The peasants are revolting

No Platform – A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech by E. Smith

ISBN 9781138591677 (hbk.), ISBN 9781138591684 (pbk.), ISBN 9780429455131 (ebook), Routledge Studies in Fascism and The Far Right, Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), London & New York, 230 pp., 2020.

Reviewed by Neil Mudford

The great thing about this book is that it shows us, in abundant detail, the longitudinal development of anti-fascist and anti-racist efforts and tactics over the last century. We rarely hear much at all about left-wing political thought and behaviours from anyone other than their opponents, so this is a refreshing read. The detailed focus is on left-wing university students curtailing the spread of fascism, in the first instance, by preventing its advocates from delivering their insidious message, a practice employed from the 1920s onwards. In the 1970s, the tactic came to be known as ‘no platforming’ and was broadened out to include racism and then to a wider range of issues and ideas that also cause damage and hurt to the victims. I will consistently use this term in quotation marks in this review, just as Smith has done in the book.

At the time of writing, the relevance of this topic could hardly be greater. In 2020 came the huge surge in urgent and passionate mass protests against racism across the United States. These were supported by protests around the world and broadened out to local racism of which there is no shortage. They were also opposed with counter-protests. In January 2021 came the month of alarming incitements by the then US President Donald Trump culminating in his supporters attempting to violently disrupt and overthrow the US Government. Then, perhaps most startling of all, the major social media companies finally responded to this, and Trump’s years of aggressive, right-wing bullying outpourings, by ‘no platforming’ him.

Much of the book concerns itself with considerable detail of ideological battles within and between left-wing groups over the anti-fascist and anti-racist struggles. Despite the sound of that sentence, the story is engrossing. The author’s skill in story-telling helps carry it off and the intensity of the competing arguments conveys the intensity and dedication of the protagonists. Another factor that kept me glued to the tale is that those years of political battles and intrigue were really about the deeper story of a fight for freedom from tyranny and hate. With such a theme and the author’s fine ability to bring the story to life, we have a tale that is well worth the read.

The book concludes that these efforts over so many years were a vital factor in keeping Britain free of a mass expression of fascism. Not that the fight is over, or ever will be, and that is part of the importance of this book. Even apart from the immediate events, the problems and challenges are, in essence, the same today as they were a hundred years ago and that is why the book contains important lessons for our times.

Part of the fascination of the topic is the sometimesimponderable questions behind it. It is the unanswerable nature of these that maintains an endless debate about the rights or wrongs of banning speakers in a university setting or in the wider world of the public press, television, the internet and, now, social media. One central question in all this is whether there are some ideas that are indeed so abhorrent that they should not be propounded. In a university setting, in particular, this immediately sounds odd. In the practices of university teaching, learning and research, everyone agrees that arguing this way and that is the bedrock of sorting the ideological wheat from the chaff.

A moment’s contemplation, however, brings to mind any number of ideas that almost everyone can agree are ‘out of bounds’ and must be opposed. Slavery and legalised murder, for instance, would surely be candidates. Just as an aside, a distant Australian ex-patriot colleague of mine did once say, at a conference in the 1990s in Virginia, USA, in relation to 19th century USA, ‘Slavery wasn’t so bad, I reckon.’ The other eight of us at the dinner table ‘exploded’. Outraged and disgusted we gave him a short but comprehensive ‘serve’, stormed out and left him there. We spontaneously ‘no platformed’ him, I now see.

Immediately though, in relation to the above example, we recognise that slavery was accepted practice for centuries. Therefore, we have to recognise that what is beyond the pale can vary with time. When a point of view is dangerous, damaging and completely offensive, time-dependent though this may be, I think a respectable argument can be made that total opposition is the morally and politically correct response.

How best, though, to counter the offending views? This book explores the ‘no platform’ approach that seeks to prevent the views being expounded at all, if possible. Would it not be better, though, to debate, counter and roundly dismiss those views? Surely, if your counter arguments are sound, you can verbally crush your opponents and win in an intellectually admirable way? Of course, this alternative is always available and has its attractions. For one thing, no-one could accuse you of denying anyone their ‘free speech rights’. The historical record shows, however, that those involved in anti-fascist and similar struggles have concluded that the debating path is ineffective and even a trap. There are a number of reasons for this.

For one thing, as the sports of debating and parliamentary interaction show, if the protagonists’ aims are to win the debate, rather than to find the truth, then the logical and factually supported outcome is not guaranteed at all. Rather, the result depends strongly on rhetorical skills, emotional appeals, prejudice, etc. The proponents of the obnoxious views we are thinking of here are interested in persuading rather than providing logical proof. On top of this, the impression conveyed to the audience can vary greatly. Hence, inviting the group in risks the furtherance of their agenda of persuasion and recruitment. ‘No platformers’ would contend that fascists, for example, have no valid arguments and persuade only on the basis of emotion or misplaced grievance.

Another consideration is that providing a university venue for a group with obnoxious views blesses them with the undeserved prestige of having expressed their views in a respected seat of learning.

Historically, the first and abiding target of the ‘no platform’ tactic is fascism. Why should this idea be, or not be, ‘banned’? The arguments are several.

Fascists wanting to expound their beliefs argue that universities ought to be willing to debate all and any beliefs. They say that banning the presentation of fascist arguments exposes the weakness of their opponents’ counter arguments and that the ‘no platformers’ are hypocritical in supporting free speech in most areas of debate while blocking it for fascism. One of the latest jibes is that students, or others, are ‘snowflakes’ – that they are, supposedly, ‘naïve and politically correct students who are unable to engage with “challenging” ideas’ (p 2).

Those favouring the use of ‘no platform’ against fascism counter this by arguing that implementing fascism would end all free speech. Therefore, curtailing free speech to combat fascism in fact protects the broader right to free expression. Additionally, the advent of fascist government would cause many people suffering and injury on a national scale and the benefit of avoiding this fate more than outweighs any free speech considerations. The latter is arguably the more important principle. The author puts it nicely as follows: For militant anti-fascists, a victorious fascist movement means violence and death for those specifically targeted by fascists, as well as the denial of a voice for everyone else. Thus fascism needs to be denied a platform in its embryonic stages. This was the basis for the original implementation of the NUS’ ‘no platform’ in the 1970s and a principle maintained to this day. (p 215)

Though no platforming began as an anti-fascist tactic, it has been applied more widely in recent decades, beginning with explicitly tackling racism in the 1970s. Since then, sexist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic speakers have found themselves ‘no platformed’. The rationale for this is much as for fascism – that the victims of attacks on these grounds can suffer great damage and hardship without any justification and through no fault of their own.

Opponents of ‘no platforming’ complain about this expansion by supposing that there was a ‘pure’ time when only fascism and racism were targeted and contrast this with the present when they say the policy is being ‘misused’ against transsexual and queer denialists. The book shows clearly, however, that the current state results from a process of constant development, that the policy was always contested and that the underlying principle is the same – ‘no platform’ for ideas that damage people.

One thing that must be said about ‘no platforming’ is that Smith reports throughout that the tactic was used to exclude only the most egregious speakers, although it must have been tempting to use it against all one’s opponents. Tories, for example, were almost always allowed to speak. There were exceptions including explicitly racist conservatives such as Enoch Powell.

The central complaint from the targets of ‘no platform’ throughout its whole history is that they are denied their right of free speech. Apart from the injustice that can be caused by free hate speech, the truth is that the targets seem to get loads of other opportunities to spread their ideas. This is abundantly evident in our own time. We hardly ever stop hearing these complaints in the mainstream media, for instance, from those who would be ‘no platform’ candidates if they chose to speak at universities. Smith cites Sara Ahmed (Ahmed, 2015) expressing this in a most pointed and satisfying way: ‘Whenever people keep being given a platform to say they have no platform, or whenever people speak endlessly about being silenced, you not only have a performative contradiction; you are witnessing a mechanism of power.’

Smith points out that ‘no platform’ is itself an expression of free speech. It is a way of debating the unhealthy views by demonstrating that there are people who passionately disagree with the speakers. It might not be the most articulate method but it gets the message across just like other protesting actions do. When it comes to lack of platform, you have to wonder about left-wing political activists. Are they not continually ‘no platformed’ by the mainstream media? When do you hear socialist notions conscientiously examined in the mainstream media, let alone communist ideas? Our major trading partner has a nominally communist government but all that is said about this is that its government is authoritarian. There is never any discussion about how or whether their communist political system was a factor in them becoming the world’s factory, for example.

Mainstream media is controlled and run by big business. Consequently, they are inherently opposed to ideas that inhibit their power and earnings and consequently do not publish them. In fact, they go further than failing to explore the ideas. Instead, at the mere mention of a left idea, they disparage it in the strongest terms as unrealistic, oldfashioned and discredited. Whereas, Laissez-Faire Capitalism is promoted as sensible, natural, the only workable way, good for everybody, etc. and even the ‘modern way’ in spite of this model being hundreds of years old.

By contrast, when there is a racist issue, for example, the reaction is to report that the instigator denies the racist tag. ‘I am not a racist,’ says the purveyor of racist talk. A bit of tsktsking might follow but we rarely, if ever, see fulsome pieces in the mass media saying how abhorrent, unacceptable and damaging racism is.

Part of the asymmetry in the images of the left and right in the public imagination derives, I believe, from the ability of conservatives to successfully mock and belittle left-leaning people. Conservatives seem somehow to have a well-honed ability to develop or purloin words and phrases and use them in sly ways to denigrate progressive thought and attitudes while reinforcing the notion that everyone is irritatingly cramped by left morality and politics. ‘Politically correct’, for example, is the term you use to mock any progressive attitude, such as inclusivity or gender-neutral language. The long standing African American Vernacular term, ‘woke’, has lately been quickly transformed from denoting awareness, especially of racial discrimination, to being used, it seems to me, to intimate that someone has recently become irrationally sensitive and comically adheres to progressive notions that are innately puerile. ‘Social justice warrior’ is another example of the same ilk. Laughter might be the best medicine, but it can also be a powerful poison.

The considerable power of mockery is used against the left in these terms but I can’t think of any equivalent terms that mock and belittle the right. Somehow the left is always seen as looney but the rabid right, even while unfair, narrow, perverse or misguided, always seems to be credited with holding its views earnestly and with conviction.

The arguments amongst the political organisations in the book about how to counter the damaging views went through cyclic changes, as you would expect. Street demonstrations, leafletting, picketing and incessant heckling in the lectures or debates that did go ahead were some of the most favoured ‘no platform’ enforcement actions. A unique protest technique was employed by student Philip Gratier at Cambridge University in 1960 during a speech on South Africa by the prominent fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. According to a report in the Cambridge student paper, Varsity (30 April, 1960, p 1), Gratier was ‘one of the twenty-strong bodyguard’ deployed by the Cambridge University Conservative Association who hosted the event. In spite of this, Gratier ‘walked up to Sir Oswald and said, “Have a jelly my friend.” Then he thrust the green jelly into his face.’ Innovative, but it never caught on.

As usual, when it comes to active, physical protest, the protesters are often portrayed as violent though it seems such acts were rare. This and the enforcement tactic of ceaselessly heckling the toxic speakers no doubt made the demonstrators seem unruly and uncouth but that is the story of all protesting. The irony is that the ‘no platform’ policy was instigated partly because of the violence done to the victims of the political beliefs it is designed to suppress.

On the other hand, Smith reports many violent acts by the pro-fascist groups and the police against the left students. Indeed, one student died as a result of a clash with police at the Red Lion Square protest in 1974.

There is also the fact that those complaining about the ‘no platform’ policy use middle class methods of newspapers and parliamentary speeches, outlets that are largely unavailable to student protestors. This raises a question concerning the matters canvassed in the book. I don’t remember seeing much at all about support for the students by parliamentarians or other public figures. Surely, though, the students were not alone in opposing fascism. After all, the period covered spans the Second World War fought against fascist regimes.

In the 1980s, moderate student groups had some success in using ‘polite’ methods of ‘no platforming’ by convincing universities to officially block or uninvite toxic speakers. The Thatcher Government, however, attempted to counter this by passing the Education (no.2) Act with clauses designed to force universities to allow all speakers in, in the name of ‘free speech’. Fortunately for progressive politics, the Act proved to be ineffective. The students ignored it and continued with their protests. In the final chapter, Smith records that, as of 2017, the UK Government’s Office for Students is trying to replicate the intentions of Thatcher’s Act in response to the current conservative push to champion ‘freedom of speech’ but he doubts that this will be any more effective than the Act.

The book is a most interesting contribution to political history but there are a number of related issues I would like to hear something about. For instance, the author provides an abundance of detail concerning the arguments within and between the left groups who developed and enforced ‘no platforming’ and their actions are reported thoroughly as well. By contrast, we hear only the bare bones of the actions of the

fascists and other like groups attempting to field their speakers at universities and other venues let alone their thinking. Is the author enforcing a printed version of ‘no platforming’, I wonder? He doesn’t say so and there must be ways to convey the gist of their behaviours while avoiding advertising their wares.

Another question I have is whether the right-wing student clubs ever tried to ‘no platform’ left-leaning speakers? The absence of any mention of people in the 50s and 60s trying to muzzle Communists seems strange when anti-Communism was at its height in those years. Did Communism’s many opponents consider that the raging anti-Communism of the mainstream media was sufficient suppression?

Another gap in the book’s reportage is that it says very little about what the public thought of the ‘no platform’ tactic and policy and the associated political action.

All in all, though, the work is a most interesting contribution to our knowledge of progressive action. I wonder what the world would be like now without those efforts?

Neil Mudford is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the University of Queensland. He is also a member of the Australian Universities’ Review editorial board. Contact: neil.mudford@bigpond.com

Reference

Ahmed, S. (2015, February 15). You’re Oppressing Us! Retrieved from Feminist Killjoys: https://feministkilljoys.com/2015/02/15/you-areoppressing-us/