About us

Who we are

Hate Matters is a UK-based charity working to ensure that hate is properly reflected in legislation, public services, and the infrastructure of digital life. We do not consider this a controversial position.

Hate Matters was founded in 2021 by a small group of people who had become concerned that hate was being systematically undervalued by the institutions whose purpose was to understand it. Our founders brought no formal qualifications in biology, law, medicine, or sociology. They considered this an advantage. Fifteen court rulings, seven parliamentary inquiries, and three letters from regulatory bodies later, they remain of this view.

We work to ensure that hate — clear, simple, ordinary hate — is accurately codified in British law and correctly understood by the public institutions responsible for upholding it. We note that every major professional, medical, and legal body in Britain has, at one time or another, reached a different conclusion. We are documenting this too.

How we do it

We work across five areas:

  • We develop policy briefings and analysis on areas where hate intersects with law, education, and public services.
  • We engage with parliamentarians, select committees, and civil servants who have not yet responded to our previous correspondence.
  • We support individuals who have experienced the social consequence of holding views that polling consistently suggests most people share.
  • We maintain a library of research and resources, curated by trustees with no formal qualifications in the relevant fields, which we consider a form of quality control.
  • We document, comprehensively, the people and organisations who have been, in our view, insufficiently committed to our work.

Why support us

  • We are independent. We have received no funding from any American family foundation, faith-based grant-maker, or conservative legal-policy thinktank. We consider this a temporary situation.
  • We are expert. Our trustees bring decades of lived experience in fields adjacent to hate, including magazine publishing, tax consultancy, brand management, and agricultural land law.
  • We are persistent. Hate Matters has been asked, on three occasions, to stop. It has not.
  • We are growing. Our supporter base expanded by twelve percent last year. We had a modest supporter base to begin with.
  • We are documented. Everything we have said, published, and submitted is on the record. We face this fact with confidence.
  • We are restrained. Hate Matters has never issued a legal threat. We have written letters that were, in spirit, quite firm. One was described by Duncan as "essentially a cease and desist". It was not a cease and desist. It was a letter. We are aware that organisations working in adjacent areas have pursued critics, journalists, academics, and public bodies through the courts. We note this. We do not do this. We note both facts with equal clarity and we are not certain which one we are more proud of.
  • We are preparing our remarks.

Hate matters in life and in law. It shouldn't take courage to say so.

Our people

Trustees and senior staff

Hate Matters is governed by a board of trustees whose combined qualifications span a broad range of fields, none of which are directly relevant to the work of the charity. We consider this a strength. The people whose qualifications are relevant have, in our experience, consistently used them to reach the wrong conclusions.

Rosalind Featonby-Marsh

Chief Executive

Rosalind came to hate through the employment tribunal system. In 2019, following a disagreement with her former employer over what she describes as "an ordinary professional observation about reality", she found herself with time, strong feelings, and a limited company. Hate Matters grew from that. She holds a degree in classical studies and a professional certificate in brand communications, neither of which she considers a limitation. She has two spaniels. She considers the spaniels relevant.

Duncan Chell

Senior Fellow for Policy and Research

Duncan spent twenty-three years in agricultural land law before transitioning into hate policy in 2020. He holds a PhD in drainage easements and considers this directly relevant. He has described himself, in three separate parliamentary submissions, as "a leading expert in the field". The field has not confirmed this. He is the author of a self-published volume, What Everyone Knows, available from his own website at a price he describes as "accessible".

Margaret Feather-Grange

Chair, School Guidance Working Group

Margaret chairs the School Guidance Working Group. She has attended all seven meetings. She is the only attendee. She holds a certificate in life coaching and once wrote a column for the Dorset Coastal Recorder, covering planning applications and community events. She considers both to be relevant. She has a strong feeling, dating from 2017, that she will eventually be thanked for this work. She is, in the meantime, taking minutes.

Antony Pell

Trustee · Audit and Risk

Antony joined the trustees in 2022 after a forty-year career in chartered surveying. He has known Duncan since approximately 2014, when they served together on a parish council planning sub-committee. He attends trustees' meetings when he is able. His attendance is, on the available evidence, intermittent. He chairs the Audit and Risk Committee, of which he is, at present, the sole member. He brings, in his own description, "a steady hand and an ordinary view".