Anti-fascism ain’t what it used to be. It used to mean signing up to go to fight Franco’s fascists in Spain, turning out against Oswald Mosley in the East End, or trading punches with National Front thugs. Now it means trying to get right-wing Tory MPs no platformed on elite university campuses – and occasionally punching elderly gender-critical women in the face. It’s by turns despicable and pathetic.
The cancellation of Suella Braverman’s event at Cambridge last week – following threats of protest by assorted faux-radical groups, with ‘Cambridge for Palestine’ to the fore – was grimly predictable. Indeed, it follows a pattern that has become all too familiar to students who dare to hold views or host speakers that upset their university’s hysterical, self-appointed censors.
This remains a timely reminder of the renewed threat to free speech on campus
Braverman was invited by the Cambridge University Conservative Association (Cuca), the organisation she herself led, as a Cambridge student, 20 years ago. Activists hastily organised a protest, accusing the former home secretary of being ‘far right’. And soon enough the whole thing was postponed, due to exorbitant security costs. Reportedly, Cuca was quoted £1,500 to securely hold the event – a sum it couldn’t afford.
It’s unclear who advised that all this security was necessary. Cambridge police say they assessed the event to be low risk, while Braverman has implied that the police along with ‘university and parliamentary authorities’ told the organisers it was best not to go ahead. For its part, parliament’s security department says it cannot comment on individual MPs’ security arrangements, while Cambridge University says it was unaware the event was even taking place. There is also sometimes an unfortunate tendency to overstate the physical threat posed by today’s campus activists, many of whom look like they’d struggle to beat up a sedated gerbil.
Still, it would hardly be out of character for such groups to try to physically shut down the event. Those who organised the protests are claiming that their only aim was counter-speech – to exercise their own free speech and show their displeasure with Braverman. Which is of course their right. But this would be a lot more convincing if their own leaflets didn’t declare, in screaming all-caps, ‘NO PLATFORM FOR THE FAR RIGHT’ – an explicit call for Braverman to be silenced.
The event will go ahead at a later date, no doubt with a much bigger audience. But this remains a timely reminder of the renewed threat to free speech on campus. One of the few good things the last Tory government did was to pass the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. This included measures to ensure campus organisers are no longer lumbered with prohibitive security costs — which effectively hand protesters a heckler’s veto.
Naturally, the Act was among the first things to go after an increasingly intolerant Labour party was returned to power. Many more campus events, which don’t always benefit from headline-grabbing speakers, will continue to be shut down as a consequence.
You do not have to be a fan of Suella Braverman to see how illiberal and outrageous this all is. Smearing the Tory right-winger as some flavour of fascist is a particularly sick joke given the past year we’ve had, in which anti-Semitic street protests have become a regular occurrence and there was a 96 per cent rise in anti-Jewish assaults. If Cambridge’s so-called radicals truly want to fight fascism, they should start with the people they themselves have been marching and sharing platforms with since 7 October.
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