No-Platforming is basic common sense- but the Tories would never admit it
Yesterday, Conservative minister Sam Gyimah announced plans to promote ‘free speech’ on university campuses across the UK by banning the right of student unions to ‘no-platform’ speakers they do not support. He argued that “A society in which people feel they have a legitimate right to stop someone expressing their views on campus simply because they are unfashionable or unpopular is rather chilling,”
To me, Gyimah’s comments are deeply misguided. To ‘no-platform’ an individual simply means that you refuse to advertise them and give them a place to speak. Whilst played up as an outrageous attack on free speech by those on the right, and disappointingly by those who call themselves ‘liberal’, the freedom to no-platform is an essential right for all institutions to have in a open society.
At its heart, no-platforming is about the right to chose who to endorse, and who not to. Political parties and charities do this all the time: if you were a Labour Party member and asked to speak in front of the local Conservative Party Association about why everyone should vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime minister, the chances are that you would be no-platformed. Naturally, given that such a speech would be in direct opposition to the values of the Conservative party, such a decision would be quite reasonable. Why would they provide time and space for a person who hates their party to tell them why they are wrong?
“At its heart, no-platforming is about the right to chose who to endorse, and who not to”
If the Conservative Party are able to no-platform people at their events, why shouldn’t Student Unions be able to? As both are democratic organisations with a values statement, shouldn’t both be able to freely express their values through the people they allow to speak at their events?
This double standard at the heart of the ‘no-platforming’ debate demonstrates that the Conservative party’s obsession with it has nothing to do with freedom of speech: it is about promoting the right as the champion of liberty and presenting the left as dangerous Soviet ‘snowflakes’.
Since the election of Jeremy Corbyn, the right-wing press has attempted to promote the idea that if the Jeremy Corbyn gained power, the UK would turn into an authoritarian undemocratic regime not dissimilar from Soviet Russia. For example, they have repeatedly called Momentum and the labour front bench ‘far left’ or ‘hard left’ to associate them with the Russian Communist party.
“The Conservative party’s obsession with [no-platforming] has nothing to do with freedom of speech: it is about promoting the right as the champion of liberty and presenting the left as dangerous Soviet ‘snowflakes’.”
The criticism of no-platforming in Student Unions is the latest tactic being used to link the left with Communist Russia. By specifically arguing that socialist students are against free speech, the right are implicitly pushing the narrative that if let into power, a Jeremy Corbyn Labour Party would crush all descent.
If the Conservative party really cared about freedom, they would not only support freedom of speech, but also the right to peacefully protest, and the right of all institutions to choose who to support and who to oppose. As it is, it is them, not students, that are acting as the real enemy of freedom.
