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.

England and Wales The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished in England and Wales by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. See also Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006.

Ecclesiastical offences

The offence of blasphemy was originally part of canon law. In 1378, at the command of Pope Gregory XI, persecution of John Wycliffe and the Lollards was undertaken. However, the only punishment available to the bishops at the time was excommunication. The clergy, dissatisfied with this, forged an act of Parliament, without the assent of the Lords or Commons, enabling the arrest and imprisonment of heretics. In the following year an attempt was made by Parliament to repeal the act, which prompted a series of prosecutions, and the repeal failed. Not satisfied with their new powers, further powers were sought and granted under King Henry IV in 1401 through the statute De heretico comburendo. These new powers allowed the bishops to arrest and imprison all preachers of heresy, all schoolmasters infected with heresy, and all owners and writers of heretical books. On refusal to abjure (solemnly renounce) or relapse after abjuration, the heretic could be handed over to civil officers, to be taken to a high place before the people and there be burnt, so that their punishment might strike fear in the hearts and minds of others. In April 1399, William Sawtrey was convicted of heresy and put to penance by his bishop. He was again arrested on 12 February 1401, as a relapsed heretic and was convicted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Sawyer was burnt on 2 March, eight days before the power to inflict such punishment was granted. There is a long list of those burnt, or hanged and burnt, between 1414 and 1506. In the 17th century, blasphemy was declared a common law offence by the Court of King's Bench, punishable by the common law courts.

In 1656, the Quaker James Naylor was sentenced by the Second Protectorate Parliament to flogging, to be pilloried, branded on the forehead and the piercing of his tongue by a red-hot poker, and thereafter kept in prison on hard labour indefinitely. In sentencing Naylor, the judge, Lord Commissioner Whitelock, makes the distinction between heresy and blasphemy.

Common law offences From the 16th century to the mid-19th century, blasphemy against Christianity was held as an offence against common law. When formulating his new Church of England's doctrines in the 1530s, Henry VIII made it an offence to say or print any opinion that contradicted the Six Articles (1539).Temperman & Koltay, p. 121. Blasphemy was also used as a legal instrument to persecute atheists, Unitarians, and others. Ever since 1838, blasphemy was considered to be only a crime against beliefs of the Church of England.

All blasphemies against God, including denying his being or providence, all contumelious reproaches of Jesus Christ, all profane scoffing at the Holy Scriptures, and exposing any part thereof to contempt or ridicule, were punishable by the temporal courts with death, imprisonment, corporal punishment and fine. In 1656, two weavers, William Bond and Thomas Hibbord were indicted in Wiltshire for atheistic statements. In May of the same year, Alexander Agnew, known as "Jock of Broad Scotland", was convicted and hanged for blasphemy in Dumfries.

Taylor's CaseTaylor's Case (1676) 1 Vent 293, (1676) 86 ER 189, (1676) 3 Keb 607 in 1676 was the first reported case of the common law offence of blasphemy.The Law Commission. Offences against religion and public worship. Working paper no. 79. 1981. p. 5 It is unclear whether or not there were any unreported earlier cases.The Law Commission. Offences against religion and public worship. Working paper no. 79. 1981. p. 6. note 11.Nokes. A History of the Crime of Blasphemy. 1928. pp. 42 to 53.Leigh, Not to judge but to save (1978) Cambrian LR 56 Lord Sumner said "Taylor's case is the foundation stone of this part of the law".Bowman v Secular Society Ltd AC 406 at 457

The report by Ventris contains the following passage:

In Rex v Woolston,R v Woolston (1729) Fitzg 64, (1729) 94 ER 655, (1729) 1 Barn KB 162, (1729) 94 ER 112, (1729) 2 Str 834, (1729) 93 ER 881 "the Court declared they would not suffer it to be debated, whether to write against Christianity in general was not an offence punishable in the Temporal Courts at common law: it having been settled so to be in Taylor's Case in 1 Vent. 293. 3 Keb 607, 621 and in the case of The King v Hall, ante, 416. They desired it might be taken notice of, that they laid their stress upon the word general, and did not intend to include disputes between learned men on particular controverted points."R v Woolston (1729) 2 Str 834, (1729) 93 ER 881

In 1841, Edward Moxon was found guilty of the publication of a blasphemous libel (Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab), the prosecution having been instituted by Henry Hetherington, who had previously been condemned to four months imprisonment for a similar offence, and wished to test the law under which he was punished. In the case of Cowan v Milbourn (1867) the defendant had broken his contract to let a lecture-room to the plaintiff, on discovering that the intended lectures were to maintain that the character of Christ is defective, and his teaching misleading, and that the Bible is no more inspired than any other book, and the Court of Exchequer Chamber held that the publication of such doctrine was blasphemy, and the contract therefore illegal. On that occasion, the court reaffirmed the dictum of Lord Chief Justice Hale, that Christianity is part of the laws of England.

The commissioners on criminal law (sixth report) remarked that although the law forbade all denial of the being and providence of God or the Christian religion, it is only when irreligion assumes the form of an insult to God and man that the interference of the criminal law took place.

The dictum "if the decencies of controversy are observed, even the fundamentals of religion may be attacked without the writer being guilty of blasphemy" was followed in R v Boulter (1908) 72 JP 188.

In the case of Bowman v Secular Society AC 406, Lord Sumner, echoing Hale's remarks in Taylor, summarized the position using the Latin phrase, deorum injuriae diis curae, "offences to the gods are dealt with by the gods": blasphemy is an offence against the (Christian) state, and is prohibited because it tends to subvert (Christian) society; offence to God as such is outside the reach of the law.

The last person in Britain to be sent to prison for blasphemy was John William Gott on 9 December 1921. He had three previous convictions for blasphemy when he was prosecuted for publishing two pamphlets entitled Rib Ticklers, or Questions for Parsons and God and Gott. In these pamphlets Gott satirised the biblical story of Jesus entering Jerusalem () comparing Jesus to a circus clown. He was sentenced to nine months' hard labour despite suffering from an incurable illness, and died shortly after he was released. The case became the subject of public outrage.

In a 1949 speech, Lord Denning placed the blasphemy laws in the past, saying that "The reason for this law was because it was thought that a denial of Christianity was liable to shake the fabric of society, which was itself founded upon Christian religion. There is no such danger to society now and the offence of blasphemy is a dead letter".

In 1977, however, the case Whitehouse v Lemon (involving the periodical Gay News publishing James Kirkup's poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name) demonstrated that the offence of blasphemous libel, long thought to be dormant, was still in force. During the House of Lords appeal Lord Scarman said that "I do not subscribe to the view that the common-law offence of blasphemous libel serves no useful purpose in modern law. ... The offence belongs to a group of criminal offences designed to safeguard the internal tranquillity of the kingdom."

The following cases, in particular, were approved by the House of Lords in Whitehouse v Gay News Ltd: R v Hetherington (1841) 4 St Tr (NS) 563, (1841) 5 JP 496, (1841) 4 Jur 529 Shore v Wilson (1842) 9 Cl & F 524 R v Ramsay and Foote (1883) 15 Cox 231, (1883) 48 LT 733 Bowman v Secular Society Ltd AC 406, 33 TLR 376, 86 LJ Ch 117

Lord Scarman saidWhitehouse v Gay News Ltd AC 617 at 665, HL that in his judgement the modern law of blasphemy was correctly formulated in article 214 of Stephen's Digest of the Criminal Law, Ninth Edition, 1950, which reads:

The Human Rights Act 1998 requires the courts to interpret the law in a way that is compatible with the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The offence of blasphemous libel is believed by some to be contrary to the freedom of speech provisions in the Convention. However, just before the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, a claim that the blasphemy law is inconsistent with article 10 of the Convention (providing for freedom of expression) was rejected in the case of Wingrove v UK (1997); a case brought by solicitor Mark Stephens. The Court decided that it was within the state's margin of appreciation for a restriction on free speech.

When the BBC decided to broadcast Jerry Springer: The Opera in January 2005, they received over 63,000 complaints by offended Christian viewers who objected to the show's portrayal of Christian icons (including one scene depicting Jesus professing to be "a bit gay"). The fundamentalist group Christian Voice sought a private blasphemy prosecution against the BBC, but the charges were rejected by City of Westminster magistrates' court. Christian Voice applied to have this ruling overturned by the High Court, but the application was rejected, the court finding that the common law blasphemy offences specifically did not apply to stage productions (section 2(4) of the Theatres Act 1968) and broadcasts (section 6 of the Broadcasting Act 1990).

Religion to which the offences relate