The Freedom Defence Committee was a UK-based organization set up in 1945 to "uphold the essential liberty of individuals and organizations, and to defend those who are persecuted for exercising their rights to freedom of speech, writing and action."

The Committee came into being as a result of the Freedom Press

Freedom Press

The Freedom Press is an anarchist publishing house in Whitechapel, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1886, it is the largest anarchist publishing house in the nation and the oldest of its kind in the English speaking world. It is based at 84b Whitechapel High Street in the East End of London...

 being raided at the end of 1944 and four editors of War Commentary, including Vernon Richards

Vernon Richards

Vernon Richards was an Anglo-Italian anarchist, editor, author and companion of Marie-Louise Berneri.He was born Vero Recchioni in London in 1915. He was educated at Emanuel School, and King's College London, where he trained as a civil engineer...

 and Philip Sansom

Philip Sansom

Philip Richard Sansom was an anarchist writer and activist.Sansom began working life as a commercial artist. During the Second World War he was a conscientious objector, and worked in farming for a while. From 1943 he worked on War Commentary, a wartime substitute for the anarchist paper Freedom...

, being prosecuted at the beginning of 1945 for attempting "to undermine the affections of members of His Majesty's Forces" and because the National Council for Civil Liberties was considered a Communist front.

An open letter requesting urgent funds was published in the 18 September 1948 issue of Socialist Leader and was signed by Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

, E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster

Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...

, Augustus John

Augustus John

Augustus Edwin John OM, RA, was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom....

, George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

, Herbert Read

Herbert Read

Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....

 (chairman) and Osbert Sitwell

Osbert Sitwell

Sir Francis Osbert Sacheverell Sitwell, 5th Baronet, was an English writer. His elder sister was Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell and his younger brother was Sir Sacheverell Sitwell; like them he devoted his life to art and literature....

. The Committee's secretary was George Woodcock

George Woodcock

George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...

.

It was dissolved in 1949.