THE FREE SPEECH UNION SPEAKEASY

OXFORD, 8th FEBRUARY 2023

I'm a big admirer of the FSU, who helped me when I inevitably fell foul of the woke cult in my school. My critique here isn’t of the gruelling and essential day-to-day casework they do, but of how the FSU comes across at speakeasies and the overview that suggests. My experience of these is in Oxford, so may be skewed by that.

My first point is how chattering class and academic in orientation these events are. I'm afraid this also fits with a rather boastful 'credentialism', so rampant nowadays. I understand why academic qualifications are bandied around but this can be very ineffective; the FSU underestimates how many this puts off, especially amongst the non-chattering class. It certainly fits with how infantile academia has become, how hopeless a defender of free speech it’s been - which now truly exists only amongst the ‘non-credentialed’, who are almost absent from such meetings. Winston Smith was so right in saying where hope lies; it isn’t with the academics or intellectuals. No surprise of course, such types have originated or fallen for every bogus ideology - supported every tyranny - down the ages. Not all academics and intellectuals but far too many of them.

Academics in particular always look after themselves. The woke takeover of our great universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, was made possible by their myopic cowardliness in defending intellectual liberty. One can have no faith at all in their guardianship of our priceless enlightenment inheritance. Quite the reverse: they’ve caused many of the problems.

Linked with this was a discussion of the pearl-clutching ideal of ‘decorum’, expressed as the need to edit things which are ‘offensive’. This is really just an assertion of moral superiority - the form of snobbery most prevalent today. Perhaps everyone should show 'decorum', just as we should all stop boozing, eat our greens and cycle everywhere wearing masks. But the suggestion that this is relevant to a discussion on free speech is - at best - a foolish concession to the 'be kind' zealots. At worst, it shows a disbelief in what free speech actually is.

So it alarmed me to hear one of the FSU people talk, re Jeremy Clarkson, about 'offence'. Therein lies much of the problem. Letting the haters of free speech define these terms of reference is dangerous. We’re all wearily over-familiar with the nightmare created - people tip-toeing around, terrified that they’ve 'offended' the latest shibboleth. Perhaps you need to have worked in such an environment, over many years, to truly know how corrosive it is. One wonders how many at the FSU have. It’s far worse for the general public than for academics and journalists.

So there's the victory, of the free speech haters: almost 100% self-censorship. Free speech is meaningless, if concepts of 'offence' - unquestioningly accepted on the mere sayso of the ‘offended’ - are used to make it contingent. And frankly, if the concept of ‘decorum’ is being used to give advice, then it's patronising and insulting. Academics and others have been infantilised into this nonsense. Why not also suggest what shampoo to use?

I know of a ‘poetry professor’ who has an entire research project - of course funded by the public - on ‘Kindness as a literary requirement’. Utterly pathetic - something one expects from Year 9 pupils on Snapchat. Ditto for the moronic Cambridge professor, who vowed on Twitter - on hearing of Nigel Biggar’s Empire book - ‘We can get this thing stopped!!!’ Simultaneously both childish and chilling: a terrifying combination.

To be fair, the FSU’s legal chap Bryn was firm in cautioning about the idea of ‘decorum'. It sets up one group as arbitrating on everyone else’s 'decorum': in reality, what they want to hear and what they don’t want to hear. The FSU needs to be careful about the dominance of bossy middle-class types, who naturally sympathise with this sort of sneaky control. Maybe I’m being harsh: that's free speech.

The FSU should target schools and - though very tough - teachers. I'm one (state school, English) with eighteen years spent at the coal-face. After the last Speakeasy in Oxford, I made some concrete suggestions but got no acknowledgement from the person dealing with schools. Sure, everyone is busy - but to not even acknowledge this is high-handed and dismissive. If there’s one thing the FSU needs, it’s teachers explaining and championing what free speech actually is, in schools. Because this isn’t currently happening. Instead, everything is couched in terms of ‘kindness’ and ‘not causing offence’. A total victory for our opponents, across the board.

And these indoctrinated pupils will be in charge, shortly. Unless the FSU can get involved in this debate, it will forever be fire-fighting and not addressing the problem at its root. The damage is done well before pupils arrive at our appalling universities.

As one lady remarked at the meeting, criticising the apparent complacency on this being shown in discussions:

‘My ten-year old grandson is instructing me on what I can say.’

The FSU speaker was nonplussed, making no reply.

They could have said: ‘That’s not your grandson speaking, it’s his teachers’.

Free Speech is an essential right, which should be like oxygen in the air we breathe. It belongs to everyone. So, I applaud the FSU for their stand and their invaluable assistance, for their excellent achievement in establishing a lobby group which may make woke bullies pause for thought.

However, a sense of ownership is starting to appear and - more annoyingly - credentialism. I realise both of these can have positives; the enemies of free speech employ them without hesitation. Yet they may have definite downsides, especially in narrowing the FSU’s potential appeal.