Contemporary Cultural Boycotts
House of Lords · Grand Committee · 9 Jul 2026 · 16 speeches · Official Report
Question for Short Debate
Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the Freedom in the Arts report The New Boycott Crisis , published in February 2026, and of the impact on artistic freedom of contemporary cultural boycotts.
My Lords, I am delighted to have the chance to bring to the attention of the Government and the Committee the themes in this recent report, The New Boycott Crisis . If we value art as a crucial mirror on society, the corruption of art reflects social trends right back at us and we should look back closely, so I say many thanks go to those noble Lords who are doing that today. The report was launched here in Westminster at the end of April, alongside the Art Beyond Boycott Toolkit. It was a packed room with lots of cross-party attendance. The authors are co-founders of Freedom in the Arts, Rosie Kay, an award-winning choreographer, and Denise Fahmy, a senior arts professional, who teamed up with Reading University’s Professor Jo Phoenix. All three have experienced the vicious consequence of cancel culture. They combine their personal insights with oodles of professional knowledge to provide a multilayered investigation into how boycotts operate against different art forms, looking not just at individual artists but at gatekeepers such as venues, agents, managers and producers. Using survey data and qualitative interviews, the report shows how even the threat of cultural boycotts is leading to anticipatory cancellation, institutional anxiety, silent boycotts and self-censorship. The report is so on the money that it got extensive media coverage even in the same crowded week as the local elections. Significantly, it was picked up by specialist publications such as Arts...
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for bringing forward this important debate. The Freedom in the Arts report raises important questions about artistic freedom and the role of our cultural institutions in an increasingly polarised society. While Members may reach different conclusions about some of the findings, I believe it presents us with an opportunity to reflect on the kind of cultural institutions we want for our country. Art has always challenged society. It can inspire, provoke, comfort and sometimes unsettle us. Shakespeare explored powers, prejudice, justice and the human condition. I am sure each of us can think of a contemporary work of art that has challenged our assumptions or encouraged us to see the world through different eyes. Great art does more than entertain, it invites us to question, reflect and better understand one another. That is why the arts matter not only to our economy but to our national identity and to the strength of our democracy itself? Drawing on my experience of leading one of London’s most diverse boroughs, I think that one of the greatest lessons that I have learned is that good leadership is not about eliminating difference; it is about creating the conditions for respectful dialogue, where people of different backgrounds, faiths, cultures and perspectives can come together, encounter new ideas and learn from one another. That is why our theatres, galleries, museums and festivals are so important. They are...
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for securing this debate. The New Boycott Crisis raises issues that go well beyond disagreements over politics or foreign affairs. It asks whether we are still willing to defend one of the defining characteristics of a free society-the freedom to create, perform, exhibit and debate without fear of ideological intimidation. Art has always challenged orthodoxies. It provokes, unsettles and encourages us to see the world differently. That is precisely why artistic freedom matters. If artists, writers, musicians and performers feel compelled to self-censor because of organised campaigns, threats or pressure to conform to a political orthodoxy, our cultural life is diminished. The report documents a growing trend of cancellations, boycotts and institutional pressure directed not at the quality of artistic work but at the ethnicity, religion, perceived political views or associations of those producing it. Hearing the stories from the founders of Freedom in the Arts, Denise Fahmy, Rosie Kay and others, at the launch in April, was powerful and shocking, especially to those who were not really aware of how quickly cancellation happens and how brutal it is. Throughout history, boycotts based on identity have rarely advanced understanding. During the Cold War, we rightly welcomed Soviet dissidents, musicians and writers, rather than excluding them; we recognised that culture builds bridges where politics erects...
My Lords, this subject is one of those where you suddenly think, “Yes, there shouldn’t be any form of cancellation”-here, primarily on grounds of antisemitism. I have always felt it to be rather absurd that the Abrahamic religions attack each other over which day they pray on, given that half the time they are all referring to similar texts, but let us go into this issue in further detail. I turn to the recommendations in the report. It admits that it is not the most scientific of structures but, still, questions around taking on the law and training for organisations have been asked. It says that on page 6. What are the Government going to do to make sure that there are training schemes? I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is not a fan of them; we have clashed on this in the past. We need to go through this and have a look at what we are doing to make sure that there is knowledge of the legal duties going forward, because that seems to be the issue here. The question of whether you are breaking the law if you do not allow somebody to do something that is legal and is not threatening somebody else seems to be the real question here. Let us remember that, although one organisation may be under pressure now, another one will be tomorrow. Other groups have been cancelled and other people have been pressured. Things have changed. Look at our own society: we have Protestants and Catholics-I speak as somebody whose background is half from the west coast of Scotland. These...
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for introducing the debate, which is of course timely. I thank Freedom of the Arts for this report, but I thank in particular the artists, the performers and the writers who found the courage to describe what has been happening to them. Speaking out is never easy when doing so may cost you your next role. This report does not allege formal censorship. It describes something quieter and in some ways more sinister and more troubling. It calls it “the silent boycott”. Opportunities simply disappear. Invitations are quietly withdrawn. Projects never quite materialise. Emails are left unanswered. Careers stall not for a want of talent but because of an artist’s Jewish identity or assumptions made about it. This has become something that institutions would rather manage than defend. The report is candid about the cause. Institutions are increasingly driven by fear: fear of a social media pile-on, fear of activist pressure, fear of internal disputes or fear of a controversy that has not even happened yet. Decisions are being taken pre-emptively before a single complaint is even made. This is not caution. Once an institution starts programming to avoid a row rather than to reward excellence, artistic freedom does not stay intact for long. Let me be clear about what this debate is not. It is not about shielding anyone from criticism or closing down legitimate political debate, including robust arguments on the Middle East....
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for introducing this important debate. Freedom of expression has always been the lifeblood of great art. Art flourishes through freedom, not conformity. History reminds us what happens when freedom is lost. In the Soviet Union, writers and artists who challenged the official ideology were censored, blacklisted, imprisoned or sent to the Gulag. My own family experienced that world. My aunt was a dissident writer and a close friend of both Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anna Akhmatova. She chose satire as her way to defy the regime, rather than open political confrontation. Even so, she spent days under interrogation in the Lubyanka. She watched friends and fellow writers disappear into the Gulag, including her friend Solzhenitsyn. Like Akhmatova, she knew that in such a climate silence could become a means of survival. Britain is not the Soviet Union, and I am not suggesting otherwise, but history teaches us that freedom is rarely lost overnight. It is eroded gradually as people begin to censor themselves, because they fear the consequences of speaking openly. The New Boycott Crisis suggests that this climate of fear is now affecting our cultural sector. As James Marriott wrote in the Times , something has gone badly wrong. A world once built on talent, merit and creative risk has, he argues, been replaced by a culture of fear, informal sanctions and institutional cowardice. The report identifies two groups as...
My Lord, in his great essay The Prevention of Literature , George Orwell wrote: “imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity”. I think this is a little commented-on reason why the current repression of free speech and freedom in the arts is such a problem. It affects not only those whose opinions are repressed but everybody. That repression is obviously outrageous in its own terms, with the shocking levels of antisemitism that have been documented and the bias against gender-critical views and even simple views on the right of politics. I congratulate Rosie Kay and Denise Fahmy for drawing attention to it in this excellent report, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for getting today’s debate. As we know and as the report documents, the repression of free speech and the spread of antisemitism have had seriously bad effects on those directly affected. We know that. It constrains what they can produce, and it may force them entirely out of the sector. There are some telling quotes to this effect in the report, such as one artist saying: “I realised how much of myself I had edited out just to survive”, or: “You make terrible art when you are cowering”. This is clear-it is sort of obvious-but my point is that the effect is on not only those affected in this way, but on everybody else. It is on those who somehow get through it. A politicised art sector produces a lot of bad art, and we have had quite a lot of it recently. On the London stage, from 20...
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for securing this debate. I must start by declaring my interest as a trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Freedom in the Arts report gives us valuable insight into the worrying state of the arts and cultural sector. As it states, there is “an interconnected web of … practices … that collectively polices the boundaries of acceptable thought, association, expression and programming within the arts”. Unsurprisingly, mechanisms that allocate artistic funding funnel most support to currently prominent causes-climate activism, support for Palestine and opposition to Israel, transgender activism and anti-racism-and generally raise the status of people and organisations associated with those causes. But there are damaging consequences to this narrowing, which everyone should be concerned about, whatever their level of interest in and support for those causes. Like my noble friend Lady Meyer, I take a historical perspective. In western Europe, it was really only in the 15th century that it became socially acceptable and normal to portray non-religious subjects in art. Over several centuries, the Catholic Church none the less monitored art ferociously to enforce approved narratives and discourage the spread of Protestant ideas, using the social penalties it could impose to make artists’ lives difficult-read the story of Veronese’s “Last Supper”. We do not want to return to inquisitions, whether by Governments,...
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for securing this debate and Freedom in the Arts for its report, which certainly is rich and detailed. I am sorry that time means that I cannot do justice to all the noble Lords who have spoken before me, but I certainly associate myself with all those who have spoken out about our need to have constant vigilance and zero tolerance of antisemitism. However, I want to focus on one particular aspect of cancel culture that is identified in the report, and that is the targeting of sponsors of those who fund the arts and who are essential for us to have what should be our starting point-that a healthy arts sector is fundamental to a healthy democracy. Protests, dissent, satire have long been the sources of the best art, and the priorities should always be to enable the most artistic expression possible without fear or favour. That is not to say that art exists in a space free from values. There will always be boundaries. But we should want to make the artistic square as large and inclusive as possible, and that means we need diverse funding, including sponsorship. When it comes to the choices made, as other noble Lords have said, there should be a clear distinction between things that are illegal and things that simply some people do not like. I look at the recent example of the Sporting Events Bill in your Lordships’ House. There were assorted amendments proposed that would have banned sponsorship from fossil fuel...
My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for bringing forward this debate and to Freedom in the Arts for having produced this excellent and timely report. I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union and will try and put a human face on what we are talking about. There are plenty of examples in The New Boycott Crisis . I thought I might give some examples from our own case files. We have fought on behalf of 150 artists, writers and performers in the last six years of our existence, all of whom have been targeted for cancellation or, indeed, cancelled because they expressed views that other people disapprove of. Where possible, we have tried to help them. It is worth noting that more than one-third of the more than 150 people we have come to the aid of have been targeted for cancellation because they have expressed their gender-critical views. That is, I think, the coalface in the arts; it is what people find themselves cancelled or targeted for cancellation for more often than expressing any other point of view. Rosie Kay is a case in point, someone who I am proud to say the Free Speech Union was able to help when she was targeted for cancellation in 2021. It is fantastic to see her recover so magnificently. I shall give the Committee some other examples. There was a case last year involving Martin Speake. He was referred to the Free Speech Union by Freedom in the Arts, with whom we have a close working relationship. Martin...
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, on securing this debate and thank her and Freedom in the Arts for the work that they have done in highlighting these problems. Above all, as others have done, I thank those individual artists who have come forward to share their experiences. The experience of being marginalised, sidelined and silenced can be lonely and frightening, and I hope they feel a bit less lonely and frightened after today’s debate. This has been a good debate-rational, articulate and well-informed. We do not all agree on everything, but we have all agreed very strongly about the importance of hearing diverse perspectives and differing opinions. We do so enjoying parliamentary privilege, which allows us to speak freely here. Lots of our arts and cultural organisations do not have the protections of Parliament or the legislative protections that higher education institutions have to preserve free speech, so it is right that we are vigilant in how they are applying their duties. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, was right about making sure that people are well informed on their legal responsibilities and their founding charters, as well as ensuring that trustees and others take those duties very seriously. Arts organisations have a duty to challenge, provoke and inform us, not to hector, censor or boycott. The noble Baroness, Lady Dacres of Lewisham, was right to say that, at their best, the arts enable us to see things through others’...
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for initiating this important debate and all noble Lords for their valuable contributions. As the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, made clear, even where individuals do not agree with each other, it is important that we have this discussion. The debate has reflected many of the issues raised by The New Boycott Crisis , which was published by Freedom in the Arts earlier this year. During the debate, I particularly welcomed the historical perspectives from the noble Baronesses, Lady Spielman and Lady Meyer. I start by addressing the critical points made by a number of noble Lords-including the noble Lords, Lord Addington, Lord Polak, Lord Frost, Lord Doyle and Lord Parkinson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman-on the scourge of antisemitism in the arts, as highlighted in the report in stark detail, which reflects the wider and, regrettably, growing antisemitism more broadly in society. I want to make it explicitly clear that this Government find antisemitism, wherever it may raise its ugly head, both abhorrent and completely unacceptable. We will do whatever it takes to work with the Jewish community to tackle it in wider society. Antisemitism has no place in our society and, as the Prime Minister made clear in May at a summit he held on the issue, it is our shared responsibility to tackle rising antisemitism. Since that summit, we have been working with the Arts Council on plans for an independent audit...
Sitting suspended.