Dressed head to toe in black, her hair swept into a glorious silver-grey chignon, she told me she was “in mourning” for her former lover David, who had not died but left Claudia many years ago. Describing David as “a cross between George Best and Jesus Christ”, Claudia told me her life story.

Born male, Claudia grew up on a run-down estate in Glasgow, where she was mercilessly bullied for being gay. Then, in the early Eighties, Claudia met David, who soon announced he was “not gay” and that therefore Claudia “must be a woman”. She had genital surgery in 1986.

“I changed for all the wrong reasons,” Claudia told me. David walked out a year after the operation. Claudia and I became firm friends and remain so to this day. I later wrote about her for the Sunday Telegraph Magazine, but the editors decided not to put the article online, so it was not widely read.

Not so my now-infamous column in the Guardian, entitled “Gender Benders, Beware”, in which I railed against a trans woman who had tried to have a rape crisis centre in Vancouver shut down by tying its staff up in years of litigation. The fall-out was immediate; the Reader’s Editor received more than 200 letters of complaint, many as a result of lobbying by trans activists. (He would later distance himself from the article, claiming “it abused an already abused minority”.)

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The hounding of Kathleen Stock

By Timandra Harkness

I began to receive death and rape threats by email, as well as messages that I was “being watched”. I was used to my feminist views being unpopular: those of us who name and blame men for violence towards women are often warned to keep quiet. But nothing could prepare me for the misogyny of extreme transgender activists.

Despite the hostility, I contacted a number of trans people to see if they were willing to talk. Over the years I had debated countless prominent activists at public events. It was always respectful, warm and, in some cases, truly enlightening for both sides. I kept in touch with some of my opponents and friendships were formed.

In 2007, I was asked by the BBC to take part in Hecklers, a live radio programme with an aggressive format. I was asked to put forward my view — that sex-change operations constitute unnecessary mutilation — before an audience of doctors and transgender people at the Royal Society of Medicine. Two trans people, a gender clinician and Peter Tatchell were put up to argue against me.

I was convinced I would mess up, and was too scared to invite my feminist allies to watch. But I survived, and afterwards stayed for a drink with several of the audience. Two individual trans men came up to me, lifted their T-shirts and showed me their double mastectomy scars. A trans woman told me that before transition and hormones she was being “poisoned by testosterone”. There was no animosity, except for the fact that Claudia, who had insisted on coming along to support me, was cruelly snubbed by her own community. Solidarity never extends to those who speak out against the transgender doctrine.

The following year, I was nominated for the Journalist of the Year award by Stonewall for my work on anti-lesbian violence. I had no interest in the nomination, which had come from the public as opposed to an internal vote by the charity. But when the gay media decided to go absolutely berserk about my nomination, I changed my mind: I had to go, despite the fact that I had long made public my view that Stonewall prioritised rich gay men over lesbians.

Soon social media was awash with petitions, open letters and plans for a demonstration at the event. There was talk of how to storm the Victoria and Albert Museum, where the event was being held. But Stonewall held firm.

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Stonewall's greatest betrayal

By Jonny Best

The crowd greeting me on arrival was loud and aggressive. My name was plastered over dozens of placards, and “Bindel the bigot” was being screamed through loudhailers. Once I had managed to enter the building, I was told by one of the judges that I was the clear winner, but the panel had received strict instructions that I was not to be given the award. So it was given to a heterosexual agony aunt.

The impact of that decision would extend far beyond the handing-out of a mundane prize. It galvanised the modern day trans-rights movement: the old guard — such as Press for Change founders Christine Burns and Stephen Whittle — started to be dismissed as irrelevant and too conciliatory, with the younger blue-fringe crew declaring themselves the new overlords.

From 2008 onwards, whenever I was invited to speak alongside a transgender activist or ally, the event would face threats of being shut down or disrupted. In 2010 I was invited to speak at “Queer Question Time” at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. I turned up to face a massive demonstration of well over 100 trans activists, shouting my name through loudhailers, jostling me as I tried to enter the building. Many of the protesters came inside for the event, and every time I opened my mouth, screamed over me.

The atmosphere became so toxic that one of my co-panellists, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, was forced to say: “I’m sure that you do have people that put you in danger, but I can’t imagine Julie Bindel is one.” From the floor, an object was thrown across the room and hit me just below the eye. I was terrified, even though it turned out to be a lanyard, thrown by a trans woman.

But at least the event had been able to take place. From 2008, the UK National Union of Students (NUS) has included me on its “no-platform” list, alongside fascist groups and individuals. This meant that even when I was invited to speak at universities on male violence towards women and girls, the NUS would threaten to withdraw any financial support it had given to the organiser. Inevitably I would be dropped, publicly, to protect the event.

For many that still wasn’t enough. In 2011, upset that I was still invited to speak at the occasional university event, the NUS Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender (GLBT) conference voted to no-platform me once and for all. The motion summed up their spiteful worldview: “This conference believes that Julie Bindle [sic] is vile.”

And on it went. In Denmark, at a conference on how to end the harms caused to women by the global sex trade, I had to be escorted out of the venue by police officers after an angry mob started to bang loudly on the windows and scream through loudhailers. At another event, in Spain, where I was asked to deliver a keynote speech on rape, I was stopped from going on stage with minutes to spare. I later discovered that a major funder of the organising group had raised concerns about “transphobia, as reflected by the invitation to Julie Bindel to speak.”

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Why I became trans

By Debbie Hayton

I am, of course, not the only activist to be harassed. Over the years, I have made friends with a number of trans people who have also been harassed and de-platformed when attempting to have discussions with feminists such as myself. I’ve interviewed dozens of de-transitioners who have been cast asunder after expressing regret about transitioning. I also know many trans people who are perfectly happy with their decision — but none of them believe it is reasonable to demand that they encroach women-only spaces such as domestic violence refuges, rape crisis services, prisons or hospital wards.

The problem, after all, is not trans people. It is extreme trans activism — a men’s rights movement which has grown out of the backlash against feminism, in particular the type of feminism that seeks to eradicate male violence towards women and girls.

For me, the costs of being targeted in this way have been enormous — and not just in relation to my unpaid activism. The mob follows me around, preventing me from speaking on how to end male violence under the guise of “protecting trans-rights”. Whenever I speak about prostitution, an expertise of mine, I am told that I “clearly hate trans sex workers”, as though everything comes back to that.

Faced with such vitriol, my mental health took a hammering. I began to feel ashamed of the trouble I was causing for those who invited me to speak. I would find myself apologising to them, which they would graciously accept as though they had done something commendable by having me there, despite my decades of active feminism and public profile.

I started to wonder if perhaps I was a monster — and I was ridiculously grateful to those who did not hide or apologise for the fact that they had any public connection to me. My self-confidence fell to rock bottom, as I doubted my abilities, skills and knowledge. On hearing of the latest cancellation, I would end up highly distressed and in floods of tears, knowing that mud often sticks. I was offered a newspaper column only to have it withdrawn after several staff members announced they would publicly argue against my appointment.

I spent years trying to warn my fellow feminists that if they stood by and let them scapegoat me, eventually they would come after every dissenter. First on the list would be the lesbians, because we are a thorn in the side of misogynistic gay men. Yet when I appealed to academics to stand with me and not cancel an event I was speaking at, most turned the other cheek and decided a quiet life was better.

And so now, here we are. The witches are being drowned and the bitches burned at the stake. Kathleen Stock, Jo Phoenix, Selina Todd and many other women whose names you will never know are being put through hell.

But another, largely hidden cost of this war is the lost opportunity for solidarity. As a young lesbian, trans people were my friends and allies. That is how it should be. Those of us who live on the margins of society, and who are discriminated against, should have each other’s backs. We are all victims of this bloody battle.

35 years ago, the government felt the need to add section 43 to the Education (No.2) Act 1986; it required universities to uphold freedom of speech, and was passed in response to a spate of No Platformings that feel depressingly familiar. “The most dishonourable case”, it was said, “was at Sunderland Polytechnic, where the Jewish Society was banned on the pretext that all Zionists are racists”. “From the objectionable to the absurd,” the Bill’s sponsor continued drily, “Guildford law school banned the Solicitor-General.”

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By Adam King

But it’s not quite plus ça change. Manchester University’s students may have been spraying Michael Heseltine with red paint when he visited in 1983, but this year the institution graduated to deprecating the use of the word “mother”. Things do seem to have become worse.

Gavin Williamson certainly seems to think so. Yesterday, as he introduced The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill in Parliament, the Education Secretary declared it a “milestone moment,” promising to counter “the chilling effect of censorship on campus once and for all.”

The plan, first proposed by Williamson in February, is that instead of the toothless statutory duty we have now — a prescription without a penalty — academics and students who suffer for their speech will in future be able to sue for damages. And universities will have to “actively promote” free speech rather than merely “secure” it. In a similar vein, the requirement to maintain a Free Speech Code of Practice will be transformed — into a requirement to maintain a Free Speech Code of Practice “with minimum standards”. There will be Free Speech Champions. And a new Regulator.

The reaction to the White Paper on this Bill was divided along expected lines: excitement from the Telegraph, disdain from the Guardian. But while it might look like a step in the right direction, is any of it really capable of reducing self-censorship — or what Williamson refers to as “a climate where individual staff members are fearful regarding their employment status”? The Index on Censorship, in its lukewarm response, noted that “you simply can’t legislate for cultural change”. The Right would do well to ponder that observation.

The reality is that unless academics and students are given legal protection from capricious dismissal for politically unorthodox speech, Williamson’s changes are likely to be ineffective. They do not plug the hole in the hull, which is that in order to sack someone, a university need only deem their utterance “unlawful” — without any finding by any court. And given the current state of the criminal law, it’s all too easy for an HR department to make a semi-plausible — but wrong — finding of unlawfulness.

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By Adam King

New Progressives — I’m staying away from the w-word — are fond of remarking that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. They sometimes try to draw a neat line beneath state-sponsored repercussions and hope no one notices that there are all sorts of other consequences that have the effect of restricting free speech in a way we might sensibly want to change. But they do have a point: if, by way of example, I form the opinion that the category of people-who-menstruate no longer merits its own short word for everyday use, and you express the contrary view, I am free to uninvite you to my dinner party, for instance, or refuse to co-author a paper with you.

So, if it’s from fear of social or professional rejection that self-censorship arises, there may not be much that anyone — even a Free Speech Champion — can do. But if the fear is of losing your job — or, as a student, greatly reducing your chances of ever finding one — the outlook is brighter: dismissal for speech transgressions could be outlawed in the absence of an actual criminal conviction. And the criminal law itself could usefully be simplified.

Much of our speech-crime legislation has become difficult to interpret in a fair and consistent way. For example, the least serious of these offences (section 5 Public Order Act 1986) has as its key elements words that mean different things to different people — threatening, abusive, harassment, alarm, distress. The same is true of the “Improper Use” offence in section 127 of the Communications Act 2003: offensive, indecent, menacing, annoyance, anxiety. The problem isn’t that meanings change over time — that’s expected, desirable even — it’s that we no longer have shared definitions for this kind of vocab.

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Free speech warriors are the real puritans

By Tomiwa Owolade

When, following a long campaign, the word “insulting” was removed from the section 5 offence in 2013, the Home Secretary Theresa May begrudgingly accepted the change on the basis that Keir Starmer, then Director of Public Prosecutions, had assured her that “abusive” pretty much covers “insulting”, so it didn’t really matter. Some would disagree. And in 2021, many more would disagree, and more vehemently, about what is or is not covered by “abusive”.

The District Judge in the Kate Scottow trial last year (she referred to trans activist Stephanie Hayden as a “pig in a wig”) found her mis-gendering of Hayden to be “abusive”. The excoriating judgment in Scottow’s successful appeal to the High Court expressed no specific view on that point (because it didn’t need to in order to determine the appeal) but the tone and extent of the criticism of the District Judge’s approach suggests that it might well have concluded differently. Mr Justice Warby (now Lord Justice) said that her analysis was “legally flawed and inadequate” and that “her reasoning is deficient”. These are strong words by the linguistic conventions of the higher courts.

And if a District Judge can’t get this stuff right, what hope is there for University HR managers, and internal disciplinary panellists? Their judgment could deprive any tweeting student or lecturer of a livelihood. This decision, this power, should be removed from them.

If we want to secure freedom of speech in the long-term we must be clear about our purpose. And it shouldn’t just be the hope of a quick win in the current culture war. We all have a principled passion for our own particular brand of “tolerance”. Each side accuses the other of intolerance — and both are right. There is an intolerance inherent in the expressing of any idea, because time and attention are limited. I might sincerely claim to defend to the death your right to say something, but if I’m talking, you’re not. My ideas, my memes, which replicate between minds as genes do in bodies, are looking for the chance to spread in place of yours. That’s what a culture war is, and it’s never-ending.

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The new Inquisition must never win

By Adam King

So the reason we should want to protect free speech is to allow the process of cultural evolution to operate smoothly over time, rather than in calamitous bursts after long periods of sclerosis. Of course, periods of stability punctuated by flashes of turmoil might well be how culture naturally evolves. But if unpopular speech is too heavily suppressed, the periods of stasis will be unnaturally long. Most unpopular ideas are unpopular for good reason, but the truth is some turn out to be correct.

So let’s not rearrange deckchairs. Free Speech Champions have made for solid headlines, but they will be seen by many persuadable non-Tories as a sad little army of libertarian proctor-generals, and will have a predictably alienating effect. Instead, we should take care of the hull of the ship: sharpen up the vagaries of the criminal law, and prevent university authorities from applying it.

Freedom of speech urgently needs to be rescued from the battlefield of the culture war. We must acknowledge, for our long-term cultural prosperity, that it forms part of the rules of the game, rather than one of the prizes. The Government has a rare opportunity, with its large majority, to entrench an enduring basic level of free speech — by imposing sensible limits on the consequences of transgression. It should take that opportunity, and take care not to jeopardise support for it with ineffective meddling. For all its noisy “raft of measures” ambition, the new Bill looks a lot like a pruning that leaves the root of the problem unaffected.

And then there are more subtle methods. ‘Cancel culture’ is spoken of as if it were something new. It isn’t. You don’t need social media to whip up a mob. And as for attacking your getting opponents fired, that too goes all the way back. Administratively competent dictators usually sack their enemies before jailing or killing them. The same goes for ‘no platforming’ — another new name for a very old practice. If you control the public square then you can deny dissidents a voice.

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Soon we’ll all be cancelled

By Meghan Murphy

This article is about the less obvious threats to free speech. I’m not referring to the constant bellendery of what happens online (and, increasingly, in the TV studio). Nor is this an article about the way in which spurious accusations of bigotry are used to tear down decent individuals (latest victim: Trevor Phillips).

Rather, my focus is on the tactics used to derail and discredit the practice of debate itself.

What makes these methods all the more harmful is that, at first sight, they appear to be justifiable — even virtuous. The biggest danger isn’t that they might be used against people of goodwill, but that they will be used by them.

Here are ten to watch out for:

1. Declaring ‘no-debate’

As important as argument is to democracy, there simply isn’t time for everyone to debate everything. There are certain issues that people just don’t want — or feel the need — to discuss. They should be under no pressure to do so: freedom of speech includes the freedom not to speak or even to listen.

The best way to deal with cranks and bigots is not to waste your energy dealing with them. After all, the great majority of reasonable people have more than enough disagreements on sensible subjects to be getting on with.

However, there’s a world between ignoring the obvious loonies and declaring certain issues to be settled or beyond question when, in fact, they’re still the subject of mainstream debate. In a free country, it’s not for anyone to take such authority upon themselves.

In any case, if you do declare no-debate, but people keep debating, what are you going to do about it? Any attempt to establish control over the public discourse — whether in the media, universities or the arts — rarely succeeds completely or permanently. For instance, ‘no-debate’ is a constant refrain among some transgender campaigners, but that hasn’t stopped the issue from being very hotly debated.

Nevertheless, by spending so much time on the meta-argument — about the terms of debate — we end-up neglecting the debate itself and thus any hope of progress.

2. Claiming that the science is settled

This one is a special case of declaring no-debate. It rests upon the assumption that questioning the scientific consensus is a potentially dangerous distraction. And on some issues, especially medical ones, that can be the case.

The facile counter-argument is that science is never settled. And, technically, that’s true. From time to time, some aspect of the scientific consensus is overturned. Nevertheless, some facts are so well established that they provide perfectly reasonable grounds for action. To never proceed on the basis of the best available evidence would be crazy.

So to avoid such insanity, should we suppress dissent? A hugely important example is climate change policy. For fear that public support for action might be undermined, do we declare no-debate on any opinion that diverges from the scientific consensus?

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Why flawed science should concern us all

By Tom Chivers

No, because such tactics will only backfire, making martyrs out of deniers. Furthermore, we’d risk suppressing legitimate and necessary discussion — for instance over how best to interpret and respond to the best available evidence.

No-debate tactics create an unhealthy dynamic in which people are forced to make a choice between complete compliance with the orthodoxy and entrenched opposition to it. There is no guarantee that the (mostly) right side will win and no space within which honest doubts can be aired and addressed.

In any case, crank science tends to wither away for lack of compelling evidence and credible supporters. Flat Earth debates don’t need to be suppressed: they’ll just become irrelevant because no one sensible turns up.

3. Emotional blackmail

The right to free speech does not include the right to harass and harangue those who have no wish to engage with you.

Of course, there are limits to the right to privacy, too — certainly when it comes to what happens in public.

So-called safe spaces blur the distinction between the public and the private. However, the real threat comes from the idea that claims of feeling ‘unsafe’ can be use to reach out and silence people peacefully expressing their opinions in contexts explicitly set aside for purposes of debate. Consider the attacks on the Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore — who is now the target of a campaign by her own colleagues because she expressed her opinions in an opinion column.

But this sort of thing isn’t limited to the Left. Though Right-wingers don’t really go in for displaying their own emotional vulnerabilities, they don’t mind using the fears of others as emotional blackmail. A prime example is the charge that climate change campaigners are scaring children.

Obviously there’s a problem if the kids are too young, or being propagandised instead of taught by their teachers. That said, there’s no denying that climate change is frightening — but that doesn’t change the facts. Older pupils, who we shouldn’t wrap in cotton wool, need to hear them — and the associated arguments.

Facts and logic, unlike emotion, are objective. They provide a basis on which all arguments can be examined consistently. However, there is no consistency in the way in which different people feel about a particular argument. It’s not that feelings can be kept out of public discourse, but they shouldn’t be allowed to dictate what does and doesn’t get heard.

4. Accusations of gaslighting

Gaslight is a 1944 film starring Ingrid Bergman as a woman whose husband tries to convince her she’s going mad. It’s a classic story of psychological manipulation — and the origin of the term ‘gaslighting’, which is when abusers attempt to make their victims doubt their own experience of being abused.

It’s a useful name for an all-too-real phenomenon. And yet it can also be misused — weaponised as an accusation to shut down debate. Argument, by its very nature, is an attempt to get the person you’re arguing with to change their mind, to see things differently, to question their basic assumptions. Because of these parallels, it’s easy to lob in a charge of gaslighting — and thus present the accused as an abuser and to characterise debate itself as a form of abuse.

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By Joan Smith

If you don’t believe me, just do a Twitter search on the word ‘gaslighting’. Most the tweets that come up, including many of those from blue tick accounts, use the term with casual abandon. Pro- and anti-Trumpers are especially fond of describing the claims and counter-claims of the other side as gaslighting, when what they’re actually referring to is argument (albeit of very low quality).

If your opponents are talking a load of rubbish, then, by all means, dispute their evidence; but don’t throw around half-understood, but very serious, accusations of emotional abuse.

5. Accusations of ‘mansplaining’

‘Mansplaining’ is another new word for something that does actually happen. Google it and you’ll find endless examples of men explaining things to women in a patronising and unsolicited manner.

And yet, like gaslighting, the definition has been stretched to breaking point; the word is used to silence people not because of what they’ve said or how they’ve said it, but simply for who they are. The twisted logic goes like this: you’re a man, you’re explaining, therefore you’re mansplaining, therefore shut up.

Last year, the Labour MP Catherine West appeared in a televised exchange with the Green Party politician Jonathan Bartley. West had just argued that Jeremy Corbyn was “green before the greens existed”, but when Bartley tried to interject, West repeatedly told him to stop mansplaining (“I’ve asked you three times”). Well, he is a man, but as co-leader of the Green Party he was perhaps well-placed to dispute West’s statement — especially given that the occasion was a debate between politicians, not a speech from one of them.

Mansplaining has inspired a whole string of other neologisms — ‘whitesplaining’, ‘cisplaining’ etc. And, of course, there are anti-PC mirror-image terms like ‘womansplaining’. It’s a game at which all sides in the culture wars can play — but no substitute for a good argument.

6. Accusations of ‘white fragility’

Further to the above. I should point out that I’m a man who’s just explained what I think about mansplaining. This makes a mansplainer squared, so feel free to disregard.

I’m also white, so bear that in mind as I move on to the concept of ‘white fragility’. This basically means that when white people deny that they’re racist it’s actually proof that they are — because what they’re really complaining about is having their privilege challenged.

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By Gavin Haynes

When white working class voters in rust belt states got Trump elected, liberal commentators were swift to blame racism (and not just on the part of the Trump campaign). If one assumes racism and regards denial of it as further evidence, it’s hard to reach any other conclusion. And yet the voter realignment of 2016 happened time-after-time in counties (especially in the rust belt) that had voted for Barack Obama in both 2012 and 2016. It’s not that there’s no racism, just that other factors — such as a preference for the candidate offering the greatest hope of change — may be the more important factor.

Incidentally, it doesn’t have to be white fragility. You can put any adjective you like in front of the noun and wave it around as an all-purpose rhetorical weapon. It’s like accusing someone of being defensive — there’s no way they can defend themselves. The ‘heads-I-win-tails-you-lose’ argument doesn’t provoke debate, it makes it impossible.

7. “I’m not here to educate you”

Speaking of rhetorical weapons, here’s another. Its purpose is not to silence your opponents, but to provide you with an excuse not to answer them.

In its proper context, the phrase “I’m not here to educate you” expresses the idea that members of oppressed groups are not responsible for explaining their oppression — and especially not to their oppressors. Quite right too. While it is the right of individuals to advocate for their community, it is certainly not a duty. In any case, the onus is on the people responsible for an injustice to undo it.

Ostensibly well-meant, but intrusive, questions from a member of one culture to another also merit the above reply. No one should be expected to serve as an ambassador for a community just because they happen to belong to it.

The trouble, of course, is that the use of “I’m not here to educate you” has mutated — being used in general argument as a get-out clause (and one that makes the other person look like the fool). If you didn’t want to get into a debate in the first place, then fair enough, but if you did and you’ve been challenged on something you’ve said, then it is your job to stand your claims up or concede the point.

8. Who funds you?

Does it matter who funds a think tank or a publication? Yes, it does.

But if they won’t tell you, and the law doesn’t require them to, that doesn’t alter the validity of their arguments. Facts are facts, and lies are lies, irrespective of who pays for them to be communicated.

So, beyond the quality of the evidence presented, what’s the objection? That those in receipt of undisclosed funds might not personally believe in what they’re saying? If that’s the problem then does that mean we should ban the advertising and PR industries?

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“Who funds you?” is a question that’s especially asked of free market think tanks. As believers in low taxes and minimal regulation, they unsurprisingly attract commercial sponsorship. But note that the money follows the ideology, not the other way round.

If the folks spouting off a load of libertarian nonsense about, say, smoking were only doing it for the cash then why wouldn’t they do it for some public affairs company instead, where the pay’s better?

To refuse to engage with their arguments or, even worse, to seek to have them excluded from mainstream public discourse altogether, betrays a lack of confidence in the counter-argument. It’s also a wasted opportunity; if these people really are no more than a front for vested interests, then why pass up on a rare chance to confront their propaganda head-on?

So while “who funds you?” is a pertinent question, it’s a rotten end to a conversation.

9. Alt democracy

In a free society, debate can take place just about anywhere — from the pub to the poshest dinner party. In reality, though, some arenas matter more than others — Parliament, for instance, or the opinion pages of a national newspaper.

Those who wish to devalue the outcome of this high level public discourse (because they keep losing) can always cry foul — pointing to issues like the influence of money on party politics or the ownership of newspapers. The system isn’t working, they say — we need an alternative.

And thus we see proposals for things like ‘democratic control’ of the media or for alternative decision-making bodies such as citizen assemblies. What all these proposals have in common is that they replace bottom-up mechanisms like universal suffrage and letting individuals decide which publications they want to read, with systems in which debate is managed from the top down — and which deny most people a direct say.

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By Roslyn Fuller

This ‘alt-democracy’ might have some peripheral uses — for instance in conducting public consultation exercises, but as a substitute for our established democratic institutions it is a threat to liberty.

If debate is to be curated, it must be by directly-elected representatives that everyone has a chance to vote in or out, or by media outlets that everyone can decide to pay attention to or ignore.

10. The catastrophisation of disagreement

It’s taken a real catastrophe (Coronavirus) to drive Brexit from the headlines. But for most of the last four years, Leave versus Remain has torn us apart as a nation (supposedly).

Indeed, for some people the deep divisions over the issue were as worrying as the issue itself.

But why shouldn’t we have massive disagreements about matters of huge importance? The alternative is to not let people have their say — or, at least, not in any way that might make a difference. To avoid heated debate we must, in effect, let one side win without a contest — either fossilising the status quo or to granting a cultural elite exclusive influence over the pace and direction of social change. That might make for a quieter life, but it isn’t democracy.

We should be concerned if our politics is becoming more polarised, but if that’s really the case it surely makes free and open debate all the more important.

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By Tim Farron

But such liberal values and attitudes are rather lacking within the universities here, which seem to be rife with restrictive practices.

Only the other night, a conference I was presenting on one campus, which focused on sexual exploitation towards women and children, was stormed by a group of campaigners. They were shouting “Blow Jobs Are Real Jobs” in protest at the position taken by speakers such as myself that prostitution is harmful to all women. I didn’t mind that in the slightest. I am all for protest and free-speech. My problem was with the university’s response.

Rather than seeing such protests as an inevitable consequence of today’s combative style of healthy debate, the university decided that our next event would be moved off-campus in order to “protect the students”. Protecting students from what exactly? Learning that there is more than one opinion on matters such as prostitution, feminism, and the like?

Alas, this is far from an isolated incident. As Peter Franklin’s thoughtful series, Open vs Closed, has pointed out, there is a growing tendency in places of learning and academia, which you would expect to be open-minded, to be Closed to ideas to which they are opposed – and there is an increasing inclination to no-platform certain opinions.

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By Peter Franklin

This trend is not restricted to Australia. It’s one I am far too familiar with the world over. In 2013, to take only one example, I was disinvited from a debate in a UK University on pornography (the pornographer was not) when the elected transgender representative of its LGBTQ Society argued that it was wrong to give a platform to someone with “a track record of transphobia during Welcome Week, when making all students feel safe and included is particularly important”.

My crime? An article written in 2004 in which I argued that men who identify as women are not suitable to counsel rape victims. I wasn’t allowed to even state my case.

On countless other times I have been invited to address students – including post-graduates – at British universities only to be stood down when management decide that they cannot ‘guarantee’ the ‘safety’ of students. Heaven forbid any of the little darlings experience trauma as a result of my presence.

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The closed world of the 'enlightened' middle class

By James Bloodworth

Lecturers at one American university even set up a ‘safe room’ for students when I took part in a debate with the alt-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos about feminism. This room, outside of the sight and hearing of students, was, so I heard, stocked with soft toys, ‘relaxation music’ and there were counsellors on hand ready to intervene if the upset of having our alien views on campus became too much to bear.

Who’s to blame for this “drawbridge up” attitude? On a book tour around Texas last year, fresh from my London launch at which the (non-academic) venue was filled to capacity with 400 attendees, an independent Catholic college that prides itself of being ‘open-minded and progressive’ cancelled my appearance with less than 24-hours notice. The academic in charge of the event told me, by email, that he had a “duty of care” to the students.

Not one student, the academic admitted, had read my 2004 article, but they had heard I was transphobic. If he had been honest, he would have admitted that he dares not risk any views perceived as controversial on campus.

It’s depressing enough to learn that the ‘snowflake’, cosmopolitan students aren’t as open-minded as they like to think they are – their tolerance extends only to view-points they agree with. But to know that the academics, the people who are supposed to charge these places with their intellectual energy, feel that it is legitimate to shut down certain points of view is worse. They are supposed to be Open to challenging ideas. But reluctant to venture beyond their own ideological comfort zone, they are, instead, closing young minds.

Bristol University student union recently proposed a policy to ban any feminist who refuses to accept that trans women are actual women. The policy was drawn up after a major kerfuffle was caused when a group of women organised an event to discuss controversial proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. They were met with blockades, pickets and major disruption by trans activists and allies, including local university students.

Later, when news that disciplinary procedures had been initiated against a PhD student involved who attempted to stop the group from meeting, an open letter to Bristol University Vice Chancellorwas signed by numerous senior academics protesting the assault on this particular student’s ‘freedom of speech’.

So there we have it – major support from spineless academics for a student who did their level best to prevent a women’s group from being able to speak out and address the 100-plus citizens who wished to hear both sides. It’s Orwellian, hypocritical, and Closed. It’s all part of a pattern which includes the pandering to the Rhodes Must Fall mob and the no-platforming of Theresa May’s portrait.

Once, universities were places where unpopular views – from either Left or Right – were welcomed and challenged. Today, the left-leaning ideologues steering these supposed bastions of learning aren’t just set against conservative soft–right views, but also those of radical feminists such as myself. Prejudices are reinforced by curricula and differing opinion silenced by the drawing up of the drawbridges.

It is to our great shame that universities are becoming such Closed, ideological echo chambers – places were students will tolerate you only if you think like them.

Where do we go from here? How do we break down the walls of their ‘safe spaces’? I would never advocate blanket freedom of speech, and I do recognise that some speech can be incitement to criminal activity. But I do believe we need to stop encouraging or accepting those Closed prejudices so prevalent on university campuses, which are inculcated and inflamed by the academics. This enforced ignorance is taking our kids in the wrong direction. It is anti-intellectual, anti-progress and anti-democratic. I despair.

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