The debanking phenomenon is probably far more widespread than we’ve been led to believe, writes Toby in Spiked, “mainly because the majority of people it has happened to are too embarrassed to talk about it”. Here’s an excerpt.
When I got a message from PayPal last year telling me my personal account had been closed, my initial reaction was shame. Being deplatformed by a financial-services company, whether a bank or a payment processor, is a mark of Cain. You wonder what you’ve done to deserve being cast out in this way. The last thing you feel like doing is drawing attention to it, not least because it might lead to losing your other bank accounts.
When I discovered that PayPal had also closed the accounts of the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic, both organisations I run, that initial wave of embarrassment was replaced by anger. And after going through the internal appeals processes, I decided to launch a public campaign to get the accounts reinstated. This worked, but I haven’t used PayPal since. Meanwhile, the Free Speech Union has been lobbying the U.K. Treasury for the past nine months to put a stop to this sinister new form of cancel culture.
Based on my own experience, I reckon the debanking phenomenon is far more widespread than we’ve been led to believe – mainly because the majority of people it has happened to are too embarrassed to talk about it. If I didn’t have a public profile and friends in Parliament, I probably would have kept quiet about it, too.
One clue as to how prevalent this phenomenon might be could be glimpsed in a line in a recent Times article. It was about the Royal Bank of Scotland closing the account of Professor Lesley Sawers, the equalities and human-rights commissioner for Scotland. The article mentioned in passing that there’s a Facebook group called ‘NatWest closed down my account’ that has almost 10,000 members. Of course, not all of these cases will be related to people’s political views. But given the current trends, it’s reasonable to suspect that some are.
Since I went public about what happened to me, the Free Speech Union has had a regular trickle of people getting in touch to tell us they have also had their accounts closed. Then, when Nigel Farage claimed that he had been debanked a couple of weeks ago, that trickle turned into a torrent. We’re now working on some guidance for our members about how to complain to the financial ombudsman if you’ve lost an account. We’re also doing some research into how respectful each payment processor is of its customers’ free speech. The aim is to give all of them a score out of 10, depending on how they react to customers who say something unorthodox but perfectly lawful. So far, none has been awarded a score of more than three.
Farage’s case is a good example of why it’s risky to publicly complain about being debanked. Coutts, the elite bank he had used for over 40 years, went straight to the BBC, telling one of its journalists that the reason his account was closed is because he didn’t have enough money to bank with them. Essentially, Coutts told the world that it debanked him because he’s too poor to hang out with the rich folks.
Toby concludes:
The more public pressure we can apply to the Government – and to banks and payment-services providers – the more likely we are to put a stop to this abhorrent form of censorship. So if anyone reading this has been debanked, I’d urge you to contact the Free Speech Union. And, if possible, swallow your pride and kick up an almighty fuss.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
One of the most alarming things about this scandal is that one of the main perpetrators of debanking seems to be the Nat West Group. Both Coutts and RBS are owned by NWG.
In turn, NWG is still 39% owned by the Government. Essentially, this is state sponsored activity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NatWest_Group#:~:text=The%20Royal%20Bank%20of%20Scotland%20International%2C%20trading%20as%20NatWest%20International,banking%20arm%20of%20NatWest%20Group.
One of my domestic business accounts with Natwest was closed in 2018 by faceless uncommunicative and apparently incompetent operators in a Coventry office who repeatedly claimed I had not sent them documents ( I had,3 times, twice with proof of postage) and claimed falsely that they had contacted me several times ( they had not, only twice ). The local business manager admitted this was a problem and they were powerless to intervene. He and several colleagues have lost their jobs through decentralization and branch closures. I was reminded of First They Came – by Pastor Martin Niemöller
I moved the account to Barclays who recently seem to be running the same script. I heard that Natwest over the last 4 years have been equally as Kafkaesque.
Time for some independent form of community banking. We already practice barter/exchange of goods and services which without money exchange cuts the treasury out too..
Indeed. Browsing through that, it appears that, although the Gov has sold a lot of it’s shares (it owned about 2/3 of the whole lot for a while), it made a loss overall. Perhaps the Treasury should open a simplified national branch providing basic services to the general public. A bit like National Savings handling cash, maybe.
Incidentally, if they are trading on the NYSE, they are likely to be liable to pay US tax.
Sign GB News’s petition to the government not to let cash become obsolete before 2050.
https://www.gbnews.com/cash
Signed it a few days ago.
Thanks Toby good article and thanks for fighting back. If it can happen to you, Farage and the Christian Priest in Yorkshire, it can happen to us all. Coercion is the usual method of choice for fascist or totalitarian cults, regimes or programs. Debanking is a potent coercive weapon which our enemies who control gov’t and most large banks, are going to use more often. I believe this phenomenon (illegal, immoral, unconstitutional) will only accelerate. We all need a backup plan, what that is exactly I am not clever enough to come up with, but we need one.
We’re now working on some guidance for our members…
Yes, grateful thanks are due to Toby and the FSU. DS subscriber @NeilofWatford has suggested (more than once IIRC) we need a league table of woke companies … an excellent idea. Some guidance on that would be much appreciated too.
Well, well, well…. In the BBC bingo of guess the presenter who the winning presenter is Huw Edwards
https://www.gbnews.com/news/huw-edwards-bbc-presenter-wife-statement
Nooooo!😲 Never in a million years would I have suspected Huw. Blimey, I’m staggered.😟
The most dangerous predators are the ones who you least expect or trust the most….
I didn’t know he was suffering from depression. Well this isn’t exactly going to serve him. How will someone like him recover from this??
Hey nice little sneaky dump BTW. When you’ve gotta go you’ve gotta go with a hot potato like that!😉 Hopefully Hardliner isn’t on shift tonight.🤫🤭
Seems to fit in with the general theme of cancelling for being persona non grata though, you have to admit 😄
😀😀😀
“I didn’t know he was suffering from depression.”
Are you on the Smirnoff Mogs?
Why it was only last evening he gave a 10 minute lecture on Libel and Deformation from his chair in the newsroom, telling all the little people that they ran the risk of being sued if they didn’t shut up. Now this. I wonder if they might be connected.?
Looks like there’s more to come & his wife’s statement is part of his legal strategy….
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22987085/huw-edwards-revealed-bbc-presenter-sex-pics-scandal-youngsters/
God…how would you react if you were his wife? Me or him would be straight out the door. Couldn’t possibly live under the same roof as him after all of these revelations. Divorce lawyer, stat. I’d feel like I’d been living with a stranger who’d been leading a double life! Hope she’s not one of those pathetic doormat women who just stick with a man who blatantly neither loves nor respects her, he just wants to have his cake and eat it and only says he’s sorry because he was caught!😤 And 17yrs old? I’d wanna see his hard drive as well, and no that’s not a euphemism!🧐🔍💾🖥
He’d be out. No questions asked. Especially with children in the house.
This was posted on the Lawyers of Light Telegram Channel about this before he was named. Calls out, with references to the appropriate legislation, the failings of the Met in investigating or not this case.
Charles Malet Unbound Today
“The obfuscation and conjecture surrounding the ‘BBC presenter’ story acts as a smokescreen covering the extremely suspect relationship between the BBC and the Met Police, as well as the perfectly astonishing efforts taken by the BBC to suppress the story in the first place.
Quite why the ‘victim’s’ family did not go to the police at the outset does not appear clear. It would be hard to blame them for thinking that they would not be believed. However, in airing a complaint of this nature to the BBC, they should have expected a prompt and robust set of actions. Instead, it looks as though Tim Davie has been bounced into doing something only by the Sun’s reporting on the matter.
Even if the BBC were not aware of the specific nature of the complaint from May of this year, taking four days to get in touch with police might well amount to the indictable offence of perverting the course of justice (max sentence is life): https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/public-justice-offences-incorporating-charging-standard.
At the very least, it is hard to see how those that had any awareness of the situation from May would not be subject to investigation for ‘concealing offences’, under section 5 of the Criminal Law Act 1967 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1967/58/section/5.
The Protection of Children Act 1978 stipulates a maximum sentence of 10 years for possessing indecent images of children (which does include 17 year-olds): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1978/37
That the Met Police has put out a statement saying that they are ‘assessing the information’ and making ‘further enquiries…to establish whether there is evidence of a criminal offence being committed’ is, without doubt, to give the BBC and its personnel special treatment. More or less the only reason that an allegation can be dismissed at the point of inception is if a police constable happened to be on the scene and can rebut the information immediately. In other words, they appear to be suggesting that they are not actually investigating this.
The immediate action on receipt of an allegation is to raise a crime report, which does constitute an investigation, even if it never goes as far as interviewing a suspect. This looks very much as though the Met are giving the BBC the benefit of the doubt, which is not within their gift to give.
However, they are investigating an allegation of a ‘malicious communication’, which will be someone having taken a guess on social media. Rest assured, we will hear plenty about this.”
It reminds me of Tarantino in Pulp Fiction:
‘I’m gonna get divorced? All right? No marriage counselling, no trial separation, I’m gonna get f***ing divorced, okay? And I don’t want to get fucking divorced!’
I dunno but I’m thinking this page should just be renamed ‘The Shame Of Being Huw Edwards’. 😮
On the Edwards front. He will now be portrayed as a victim of ‘mental health’. Perpetrator turns victim.
We will then be told that he paid these young men via Only Fans. By law, you have to be over 18 to parade yourself on Only Fans. Thus, it’s Only Fans failure to ensure the welfare of both their underage tempter & their overage voyeur.
Edwards will follow Schofield, he’ll out himself & we’ll be expected to feel sorry for him & call him brave.
Yep, I’m with this lady. Same as what you’re saying. He’ll try and play the mental health card as some last ditch attempt to try and garner the sympathy vote. It’s pathetic and doesn’t wash. Don’t know the ages of the kids but it’s irrelevant because they all have to face people and carry on leading their day to day lives. How will this effect them? Everyone knowing your dad is a massive perv! This is where the wife comes in and needs to demonstrate what a strong role model of a parent looks like and keep things together for the kids’ sake. How will they ever forgive their dad behaving like this? Yeah Schofield will be well relieved the spotlight’s not on him any more.
”Huw Edwards does NOT get to play the mental health card.
If the alleged claims are true that he paid £35K for nude pictures of SCHOOL BOYS, he deserves no sympathy.
He is married with five kids. They have to live with this.
This is disgusting and utterly indefensible.”
Interesting comments underneath too.
https://twitter.com/AnnaMcGovernUK/status/1679196697174343690
“Edwards will follow Schofield, he’ll out himself & we’ll be expected to feel sorry for him & call him brave.”
And further clampdowns on social media networks will ensue.
BB guilty of an off-topic dump.
😀😀
I don’t buy this.
I can’t believe that paedos have to pay tens of thousands of £s for their photos.
Oops, missed.
Sign GB News’s petition to the government not to let cash become obsolete before 2050.
https://www.gbnews.com/cash
https://youtu.be/-PmLP5dP8_8
Christine Anderson in the EU telling the WHO:
“You picked a fight, now you’ve got a fight.’
Two minutes. Brilliant.
The whole point of CBDC’s (and a cashless society) is so that we will all live permanently in fear of being de-banked …. and will therefore conform to the Globalists’ agenda.
The banks are just priming the fear …..
Use cash as much as you possibly can.
Has Huw Edwards been de-banked? Asking for a friend.
Farage’s case is a good example of why it’s risky to publicly complain about being debanked. Coutts, the elite bank he had used for over 40 years, went straight to the BBC, telling one of its journalists that the reason his account was closed is because he didn’t have enough money to bank with them. Essentially, Coutts told the world that it debanked him because he’s too poor to hang out with the rich folks.
This is a bit misleading. Coutts didn’t go straight to the BBC. They said nothing for several days after Farage complained he had been debanked and even then we don’t know if they went to the journalist or the journalist took the initiative and managed to winkle out the story from contacts. While I don’t approve of it, it is standard part of Coutts T&Cs that you have to be rich to have an account with them – nothing political about it. Plebs can always take out a Nat West account and apparently Farage was offered one – so they weren’t debanking him.