WHAT IS THE GREATEST THREAT TO FREE SPEECH TODAY?

WHAT IS THE GREATEST THREAT TO FREE SPEECH TODAY?

WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER 2026, 7.30pm.

LONDON, EC2V: nearest tubes Moorgate, Liverpool Street and St Pauls.

Venue details will be emailed to ticket-holders.

Time: 7.30pm to 9pm, with social to follow.

Doors open 6.45pm.

Free speech is under attack — but why, from where and what is the remedy?

Lord Young, founder and general secretary of the Free Speech Union, brings together two passionate free speech defenders, one with a global perspective and the other with a specifically British one, to debate how we can best understand and reverse the current "free speech recession".

Jacob Mchangama, lawyer, author and international free speech campaigner, offers a global perspective. In his new book, The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy's Most Essential Freedom, he catalogues how governments of all political persuasions – from the US to China, Canada to India, Brazil to Russia, New Zealand to the European Union – are restricting speech in the name of national security, child protection and even the defence of democracy itself.

Barrister Jon Holbrook looks at things from a different standpoint. In his recent report, Reversing Britain's Free Speech Recession, he analyses British developments since the 1960s, through which new concepts of harm and hate have become embedded in bad law which breaks with the specifically English tradition of common law protections for speech. He argues that the criminalisation of political beliefs categorised as racist in the 1965 Race Relations Act paved the way for other 'hateful' speech to be curbed. At the same time, expanded notions of 'harm' – both individual and social – introduced subjective notions of emotional and psychological damage into criminal law and led to an impossibly broad and protective approach to 'equality' that restricts, rather than expands, our liberties.

Our speakers will debate how we got into the "free speech recesssion" and how we can get out of it – whether classical liberal principles can be reinvigorated to revive a culture of free speech, whether stronger national sovereignty rather than international human rights is the better guarantor of freedom and whether we can undo bad law and bring in good law to restore our most essential liberty.

CHAIR:

LORD YOUNG, British journalist and campaigner. He is the founder and general secretary of the Free Speech Union, an associate editor of the Spectator and the editor-in-chief of the Daily Sceptic. He was made a Conservative life peer in 2024 as Lord Young of Acton.

SPEAKERS:

JACOB MCHANGAMA, founder and executive director of The Future of Free Speech project at Vanderbilt University. He is a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). He has commented extensively on free speech and human rights in outlets including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. Jacob has published in academic and peer-reviewed journals, including Human Rights Quarterly, Policy Review, and Amnesty International’s Strategic Studies. He is the producer and narrator of the podcast Clear and Present Danger: A History of Free Speech. Jacob is also the author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media. His new book, co-authored with Jeff Kosseff, is The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy's Most Essential Freedom.

JON HOLBROOK, barrister, called to the Bar in 1991, who practised at Garden Court and Cornerstone and specialised in public law. In 2021, he was expelled from Cornerstone for expressing socially conservative beliefs on Twitter, and was cleared of wrongdoing in 2022 by an appeals panel independent of the Bar Standards Board — a decision the High Court has since affirmed as establishing the right of professionals to speak freely on political issues. He now uses his legal expertise and personal experience to support others fighting for free speech. Jon's paper, Reversing Britain’s Free Speech Recessionwas published by Prosperity Institute in July 2026.

Discounted tickets for FSU Members. Non-members welcome. If you're not an FSU Member, JOIN TODAY to get access to discounted tickets and online events.

The Free Speech Union is a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members and campaigns for free speech more widely. We champion the right of people from all walks of life to express themselves without fear of punishment or persecution.