group’s website.

It’s a nice, well-rounded little exculpatory tale, but doesn’t explain why passengers were notified that they were being denied access to the website not because of “adult content”, but very specifically because it was – as a salaried trans activist working for, say, an outside provider of AI-based IT services might have put it – “associated with terrorism and hate”.

The slow creep of politically motivated denial of critical services

A female survivor of sexual violence whose operation at a London hospital was scrapped as a result of her request that only biological women be involved in her intimate care is calling for vulnerable patients to be given greater protections based on their sex-based rights (Express, GB News, Mail, Telegraph).

Former solicitor Teresa Steel was due to have a complicated abdominal operation at The Princess Grace hospital on Oct 10th last year, and in her admission forms stated that she required single-sex bathrooms and would not discuss pronouns.

However, on Oct 6th, as she underwent her pre-op assessment, a transgender nurse not involved in her care entered her private examination room, making eye contact with her while doing so. Ms Steele believes she was “targeted” in this way because she had expressed her legally protected gender critical beliefs during the admission process.

Later that day she sent a complaint, repeating her demand for same-sex care, and asking for assurances that after her operation a male – or a transwoman – would only enter her room with her prior agreement.

At 7.36pm the following evening, hospital CEO Maxine Estop Green notified her via email that “we do not share your beliefs and are not able to adhere to your requests” and that therefore the operation was being cancelled.

Ms Steele did not see the email, and only found out about the cancellation when a prescription did not arrive. Following a public outcry, including a petition with thousands of signatures, Ms Steele’s surgery was rescheduled.

The CEO later admitted that Ms Steele’s privacy and dignity were breached when the trans nurse entered her room, and Ms Estop Green said she “sincerely apologise[d]” and recognised “how unsettling this must have been”.

Ms Steele is now calling on the HCA, one of the UK’s largest private healthcare companies, that owns The Princess Grace and also provides services to the NHS, to change its policies to ensure that vulnerable patients are given protections based on their sex-based rights.

“Since my experience with HCA, I have been contacted by many women patients who are now too afraid to speak out,” the former solicitor said, adding: “It is particularly distressing to hear from disabled women, including a young woman who is paralysed and has been forced by a private agency to accept intimate care from men under threat of her care being withdrawn.”

Ms Steele’s public intervention comes as cases of other, similar forms of politically motivated denial of critical services have started to emerge.

A private medical hospital in the United States recently refused to treat a woman undergoing treatment for breast cancer based on “disrespectful and hurtful remarks” she made in a private email to her physician. What were the outrageous things she said? She objected to the presence of a trans pride flag in the clinic’s reception area (Reduxx).

Last year, a Canadian woman was also evicted from a shelter for women struggling with mental illness who have also been the victims of domestic violence, after expressing concerns to management about gender identity ideology, following two separate incidents with transgender women in the residence. “The fact is you’re transphobic,” the manager told her during the eviction process, adding: “[T]his is not the right place for you.” (Reduxx).

Closer to home, new guidance from the NHS Confederation – published in partnership with the LGBT Foundation – warns that patients may be found guilty of direct discrimination or harassment if they refuse care from a transgender medical professional.

“If a patient or relative refuses to be treated or cared for by a healthcare worker due to the employee’s protected characteristic of gender reassignment, and this request has no reasonable clinical merit, this may be direct discrimination or harassment,” the 97-page guidance states, adding that patients who express “any such views… may be removed from the premises”. Remarkably, the document goes on to suggest that patients with dementia “should still be challenged” if they express discriminatory views about transgender staff.

King regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

FSU urges NHS Trust to withdraw unlawful trans policy

As reported in today’s Mail, FSU General Secretary Toby Young has written to the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust in relation to its new ‘Transitioning at Work and Gender Diversity Policy’. The policy came into effect last month and, having reviewed it, we believe it must be urgently withdrawn and substantially amended as it appears to discriminate against NHS employees with gender critical beliefs. (You can read Toby’s letter here.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should the South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust refuse to withdraw this policy and any of its employees find themselves being disciplined or worse because they fall foul of it, we’ve made clear we stand ready to support them, including by helping them take the Trust to the Employment Tribunal.

FSU founder member helps open up debate on the battle for women’s sport!

We are delighted to announce that the generosity of one of our Founder Members, Alan Hearne, has made it possible for copies of British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies MBE’s book Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sport to be sent to over 80 national and international sporting bodies. The accompanying letters either congratulate those which have already taken notice of the evidence and taken steps to protect the female competitive category or urged them to read the book and re-open debate if they have yet to do so!

The FSU was delighted to host the launch event for Sharron’s book in London last month, and the recording of the event is available in full on our YouTube channel (here).

Cabinet minister faces non-crime hate incident investigation over ‘racist’ leaflet

A Cabinet minister is facing a police investigation over an allegedly ‘racist’ campaign leaflet about a proposed new traveller site in his constituency (BBC, GB News, Sky News, Telegraph).

David TC Davies, the Welsh Secretary, raised his concerns about the inadequacy of a council consultation about the site in a flyer sent to constituents in July.

However, after complaints of discrimination were made, Gwent Police confirmed it was reviewing the “impact” of the leaflet’s content “on the gypsy and traveller and settled communities in Monmouthshire” on the grounds that it may represent a non-crime hate incident (or NCHI).

Mr Davies, the MP for Monmouth, said the leaflet was “not a criticism of the gipsy and traveller community”, who he understood to also be unhappy about the plans for the site.

“The location of authorised and unauthorised traveller sites is a legitimate matter for public debate and scrutiny,” he said. “It is entirely valid to criticise a lack of wide public consultation by a council. I have been contacted by many upset residents at the shortness of the consultation and the proposed locations for the sites.”

Gwent Police’s intervention comes despite the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, issuing a new code of practice for police forces in England and Wales earlier this year, intended to protect freedom of speech by ensuring NCHIs are no longer recorded simply because someone is merely offended, but only in circumstances where an incident is “clearly motivated by intentional hostility”, and where there is a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence”.

Ms Braverman is understood to be concerned that officers appear to be “wasting time” investigating an NCHI that quite obviously doesn’t meet the higher reporting threshold established in the new code of practice.

It’s not as if Gwent Police hasn’t got enough actual crime to be going on with. The county of Gwent has seen a 12% rise in recorded crime in the past year, including a 38% leap in shoplifting, and a 31% increase in theft from the person.

In the year up to March, it was the eighth worst area of the country in terms of the number of crimes per head of the population, as well as the worst in Wales.

Figures from the Home Office also show that only 5.5% of reported crimes led to a charge or summons in the year to September 2022, down from 8% the year before.

The latest FSU podcast episode with Gillian Philip podcast is out now!

The latest episode of the FSU’s podcast is out now, and this week Tom and Ben are joined by best-selling children’s author and FSU member Gillian Philip.

When Gillian added the hashtag ‘#IStandWithJKRowling’ to her twitter handle back in 2020, the online twitchfork mob moved in, sensing a quick cancel.

Unbelievably, following baseless claims of ‘transphobia’ and repeated rape and death threats from the ‘Be Kind’ brigade, her employer terminated her contract.

During the podcast, Gillian spoke powerfully about her experience of cancel culture, as well as the insidious, chilling effect it has on society more generally.

“Chilling”, Gillian says, in the sense that when high-profile gender critical feminists like Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Julie Bindel and others are targeted by the mob all the vile abuse serves as a grim warning to others: “You too will lose your job if you continue to speak out about this.”

With the FSU’s support, Gillian is fighting for the right to express gender critical beliefs without losing your job. Now she needs your help to bring an appeal claim against her former employer, Working Partners and HarperCollins, to the Employment Appeal Tribunal in September.

If you can, please show your support here.

You can listen to clips from the podcast here and here. The link to download the episode in full – and for free – is here.

Battle of Ideas Festival 2023 – get your special FSU discount here!

The Battle of Ideas festival returns to Church House, Westminster on the 28th and 29th of October. As ever, the festival’s motto is: “Free speech allowed, free thinkers welcome.” There’s plenty to discuss, from the corporate wars on free speech to the rise of apocalyptic thinking around climate change and artificial intelligence. There will be debates on the continuing outbreaks of populism in Europe and the crisis in the arts world – plus much more across 100+ sessions.

We’ll be there all weekend with our stall and will be organising a panel on Saturday as part of the Free Speech Strand.

FSU members can get 20% off tickets by using this link.

Censor, hide or limit purchase of gender critical books, public libraries told

A number of gender critical books have been hidden from view at public libraries within the library service of Calderdale Council, a local authority affiliated with the controversial LGBT charity Stonewall (Mail, Telegraph).

Following receipt of a “formal grievance” from a single member of staff, Calderdale Council (metropolitan borough population: 206,600) removed a variety of books, all critical of gender ideology and transgender activism, from public view at the Council’s 12 public libraries and placed them out of sight in an off-limits storage space.

The books in question include Dr Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology meets Reality and Prof Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls, bestselling titles which argue that biological sex is immutable and not altered by self-identification.

Earlier this year, the council’s Labour leadership reaffirmed its commitment to Stonewall’s Diversity Champions scheme to ensure “services that are accessible and inclusive for all… not just for the people of Calderdale, but for our staff too”.

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

The “best practice” guidance, titled Welcoming LGBTIQ+ users: advice for public library workers, has been shared among council-run public libraries across the country and contains recommendations on how to handle “transphobic books”. Librarians are urged not to promote works by gender-critical authors and told how to mitigate the “risk” that LGBT readers might encounter these “offensive” titles on shelves. The guidance also suggests that staff limit the number of gender-critical books they stock.

Produced in 2022 by an Islington “LGBTIQ+ library” called Book 28, the document is available on the websites of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland, and the charity Libraries Connected, an organisation whose membership includes every library service in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Book 28’s founder, Southwark Council librarian Isadore Auerbach George, drew up the advice with Lambeth librarian Colette Townend, who recently wrote an article for the trade publication Information Professional on “public libraries’ response to transphobia when making library stock decisions”, and academic Dr Elizabeth Chapman, whose doctoral thesis was on “provision of LGBT-related fiction to children and young people” in public libraries.

In a section titled ‘Transphobic books’, the co-authors warn: “There have been a few titles published which claim to be ‘gender critical’ and argue for removal of trans rights.

“We, along with many in the LGBTIQ+ community, find these books offensive,” they thunder from up on their ideological mount, and issue a decree to the faithful that “these authors and their work can be labelled transphobic, and the writers themselves Terfs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists)”.

Having regretfully noted that such books are “legally published”, the authors advise librarians on how best to guard against the sin of biological blasphemy in their taxpayer-funded woke Sacrament houses: “We do not say you shouldn’t stock these books or consider methods of censorship around them. Rather, we would recommend to be mindful of and not promote these books, and to think carefully about how many you want to buy, perhaps based solely on individual requests.”

Understandably, the guidance has caused concerns about censorship, with FSU General Secretary Toby Young telling the Telegraph: “I’m afraid it’s all too typical of the woke Left to urge librarians to censor books in the name of ‘inclusion’.

“What’s next? Telling libraries to burn works by Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce because they’ve dared to challenge ‘trans-inclusive’ dogma?”

The FSU would like to get a sense of the extent to which book censorship of this kind is becoming normalised in public libraries. With that in mind, if you spot any gender critical ‘gaps’ in the catalogue next time you’re renewing your long-loan copy of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, let us know by direct messaging us either on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

Is there a left way back from woke? Tickets for our next live event now available!

Our next event will take place on Wednesday 13th September, both in-person in London and online. In-person tickets for ‘Is there a left way back from woke?’ can be purchased here and include a free glass of wine on arrival! Watching it online is free for FSU members – the link to register is here.

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

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

The panel will discuss Professor Özkirimli’s book and how those on the Left, as well as the politically homeless, can be encouraged to reject the divisiveness of ‘woke’ politics and stand up for freedom of speech and democratic values. As ever, there will be plenty of time for audience Q and A. 

Nigel Farage de-banking “not about free speech”, says former BBC journalist

Former BBC journalist turned podcaster Emily Maitlis has claimed that Nigel Farage’s de-banking by Coutts had nothing do with free speech, and that the former UKIP leader is simply using the episode to “whip up a populist storm” (Express, GB News, Mail, Telegraph).

Earlier this month, after Alison Rose, the then-NatWest chief executive, sat next to Simon Jack, the BBC business editor, at a charity dinner, the BBC reported that Mr Farage’s account was closed because his wealth fell short of that required by Coutts.

However, thanks to a Subject Access Request submitted by Mr Farage, we now know that his accounts were closed largely, if not entirely, for political reasons.

Across the 40 pages of eye-poppingly partisan documents released to Mr Farage, his perfectly lawful views on Brexit, LGBT rights, the government’s Net Zero targets and many other contentious contemporary topics, are cited as evidence of his “distasteful” views, which “do not align with our values”, and which the bank’s reputational risk committee saw as grounds for “exiting” him from the bank.

Speaking on a podcast called The News Agents, Ms Maitlis said: “I think the one thing we have learnt from all of this is how to whip up a populist storm. Because at the heart of this is the choice of one private bank to say no to one private customer who they felt was costing them too much and wasn’t bringing them in enough money.”

It’s not immediately clear how the aspiring podcaster reaches that conclusion. In the Coutts documents released to Mr Farage, the bank clearly refers to the fact that, although “NF” had technically dipped below the financial threshold required by the bank, he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”. One for Emily’s former colleague, the BBC’s misinformation expert Marianna Spring, perhaps.

Not that the co-host of The News Agents is alone in adopting this whimsically idiosyncratic view. Ever since it became clear that Mr Farage was de-banked for political reasons, many of those on the woke Left who never normally seem particularly keen on free market capitalism have been lining up to explain why corporate censorship of this kind is perfectly within the rights of a private company.

It will therefore be interesting to see whether this sudden spasm of love for Hayekian economics persists in the face of news that Gina Miller’s political party, True and Fair, is being de-banked by Monzo and nine other banks have refused to take the account (Mail, Telegraph).

Ms Miller is now asking the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to step in to ensure all new political parties and MPs can access banking facilities. Beyond her own party’s difficulties, she says, “the bigger issue is the fact that as a new insurgent political party you have no access to banking services, which is extraordinary in a democracy”.

Separately, the FCA has begun looking into whether the PEP rules (politically exposed persons) are being applied too rigorously. Banks are estimated to have categorised as many as 90,000 UK citizens as PEPs (Guardian). PEPs now include MPs and other public figures that obviously aren’t criminals, but who are deemed vulnerable to bribery or blackmail. Under anti money-laundering regulations, banks must implement extra layers of scrutiny in such cases to avoid the risk of corruption.

When the PEP system came into force in the UK under the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, it referred to people with a prominent public position “other than [in] the United Kingdom”. But following implementation of new EU directives via the UK’s Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds Regulations 2017, the distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ PEPs appears to have been lost – this despite FCA Guidance stating that UK PEPs “should be treated as low risk, unless a firm has assessed that other risk factors not linked to their position as a PEP mean they pose a higher risk”.

In other words, the banks appear to have taken it upon themselves to interpret the rule (and then the law) more widely, giving the whole system an inescapably political dimension.

FSU updates its de-banking FAQs!

We’ve updated our FAQs on what to do if you’ve been de-banked.

The two updates are: (a) we’ve discovered that the nine biggest high street banks have signed a Basic Banking Agreement with the government whereby they’ve committed to provide customers with a basic bank account, so if you’ve been notified that your personal account is being closed and your bank is one of the big nine, you can request a basic account (which is free of charge); and (b) in addition to advising people to submit a Subject Access Request (SAR) to their bank, we’re also advising them to submit an SAR to World-Check, an international database all British banks use to assess whether their customers are ‘low risk’, ‘medium risk’ or ‘high risk’. One reason people are being de-banked is because they’ve been flagged as ‘high risk’ by World-Check.

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer

Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. 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 turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

NatWest CEO quits after leaking Nigel Farage’s financial details to BBC

Dame Alison Rose, the CEO of the NatWest Group, which owns Coutts, has resigned, after admitting selectively leaking confidential information about Nigel Farage’s finances to BBC Business Editor Simon Jack, and, in doing so, creating the impression that the former MEP for South East England was de-banked by Coutts for entirely commercial reasons (BBC, FT, Telegraph, Times).

It was Mr Jack who first reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts had been closed was that he lacked the financial resources to be a customer of the millionaires’ bank. Mr Jack’s story (headlined: “Nigel Farage bank account shut for falling below wealth limit”) cited “people familiar with Coutts’ move” and was subsequently picked up, and the main points gleefully repeated, by various progressive media figures who happen to dislike Mr Farage’s politics.

However, thanks to a Subject Access Request subsequently submitted by Mr Farage, we now know that his accounts were closed largely, if not entirely, for political reasons.

Across the 40 pages of eye-poppingly partisan documents released to Mr Farage, his perfectly lawful views on Brexit, LGBT rights, the government’s Net Zero targets and many other contentious contemporary topics, are cited as evidence of the former UKIP-leader’s “distasteful” views, which “do not align with our values”, and which the bank’s reputational risk committee saw as grounds for “exiting” him from the bank.

And yet, in among the document’s politically subjective ‘findings’, the bank repeatedly refers to the fact that, although “NF” had technically dipped below the financial threshold required by the bank, he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.

All of which led to speculation that in the period following Mr Farage’s initial claim that he’d been de-banked, but before his Subject Access Request had been completed, Dame Alison may have selectively leaked aspects of the former UKIP leader’s personal financial profile to the BBC in an attempt to misdirect the media and scotch any suggestion that his accounts had been closed for political reasons (Telegraph, Times). 

Why the speculation? Because the night before the corporation broke Mr Jack’s ‘exclusive’ story, the NatWest Group’s CEO had sat “laughing and joking” next to none other than Mr Jack himself, while attending a Charity Dinner at the five-star Langham Hotel (Telegraph).

In a statement issued on Tuesday evening, Dame Alison outed herself as the source of the BBC’s story, and accepted that she had made “a serious error of judgment”.

The latest news is that Peter Flavel, the CEO of Coutts, has also fallen on his sword, confessing that in the bank’s handling of Mr Farage’s case, “we have fallen below [our] high standards of personal service” (Sky News).

NatWest subsidiary Coutts may now face an investigation by Britain’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, after John Edwards, the information commissioner, said that Mr Farage’s trust had been “betrayed” by the bank.

Mr Edwards said: “The banking duty of confidentiality is over a hundred years old, and it is clear that it would not permit the discussion of a customer’s personal information with the media.” He added: “We trust banks with our money and with our personal information. Any suggestion that this trust has been betrayed will be concerning for a bank’s customers, and for regulators like myself.”

The Financial Conduct Authority has also raised concerns about breaches of confidentiality by Coutts and its parent company NatWest and said that it had “made clear” to the bigger bank the need for an independent review (Telegraph).

In an attempt to cling on to her £5 million-a-year job, Dame Alison had insisted she believed the information she disclosed to the BBC was already in the public domain. “In response to a general question [from Mr Jack] about eligibility criteria required to bank with Coutts and NatWest, I said that guidance on both was publicly available on their websites,” she said in her statement.

It’s difficult to imagine a journalist of Mr Jack’s experience getting particularly excited about a story he’d just pulled together having scrolled through a few pages of Coutts’s open access website on his phone. Indeed, if the information Dame Alison let slip at the Charity Dinner really had been as generic and inconsequential as her statement suggests, then why did the BBC subsequently contact her office to confirm she was happy for the corporation to run Mr Jack’s story – a story that the Head of BBC News, Deborah Turness, felt at the time to be “of significant public interest”?

Following the release of her statement at 5:42pm on Tuesday, NatWest’s board expressed full confidence in their CEO, yet by 11pm was locked in emergency talks, as Treasury officials made it clear that the Prime Minister and Chancellor had “significant concerns” over her position at a bank which is still 38% owned by the taxpayer.

By midnight, the mood music had darkened, with the Telegraph reporting that there was now an “expectation” within government – or in the parlance of corporate governance, the ‘principal shareholder’ – that the group’s CEO would have to resign.

A few hours later, the banking chief who spearheaded NatWest’s pivot away from a strict focus on returning dividends to shareholders, and towards putting diversity, inclusion and equity at the heart of the business, was gone.

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

In this week’s episode of That’s Debatable!, hosts Tom and Ben celebrate what is, arguably, our biggest victory to date – following sustained lobbying by the FSU, the government has announced it will be tightening the UK Payment Services Regulations to make it much more difficult for banks and payment processors to cancel people’s accounts just because woke execs in the C-suite’s air-conditioned offices happen to find their lawful political beliefs ‘distasteful’.

The link to listen in full – and for free! – is here.

Sibyl Ruth fundraiser – join the fight!

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

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

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

As Sibyl told Andrew, she had been working for Cornerstones as one of their ‘Core Editors’ without issue when “really suddenly” the company stopped sending her work in spite of positive feedback. First, management told her a client she had been working for no longer required her services. Then when she decided to tweak her profile on the company’s website, she realised she’d been “disappeared” from the editors’ page on the Cornerstones website. Finally, she was told it was “unlikely” that any more projects would come her way.

Thanks to a Subject Access Request (SAR) which we urged her to submit, Sibyl discovered that a member of staff had objected to her tweeting about her gender critical views. Although ‘objected to’ is perhaps not the right phrase, given how the SAR revealed staff members saying things like: “Is Sibyl working on a project? Let’s get rid of her.” It’s the sort of tone you might expect in cases where a staff member had been sticking their hand in the till, but not, as in Sibyl’s case, where the ‘crime’ is simply tweeting about Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, and the importance of women’s spaces in healthcare settings, prisons and rape-crisis centres.

Sadly, by the time Sibyl received these details, it was too late – Cornerstones had already stopped all her work and effectively terminated her.

Sibyl’s case is that Cornerstones discriminated against her based on her lawful gender critical beliefs, as well as her age.

The case of Forstater v CGD Europe established that gender critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act 2010 and are therefore “worthy of respect” in a democratic society. However, the first phase of Sibyl’s case will involve establishing that she’s entitled to Equality Act protection in the first place. That’s because she was employed on a precarious contract and labelled an ‘independent contractor’ rather than an employee.

Whether contractors are ‘employees’ is therefore an important question of law. Without such status, writers like Sibyl do not benefit from employment legislation preventing unfair dismissal or Equality Act protections against discrimination.

That’s why it’s important we support Sibyl as she brings this case, which could be of ground-breaking importance for the arts world and beyond, signalling to de facto employers that they will be held accountable for discriminating against their employees.

Once again, we need your help. Please join the fight and support Sibyl’s crowdfunder here.

Big FSU victory leads to UK banks making free speech commitment

The heads of Britain’s biggest banks have committed to the principle of “non-discrimination based on lawful freedom of expression”, following a meeting with the financial services minister Andrew Griffiths (Investment Week, Mail, Reuters, Sky)

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

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

The reforms in question relate specifically to the UK Payment Services Regulations (i.e., the regulatory framework currently applied to over 1,000 firms authorised as payment and e-money services in the UK).

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

The consultation culminated in the government’s announcement earlier this week of concrete new measures to protect customers. Under these new rules, banks will be forced to explain and delay any decision to close an account unless this plays into the hands of criminals.

The notice period for a closure will be extended to 90 days, giving customers more time to challenge the decision or find a replacement bank.

Banks will also have to spell out clearly the reasons why they are closing an account, giving customers more knowledge and power to challenge decisions.

That last point is important, not least because the 2010 Equality Act makes certain forms of belief discrimination illegal. So if customers are de-banked because the bank or payment services provider disapproves of their ‘protected’ beliefs , and they can prove it, the customer could sue.

If you’ve been de-banked, the first thing you should do is submit a Subject Access Request, demanding to see whatever information that company is holding on you. If it shows you’ve been discriminated against, you can then complain to the financial ombudsman and, if necessary, take the bank or payment processor to court. (See the FAQs we’ve just published on what to do if you’ve been de-banked.)

The FSU has already helped several of its members navigate this process, so if you need our support and advice, please do get in touch via [email protected].

In addition to the FAQs we’ve just published, we’re doing some research into how respectful each payment services provider is of its customers’ free speech. The aim is to give all of them a score out of 10, depending on how they react to customers who say something unorthodox but perfectly lawful.

High street lenders now able to monitor customers’ social media accounts

In a move likely associated with the rise of so-called ‘know-your-customer’ regulations in the financial services sector, the four biggest high street lenders and several others have quietly introduced the right to monitor customers’ social media into their privacy policies (Mail, Telegraph).

Buried in NatWest’s full, 13-page privacy notice, is the news that it may gather “information that you make public on social media”, including Facebook and Twitter. Coutts’s policy is identical.

Lloyds Banking Group, which also owns Halifax and the Bank of Scotland, ignored questions about the issue, but also says in small print that it may collect information from “published media and social networks”.

In its 28-page privacy notice, HSBC explains that it could monitor information “that relates to your social interactions, such as your communications via social media, between individuals, organisations, prospects”.

Barclays also conceded that in some circumstances “we collect information about you, such as from your actions on our social media pages”, including “what you say (such as comments)”, when explaining what data it holds.

Elsewhere, Metro Bank says it will “occasionally obtain [information] from publicly available sources, such as social media sites (e.g., we may collect your name and comments where you mention us in a post)”, while Virgin Money states that it gathers information from “publicly available sources”, such as “[i]nformation that you make public on social media”.

The banks do not refer to this in the terms and conditions for account closures.

UK Finance, the banking industry body, has admitted that lenders could run checks on customers’ social media accounts. “Banks [are] allowed to monitor social media of their clients, well to the same degree as other people,” a source told the Telegraph. “They’ve also got more obligations to monitor their customer activity than many other businesses as they’re in the regulated sector.”

Simon Gleeson, a partner at Clifford Chance, told the FT that: “Under the guise of ‘de-risking,’ banks have been dropping customers who pose reputational risk for at least a decade.”

That trend was prompted by a period of swingeing fines on banks by US and UK authorities for money-laundering failures. For instance, following the $1.9bn penalty levied on HSBC in 2012 by the US Department of Justice, the bank agreed to spend $700m on a global know-your-customer (or KYC) programme. KYC is shorthand for a range of anti-money-laundering safeguards enforced in markets around the world, and which frequently involved “adverse media checks” of precisely the kind Coutts carried out on Mr Farage.

Should a bank’s regulatory obligations include monitoring and assessment of someone’s perfectly lawful political opinions? Not according to Nikhil Rathi, the Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority. In response to a question from Danny Kruger MP at a hearing by the Treasury Select Committee earlier this month, he confirmed that under the payment accounts regulations in the UK, “you are not able to discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics; you are not able to discriminate on the basis of political views either. That is in the legislation.”

As FSU Head Toby Young pointed out to Nigel Farage on GB News this week, whenever members get in touch with concerns about employers potentially monitoring their social media profiles, we always advise not only that they set their privacy settings to the highest standard possible, but that they also install apps that automatically delete social media posts after a week or so, so offence archaeologists can’t go back years to find things to be offended by. It sounds like something similar would be a good idea for anyone worried about being hauled in front of the banking sector’s new financial inquisition on a charge of ‘political wrongthink’.

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer.

Welcome to the FSU’s weekly newsletter, our round-up of the free speech news of the week. 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 turn the tide against cancel culture. You can share our newsletters on social media with the buttons at the bottom of this email (although not if you’re reading this on a desktop). If someone has shared this newsletter with you and you’d like to join the FSU, you can find our website here.

Big ‘de-banking’ victory for the FSU!

The FSU is delighted the government has decided to do something about ‘de-banking’. This is a sinister form of cancel culture that has no place in a modern democracy – and we deserve some of the credit for stamping it out!

As reported in the Telegraph, the government will now change the Payment Services Regulations to make it impossible for banks and payment processors to cancel people’s accounts just because they disagree with their perfectly lawful political beliefs!

That’s terrific news – indeed we’re tempted to call it our biggest victory to date. When the FSU was de-banked by PayPal last September, we kicked up an almighty fuss in the public square, and when senior politicians started asking questions, PayPal restored our account.

But we weren’t going to let the matter rest there. We saw this for what it was – the emergence in Britain of a Chinese-style social credit system, whereby if your political beliefs don’t align with the progressive ‘values’ of banks you lose access to their services.

We started talking to Andrew Griffith MP, the Economic Secretary, to see what could be done about it. He invited us to submit evidence to the Treasury about how widespread the de-banking phenomenon is. We duly did that, citing numerous cases – many of them members of the FSU.

The result is that the Payment Services Regulations are now being toughened up to stop banks and payment processors closing people’s accounts just because they’ve exercised their right to lawful free speech.

Specifically, any bank that discriminates against a customer because of their political beliefs could now have their banking licence revoked. Payment service providers will also be told that they must not discriminate against customers just because they’ve exercised their right to lawful free speech.

In terms of oversight and enforcement of these regulatory changes, the Treasury is now preparing to strengthen the Financial Conduct Authority’s ‘Principles for Business’.

These changes to the financial regulations will undoubtedly help, but on their own they won’t be enough. Why? Because while the Treasury has made it clear that payment services providers should not discriminate against customers for expressing their perfectly lawful beliefs, however unpalatable they might find them, we suspect that banks and payment processors will come up with spurious, un-related reasons for closing people’s accounts, just as Coutts did in Nigel Farage’s case (Telegraph).

If you’ve been de-banked, the first thing you should do is submit a Subject Access Request, demanding to see whatever information that company is holding on you. If it shows you’ve been discriminated against, you can then complain to the financial ombudsman and, if necessary, take the bank or payment processor to court. (See the FAQs we’ve just published on what to do if you’ve been de-banked.)

The FSU has already helped several of its members navigate this process, and we’ll be happy to help others who have been affected by the recent rise of politically motivated financial censorship. If you’re a member, you can get in touch with our case team at [email protected]. 

It goes without saying that we will continue to campaign on this issue.

In addition to the FAQs we’ve just published, we’re doing some research into how respectful each payment services provider is of its customers’ free speech. The aim is to give all of them a score out of 10, depending on how they react to customers who say something unorthodox but perfectly lawful.

Sibyl Ruth fundraiser – join the fight!

Writer, editor and FSU member Sibyl Ruth hopes to continue her fight for the free speech rights of those in the arts world at the Employment Tribunal in September – and now she needs your support.

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

Last year, Sibyl’s contract with her employer, Cornerstones Literary Consultancy, was effectively terminated after she dared express her gender critical beliefs on Twitter. Now Sibyl is seeking to bring a discrimination claim against Cornerstones.

Sibyl joined GB News’s Andrew Doyle on Free Speech Nation at the weekend, and revealed a little more about what happened behind the scenes at Cornerstones in the lead-up to her contract termination (you can watch a clip of the episode here).

As Sibyl told Andrew, she had been working for Cornerstones as one of their ‘Core Editors’ without issue and receiving good feedback from clients when “really suddenly” the company stopped sending her work. First, management told her a client she had been working for no longer required her services. Then, when she decided to tweak her profile on the company’s website, she realised that she’d been “disappeared” from the editors’ page on the Cornerstones website. Finally, she was told it was “unlikely” that more projects would come her way.

Thanks to a Subject Access Request (SAR) which we advised Sibyl to submit, she discovered that a member of staff at Cornerstones had objected to her tweeting about her gender critical views. Although ‘objected to’ is perhaps not the right phrase, given how the SAR revealed staff members saying things like: “Is Sibyl working on a project? Let’s get rid of her.” It’s the sort of tone you might expect in cases where a staff member had been sticking their hand in the till, but not, as in Sibyl’s case, where the ‘crime’ is simply tweeting about the government’s proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act, and the importance of women only spaces in healthcare settings, prisons and rape-crisis centres.

Sadly, by the time Sibyl received these details, it was too late – Cornerstones had already stopped all her work, and effectively terminated her.

Sibyl’s case is that Cornerstones discriminated against her based on her lawful gender critical beliefs, as well as her age.

The case of Forstater v CGD Europe does establish that gender critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act 2010 and are therefore “worthy of respect” in a democratic society. However, the first phase of Sibyl’s case will involve establishing that she’s entitled to Equality Act protection in the first place. That’s because she was employed on a precarious contract with Cornerstones and labelled an ‘independent contractor’ rather than an employee.

Whether contract writers are ‘employees’ is therefore an important question of law. Without such status, workers like Sibyl do not benefit from employment legislation preventing unfair dismissal or the protections of the Equality Act against unlawful discrimination.

That’s why it’s important we support Sibyl as she brings this case, which could be of ground-breaking importance for the arts world and beyond, signalling to de facto employers that they will be held accountable for discriminating against their employees.

Once again, we need your help. Please join the fight and support Sibyl’s crowdfunder here.

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

There’s a fierce battle for free speech taking place in the Republic of Ireland right now, where the proposed Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred or Hate Offences) Bill (‘CJB’) is expected to radically enlarge the definition of ‘hate speech’ to include things it’s currently lawful to express (such as saying transwomen aren’t women). In that context, the hosts of our weekly podcast, Tom and Ben, were delighted to welcome Sarah Hardiman, spokesperson for Free Speech Ireland (FSI), to the show.

The link to download the episode in full – and for free! – is here.

It’s a fantastic – albeit fairly chilling – discussion that touches on several areas that will be familiar to members, such as the practical problems of policing hate speech, the tension between lobby groups and individual citizens, and what appears to be the ubiquitous inadequacy of schools and universities in relaying the vital importance of free expression in a free society.

If you would like to support the FSI in this essential fight, then please do visit their website – which you can find here – and follow the FSI across their social media channels.

Christian Councillor suspended after tweeting “Pride is a sin”

A Tory councillor in Northamptonshire who tweeted “Pride is not a virtue but a sin” has been suspended by the Conservative Party and been cancelled by six other organisations after expressing his religious beliefs on social media (BBC, European Conservative, GB News, Telegraph).

King Lawal is now considering legal action over alleged violations of his rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

The tweets at issue constituted Mr Lawal’s response to images of Pride parades organised by LGBT groups at the end of ‘Pride Month’ celebrations in June. Mr Lawal wrote: “When did Pride become a thing to celebrate. Because of Pride Satan fell as an arch Angel. Pride is not a virtue but a Sin. Those who have Pride should Repent of their sins and return to Jesus Christ. He can save you. #PrideMonth #Pride23 #PrideParade.”

The post included an image with a verse from Isaiah 3 verse 9, which said: “Whatever God calls ‘Sin’ is nothing to be Proud of.” Cllr Lawal said that soon after posting the tweet he was suspended by the local Conservative group, pending an investigation by CCHQ.

Mr Lawal was then forced to resign from his main job in a nursing and care business after receiving an ultimatum by a different local authority because of his tweet.

Next up, an organisation that helps children get access to green spaces removed Cllr Lawal as a trustee, while Weavers Academy, a state secondary school in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, suspended him as an academy council member.

Capping off this Orwellian un-personing, his local library also decided he could no longer host a planned surgery at the venue.

Speaking for the first time since the backlash, Cllr Lawal said: “It is now almost impossible to say something biblically truthful on sexual ethics in UK society without being cancelled and having your life ruined.

“What I said was biblically sound and a protected expression of the Christian faith,” he continued, adding: “I know what it is like to be in the minority, and I would never discriminate against anyone. I have diligently represented all my constituents; however, I must also be free to express my beliefs without fear.”

In response, the leader of North Northamptonshire Council, Cllr Jason Smithers, said: “North Northamptonshire Conservative Group are an inclusive group. We continue to be committed to reducing inequality within our communities and creating a fair and inclusive environment for everyone. We fully support our LGBTQ+ community, as we support all communities.”

The FSU is in touch with Cllr Lawal, and will help him seek justice.

Coutts’s decision to de-bank Nigel Farage was political, documents show

Documents obtained by Nigel Farage under a Subject Access Request (SAR) revealed that his Coutts accounts were closed after a risk committee decided his friendship with the 45th President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, along with his perfectly lawful views on Brexit, LGBT rights, the government’s Net Zero targets, and many other contentious contemporary issues, were “distasteful” and “do not align with our values”.

As first reported by the Telegraph, a reputational risk committee “exited” him after considering, among other documents, a 25-page report detailing some of the adverse press associated with Farage dating back to 2016. The main themes highlighted were: “racism, xenophobia, Black Lives Matter; Russia, Pro-Putin/Russia Today links; Climate denying/anti Net Zero”.

Mr Farage said he was shocked by the “vitriol” in the “prejudiced and nasty” document, and it’s difficult to disagree with that description (Sky News).

The background briefings show that the bank not only devoted considerable resources to vetting its long-term client, but that it went to great lengths to find reasons to dump him, rather than retain him.

For instance, there are multiple references to “false Brexit claims”, and at one point even a barrel scraping reference to Mr Farage allegedly having been a “fascist” in his schooldays.

On several occasions, “NF” – as the document insists on calling Mr Farage – is also criticised for “courting controversy”. It’s a revealing phrase, and indicative of the extent to which “chilling new official ideologies on diversity, equity, climate and multiculturalism”, as Lord David Frost puts it, have taken hold across Britain’s institutions: those who disagree with, challenge or critique those ideologies are no longer viewed as contributing to important public debate on essentially contested topics, but rather, as unhelpfully “courting controversy”.

At one point, Coutts’ ostensibly formal, technocratic dossier refers to the former MEP for South East England, without scare quotes or any discernible attribution to a specific source, as a “disingenuous grifter”. Elsewhere, the dossier quotes the Independent’s characterisation of his criticism of the Australian government’s decision to deport his friend, the tennis player Novak Djokovic, for refusing to be vaccinated against Covid, as “the spineless, chaotic behaviour of a chancer”.

A Coutts spokesman has since claimed: “We cannot comment on the details given our customer confidentiality obligations.” And yet those obligations don’t seem to hold much weight with some of the firm’s other, loose-tongued employees. One of the curiosities of this story is the attempted misdirection of the media by Coutts insiders in the period following Mr Farage’s announcement that he’d been de-banked, but before his Subject Access Request had been completed.

It was BBC Business Editor Simon Jack who first reported claims that the reason Mr Farage’s accounts had been closed was that he lacked the financial resources to be a customer of the millionaires’ bank. Mr Jack’s story (headlined: “Nigel Farage bank account shut for falling below wealth limit”) cited “people familiar with Coutts’ move” and was subsequently picked up, and the main points gleefully repeated, by various progressive media figures who happen to dislike Mr Farage’s politics.

Thanks to Mr Farage’s SAR, however, we now know that his accounts were closed largely, if not entirely, for political reasons. Across the 40 pages of documents released to Mr Farage, the bank repeatedly refers to the fact that, although “NF” had technically dipped below the financial threshold required by the bank, he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”.

All of which suggests that someone at the bank selectively leaked aspects of Mr Farage’s personal financial profile to the media. That’s not just a serious breach of GDPR – it’s also potentially an issue for the Financial Ombudsmen Service and, beyond that, the Financial Conduct Authority (in particular, Principle Six of the regulator’s principles states that a firm “must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly”).

It has since emerged that Dame Alison Rose, the CEO of NatWest, which owns Coutts bank, sat “laughing and joking” with Simon Jack at a Charity Event the night before the BBC broke its exclusive (Telegraph).

Both the BBC and NatWest declined to comment when the Telegraph asked what Mr Jack and Dame Alison had discussed during the meal. Informal conversations happen all the time, of course, and there is no proof Dame Alison is the source of the leak.

Nevertheless, happening to find himself sitting next to NatWest’s CEO, one imagines that Mr Jack’s curiosity as to all things Coutts would naturally have been piqued.

Perhaps, while they were whooping it up together, Mr Jack found time to ask Dame Alison about her role in overseeing the NatWest banking group’s pivot away from a strict focus on returning dividends to shareholders, and towards saving the planet and putting diversity at the heart of the business, and whether that might not have impacted the bank’s ability to tolerate the cognitive diversity exhibited by its customer base (Telegraph).

Or perhaps he queried whether the Coutts executive – and avowed Remainer – who handled the former Brexit Party leader’s bank accounts also sat on the committee that ultimately took the decision to “exit” him from the bank (Telegraph).

Maybe he also pushed her for her view as to whether, with Coutts having signed up to a corporate diversity scheme under her leadership that pledges to tackle “racism, transphobia, classism, sexism, and xenophobia” as well as “gender inequity” and, just for good measure, “caste [and] colonisation” too, the bank might not be in danger of using its considerable powers to bully customers into accepting certain values (Telegraph).

Then again, perhaps he didn’t have time for any of that after he’d been told by a Coutts’ insider that Mr Farage was de-banked because he’s too poor to be one of its customers.

Kind regards,

Freddie Attenborough

Communications Officer