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- Apologies for the long post but this affects us all
Football fan banned over gender-critical posts after ‘Stasi’ Premier League investigation
It’s great to see news of our latest case in the Telegraph – and it’s arguably our biggest yet!
In the four years since the FSU was formed, we’ve come across some pretty appalling examples of private companies punishing their employers and their customers simply for exercising their right to lawful free speech. But this is the most egregious instance we’ve come across.
At the heart of this case is die-hard football fan Linzi Smith and the outrageous way she’s been treated by the club she supports – Newcastle United Football Club (NUFC) – for expressing views that don’t align with fashionable orthodoxy.
That part of the story is, in itself, bad enough. But what the FSU has also uncovered while providing Linzi with support and assistance is a shadowy intelligence unit embedded in the Premier League, whose job appears to be snooping on football fans, checking their social media accounts, and then determining if they’ve engaged in wrongthink.
In Linzi’s case, NUFC reached out to the Premier League to help investigate her and the League then tasked its spy unit with compiling a dossier on her, which it then handed over to the club. At that point, NUFC took the decision to ban her from attending games for the rest of this season and for the next two.
We fear that what happened to Linzi could – probably already has – happened to other football fans of Premier League clubs.
Unlikely as it may sound, our national game has suddenly become the battleground in the latest fight to defend free speech.
Linzi is a 34-year-old female NUFC fan. (Click the image at the top of this story to watch FSU General Secretary Toby Young’s interview with Linzi). She’s passionate about her local team, and will regularly buy tickets for home games at St. James’s Park. But she’s now no longer able to do that.
Her ‘crime’ in the eyes of her hometown team – the club to whom she’s given tens of thousands of pounds over her lifetime? Expressing ‘gender critical’ views on social media.
Linzi’s ordeal began on 1st November last year when she was suspended as a member of NUFC’s supporters’ club because of supposedly “hateful” things she’d said on X (formerly Twitter).
NUFC contacted Linzi via email to let her know that she was being investigated by the police for a possible hate crime and that she was being suspended from the club as a result. This caused Linzi considerable alarm and distress as she had not been contacted by the police at that point. It took some days before the police were able to confirm that any investigation was underway.
We can understand a football club wanting to exclude a fan who’d engaged in online abuse of players or officials, particularly racist abuse.
But that’s not what happened here.
At no stage was Linzi charged by the police with committing an offence, and Northumbria Police, having interviewed her after her supposedly ‘transphobic’ remarks were reported to them, decided that no action needed to be taken.
Not that that’s particularly surprising. One of the ‘hateful’ posts which resulted in the investigation read: “Just your daily reminder that transwomen are men.” The others were of a similar nature, expressing her belief in the biological reality of sex. These are views that are shared by the vast majority of the British population, and – ironically – the Saudi owners of NUFC.
With the FSU’s help, Linzi appealed the ban, pointing out that the club appears to have ignored its obligations as a service provider not to discriminate against her based on her gender critical beliefs, which constitute protected philosophical beliefs under the Equality Act 2010. Alas, it was to no avail, as the appeal panel – consisting of the club’s Head of Safeguarding, Head of Supporter Services, and Commercial Venue Director – upheld its original decision and concluded that the sanction was “appropriate”.
One of the most shocking aspects of Linzi’s case is that when the club responded to her appeal it sent her a cache of documents that included a report that had been compiled by the Premier League’s very own intelligence unit.
It appears that, as part of the evidence against Linzi, NUFC considered a raft of personal information compiled by this unit.
What emerges from this concerning report is evidence of considerable surveillance, intended to prove that Linzi, the NUFC supporter, was the owner of the X account from which the ‘offensive’ X posts were sent.
Chillingly, the report refers to Linzi as the “target”.
Attempts were made to find out where she lived. Google images were used to assess photos on her X timeline, and identify her precise location. Photos were downloaded in which she can be seen walking her dog in a park near to where she lives. The fact that she has “ties” to nearby Whitley Bay was also noted.
We think the fact that the Premier League compiled and passed on this detailed personal information about Linzi to NUFC is a flagrant breach of GDPR – and with our help she’s now submitted a complaint to the information regulator, the ICO.
While we continue to help Linzi to secure justice in this case, it’s clear that another, equally pressing issue has arisen: just how many other fans are being monitored by the ‘Stadium Stasi’? And how many have been similarly penalised – not for racist abuse, but for expressing perfectly reasonable, mainstream political views that fall foul of fashionable dogma?
We suspect we know the answer to that question, but we’d like to know for sure.
That’s why we’re asking for your support.
If you’re a fan of a Premier League team, and you’ve ever expressed perfectly lawful but ‘non-woke’ views on social media in the past, on this subject or any other, please go to our website and use our new, automatic form to submit a subject access request, both to your Premier League club and to the Premier League itself.
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