Staff at a campaign group that claims to defend free speech in Britain said it would “need to explain” how it spent roughly £60,000 that was crowdfunded for a legal case that was ultimately fought by a pro bono lawyer. The Free Speech Union (FSU), an activist group founded by Conservative life peer Toby Young, last year took up the case of Julian Foulkes, a 71-year-old retired police officer who had been arrested 18 months earlier after writing a social media post about antisemitism. The case generated widespread controversy, with rightwing publications describing it as a “thought crime” arrest.
With the help of the FSU, Foulkes launched a legal action against Kent police, the force that had originally detained him. The FSU started a crowdfunder for Foulkes, which quickly raised £50,000 and then upped its target to £100,000. Kent police, which had previously apologised for the incident, soon after awarded Foulkes an out-of-court settlement of £20,000.
But sources close to the FSU and internal communications seen by the Guardian, suggest that money raised through the crowdfunder did not go entirely to Foulkes’s case. Foulkes’s action was handled free of charge by a London-based solicitor, according to sources and the FSU’s own social media posts. Internally, it appears staffers at the FSU were aware of the inconsistency between a crowdfunder campaign to pay for the legal action, and the appointment of the pro bono lawyer.
Young would not elaborate on what those were, and Foulkes did not answer questions as to whether he’d been given money from the FSU for other expenses. Young added: “Any funds raised over and above what was needed to pay for external legal costs in Julian Foulkes’s case would have been reallocated to pay for external legal costs in other similar cases (and not for any other purpose).” When asked by the Guardian if the FSU had given him money to cover his expenses, and whether he was aware that his case was handled pro bono, Foulkes said his case was “done and dusted”, and declined to answer further questions. As far as I’m concerned, it’s water under the bridge.
I’ve got nothing to add.” The inconsistencies raise questions about the funding and integrity of an organisation that claims to have fought more than 6,000 cases on behalf of individuals who have been “cancelled or silenced” across the political spectrum. Founded by Lord Young, the FSU describes itself as “a non-partisan, mass membership public interest body” fighting for anyone who gets into trouble for exercising their freedom of speech. Critics, however, see it as a partisan rallying point for “anti-woke” grievance.
These are not the first questions to surface about how the FSU funds itself. Earlier this summer, the Guardian reported that the state department intended to give $5m to the Free Speech Union International, an offshoot of the FSU, as part of a larger package of money aimed at promoting rightwing causes in the UK and Europe. Accepting that grant would mean putting the international organisation at odds with the principles the UK chapter of the FSU lays out on its website: “We take no government money and have no political agenda.” In the past, the FSU appears to have raised amounts in charity fundraisers that are in excess of what the stated purpose of those fundraisers would require.
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