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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.