For years, the hate group ‘Free Speech Union’ has been funding anti-trans lawsuits. Now you can see their funders.

The donor information comes from a leak of information organized by BASH BACK after it hacked the FSU website.

By Jane Migliara Brigham

‘Free Speech Union’, a far-right campaigning group funding anti-trans lawsuits in the UK, has had its funders revealed and publicized by BASH BACK, a trans-organized direct action group.  

The list of donors includes anyone who made a donation to the group valued at over £50, with over 3,000 names and donations being listed.  

Attached to the list are any messages sent to the organization along with the donations.  Most of these messages consist of donors telling the organization they are doing important work in defending free speech.  Relatively rare in these comments is any mention of what the money is actually supposed to be used for

All this can be found here:

Free Speech Union donor data - Distributed Denial of Secrets

A leaked list of donor information for Free Speech Union (FSU), a group associated with far-right activist and eugenicist Toby Young. According to a press release from the source: The leaked recor…

Distributed Denial of Secretsmx_yzptlk

The money was mostly being used to fund lawsuits made against trans people, largely in the service of defending public harassment against them as a class of people.  

This is evidenced in their pattern of providing legal defenses for anti-trans lawsuits, most famously in their persistent defence of anti-trans activist and former TV writer Graham Linehan.

The group who made the hack, BASH BACK, is a direct action group fighting the ongoing persecution of trans people in the United Kingdom.  They were founded in summer of 2025, where they smashed up the offices of UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has banned puberty blockers for trans kids, and who is in the running to become the next prime minister.

BASH BACK has also vandalized the office of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the public body tasked with implementing last year's Supreme Court decision stating that the definitions of male and female were set at birth.

An earlier investigation by The Needle prompted the release of information proving the EHRC doesn’t have internal or policy definitions of male and female, despite their mandate to implement the UK Supreme Court’s decision.

The BASH BASH spokesperson stated:

“The FSU purports to be an advocacy group for freedom of expression, but - as this leaked information shows - they represent a security fund for attention-seeking reactionaries backed by the ultra-wealthy. They use their funders’ deep pockets to repress ordinary people and impose a two-tier justice system where wealthy transphobes and racists can preach hate whilst those who oppose genocide are imprisoned and abused, or otherwise subject to police violence. In a time where free speech is under attack, not by “wokism” or minorities, but by an increasingly authoritarian state, the so-called ‘Free Speech Union’ sets its sights instead on protecting powerful bigots from the consequences of their public tantrums.”

This recent hack fits into a larger pattern of direct action by BASH BACK against the people and groups who persecute trans people.  As normal channels fail to address their grievances the group has stated, “there has never been a time more urgent for direct action against the establishment.”