Scientology in The United Kingdom - Foreign Entry Ban and Legal Challenges

Foreign Entry Ban and Legal Challenges

In a House of Commons of the United Kingdom speech on 25 July 1968, Minister for Health Kenneth Robinson said Scientology's practices were "a potential menace to the personality and well-being of those so deluded as to become its followers". He described Scientology as "so objectionable that it would be right to take all steps (...) to curb its growth," and so introduced a ban on the immigration of foreign Scientologists. Until then, the Hubbard College of Scientology had, as a recognised educational institution, been allowed to receive foreign students. Foreign Scientologists already in the country were not allowed to stay. According to an internal document from 1976, some of the Church's intelligence staff got around the ban by giving false information to immigration officials. Hubbard left the UK permanently in 1969, moving Scientology's world headquarters to a fleet of ships. The Home Office told him not to return.

Scientologists denounced Kenneth Robinson's remarks as "insane". In retaliation against him, Scientology publications titled "Freedom Scientology", "Freedom and Scientology" and "Freedom" conducted a libel campaign, beginning in 1968. According to these newsletters, he was responsible for creating "death camps" to which innocent people were being kidnapped to be killed or maimed at will. Robinson successfully sued for libel, prompting a total retraction and substantial damages.

The government inquiry in 1971 recommended lifting the ban, by which time 145 individuals had been refused entry to the country. However, the ban was not immediately lifted. The Church took out multiple writs of libel against the Department of Health and Social Security, who in 1977 prepared a confidential report (released to the public 30 years later) to assess their position. According to this report, young people were being alienated from their families by the Disconnection policy and some Scientologists were being trained to carry out Fair Game actions against Church opponents. It also alleged that the Church was taking on young people with mental illness problems, charging them hundreds of pounds, then putting them out on the street after breakdowns. It warned that if the Government lost the libel cases, it could give "some seal of respectability to an organisation which is essentially evil." On its release, a Church spokesman attacked the document as "based on no evidence".

It was not until July 1980 that the Home Secretary reversed the ban, saying in Parliament, "My Right Hon. Friend the Secretary of State of Social Services is not satisfied that there is clear and sufficient evidence for continuing the existing policy with regard to Scientologists on medical grounds alone." Once the ban was lifted, applications by foreign Scientologists to come to the UK were assessed individually. However, all the applications were refused because of Scientology's non-religious status. This was changed in 1996 when the Home Office labeled Scientology a "bona fide religion" for immigration purposes.

In 1984, Hubbard contested his exclusion from the United Kingdom, but his ban was reaffirmed by the Home Office when he refused to discuss his conviction in France for fraud.