That’s Debatable!

Welcome to ‘That’s Debatable!’, the weekly podcast of the Free Speech Union. Hosts Tom Harris and Jan Macvarish – both staffers at the FSU – talk about the free speech controversies that have erupted in the past week and interview some of the main protagonists in those dramas. Edited by Jason Clift. Please like, subscribe and share. Thank you.

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Episodes

Woke, Ltd

Wednesday Aug 16, 2023

Wednesday Aug 16, 2023

Woke privilege” is a phrase coined by a listener to describe ‘those who follow the woke orthodoxy and experience all the privileges of not being cancelled’. People with Woke Privilege are free to express their woke opinions, they’re lauded online, and work promotions generally come easily to them. We would posit that Woke Privilege has certainly found a comfortable home within the B Corp movement, which features in today’s episode following the publication of the FSU’s latest report, Woke, Ltd. We discuss our motivation for writing the report and why we are so concerned that the proliferation of B Corps could have some very deleterious effects on freedom of expression, especially if the so-called Better Business Act reaches the statute books. This week, a video of West Yorkshire police arresting a 16-year-old autistic girl has caused profound discomfort across the nation. We discuss how it can be that the police can have reached a place where a child’s exclamation that an officer ‘looks like my lesbian nana’ can trigger such an apparently disproportionate response (though we concede that the video may not provide a complete picture). Over the last two years or so, West Yorkshire police has featured in at least another four public incidents relating to freedom of expression. It would seem that we have found a very good candidate for some of that training we discussed in the FSU’s previous report.

Thursday Aug 10, 2023

It’s a cliché, but Sharron Davies MBE really needs no introduction. One of Britain’s greatest Olympic medallists, she dominated women’s swimming throughout the 1980s. As Sharron makes clear during this discussion, her new book, Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sport  was written to give people the knowledge and power to fight back against the incredible level of unfairness that women and girls are facing across the sporting world. Having experienced the injustice of competing against the doped-up East German swimmers in the 1970s and 80s, Sharron understands first-hand what it means to operate at the most elite level possible yet face a profoundly unfair field. She quickly discerned the disastrous decisions that were being made in the 2000s by sporting authorities, starting with the removal of sex screening by the IOC (International Olympic Committee). In our discussion, we explore the major themes explored in the book, including the emergence of a new incarnation of virtue-signalling misogyny, the fundamental importance of empiricism, and the heart-breaking effect that today’s unfairness is having on women and girls. Sharron passionately believes in the life-affirming impact of sport and that it should be for all; we simply need to define our categories in a way that makes participation fair. Both Sharron and the Free Speech Union were delighted that the generosity of one of our Founder Members, Alan Hearne, has made it possible for copies of the book 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.

Tuesday Aug 01, 2023

#IstandwithJKRowling. When Gillian Philip, a successful children’s author, added that statement to her twitter handle in June 2020, she soon found herself subject to a twitter pile on. The mob accused Gillian of being “transphobic” and a “TERF” (standing for trans-exclusionary radical feminist) – the latter a familiar slur so easily thrown around by transgender activists. Soon afterwards, her publishers, Working Partners and Harper Collins, cancelled their contract with her. Inevitably, this experience of cancel culture took a huge personal toll on Gillian, but she was determined to fight back! As so often happens, the activists didn’t fully appreciate the risk of going up against such a focused, tenacious, and strong woman as Gillian.

Wednesday Jul 26, 2023

We open our episode with the encouraging thought that the UK’s free speech woes repeatedly drive us back to hear and be inspired by the voice (and music!) of past genius. Then the big news item of the week is the FSU’s ‘de-banking’ victory. As many listeners already know, the government will now be tightening up 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 belief. During our conversation, we focus on the elements of this very public discussion that have most intrigued us. Why do some commentators seem unable to appreciate the threat that de-banking represents to all UK citizens across the political spectrum? Ben introduces the idea of cognitive decoupling, which may go some way to explain the alternative reactions. The principle of Chesterton’s Fence is another helpful tool with which to interpret some of the more disastrous applications of woke ideology. As we wonder whether all this de-banking publicity will lead to a retreat or advance of woke ideology, we touch on Lord Frost’s recent article in the Telegraph that describes an ominous new state ideology.  

Wednesday Jul 19, 2023

There is a fierce battle for free speech taking place in the Republic of Ireland, where the proposed Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred or Hate Offences) Bill (‘CJB’) is expected to radically extend the scope of hate crime. In that context, we are delighted to welcome Sarah Hardiman, spokesperson for Free Speech Ireland (FSI), to this week’s episode of ‘That’s Debatable’. Top of the list of the FSI’s concerns is the lack of clarity around essential definitions within the CJB, such as the definition of ‘hate‘ itself!  Our discussion touches on several areas that will be familiar to our listeners such as the practical problems of policing hate laws, the tension between lobby groups and individual citizens, and what appears to be the ubiquitous inadequacy of state education systems in relaying the vital importance of free expression in a free society. A significant motivator for Sarah and the FSI is the demonstrable support from individual Irish citizens who, following more thorough reporting in the national and international press, are clearly quite horrified at the more perverse implications of the bill as currently drafted; dawn raids for possession of wrong think documents being a good example. If you would like to support the FSI in this essential fight, then please do visit their website at https://freespeechireland.ie and follow the FSI across their social media channels.

Tuesday Jul 11, 2023

Direct from her recent win at a Leeds Employment Tribunal, we are very excited to welcome Denise Fahmy to this episode of ‘That’s Debatable’. Denise worked at Arts Council England for 15 years but, as you will hear, was subjected to some quite appalling harassment from other council employees when she spoke up for LGB Alliance during an internal staff meeting. After discussing what happened to her, Denise goes on to talk about how the side-lining of gender critical content doesn’t always lead to overt cancellation, but instead causes a general chill in which gender critical output is simply missing from arts shortlists and events. Combined with weak organisational leadership, this frostiness explains why art funding decisions often fail to be impartial and can be so influenced by ideological employee groups. We also explore the general state of the arts in the current woke cultural environment. Denise offers fascinating and measured insight into the arts world including the rise of the art curator, who now operates as the gatekeeper between creator and end consumer. We also wonder whether some interesting art may arise from contemplation of cancel culture itself, a planned July staged reading of the recent Mermaids vs LGB Alliance court battle being a case in point: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mermaids-vs-the-alliance-a-staged-reading-tickets-666999352017 

Tuesday Jul 04, 2023

If, in Cher’s immortal words, we could turn back time five years, say, and describe the essence of today’s episode to a group of level-headed UK citizens, we are pretty sure they would label us fantasists and loons. But the fact is that we are now living in a society where a British colonel with an impeccable service record can be forced out of the army for supporting the idea that men can’t be women and women can’t be men. Who runs the British army? Stonewall’s enthusiastic commissars, it seems. We also report back on some headline statistics from the FSU’s cancel culture survey. Cancel culture does affect people’s well-being (at least 75% of those cancelled), it is rarely a surprise to the person being cancelled, and it really isn’t just a right-wing myth. For their next treat, those 2018 Cher fans can hear how the Chinese social credit system is taking root across our banking system, with high street names happily shutting down the accounts of all those pesky customers who think wrong thoughts. Finally, we head back to rather less familiar territory, 2023, and report back on a day out at Pride London. We reflect on the importance of discernment and wisdom when trying to work out what might really be going on.

Thursday Jun 29, 2023

Sadly, recent events at both Rye College and the NSPCC demonstrate that the UK’s free speech woes are affecting the lives of the most impressionable members of society, our children. We discuss how we’ve reached this place and why it is proving so hard to dislodge the controversial philosophies behind Stonewall, Mermaids, and other activist organisations. There are glimmers of hope, though, not least the undeniable fact that parents will not easily accept or tolerate the ideological capture of their own children. We move on to the fact-checking industry and ask ourselves a deeper question behind the phenomenon: what does it take to change minds? In our conversation, we refer to Konstantin Kisin’s Oxford Union address from January 2023 as a great case study in how to speak persuasively: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJdqJu-6ZPo  We only manage to scratch the surface of this important question, however, and will most certainly come back to it in future episodes!   

A Touch of Civic Pride

Wednesday Jun 21, 2023

Wednesday Jun 21, 2023

We were delighted to welcome Angela Kilmartin, a former conservative district councillor for Witham Town and Braintree, to this week’s That’s Debatable podcast. In this refreshingly frank discussion, Angela eloquently recounts the story of how she was formally investigated for expressing on her private Facebook account, her opposition to the flying of pride flags . At the end of the process, the district council’s monitoring officer advised Angela to go undergo Equality Act and ‘emotional intelligence’ training.  As you will hear, Angela is not exactly the sort of person willing to be pushed around in this manner. Far from caving in and subjecting herself to Maoist emotional re-education, she continues to exercise her political voice to great effect from the public gallery at council meetings. After the discussion with Angela, in part two, Ben and Tom round-off the episode by pulling together their own thoughts on the themes covered.

Oxfam & The New Elite

Tuesday Jun 13, 2023

Tuesday Jun 13, 2023

Oxfam is back in the free speech news, for all the wrong reasons. We begin today’s episode wondering why the charity keeps tripping over itself in the culture wars and highlight the deleterious effect these clumsy moves have had on numbers of volunteers and donors, as well as the charity’s finances. The case of an Oxfam employee who felt she had no choice but to resign due to the hostile environment she faced after expressing perfectly reasonable support for JK Rowling leads us into more general discussion of employee speech codes. There is now hardly a workplace without a speech code (often disguised as an EDI policy), and we ponder how a single individual can now be subject to several codes at the same time, yet none of them ever seems to be applied in an even-handed way. It is also very rare to stumble upon a speech code that differs from the new orthodoxy.  We briefly discuss how HSBC has shut down three accounts of the League of Social Democrats, one of the few remaining pro-democracy parties in Hong Kong that dares to protest China’s draconian security law and free speech crackdown.  Finally, we share thoughts following last week’s FSU panel event centred around Matt Goodwin’s new book on the new elite. It was a great discussion, and we were particularly happy to take Matt’s final word to be sure to keep the debate going in the bar afterwards.      

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