Blacklisted for Speaking Out! - Free Speech Author on Cancel Culture and Self-Censorship

In his first interview since he published the book Mr Fairclough spoke out to GB News Originals podcast with a blunt warning. He believes Britain is sleepwalking into a "digital dictatorship."

“People think they can’t say basic truths anymore,” he said. “We’re building a secular religion - where logic is blasphemy, and debate is heresy.”

Until 2022, Mr Fairclough was best known for his unorthodox approach to education: running a pioneering school on a council estate in Eastbourne, where children raised livestock, lit fires, and learned real-world skills. Ministers, media, and even the BBC heaped praise on him.

But it all changed when he publicly criticised the Covid vaccine rollout for children - comments he made in his own time on social media. “I was investigated three times and cleared three times,” he says. “But the pressure was relentless. I was even referred to Prevent (the government's counter terrorism strategy) as if I were an extremist.”

Fed up with what he calls “a culture of cowardice and censorship,” Mr Fairclough walked away - straight into a delivery driver job. “It was humbling,” he admits. “But I found freedom.”

In his book, Mr Fairclough compares cancel culture to a modern-day inquisition. “There are sacred cows now,” he says. “Gender ideology, climate alarmism, diversity. If you challenge any of it, you’re treated like a heretic.”

He slams what he sees as groupthink across media, politics, and education. “Take J.K. Rowling,” he says. “She spoke up for women’s rights - and was ruthlessly attacked. It’s insane that stating men are not women is now controversial.”

And he says this orthodoxy is trickling down into classrooms: “Teachers are being told not to say ‘boys and girls’—to say ‘folks’ instead. I pushed back and was treated like a threat.”

Mr Fairclough’s warnings come as the government considers legislation that could see “offensive jokes” in pubs or workplaces treated as criminal offences - dubbed by critics as the "pub banter ban".

“It’s Marxism by stealth,” he said. “If people are too afraid to laugh, or speak plainly, we’ve lost something vital.”

He believes this creeping censorship is already reshaping the nation’s psyche. “People tell me all the time: ‘I agree with you, but you can’t say that anymore.’ That’s Britain’s unofficial social credit system.”

Mr Fairclough’s book also takes aim at what he calls the “climate cult” - and the double standards at its core.

“COP conferences packed with private jets. Billionaires with four homes lecturing us about carbon footprints. It’s hypocrisy on steroids,” he says. “If you believed the planet was burning, you wouldn’t be flying to Davos in a Gulfstream.”

He says children are being terrified unnecessarily. “We had acid rain in the ’80s, the ozone hole in the ’90s — now it’s climate Armageddon. Same panic, new packaging.”

That doesn’t mean he’s anti-environment. “I want clean rivers. I want real conservation. But this top-down alarmism is about control, not nature.”

Having trained in the mid-90s, Mr Fairclough says the teaching profession has lost its critical edge. “We studied Socrates and Vygotsky. Now staffroom chat is more likely to be about Love Island,” he says.

He believes new teachers are being groomed for conformity, not inquiry. “The capacity to think independently has been eroded. The system rewards silence.”

And what of his fellow educators? “Many agree with me. They just won’t say it publicly. They put job security above safeguarding children," he said.

In Cancel THIS, Mr Fairclough urges Brits to rediscover their backbone - not with violence, but with truth and satire.

“We need to mock the madness,” he says. “Defy the pub banter ban. Say what’s true. Laugh out loud. This is still Britain.”

He credits his resilience to tragedy - including the loss of his first wife - and a family legacy of wartime grit. “My grandfather survived the Battle of the Somme. Another escaped a Nazi POW camp. Speaking out is nothing compared to that."

Mr Fairclough is now earning more as an author and ghostwriter than he did as a headteacher - and has no plans to stop. “I’ve co-written a book on the supplements industry, and more are coming,” he says.

But his mission is bigger than books. “This is about cultural survival,” he said. “British people need to reclaim their voice - before it’s too late.”

Listen now: GB News Originals – “Cancel THIS: Mike Fairclough on Free Speech, Culture Wars and Speaking the Unspeakable.”

Cancel THIS by Mike Fairclough is out now from Fisher King Publishing – available on Amazon.