The Free Speech Union

Following a third week of pro-Palestinian protests in London and other UK cities (including sit-in protests across many major railway stations), the government has started drawing up a new, broader definition of extremism. We discuss our fears that, while understandable, such legislation could have unexpected and troubling consequences for free expression in Britain: the FSU’s case work includes multiple examples of ordinary members of the public being branded extremist for quite reasonably opposing elements of the new woke orthodoxy. In such a hostile environment, it is heartening to see one brave FSU member, Clare Page, battle hard to gain access to teaching materials used at her daughter’s school for sex education lessons. We would encourage listeners to consider donating to her crowd justice campaign. It is now three weeks since Australia’s ‘Voice’ referendum and we end today’s episode by drawing various parallels with the fallout from the UK’s Brexit referendum, which touch on free speech in all sorts of ways: accusations of misinformation, politicisation within Australian corporations, and a post-referendum backlash against an electorate which returns the ‘wrong answer’.

This week’s episode was recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Ideas festival, so Ben and Tom sat down in front of their microphones with heads still buzzing from the fascinating conversations and heated debates that were held over the weekend. The discussion ranges across topics as diverse as lived experience, social amnesia, confidence in leadership, and the whole area of whether the culture wars, which (as FSU data proves) are no myth, might yet be an unnecessary distraction. The discussion moves on to the latest FSU research briefing, Not on Our Shelves – Soft Censorship in Local Authority Libraries. As the Telegraph rightly says, this is the first widespread snapshot of the effect censorious transgender activists are having on public libraries. The FSU found that over two thirds (67%) of the local authority library catalogues sampled list more transgender rights (TR) books than gender critical (GC) books. We also found that, although library stock policies are more than matching TR book demand, they are failing to meet demand for GC books. We touch lastly on the disappointing news that the government has resurrected its bill to ban conversion therapy. We are encouraging all our members and listeners to write to their MP using our campaigning tool to raise their concerns.

Saturday’s protests on the streets of London were yet another example of partial policing from the Metropolitan police, whose commissioner was called in to explain himself on Monday morning by the Home Secretary. But watching BBC coverage of the day, you would most likely be unaware of some of the more inflammatory phrases that were being thrown around by protesters; these were instantly cast into the broadcaster’s ‘memory hole’. But, as so many commentators have made clear, the consequences of these failures by such important British institutions have an immediate and frightening impact on our citizens, especially the Jewish community, and this during a very uncertain time. In a period where the mainstream media has too often shown itself to be partial, it was heartening to see the publishing of the Westminster Declaration. This statement shines a light on the censorship dangers arising from labels of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ being routinely slapped onto dissenting or (so-called) incorrect views. We end our episode with a discussion on the latest trends from our casework. The FSU’s dataset is perhaps the most complete and compelling evidence yet compiled on the cancel culture phenomenon.  

We are very fortunate this week to be joined by Dr Jan Macvarish, the FSU’s Education and Events Director. October is always jam-packed with events, so we take the opportunity to hear Jan’s perspective on the role that events play in the life of the FSU and the meaningful difference that they make to our members. The ‘Battle of Ideas’, staged over the weekend of 28th and 29th October, is undeniably one of the flag ship moments in our annual free speech calendar and FSU members can grab discount tickets (20% off!) from the FSU’s events page. Indeed, as Ben says, the festival is an ‘embarrassment of riches’ with so many great speakers and topics for delegates to choose from. Importantly, though, we are also expanding our FSU events offering across the UK – as Jan makes clear, we are certainly not all about London. During the second half of today’s discussion, we come back to the difficult and tragic events unfolding in the Middle East and explore some of the themes raised by the statement released by Toby Young last week. There is no doubt that we are all struggling to pick our way through the various issues, but what we are sure of is that free speech, alongside the other great enlightenment values, remain essential tools to light the way ahead. 

This week’s episode was recorded just three days after the appalling terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas. It was only right to begin, therefore, with some thoughts on the nature of the media coverage, especially the apparent insistence of the BBC to avoid the use of the word ‘terrorist’ –where even Labour’s David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary said on Sunday, “I don’t mince my words. I’m a lawyer by trade. Hamas is a terrorist organisation”.  We move on to discuss the due diligence policies applied by government departments to vet external speakers at government organised events. It appears that social media ‘dossiers’ have been collected on various speakers across multiple fields of expertise, a tactic lifted straight from 1984’s ministry of truth. There is some very exciting news to report following FSU Advisory Council member Professor Eric Kaufmann’s move to Buckingham university. He is creating a new Centre for Heterodox Social Science – or what the Mail, getting down to brass tacks as ever, describes as a “faculty for common sense”. At the same time, Britain’s new free speech tsar, Professor Arif Ahmed, has made a powerful speech outlining the importance of a diverse set of views in the academic sphere.  A promise at conservative conference last week from Steve Barclay, the health secretary, that sex-specific language will be restored in the NHS is welcome news, although history suggests that we should wait and see what this means in practice. It was encouraging, though, to hear a discussion between Andrew Boff (who was removed from the conference auditorium for alleged heckling) and Andrew Doyle on Free Speech Nation. We ponder whether so much of the toxicity around the area of gender identity ideology has arisen from an almost complete absence of meaningful debate. There is much to look forward to in the world of FSU events and we encourage all listeners to visit our events page for more information about the events we discuss at the end of the podcast.

It’s almost exactly a year since PayPal cancelled the FSU’s account and so Tom & Ben kick off today with some thoughts around how much of an existential threat the move was to the organisation. Sadly, though, it was just one example amongst many ‘financial exclusion’ cases to have been reported more widely since then, the most high-profile being the cancellation of Nigel Farage’s account by Coutts bank.

We begin today’s episode by pondering some interesting parallels between last week’s letter from Dame Caroline Dinenage requesting on-line platforms to consider demonetising Russell Brand and the long but  fascinating history of Acts of Attainder. Dame Caroline’s letter was discussed at length by Ben on GB News last week. We move on to an important victory for the FSU and one of our members. Colonel (retired) Dr Kelvin Wright has been cleared after he was investigated for sharing a Facebook post stating that ‘men cannot be women’. Following this positive outcome, Dr Wright commented that, while he has been vindicated, “the Army has a systemic problem where gender critical opinions are concerned. I want to ensure that nobody can be put through the type of process I’ve just endured”; the Army is much the poorer for the loss of a man like him. Following the publication last week of a staff letter that warns of a ‘woke takeover’ across the civil service, we are rather left wondering, in the words of Ted Heath, “Who Governs Britain?”. After a brief interlude to discuss the new Online Safety Bill (thank you to all our members who have worked with us to strike out its most egregious elements) we finish the episode on a positive note: the apology statement written by Rethinking Education in the aftermath of its cancellation of director of Don’t Divide Us, Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert.

Frequent listeners to ‘That’s Debatable’ will remember our interview with Sibyl Ruth from the end of August (you can listen to that episode here). We are very pleased to announce that Sibyl’s case has now 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”. Sibyl has posted an update to her crowd funder 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. During our podcast discussion with Sibyl, we discussed the removal or relocation of allegedly contentious books in UK libraries. That idea now seems to have been taken to an extreme in a Canadian public high school. CBC reported this week that all books published prior to 2008 (seemingly the new ‘Year Zero’) have been removed by Peel District School Board amid confusion around a new equity-based ‘weeding’ process. The photo in the article looks like it’s been extracted directly from the ‘dystopian fiction’ section of a library (though we can’t confirm this, since that section no longer contains any books). Our conversation expands to ponder some of the broader free speech woes facing Canada, including the apparent politicisation of the professions as reported by Jordan Peterson. Finally, we discuss a very interesting analysis completed by the group ‘Alumni for Free Speech’ on free speech at our leading universities. Their analysis, which includes a detailed spreadsheet with all the data from their various Freedom of Information requests, shows that around 214 times as much money appears to be being spent by these universities on EDI as on free speech protection.

It’s a couple of weeks now since the public berating of Róisín Murphy for expressing (in a private Facebook post) her concern with some of the more extreme elements of transgender ideology. At around the time that Róisín’s story was dominating the free speech news, Tom was fortunate enough to catch the final night of ‘The Crucible’ at London’s Gielgud theatre. In that context, we take the opportunity in this week’s episode to revisit the ideas of blasphemy and the parallels between contemporary ideological wars and the witch trials of the 17th century. The topic quite naturally moves on to a discussion of how a deeper understanding of religion, and Christianity in particular, might offer us a path through some of our problems. 

This week we 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 at 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’ during training that turned out to be anything but. In our discussion we ponder the ever-changing groups of allowable words and banned words. How are ordinary citizens meant to keep up with such rapidly shifting cultural sands? We move onto a very worrying case in Finland. Päivi Räsänen, a former politician, is on trial for hate speech after defending traditional marriage. This follows a 2019 police decision that she had committed no crime and a 2022 acquittal by judges in her first trial. We initially consider the implications of Päivi’s case for free speech across Europe, before moving on to discuss the origins of hate speech, wondering how the concept has come to define such a large piece of our cultural discourse, for both citizens and institutions. What is the line between hate speech, thought crime and even, in an Irish context, pre-crime?