The case of Anita Meston, the teacher sacked by a secondary school for expressing pro-life views, deepens Britain’s reputation for suppressing Christian freedom of speech.
Leaders in US President Donald Trump’s administration are already very concerned about the UK’s track record. In his historic speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vice President JD Vance said “the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs”.
Vance highlighted the case of Adam Smith-Connor, the army veteran prosecuted for praying silently near an abortion clinic in Bournemouth. Vance’s feelings about this case registered strongly in his remarks.
He said: “A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes - not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
“And after British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied, simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
“Now, the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new ‘buffer zones’ law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could ‘influence’ a person's decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.”
Anita Meston’s legal action for discrimination against Biddick Academy near Sunderland is due to get a preliminary Employment Tribunal hearing on October 16. According to her lawyers at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the school sacked her for “expressing pro-life beliefs when honestly answering a question from a student during a lesson”.
Meston, 63, with 28 years’ teaching experience, was giving a history lesson for 12 to 13 year olds in Year 8 when a student “spontaneously” brought up the topic of abortion. The student asked her if she was “pro-abortion”, to which she responded that she was “pro-life”. In a different lesson, students also questioned Meston about her political views, “to which she responded briefly before directing students back to the lesson topic.”
ADF continues: “The following day, Meston was summoned to a meeting with the school’s headteacher, who informed her that a complaint had been made about the lesson and asked what had happened. At the end of the meeting, the headteacher informed Meston that she was not allowed to give her personal views in the classroom – despite the fact that she had only answered the questions briefly and honestly – and that her contract would be terminated.”
The optics of her case are truly terrible for the UK’s growing anti-free-speech reputation. Anyone who has been to school in a democratic country will have recollections of their teachers expressing their opinions in class, sometimes at length after being enticed to go on a “red herring”.
Meston apparently did not go on one of those but behaved professionally, giving brief answers to specific questions before getting on with her lessons.
Would she have been sacked if she had said she was “pro-choice” in answer to a pupil’s question? Would she have been sacked if she had said she was “pro-trans”? Would she have been sacked if she attacked Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, in a lesson?
A sinister aspect to Meston’s case is the evident Left-wing political bias in UK secondary schools. According to ADF, “during her time at Biddick Academy, a group of students repeatedly asked Meston for her views on Nigel Farage and Donald Trump during her lessons, to which she responded briefly that they were both popular politicians before returning to the subject of the lesson."
One pupil also asked Meston if she would be attending a Reform UK party conference in February 2025 after a student had seen the teacher at a Reform event on a previous occasion. Meston said she would be attending.
Would Meston have got into trouble for saying she was an active member of the Labour, the Liberal-Democrat or Green parties?
Pro-free-speech leaders in America such as JD Vance know the answer to all these questions, further cementing their perception that Britain is turning into an anti-Christian “North Korea by the North Sea”, to quote the phrase often used by Free Speech Union director, Toby Young. The Meston case shows the description is becoming disturbingly apposite.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
