Free Speech Union

Defending men's right to silence women.

Upon hearing of the death of politician and public figure Ann Widdecombe, Scott Herbert ( A man who calls himself ‘Heather’) wrote,

“And some good news for once. I hope it was an extremely painful death.”

He followed it with,

“And I hope she was handcuffed to the bed as she screamed in agony.”

Predictably there was outrage about these comments because they are utterly vile. Herbert an employee of Aberdeen University faced calls for his employment to be terminated and also for his arrest as a result. An arrest was made, he was charged and an investigation by Aberdeen University is now in progress.

The arguments around whether Herbert was simply indulging his right to free speech began immediately, and they rage on. The basics being that, according to the tenets of free speech absolutism, he had a right to say these things even though they are disgustingly offensive.

However, at this point no one knows what he has been charged with or what evidence is being relied upon. His devices were seized and have probably been forensically stripped. More than that is pure speculation.

In my opinion however the tweets, even if nothing further is available to police, are not merely repugnant in the light of Ann Widdecombe’s death. It is the flesh of the tweets, not the skeleton holding them together, which proves so worrying and made so many, in particular women, recoil instinctively.

Herbert is a man with a track record of misogynistic behaviour towards TERF women though his dislike of women is palpable as part of that. He is a member of a group of deranged blokes running a You Tube channel ‘The Polycule’ where they discuss their views of women and the attendant politics. In one video Herbert is alongside another man who is discussing solving his hatred of TERFs with bullets.

“If people don’t show love, [towards men pretending to be women] show bullets”.

Herbert himself appears in another suggesting that if women are silenced with physical attack then the end justified the means as in the case of Kellie Jay Keen being attacked at a rally with soup. Herbert doesn’t care what the method is, as long as women are prevented from speaking.

As with many of these crazed “gender” activists, the propensity to allow women to speak freely on topics of gender is entirely absent. The desire to silence women who oppose their gender beliefs (that they have changed into women) is in overdrive. The way that they might silence them made clear in this instance featuring Herbert’s partner - shooting them. Herbert smiles and nods along. We can assume he agrees.

If ever anyone believed that free speech is not for everyone, that in fact it is not for women who say he is a man, it is men like Herbert.

So when Herbert speaks of Ann Widdecombe in such a visual way, drawing her last moments of terror in graphic detail, it has an effect on women in particular, it creates incredible fear of being as vulnerable as Ann was to any man who wanted to break into a woman’s home. This is a man, pretending to be a woman, saying that he would enjoy the final moments of a woman’s life as she is murdered. He would revel in her terror and pain as he watched her slip away from her life in agony.

We already know this man isn’t alright in the head if we look at his “previous” broadcasts and also consider his belief that he isn’t a man. That is a form of madness in itself. When lunatics begin discussing how women die, those lunatics of course invite the scrutiny of the law.

Women reading that tweet understood viscerally that this is a man very excited by a woman’s death. He took a step up from expressing his thoughts on her death in simple, if vile, terms (which would merit a free speech defence I suppose) to discussing a fantasy of how he thought her death actually was, perhaps how he would feel if he could have watched it, and such men are terrifying to women. At the same time such expression gives permission to others with a hatred of women (with opposing politics to themselves) to enter into his fantasy with him. Women have seen the potential for violence in these activist men far too many times to think it is “just talk”.

So when a man’s “free speech” becomes a blunt tool for the intimidation of women, something that would make them fear how far such a man would go, perhaps his freedom to say such things is curtailing their freedom in a physical/emotional way.

If the police want to examine his devices to see if there is anything behind this fantasising of his, then that is entirely understandable. Few who commented nastily about Ann Widdecombe’s murder said anything of this sort, which crossed into a very much darker level of woman-hating. Perhaps they have found more of the same, or perhaps they have found worse. We don’t as yet know.

It is now looking to be a shakier line in the sand for free speech absolutists. A man who fantasises a woman’s murder is not merely a man saying “I hate women”.

And this was the point where Free Speech Union, bizarrely, opportunistically, and I think foolishly entered the arena. There really was no need. No one knows if Herbert has been arrested for “hate speech” related offences, he is not a Free Speech Union member and he is categorically against everything FSU supposedly stand for.

Free Speech Union, the company founded by Toby Young, angered many, especially their female members, by posting the following,

“The Free Speech Union has said that, should Heather Herbert join the Free Speech Union, we would do our best to help him.

Heather Herbert posted a vile and deeply offensive statement on the social media platform BlueSky about the tragic murder of Ann Widdecombe.

The University of Aberdeen employee has now been arrested and charged over his offensive comments.

While the Free Speech Union does not support Heather’s offensive comments about Ann — a dear late friend of the FSU — it is not an offence, no matter how offensive, to speak ill of the dead.

Ann was a staunch defender of our fundamental right to free speech, and we very much doubt she would have supported Police Scotland’s actions.

Police Scotland has a poor record when it comes to recognising citizens’ rights to free speech.

If Heather has been charged with a speech offence, the Free Speech Union is here to help”.

This commitment to a repugnant man was repeated in a video of Connie Shaw on UK Live reiterating that they would “help” Herbert if he was charged with a crime related to his statements in these posts on X.

Shaw minimises the speech contained in the tweets,

“he said that it was good news that Ann Widdecombe had died and that he hoped she had died a very painful death”.

This summary makes no attempt to analyse the words for potential meaning or incitement or even intimidation. She doesn't approach this from a feminist or women’s rights perspective. She does not discuss the second, and most worrying, part of what he said at all, or evaluate why FSU feel it resides simply in “free speech” territory rather than something more sinister. This seems remiss at best when they take such a bold step in saying they will defend him. I think FSU directors were too keen to run into the limelight, or shove Connie into it, to properly sieve the consequences of what they might be chasing. Sometimes profit clouds judgement.

Young, in a fawning interview in the Telegraph yesterday, admitted that 37% of their caseload is related to “gender” and that 99% of those cases are women's cases. This tells us that they have a lot of female members paying their company’s wage bill which is close to £1 million a year. Those women were shocked and many were angry.

Given that despicable men like Herbert are the type of men reporting them to their employers and leading them to require the services of FSU for which they pay money they can ill afford, it was a deep affront to send Shaw out to tout for his business when he isn’t even a member.

As one user on X commented, why would anyone pay a membership fee to FSU when, if they do get in trouble with their speech, FSU will defend them anyway. This does of course presuppose that you are important and newsworthy enough I imagine. As important as Scott Herbert, a man pretending to be a woman whilst fantasising about killing one.

Others commented that some women had their cases turned down, whilst this man who actively hates women is being chased by FSU for his case. It felt insulting on a number of levels.

The Telegraph interview revealed,

“AS of last week the FSU has more than 45,000 members. But perhaps more importantly, the organisation …has now fought more than 6000 cases. “We’re getting about 45 referrals a week at the moment… last week, we had an all-time record: 20 requests for help on a single day.”

So Toby Young is being greedy then? Scrambling after a more famous case which has already hit the news instead of directing attention to the women losing their employment whose names we don’t know? Because there is scant justification for seeking to represent a man who has not before shown interest in being represented by you. Putting aside some of those 45 cases to do so, many of whom will be women, is a gross insult to women who have helped Young build his FSU into the successful empire it is today.

The next twist in this bizarre misogynist saga was when a member of Herbert’s little gang, “Sophie” Euan Molly, turned up to squeak out a hilarious, part gibberish refusal, part chest thump challenge. This was sort of aimed at Young’s Free Speech outfit and partly directed at an unnamed group who he seemed to want to fight.

Molly, not known for lucidity, rejected an offer not made to him in the manner of someone turning down a free dinner no one offered him. I imagined it a little like this,

Euan: “You can take your steak and chips and shove it up your arse! Alright??!”.

Macdonald’s server: “Mister can you just move back a bit and order over there on the big screen behind you. Your chicken mcnuggets will be with you when I’ve served this lady in front of you.”

Sophie Molly posted on Blue Sky,

“The Free Speech Union can. Apologies for all the abhorrent transphobia they spew online. Call Heather a woman. Stop pretending that they care for the extreme harm done to Heather from the media circus ect. Otherwise I want absolutely nothing to do with them ever! understood?”

Obviously the whole Herbert “polycule” crew are utter nutbutters but even the most linguistically challenged amongst us can usually abbreviate “etcetera”. Molly must have been pulling his fringe out typing this, it’s so hilariously cross.

However, more seriously, what Molly does in his uniquely cack-handed way, is demand that FSU submit to lying. FSU, the fervent protectors of free and honest speech, appeared to have offered a lifeline to men who would not only slap them in the face and call them twats, but also ask them to abandon all of their principles and their oft-repeated commitment to women. The women who partly pay that big wage bill of theirs.

Quite the dilemma Toby Young now finds himself in.

I imagine there will be a convenient script for Connie Shaw to run out over the next day or so.

“Well! We only wanted to show them up for the authoritarians they are! Gotcha! We really caught the big fish there eh? HAHAHAH!”

I will not curtail my own free speech. That’s a load of bollocks.