UK Lawyer Fined 500 for Saying Free Speech 'Dying' Due to 'Islamists and Other Muslims' Wins Appeal

Jack MontgomeryApril 1, 2022

A lawyer fined £500 ($660) by regulators after saying that “free speech is dying and Islamists and other Muslims are playing a central role” has won an appeal to the Bar Tribunals & Adjudication Service, telling Breitbart the campaign against him was “politically motivated”.

Jon Holbrook, a British barrister who styles himself as a “critic of identity politics” who has been “cancelled for defying the woke”, had tweeted the remark in October 2020 in response to a British Muslim activist demanding that the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo — which lost a number of staff to a radical Islamic terror attack in 2015 after publishing depictions of Islam’s prophet — “must be shut down immediately by French authorities”.

Despite the social media post’s relatively limited reach — 23 retweets, 61 likes, and seven replies, as of the time of publication — the Bar Standards Board (BSB) saw fit to punish Holbrook for exercising his right to free speech, subjecting him to an investigation and imposing the £500 fine as a so-called “administrative sanction”.

“The charges against me were always politically motivated, that’s how the left works,” Holbrook told Breitbart London.

“Whether they’re in unpaid activist groups or salaried regulatory offices, they instinctively seek to ban speech they don’t like. But from now on they’ll have to think twice: political speech should be debated, never silenced,” he continued hopefully.

“Regulators of the professions who seek to censor with sanctions now know that if they infringe political speech they’re probably breaking the law. Worse still, they’ll be undermining democracy.”

“Who will lead the struggle to reinstate free speech as the foundation of all other freedoms?” the lawyer added.

Free speech is dying & Islamists & other Muslims are playing a central role.

Who will lead the struggle to reinstate free speech as the foundation of all other freedoms? https://t.co/dNDlJegdks

— Expelled & twice exonerated barrister Jon Holbrook (@JonHolb) October 17, 2020

The BSB had imposed the sanction on Holbrook after finding that 17 other politically incorrect tweets, once of which resulted in him being sacked by his chambers, Cornerstone Barristers, despite “an unblemished professional record”, did not amount to a breach of standards.

The BSB found that the free speech tweet, however, “would not only cause offence but could promote hostility towards Muslims as a group” and warned him to “take care to consider how your public posts as a barrister may impact on you and/or the profession and take care to consider the standards set out in the BSB Handbook and any supporting guidance”, further accusing him of a “Lack of remorse” and “Lack of insight”.

Holbrook, who argued that the BSB had hunted out a tweet he could be sanctioned for like a “playground bully seeking to save face”, appealed to the Bar Tribunals & Adjudication Service, earning a perhaps surprising victory when it concluded that the BSB had indeed “erred in law by applying too low a threshold in reaching its conclusion that the tweet breached [the rules].”

There were some typos in the initially published decision.

The corrected & updated version from the Bar Tribunals and Adjudication Service is here:https://t.co/e7HM6BIZlS

— Expelled & twice exonerated barrister Jon Holbrook (@JonHolb) March 30, 2022