OTR 1 Year Anniversary | FSU Guest Speaker

🥂Celebrating Off The Record’s First Anniversary with a Guest Speaker from the Free Speech Union

Notes from the Hostess:

It is remarkable to think that only a year ago Off The Record hadn’t even existed as Project, let alone a Community or a Platform. Late in the evening of August 2025, I was finalising the logo, and getting the first domain name (which, I must admit, wasn’t even fully suited to the purpose) as well as making preparations for the first “pilot” Session — without any Guest Speakers as such — and purely advertised as a concept, just to see if anyone would be interested in coming together at all. About a week later — on the 5th September 2025 — we have held the first “Pilot Session” at Louis Marchesi, where roughly 10 people came together for the first trial discussion of this kind. I am very happy to say that as of August 2026, we’ve now got a Community with a few hundreds of people keeping tabs on the Sessions, a presence on Meetup, Eventbrite, Social Medias, WhatsApp Group, and a Newsletter. We’ve had just under 15 Sessions with politicians, academics, legal professionals, and professionals from a wide range of other fields.

I, personally, find it quite symbolic to welcome a Representative of a Free Speech Union as a Guest Speaker of Honour on the date of OTR’s First Anniversary, given the close similarity in foundational values and beliefs.

We welcome you to join us on this celebration:

🗓️ 27.08.26
🕕 18:00 doors open; 18:30 start
📍St Giles House Hotel

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Talk Description:

In Britain today, people are losing their jobs, being arrested by the police, and facing disciplinary action at their universities for saying things that are perfectly lawful. The climate around freedom of expression — one of our most fundamental rights — has shifted, and for many, the cost of speaking their mind has become very real.

The Free Speech Union was founded in 2020 to lead the fight back. It stands for freedom of speech, of conscience, and of intellectual inquiry — the foundational freedoms on which all others depend — and believes that if society doesn't uphold the right to express controversial, unpopular, or unwelcome opinions, it doesn't uphold free speech at all. Since its founding it has fought over 6,000 cases for people who found themselves in trouble for speaking their mind, and has built a membership of over 45,000.
In this talk, Vinay Kapoor — the FSU's Education and Engagement Officer — draws on real cases and national trends to open up an honest conversation about free speech in Britain today: who is under threat, what the law does and does not protect, whether the law itself is the problem, and what it all reveals about the culture we are living in. An introduction to the issues — and an invitation to argue about them.

Bio:

Vinay Kapoor is the Education and Engagement Officer at the Free Speech Union (FSU), a non-partisan mass membership organisation that stands up for freedom of speech in the UK and campaigns for free speech change more broadly. He leads the FSU's work with young people and administers the Ian Mactaggart Programme, a grant-giving programme that supports students and young people to foster open debate and free expression in the UK. He graduated with a first-class degree in Politics from the University of Warwick, where he was Founder and President of Warwick Speak Easy (2023–2025), a free speech society promoting the open debate and discussion of ideas.

Some of Vinay's work:

• Instagram Video: Vinay Kapoor on Freedom of Speech
• Building a Culture of Free Expression on Campus
• Vinay on TalkTV

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