what has happened to freedom of speech?
Absolutely nothing. You simply don’t understand it, that’s all.
Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, disability, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation have been forbidden since the Public Order Act of 1986. The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 made it illegal to stir up religious hatred. The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 makes it illegal to incite hatred on the ground of sexual orientation. The Football Offences Act 1991 forbids indecent or racist chanting at football matches.
Even before this suite of hate speech laws was introduced there were restrictions on free speech. It has never been legal for a person to defame another under the defence of free speech. It has never been permissible to share state secrets, or broadcast the contents of protected judicial proceedings. There has never been an unqualified right to freedom of expression in the U.K.
Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 provides that citizens of this country have the right to freedom of expression, but specifically states that this right is subject to restrictions which may be “in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary”.
And freedom of expression has never meant freedom from consequences. The law states that you have the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority. In other words, you can’t be fined or imprisoned or otherwise punished by the government or a public authority for holding a certain opinion UNLESS your actions fall under any of the other statutes mentioned above.
Employers have always had the freedom to fire employees who don’t adhere to their code of conduct. In fact it is much harder for employers to do this now than it used to be, because employees have much greater protection under the law than they used to. Only a few decades ago it was perfectly acceptable for an employer to fire you for being gay, being a woman who got married, being a communist or expressing communist views, or any number of reasons both serious and trivial. It is now rightly much harder to fire people without just cause - but expressing racist views is very much a just cause, and employers have every right to take action against employees who behave this way.
So no, we have not left behind some golden age whereby anybody could say what they liked without repercussions. The right to freedom of expression has always been a qualified right. The rights of employers to terminate employee contracts where their employees don’t follow their code of conduct has always existed. And it’s hard to see how we could benefit as a society by assuming a mad ideological position that there should be no consequences for people who incite hatred and say racist things. Who wins by the law protecting the rights of racists over the rights of their victims?