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Among the myriad charges laid by the Conservative party-in-the-press against the new Government, which right-wing newspapers clearly regard as having usurped the Conservatives‘ rightful role, is that it is threatening to curb freedom of expression.
Most obviously, the Government’s stress on the role played by social media in fuelling the riots gave rise to the accusation that it was going to introduce new censorship measures in order to combat dis- and misinformation, something which, for obvious reasons, always elicits a neuralgic reaction on the part of sections of the national press.
However, there has also been a persistent drumbeat concerning the pausing of the previous Government’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 just before it was due to come into force at the end of July.
So, for example, an editorial in the Telegraph on 27 July, accused the education secretary Brigitte Phillipson of “handing control of our campuses back to the Left-wing culture warriors”; Simon Heffer in the same day’s paper stated that her move would “delight … the no-platforming zealots of the National Union of Students”; Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday on 28 July, complained that Phillipson had “deliberately strangled a valuable plan to protect free speech in English universities” and Daniel Hannan in the following day’s Mail accused her of “doing the bidding of the lecturers’ unions and the higher education Blob, who are happy to shut down ideas of which they disapprove”.
Similar outrage could also be found in the Sun, Express and Times and has spluttered on ever since, spurred on by the Free Speech Union seeking judicial review of the Government’s decision.
Why is the Right-Wing Press so Bothered?
The papers’ wrath stems from two main sources. Firstly, they played a key role in bringing the Act into existence, and, second, they fear that the Government’s action presages a crackdown on their own freedom to express themselves.
Fears for their own freedom are expressed in terms of the usual “slippery slope” argument. So, for example, in the Telegraph on 27 July, the former education secretary Claire Coutinho warned that “if we do not stand up for our right to ask questions, I shudder to think where Labour will take us next”.
Similarly, Simon Heffer in the same day’s paper stated that “until we have a coherent opposition, the closing down of opinions other than those deemed fashionable on the Left will continue” while Andrew Neil in the Mail on 7 September warned that “the threat to free speech in Britain goes far beyond the campus. Everybody’s right to say what they want is at risk”.
And in the same paper on 26 September Stephen Glover cited recent remarks about press regulation by the Labour peer Lord Alli and the MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy as evidence that they and “many others in their party want to curb the freedom of the Press so that newspapers will find it much harder to shine light on Labour’s faults and peccadilloes” and warned that: “We should be on our guard. With its huge majority, Labour can do virtually whatever it likes. I don’t believe that in its heart it much likes our free Press”.
As far as the papers’ own proprietary interests in these stories is concerned, it is an incontrovertible fact that their origins lie in frequently distorted and inaccurate accounts of the way in which “cancel culture” allegedly operates in British universities.
From Tufton Street to the Press to Policy
Many of these have emanated from the leading culture war think tank Policy Exchange (here and here), thence making their way immediately and unfiltered into the right-wing press echo chamber and from there into the White Paper Higher Education: Free Speech and Academic Freedom (2021), which formed the basis of the Act.
Few things could illustrate more clearly than this process of osmosis the workings of the Government/Conservative press/Tufton Street nexus during the years of the last Government, something which one of the co-authors of the Policy Exchange reports, Eric Kaufmann, has openly boasted about.
Ensuring Freedom of Speech on Campus
The Act was passed in May 2023 and strengthened the legal duties on universities contained in the 1986 Education Act in relation to academic freedom. It also extended these duties to include students’ unions.
In particular, universities would be required to promote, rather than simply to assure, freedom of speech on their campuses. Students, staff and visiting speakers would be able to bring claims to court if they felt they had suffered loss (financial or reputational) as a result of their free speech rights being unlawfully restricted.
The Act’s provisions were to be administered by the Office for Students (OfS) under the auspices of a Director for Free Speech and Academic Freedom, which role inevitably came to be known as that of the free speech tsar. The Cambridge philosopher Arif Ahmed was appointed to the position in June 2023.
Universities were rightly concerned that the Act would place very considerable administrative and financial burdens upon them. But individual academics and bodies such as Index on Censorship, Article 19 and English PEN (none of whom was consulted during the legislative process) consistently argued that reliable evidence for widespread suppression of freedom of speech on campuses was conspicuously lacking.
For example, the 2018 report, Freedom of Speech in Universities, of the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) concluded that it “did not find the wholesale censorship of debate in universities which media coverage has suggested”.
Students Don’t see the Problems the Media Report
More recently a report by the Policy Institute at King’s College London produced data which showed that 70% of students agreed that academics are free to express their views at their university. Some 65% stated that free speech and robust debate are protected at their institution and 73% reported that debates and discussions are conducted in a civil way.
And in 2023 a new question added to the OfS national student survey found that 86% of respondents said that they were free or very free to express their ideas, opinions, and beliefs during their studies.
Where threats to freedom of expression do exist, these tend to emanate not from the advocates of “cancel culture” but, as the JCHR report repeatedly insists, from universities erecting “bureaucratic hurdles” which deter students from holding events and inviting external speakers.
This is particularly the case when it comes to fulfilling their Prevent duty, a situation which is greatly exacerbated by their receiving “unduly complicated and cautious guidance from the Charity Commission”.
Furthermore, as Jo Grady of the University and College Union (UCU) stated, serious threats to freedom of speech and academic freedom on campus are also the result of “widespread precarious employment” that “strips academics of the ability to speak and research freely, and curtails chances for career development”.
Capitalising on Panic – For Voters Not Free Speech
Beyond such considerations, Alison Scott-Baumann, author of Freedom of Speech in Universities: Islam, Charities and Counter-terrorism, has argued that the Act’s proposals are more about appealing to voters and capitalising on the moral panic about universities than actually helping them to protect free speech.
The Government doesn’t seem to trust anyone on campus, staff or student; they want to be in charge of what good speech is and what bad speech is, and they also want us to believe that by policing and enforcing free speech (the good free speech that they will define) they can resolve this problem.
Similarly, in a joint statement, Index on Censorship, Article 19 and English PEN expressed their fear that the Act might have the “inverse effect of further limiting what is deemed ‘acceptable’ speech on campus and introducing a chilling effect both on the content of what is taught and the scope of academic research exploration”.
Indeed, it is difficult not to regard the Act as a classic piece of doublethink designed to censor freedom of expression in the guise of protecting it: a culture war tactic designed by right-wingers to ensure that their views are heard on campus whether or not they are welcome there, and to legally enforce the platforming of contentious speakers at universities.
‘Cancel Culture is Alive and Well on British Campuses’
Given the past history of the Free Speech Union, which strongly supported the Act and had close links with those that helped to engineer it, such as Policy Exchange, it would have been extremely surprising if they had not used it to precisely these ends.
Indeed, it is presumably because they wish to do so that they are seeking a judicial review of Phillipson’s decision to pause its commencement, and that they have taken such an interest recently in the case of Helen Joyce, the author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.
On 10 July, The Times published an article by Joyce headed ‘Ditching this free speech act is a green light to campus bullies’. In it she explained that in 2022 Arif Ahmed, the soon-to-be free speech tsar, had asked her if she would join him in testing just how “free” speech was in Cambridge by giving a talk at his college, Gonville and Caius …. The topic would be the most incendiary of those provoking the campus censors: the insistence that self-declared “gender identity” should supplant binary sex in laws, medicine, language and everything else.
Ahmed had recently led a successful campaign at Cambridge to reject the university adopting a free speech policy that required staff and students to be “respectful” of differing views and diverse identities, instead of requiring them simply to be “tolerant” of these.
In her article, Joyce complained that two members of the college had written to staff and students describing her views (not her personally, as Joyce states) as “offensive, insulting and hateful to members of our community”, forbidden Ahmed from publicising the event via university e-mail lists and required that it be ticketed as opposed to open to anyone just turning up on the night.
Furthermore, there was a noisy demonstration outside, and some of those involved entered the building and banged on the lecture theatre’s doors. All very upsetting and annoying no doubt, even to someone who professes themselves in favour of “the severe contest of ideas”, but none of this amounts to “cancelling”, still less censorship, by any definitions of which I’m aware.
Some might argue that those who engage in “incendiary” actions can hardly complain if they get singed. But in Joyce’s view, her experience demonstrated that “cancel culture is alive and well on British campuses”.
To those who say that what she supports is less freedom of speech than consequence-free speech, she draws a contemptuous comparison with the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, “who said that his opponents had freedom of speech but not freedom after it”.
However, this is frankly quite preposterous. If one examines what Amin said in its proper context, he clearly meant that those who criticised him or his regime could well find themselves locked up as a consequence, whereas the principle which is at least supposed to govern the exercise of freedom of expression in the UK is that of “publish and be damned”.
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This is allegedly what the Duke of Wellington said on hearing that a famous courtesan was about to reveal their liaison, meaning that she was welcome to publish but could possibly face legal consequences for doing so.
But if we really want to rebut this ridiculous parallel with Amin we simply have to turn to the great jurist William Blackstone, no more an advocate of “cancel culture” than was Wellington, who stated in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765):
The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state; but this consists in laying no previous restraints on publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every free man has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous or illegal, he must take the consequences of his own temerity
William Blackstone
There are, of course, some serious issues here, but the problem lies in the ways in which such events on university campuses have been ruthlessly twisted and exploited by the think tank/press/government nexus to suit their own ideological and political interests.
Lisa Nandy’s announcement that “the era of culture wars is now over” is one of the most welcome to come from the new Government, but the right shows not the slightest sign of abandoning its offensive.
How the Government deals with the ongoing fall-out from its pausing of the egregious Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act will be an early test of its mettle on this particular front.