Blasphemy law in the United Kingdom

Laws prohibiting blasphemy and blasphemous libel in the United Kingdom date back to the medieval times as common law and in some special cases as enacted legislation. The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were formally abolished in England and Wales in 2008 and Scotland in 2024. Equivalent laws remain in Northern Ireland.

Historically, blasphemy laws in England and Wales protected only Christianity, particularly the established Church of England, with prosecutions targeting those who denied Christian doctrine or mocked religious beliefs. The last person executed for blasphemy in Britain was Thomas Aikenhead, a 20-year-old Scottish student hanged in Edinburgh in 1697, while the last person imprisoned for blasphemy was John William Gott in 1921. The laws remained largely dormant until the landmark 1977 case Whitehouse v Lemon demonstrated they were still enforceable. The 1985 Law Commission recommended abolition of the offences, citing their anachronistic nature and incompatibility with modern human rights principles.

Following extensive campaigning by secular and religious groups, including Humanists UK and members of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished in England and Wales by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 had previously demonstrated Parliament's approach to addressing religious hatred by focusing on harm to individuals while explicitly protecting the right to criticise or attack religions as ideas and institutions. Scotland followed suit with the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, which came into effect in 2024. More recently, concerns have emerged in the 2020s that blasphemous self-expression was once again being criminalised through prosecutions under the Public Order Act 1986, leading to calls for further legislative reform to protect freedom of expression and freedom of religion.