Under Dreaming Spires
Last night’s much publicised Oxford Union debate on the freedom of speech involving BNP leader Nick Griffin and historian David Irving was delayed after protesters broke into the debating theatre.
Perhaps this outcome was in the end not all too much of a surprise since there will always be individuals willing to prevent others engaging in democratic and free debate with whose views they do not agree?
Many Universities in Britain currently hold a ‘no-platform’ policy for groups such as the BNP and the likes of David Irving. Only last year the University of Bath’s Student Union voted to bar Nick Griffin from speaking at a private event hosted in one of its auditoriums. Therefore it actually came as a pleasant surprise to discover that the Oxford Union had actively voted to allow Mr Griffin to be challenged in an open debate.
Regardless of whether you agree with Nick Griffin or David Irving (and I for the most part do not) then it should be generally accepted that if their views are so wrong, then they should be challenged through debate and their arguments shown to be incoherent - not instead to try and force Mr Griffin and Irving into silence, which benefits no-one and in the end often has the undesirable effect of providing them with public sympathy.
Thus it is not so much a problem that protests against the speakers took place, as this was perfectly within their right, but it was the manner in which they did protest that was disagreeable and wrong. The Oxford Union voted democratically by a two to one margin to allow Nick Griffin and David Irving to speak at a private establishment, and yet by trying to prevent the debate from taking place at all or baring ticket holding members from entering the hall, the Leftist protesters in affect stooped to an apprehensible level. As I said previously, if the views of Griffin and Irving are so obviously wrong, as many of them quite clearly are in my opinion, then all that need be done is to prove them so in debate.
What’s more, arguably a great deal more fuss than was necessary surrounded the debate. Had those persons who disagreed with Nick Griffin not protested in the manner that they did at his being allowed to speak, then last night’s event in Oxford would not have hit the national headlines nor would the BNP have gained anywhere near as much media coverage. Therefore in reality, those supposedly most against the views held by Nick Griffin and David Irving did most to help promote them – all without actually challenging them through open debate either.
In general there is, I would imagine, an ulterior motive behind the façade of outrage and indignation expressed by protestors like those in Oxford yesterday and anti-fascist campaigners elsewhere. As Daniel Hannan pointed out a week or so ago on his Telegraph blog:
The answer, I think, is that Lefties like to exaggerate the threat from what they call ‘the far Right’ in order to taint, by association, the mainstream Right.
In his post, Daniel later goes on to correctly outline that there is in fact very little actually right-wing or indeed conservative in the programmes of continental neo-fascist parties throughout Europe, inclusive of the British National Party. However, a convenient myth has been developed around the ‘right-wing’ whereby without reason, the left can lump the predominately socialist inclined fascists together with the conservative right and in doing so attack small-state conservatives who, as Daniel Hannan again remarks, ‘couldn’t be ideologically further removed’ from the neo-nazis.
Once again regarding the debate that eventually took place in Oxford last night; ours and future generations must remember that there really can be no compromise in exercising ours and others’ right to free speech, no matter how odious or repugnant the views of those we disagree with may be.
