Before getting stuck into the latest threat to free speech, I should declare that I’m on the Northern Ireland advisory council of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and a News Letter columnist.
Published: 2 April 2026
Yes, I was born and reared a (sceptical) Roman Catholic in the Republic of Ireland and have lived almost all my adult life in England, but it is Northern Ireland that became my main focus as a political journalist from the early 1990s.
I came to love the Protestant people of NI for their courage, their resilience, their honesty, their common sense, and their intolerance of bullsh*t.
As most of my tribe rejected the religion they had adhered to unquestioningly for centuries, many filled the god-shaped hole with progressive ideologies that have become a horrific threat to Irish society throughout the island.
People who care about the stark truth of what is going on under most people’s unconscious gaze should read Gript — a Dublin-based online daily publication countering secular extremism — and the News Letter, to see the stories most of the media ignore and progressives hate to see exposed.
This week, for instance, the News Letter’s Adam Kula wrote of a clash on BBC Talkback between SDLP Belfast councillor Seamas de Faoite, a seemingly hardline progressive activist, and Jeff Dudgeon, a voice of sanity who is greatly missed since he lost his UUP council seat. (Read the report here.)
The issue was de Faoite’s justification of Belfast City Council’s demand that any group wishing to be part of the planned LGBTQ+ hub in the newly-acquired community resource of 2 Royal Avenue must be “compatible and complementary”.
(Adam Kula had broken the story about the council requirement on the front page of Monday’s News Letter, “Council ‘could break law’ at its LGBT hub” – to read the article, click here).
Jeff is a friend, an FSU board member and a free speech warrior I’ve admired for decades.
It was he who brought about the legitimising of homosexuality in NI more than fifty years ago.
“I campaign for equal rights, equal opportunity, but I didn’t campaign for privilege,” he says now.
I listened to almost an hour of debate, as to de Faoite’s discomfort, lesbian Nora Calder, who like Jeff has been a vocal opponent of aggressive trans activism that seeks to close down criticism, joined in crisply and eloquently to spell out the threat.
Like all my gay friends, they have lives that are not curtailed or driven by the issue of their sexual identity.
Meanwhile, Gript freezes the blood with an article about how Ireland has been a key driver of gender identity politics which as part of its agenda for its presidency of the EU from July is pushing the whole trans agenda maniacally with the support of the left.
Under the leadership of Leo Varadkar, now a “human rights” activist, in his new incarnation, Ireland will be pushing a well-resourced agenda called “Follow the Rainbow” which will be doing everything to legitimise a child’s right to live in their chosen gender at will while denying the truth that while a man should be free to live as a woman, he cannot turn into one.
As well as assailing women’s rights, issues like surrogacy are being driven by the fanatical male sexual rights movement.
If you can afford it, in the interests of a healthy and sane society, I suggest you subscribe to the News Letter, Gript and the FSU.
