AFAF’s Heroes and Zeros
Every month Catrin Thomas, chair of Free Speech Wales, selects a Hero and a Zero. We began our ‘Heroes and Zeros’ selection in October 2019 as a light-hearted way of drawing attention to defenders of free speech, as well as those who would undermine it. It was a struggle to find a ‘hero’ each month and we welcome nominations. We recently introduced a ‘Hero’ of the year award. In 2023, the award went to Shereen Benjamin, in 2024 to Jo Phoenix and in 2025 to Anthony Finkelstein. The awards for the first five months of 2026 are shown below. The full list can be found on our Heroes and Zeros page. Enjoy!
May 2026
Our Hero is Big Brother Watch for revealing the free speech lottery operating across the UK. Between 2024–2025, over 16,000 people were arrested across 40 forces — an average of 22 per day. Cumbria Police Force is, apparently, most prone to arresting people for speech offences (malicious communications); Cumbrians face eight times the arrest rate in, for example, neighbouring Northumbria. Maya Thomas of BBW commented, “A democracy only works if everyone, from the Government to the public, clearly understands what the law does and doesn’t allow. But…these figures suggest that in Britain, your right to free speech often depends on where you live rather than on the law itself.
Our Zero is Keir Starmer for banning 11 foreign speakers — including politicians, commentators and activists from Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and the USA. The event drew around 55,000 protesters, yet Starmer justified the bans by claiming the rally was “peddling hatred and division.” Critics, including Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator, highlighted the contrast with the more lenient approach taken towards pro-Palestine protests. Sacerdoti remarked: “The real test for any government is whether it can apply the same standard to dissent it dislikes as to dissent it finds convenient.” Together with record numbers of arrests for speech offences, Starmer is increasingly accused of cherry-picking who is allowed free speech in Britain — and who is not.
April 2026
Our Hero is Professor Abhishek Saha for constantly urging ministers to publish a clear timetable and let the unexecuted sections of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 come into force, even in interim form. The Act was intended to protect free speech in universities in England from July 2023 but, due to the Government’s stalling, it only launched this January – and, crucially, without the mechanisms for individuals to make effective complaints or to sue universities in County Courts. As a result, universities have been able to shrug off the law with little consequence, as illustrated by the latest controversies in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield Hallam. Without action, the hard-won law will remain largely toothless.
Our Zero is the University of Roehampton for its warnings about chocolate. The sweet treat was listed alongside potentially upsetting topics such as anger issues, passive smoking, and parent-child relationships. Undergraduate Octavia Evans, a self-confessed chocoholic, has argued that while conditions such as bereavement or disability deserve consideration, the expansion of ‘trigger’ warnings is infantilising students and reducing their ability to meet the intellectual challenges that universities are supposed to present.
We give a Special Mention to Matt Rattley. Titter ye not, Madam: an Oxford lecturer recently gave a masterclass in irony, opining about ‘imposter syndrome’ while sporting a full beard and huge prosthetic breasts. His online post provoked a debate about freedom of expression: is Rattley’s stance justified, degrading to female students, or just poor dress sense?
March 2026
Our Hero is Lord Young, Founder and Director of the Free Speech Union, along with former Met Commissioner Lord Hogan-Howe, for leading the House of Lords in a vote to scrap non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs). The move would bar police from recording, retaining or processing personal data on NCHIs unless required to prevent or detect actual crime. Hopefully, this would prevent officers from being dragged into petty disputes about alleged ‘offensive’ remarks. Peers backed the amendment to the Crime & Policing Bill by 227 votes to 221; the Bill is now to return to the Commons.
Our Zero is The Government for its plans to appoint a dedicated ‘anti-Muslim hostility tsar’ as part of a £4 million drive entitled ‘Protecting What Matters.’ The move includes setting up helplines to record anti-Muslim incidents. The definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ covers violence, vandalism, harassment, unlawful discrimination and ‘prejudicial stereotyping’ against Muslims or anyone perceived to be Muslim. The Government stressed that the definition is not law and does not criminalise all hostility but Lord Young, among others, warned that the broad wording used could discourage legitimate discussion of issues like Islamist extremism, grooming gangs, FGM, and honour killings. Paul Holmes (Conservative Shadow Minister) said that the measure risked creating ‘a back-door blasphemy law.’
February 2026
Our Hero is PC Moule for defending a man’s right to preach the Gospel near a mosque in Whitechapel, East London, despite objections from several Muslim men who were present. Videos of the officer, who at one point appeared to be surrounded by the group, went viral, drawing praise for her calm professionalism. See the extended video here. Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist later told a London Assembly meeting that her actions had been “a good example of officers showing policing common sense without fear or favour and doing a good job.”
Our Zero is the University of Bangor Debating & Political Society, Wales’s oldest student society, for refusing Reform UK representatives Sarah Pochin MP and campaigner Jack Anderton a Q&A session with students. The Society also set up a petition to ban Reform speakers from future campus debates, calling the Party “racist, transphobic and homophobic.” The University distanced itself, with a spokesperson saying that “the views expressed by societies are their own and do not reflect university policy.”
January 2026
Our Heroes are 370 academics, including three Nobel Prize-winners, who wrote to the Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, urging her to honour her pledge to defend free speech in UK universities. Despite over a year of promises to bolster protections under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, especially by setting up an effective complaints system, little action has materialised.
Our Zero is the University of York Students’ Union for campaigning to be exempted from free speech laws. When a Reform UK society planned an event on campus, York SU encouraged students to write to their MPs, urging them to release the union from the 2023 Act’s requirement to uphold free expression
We give a Special Mention to Wokeness for its recent services to literature: first, the bold claim that Shakespeare was a dark-skinned Jewish woman; and second, trigger warnings by the University of Glasgow that alerted students to themes of “servitude,” “abuse” and “violence” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The central theme of a dreadful entity stitched together from disparate body parts, however, seems to be perfectly fine.
(Illustration by H. C. Selous (1886) Thersites accosts Achilles from Troilus and Cressida, in Cassell’s Illustrated Shakespeare. In the public domain.)
