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Lord Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, said: “The OfS’s new guidance is reassuringly robust, but it’s a great shame that the new free speech duties won’t apply to student unions. We know from the Free Speech Union’s case files that student unions are among the worst offenders when it comes to silencing dissenting voices on campus.”
Craig Simpson, The Telegraph, 19th June 2025.
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Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, said: ‘Warning fans of musical theatre that they may hear loud music and sudden noises is beyond parody. Just how stupid do theatre owners think their customers are?’
Brooke Ivey Johnson, Metro, 19th June 2025.
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By 2023, at least 52 local authorities in England — approximately one in six — had adopted the APPG definition. In several of these areas, including those directly affected by grooming gang scandals, councillors and council staff are subject to internal disciplinary codes that incorporate its terms. The Free Speech Union, which has defended individuals in such cases, has documented multiple instances of councillors being investigated for speech that, while perfectly lawful, was alleged to fall foul of the APPG standard.
Freddie Attenborough, The Critic, 18th June 2025.
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The claim inevitably drew outrage from rightwing commentators. Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU), wrote to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, pointing out that Prevent’s definitions of “extremism” and “terrorist ideologies” expand “the scope of suspicion to include individuals whose views are entirely lawful but politically controversial”, and that “right-of-centre beliefs risk being treated as ideologically suspect”.
Prevent, the FSU’s Freddie Attenborough wrote in The Critic magazine, “has shifted from focusing on conduct (acquiring weapons, making threats, inciting violence) to treating political ideologies as indicators of risk – the problem being that ‘risky’ ideologies are both vaguely defined and culturally loaded”.
Kenan Malik, The Observer, 15th June 2025.
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And then there are the armies of police officers who spend their days trawling through social-media accounts in the hope of locating a non-crime hate incident. This is the practice whereby officers record speech or incidents that, while not criminal, are perceived as hateful. The Free Speech Union estimates that up to 65 of these are secretly recorded every day, against people who have not committed any crime or harmed anybody.
Hugo Timms, Spiked, 15th June 2025.
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Certainly, the Free Speech Union (FSU) knows of plenty of people referred to Prevent when lawful but controversial views were misread as signs of extremism: a Christian teacher who stated that marriage is between a man and a woman; a schoolboy who declared in a YouTube video that “there’s no such thing as non-binary”; a 24-year-old autistic man whose social worker reported that he’d been viewing “offensive and anti-trans” websites and “focusing on lots of right-wing darker comedy”.
Freddie Attenborough, The Critic, 10th June 2025.
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However, following a complaint from the Free Speech Union that the policy treated ‘members of one racial group less favourably’, the theatre ordered a review.
Lara Olszowska, MailOnline, 8th June 2025.
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The news has sparked fury with free speech activists, including Toby Young, head of the Free Speech Union.
In a letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, he writes: “Now that ‘cultural nationalism’ has been classified as a subcategory of extreme right-wing terrorist ideology, even mainstream, right-of-centre beliefs risk being treated as ideologically suspect, despite falling well within the bounds of lawful expression.”
Kate Ferguson, The Sun, 7th June 2025.
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Lord Young of Acton, the general-secretary of the Free Speech Union, has written to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, urging her to reconsider the classification, arguing it was a “matter of serious concern” for free speech.
In a letter to Cooper, Lord Young said: “While not defined in law, nor subject to statutory constraint, the definition in the training course expands the scope of suspicion to include individuals whose views are entirely lawful but politically controversial. Now that ‘cultural nationalism’ has been classified as a subcategory of extreme right-wing terrorist ideology, even mainstream, right-of-centre beliefs risk being treated as ideologically suspect, despite falling well within the bounds of lawful expression.”
Charlie Moloney, The Times, 6th June 2025.
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Lord Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union (FSU) said: ‘The definition in the training course expands the scope of suspicion to include individuals whose views are entirely lawful but politically controversial.
‘Now that ‘cultural nationalism’ has been classified as a subcategory of extreme Right-wing terrorist ideology, even mainstream, Right-of-centre beliefs risk being treated as ideologically suspect, despite falling well within the bounds of lawful expression.’
Noor Qurashi, MailOnline, 6th June 2025.
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