It was a quiet Tuesday in Brighton, and the air smelled like cheap lager, poppers, spilled semen and thinly veiled tension. The kind of night where things feel poised on the edge of chaos, like a drunk sprawled on the pavement who’s about to realise the pavement isn’t where he thought it was. Free speech was about to be tested severely that night when the Free Speech Group convened for what they thought would be a civilised debate about pertinent subjects.
Inside the Southern Belle pub, about 50 members of Free Speech Brighton gathered in the back room, ready to launch into an evening of speeches. They had their microphone, their speaker, and most dangerously in today’s Gulag Britain, their opinions.
But Brighton seems to be a stranger to free speech, and the Southern Belle’s landlord wasn’t having any of it. Word around the room was that a retired teacher—someone in her fifties—had just finished 15 minutes of voicing her right to free speech about how “gender ideology” didn’t belong in the curriculum for 5-year-old kids. Children, she said, are susceptible to indoctrination and are pliable to manipulation by people with an agenda. Sure trans people need to have rights as much as anyone else but why push this agenda down the throats of young children from the age of 5, when they are most susceptible and vulnerable. What ever happened to letting kids be kids without this shit programmed into them?
Enter the muscle — five security guards ordered in by the anti-free speech landlord who could smell controversy from a mile away. They stormed in like girl scout mercenaries on a butt-plug unplugging mission, demanding the entire Free Speech crew clear out. The woke landlord, had thus been severely triggered, and sent in the troops to shut the Free Speech Group down once and for all.
Laura King, the group’s chairwoman, described it as a scene out of some dystopian Orwellian nightmare. Guards lunging at the microphone like it was a live grenade. Chaos, yelling, drinks untouched on sticky tables. Footage hit social media faster than a tabloid can scream non-news, showing a security guard grappling with the speaker system, trying to unplug it like he was defusing a bomb. “Anyone who doesn’t leave is trespassing,” the heavily tattooed guard barked.
But this wasn’t just about a night at the pub anymore. This was war—the war of ideas, and they weren’t going down without a last round of drinks. Toby Young, head honcho of the Free Speech Union, chimed in with his opinion about the entire sordid affair. The pub was in the crosshairs, and Young was aiming for blood—or at least a rebooking. “Legally, the landlord doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” he argued. “It’s like kicking someone out for being black or gay,” he claimed, throwing down the gauntlet on the unjust eviction.
The colourful, smelly environs of Brighton, meanwhile, sat back and watched as the drama unfolded. After all, this was just another night in the battleground of British free speech—the place where beer, big ideas, and simpering security guards mix like an explosive pink cocktail, and the only thing anyone can count on is the mess that follows. All in all, a great PR event.
Last night I attended a local Free Speech Union meeting for the first time. About 50 orderly civilised people sat in the back room of The Southern Belle pub.
It started well- A hushed room listened to a measured and informative 15min speech about safeguarding children against… pic.twitter.com/vqL1HGd5as— FreeByTheSea (@Free_ByTheSea) September 18, 2024
So The Southern Belle Pub doesn’t believe in the safeguarding of young children? It instead supports the sterilisation, child abuse, mutilation and medical experimentation on young kids with autism or mental illnesses? Don’t go to the Southern Belle pub in Brighton. These people are dangerous.
It’s Brighton. They love kiddies there.