Free Speech in the Queen’s Speech
The government is on the warpath over freedom of speech. Lib Dems need to step up and hold the liberal ground.
This week the Queen’s speech announced government plans to tackle the issue of censorship and suppression of speech in UK universities, in the form of The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. There can be little doubt that this problem is being felt most acutely by female academics, in particular those who consider the existence of two human sexes to be of scientific, social and political importance.
A culture of intolerance has emerged in universities in which any speech or writing that fails to adhere to the new orthodoxy positing ‘gender identity’ as sacrosanct is deemed heretical. Examples of this phenomenon abound: Oxford Professor Selina Todd is now routinely provided with bodyguards during lectures after threats of violence from trans activists; philosophy professor Kathleen Stock has experienced a ‘hostile environment’ at work, with relentless criticism from colleagues and students including petitions calling for her sacking; professor and human rights lawyer Rosa Freedman has faced significant abuse, including an incident in which her office door was sprayed with urine for raising concerns about reform of the Gender Recognition Act.
The standard response to this from pro-censorship activists is ‘How are they being silenced? They still have their jobs and are even publishing books!’ But is it really acceptable for anyone to have to endure this kind of abuse in the course of their work? Should it take the nerves of steel possessed by these women to hold one’s - perfectly reasonable - line within an academic debate?
Of course, what we don’t hear as often are the stories of the women intimidated into silence by campus trans activists. To remedy that, the GC Academia Network website has been set up to host anonymous testimonies from women in academia about their experiences of the censorship and abuse they have received for expressing views that are critical of gender identity doctrine. It makes for a sobering read. One academic wrote, ‘I don’t know if senior management have any idea of the scale of censorship feminists are subject to on a daily basis at this university. It is suffocating.’
The culture of #nodebate on campuses has created such an intellectual silo that the mundane is now contentious and the absurd has become the norm. A statement of fact such as ‘women are born with female genitals’ is liable to trigger a complaint. While stating that biological sex is just a figment of the imagination is unlikely to raise even an eyebrow. Meanwhile, prominent pro-gender identity academics have attempted to position gender critical feminism - which asserts little more than that there are two human sexes and endless possible personalities - as analagous to Holocaust denial. These bizarre and offensive interventions are clearly nothing more than brazen attempts to re-engineer the parameters of acceptable thought and speech.
An academia in which women’s rights are unsayable for fear of ‘consequences’ will be devastating, not just for for women but for academic freedom and for society as a whole. As Selina Todd put it, ‘This might sound like a storm in a teacup and something that's just about student activists but students become graduates and Oxford students tend to become graduates who go into things like politics, the media or the civil service. So if they are learning that no debate is the way to run a society we should all be worried.’
Despite our party’s recent and welcome emphasis on civil liberties, Liberal Democrats in Parliament have so far largely failed to jump on this ongoing crisis, despite the obvious threat it poses to democracy. Meanwhile, many of our activists can often be heard dismissing the subject as ‘some culture wars stuff’ or ‘a right wing talking point’ and flatly denying the existence of any problem. They justify it with the familiar mantra, ‘if people want free speech, they must accept the consequences of that speech’. The consequences obliquely referred to here might include loss of livelihood, suspension of membership of professional and social groups, revocation of past honours or prizes, etc. The statement betrays a troubling lack of awareness. If freedom of speech must come with ‘consequences’, then those consequences are themselves the price of the speech. Speech that comes at a cost is patently not free.
The Bill to establish new laws compelling universities to uphold freedom of speech is likely to be a blunt instrument with which to tackle a complex problem. It is also unlikely to be an ideologically neutral endeavour on the part of the government: we are told that much of the problem, as perceived, is to do with, among other things, activists ‘trying to do Britain down’. We might not share the government’s primary concern that universities are being insufficiently patriotic, but regardless of the motivation, there is clearly a problem in universities that does need to be addressed.
The Conservatives will be eager to seize the opportunity to make political capital from claiming the liberal moral high ground on territory that should have always been our own. There is little doubt that they are keenly aware of the bind in which parties like ours find themselves: while most of our parliamentarians might intuitively incline towards free speech, such a position is liable to rile much of our online activist base, which, sadly, is as likely to endorse the ‘consequences’ route for female academics who don’t toe the line on gender identity as it is to oppose it. The easy path for us would be to make excuses: ‘we mustn’t get dragged into this government’s culture war,’ etc. But public awareness of the dire situation within universities is growing, as is awareness of the impact of absurd ideas emanating from academia and finding their way into the mainstream. By taking action on this issue, the government is making a smart strategic move by laying down a challenge to liberals in Parliament.
Last Thursday Ed Davey gave a rousing speech at the Queen’s Speech debate, in which he exercised his freedom to thoroughly lambast the government’s authoritarianism, its disregard for the rule of law, and its silencing of opposition. He pulled no punches, insisting, ‘these are the actions of despots, not democrats’. Like our party’s recent opposition to vaccine passports, as well as the Policing Bill, this return to our roots politics has seen us gain much-needed traction in the media and in the polls alike. As it has been correctly pointed out, Lib Dems do well when we’re being liberal. This is our terrain.
We have yet to read the in-depth legal analysis of the The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill; the proposals may or may not stand up to scrutiny. Our inclination is to support it, but if Lib Dems ultimately don’t vote for the Bill, it must not be on the basis that there is ‘no issue’. The issue is undeniable and our party must at least have some solutions of our own to offer. A Lib Dem policy working group on freedom of speech is long overdue. Equally, our student groups across the country should make a commitment to opposing censorship on campus. This would be a tangible and positive move that would distinguish our youth wing from others on the left/centre-left.
Finally, we urge Ed Davey to listen to what female academics are saying, stand up for the fundamental liberal principle of free speech, and keep up the momentum on his civil liberties messages, which speak not just to the public but to the philosophical heart of the party.
If any Lib Dem student bodies would like to get in touch we would love to work with you to explore policies around this issue.