Labour to scrap Freedom of Speech Act

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Free Speech Union is threatening to bring Judicial Review proceedings.
This does feel pretty undemocratic. Is this a sign of things to come?

https://x.com/SpeechUnion/status/1816771547215835345

Statement from Bridgett Phillipson...

Lastly, I have written to colleagues separately about my decision to stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal. I am aware of concerns that the Act would be burdensome on providers and on the OfS, and I will confirm my long term plans as soon as possible. To enable students to thrive in higher education, I welcome the OfS’s plans to introduce strengthened protections for students facing harassment and sexual misconduct, including relating to the use of non-disclosure agreements in such cases by universities and colleges.

https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2024-07-26/hcws26

One of the flaws I saw discussed (and this was by someone who acknowledged that there was a problem with freedom of speech in universities) was that the law requires those who may have been discriminated against to go through the process required by the act rather than being able to jump that process and go straight to the tribunal process.

Isn’t that the whole point? Students don’t have a tribunal process to go to (other than the useless students’ complaint scheme).

The main improvement is civil liability where loss is suffered.

So far as I can see, nothing in the Act limits the rights of staff to use grievance procedures and employment law if they’d prefer.

BP’s actions are so nakedly political and cowardly it’s shameful.

She's listening to the universities who were against this bill in the
first place.
She said in the past about trusting teachers. It's rather like the sport issue, trust the second tier organisations, most of which have been captured. So unlike Wes Streeting.

She's the one minister who's shown herself most comfortable with exercising raw power straight out of the gate.

Although she's exercising that power in deference to the NEU, and in this case the higher education blob. Which is fine, I suppose, if you trust the blob. Not so good if you don't.

It was just something I read recently. Possibly a misunderstanding on part. I know I’ve seen plenty of criticism from people who recognise there’s a problem and are broadly supportive of the legislation.

If someone is insulting me I see no issue with using the mumsnet shorthand back.
It saves me getting deleted for a "personal attack".

"The blob" 🙄

Of course Labour are going to cut legislation they strongly opposed that's not been enacted yet.

That’s fair enough. But the question is why.

There are no ‘flaws’ in the Act. It’s plain, and it’s addressing a stark problem.

So the objection must be that it doesn’t suit one or more of Labour’s special interest constituencies.

Given the subject matter and the neutral effect of the Act’s measures - nobody is privileged or advantaged to the detriment of others - objection to it is, again, shameful.

Why do Labour strongly oppose freedom of speech legislation, but not hate crime legislation?

As far as student unions go, the key point is the No Platform policy, which was adopted by the NUS in the early 1970s. Any Labour MP who has come up through student union politics, which is most of them, takes No Platform to be axiomatic. The policy has been around since before many of them were born.

The policy was originally designed to deal with the National Front, who actually were trying to organise on campus at the time. But today the NF is irrelevant and its offshoot the BNP almost equally irrelevant. Neither has even tried to organise on campus for decades.

However, in the world of student union politics the demand for No Platform vastly exceeds the supply of fascists, so they just expand the categories of wrongthinkers who it can be applied to. Julie Bindel has been officially No Platformed by the national NUS since 2011.

One might set this alongside some student unions' periodic attempts to derecognise Jewish societies because something something Zionist settler colonialism.

Interestingly enough, the concept of No Platform was invented by the now defunct International Marxist Group, who at the time were noisily supportive of the IRA.

So as far as student politics goes, opposition to the very concept of free speech is not just something you find among Trotskyites. Even quite moderate Labour people work on the basis of a Schmittian friend/enemy distinction. That goes a long way to explain their strong opposition to the Act.

Of course it's also very likely that Phillipson has been lobbied by VCs, but that will just have encouraged her to do something she wanted to do anyway - and that Labour didn't mention anywhere in their manifesto.

Just to restate what I posted yesterday.

Although there may well be any of the ideological positions listed in various posts so far, it is clear that the pressure from universities was that they couldn't afford the cost of any contested speaker.

And this is why in making the announcement the Minister linked it to other more pressing financial concerns.

But of course for Labour the added pleasure of "cancelling" of Tory policy.

Lets face it, if for instance you take the treatment of Rosie Duffield, Labour acts very much like the students the act was aimed at.

It isn't about whether a SU would host a holocaust denier, it is as happened with Julie Bindel being cancelled from talking about anything because of being trans critical, just as JKR is cancelled.

I think framing the act of being about Freedom of Speech actually by passes the real issue.

That of intolerance, and this childish but very damaging attitude amongst some that because they think what they think is right, everybody else is wrong, and not just wrong but harmful because the mere expression of an opposing view is "literal" violence.

ie universities are turning into places that are the very opposite of what they should be about ie a place where you grow up and learn about how other people think and maybe change your mind, or maybe dont change your mind but are able to talk about it in a considered and well thought out way.

Although there may well be any of the ideological positions listed in various posts so far, it is clear that the pressure from universities was that they couldn't afford the cost of any contested speaker.

And this is why in making the announcement the Minister linked it to other more pressing financial concerns.

I think it's a mistake to separate the two. The core function of a university needs to be addressed before funding issues. Freedom of speech is a core issue.

The standard of research etc is poor eg Aston scraping debacle
I must say I've been delighted to see some absurd posts axed. I also want to see self indulgent postgraduate courses such as Transgender Archaeology withdrawn.

I think it's a mistake to separate the two. The core function of a university needs to be addressed before funding issues. Freedom of speech is a core issue.

Unfortunately that is now a concept from the past!

Universities are now businesses and students their customers.

The customers is always right ...

No flaws in the act?

Neutral effect?

Any legislation that compels universities to provide a platform to holocaust deniers or be sued is inherently flawed.

It does not do that, as you well know.

It’s the freedom of lawful speech that’s protected. The Act says that again and again.

This objection is so bogus it’s painful.

I don't think holocaust denial is banned in this country. Neither is far right or left political rhetoric, anti-LGBT rhetoric, misogyny etc. In fact we have existing, good free speech laws. What this Act is about, is taking away organisations choice as to who they "platform". It's not about free speech at all. I see it as an authoritarian intervention and control of private institutions, and quite against the ethos of the Conservatives.

I think Labour should repeal it. The act is completely unnecessary and won't achieve much other than headaches and financial issues for universities.

Universities aren't businesses there not for profit or charities. They are for the public good not just individual students.

After looking into it a bit more, surprise surprise this was a policy exchange idea and is addressing a non-existent problem.
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/freedom-of-speech-in-universities/

We have bigger problems in this country than some right wing think tanks views of "free speech".

It can get in the bin. Good work Phillipson 👏

That link doesn’t support your argument; it undermines it. That Labour statement is witless.

Kathleen Stock gets mentioned in the paper, but curiously the Labour speech had nothing to say about staff being hounded and bullied for expressing views. But I suppose if the party’s in bed with trans activists, that’s to be expected.

This is so fucking desperate.

Its hardly unexpected

The left are more authoritarian than any right wing party that isn’t a dictatorship. They just get their followers to shut down debate rather than the law/police.
Labour oppose the bill because the current two main groups it might affect the most are pro Palestinian and trans right activists. Labour & its supporters support Palestinian rights over Jewish rights. They support trans rights over women’s rights. This is not news and everyone who voted for them KNOWS this and at best doesn’t care and at worse agrees. No different to conservative voters who know that the right wing parties support Jewish rights over Palestinian rights and women’s rights over trans rights. 🤷‍♀️ The only difference is conservative voters don’t worship at the feet of their political masters (much to the Conservative Party chagrin!) whereas Labour voters do so the no debate / no discussion perpetuates as they can not be wrong hence the mind boggling mental gymnastics of some posters on here to claim anything other than this bill will have limited the ‘rights’ of universities to ensure that no nasty GC or Pro-Israeli speakers can set foot in any university campus and posset any alternative to the left wing position. It’s what happens when a party wins. They make sure that an opposition finds its as hard as possible to be heard.

It's "witless" to point out barely any events get cancelled and that all the "evidence" the Conservatives used to inform their bill was from Policy Exhange, a far right shadowy think tank?

If you read the policy exchange paper, it's obsessing about pro-Brexit students being "chilled".

I'm very glad to see the back of policy exchange and Tufton Street generally setting the agenda and if you want to persuade me that act was a good idea you'll need to do better than just calling Labour "witless". Because from where I'm sitting the Act was a piece of authoritarian culture wars nonsense the likes of which we don't need to waste time on.

Here's a synopsis of one of the authors:
^Eric Kaufmann is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange and Professor of
Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. A political scientist, Kaufmann is the author of numerous books, examining the impact of ideological and population shifts on identity and politics. These include Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth (Polity 2014) and Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities (Penguin 2019).^

From Wikipedia:

Kaufmann identifies as a liberal national conservative.[15] He has called "woke" ideas "a battle for the foundations of our civilisation" and has expressed support for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, arguing at the 2022 British Conservative Party conference that the party shouldn't follow DeSantis's lead.

I'm fed up with the damage caused by unelected Tufton Street ideologues. Thankfully Labour are giving them short shrift too.

You really are a totalitarian, no debate , bring on the one party state.
You declared in an earlier post;

Students can also vote with their feet and not attend universities that host unpopular speakers or amplify messages they don't like. For example, if I was a student today I wouldn't choose a university that featured Milo Yiannopoulos on its list of speakers

Are you serious? You do know it's not compulsory to attend speakers events. If for example Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz or Jennifer Doudna were lecturing you would choose another uni rather to be within the vicinity of Milo Yiannopoulos. I can't take anything you say seriously.

The proximate outrage at the time the bill was introduced was, of course, the campaign at Oxford against lifelong Labour supporter Selina Todd, which led to her needing security guards to accompany her to lectures.

But ho hum, that's so 2020, we can rely on the good offices of Jo Grady and the UCU to stand up for any academic who gets similar treatment.

Holocaust denial is lawful speech.