A war on freedom of expression is raging across Britain’s university campuses – but a recent surge in free speech groups is rallying to defend the right to debate.
Freedom of speech activists from all walks of university life – students, academics and alumni – have opened up to GB News on the mounting threats to open discussion on campuses nationwide – and what’s being done to protect the “pursuit of truth”.
Their words come amid a long-running battle between Westminster and the Free Speech Union (FSU) over the imposition of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, which was passed by the Tory Government, before being stalled by its Labour successor.
The FSU had threatened a judicial review against Labour’s “war on free speech” last summer after Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced she would be “considering options, including its repeal” – then, in January, Labour confirmed its plans to partially reintroduce it.
A pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Edinburgh, 2024
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Now, GB News understands that the Union will be holding off on the review until July 14 this year – and will act depending on Phillipson’s course of action.
In the meantime, campaigners have warned that causes like transgender activism, pushes to “decolonise” curriculums and solidarity with Palestine are being wielded to suppress true freedom of expression.
Professor Dennis Hayes is the director of Academics For Academic Freedom (Afaf) – a thousands-strong free speech campaign group representing staff at more than 30 universities across the UK and Ireland.
Afaf runs a “banned list” of “silenced” academics, groups and public figures stretching back two decades – but Prof Hayes told The People’s Channel it was “only the tip of the iceberg”.
OUTRAGE AT BRITAIN’S UNIVERSITIES:
Professor Dennis Hayes, director of Academics For Academic Freedom (Afaf)
UNIVERSITY OF DERBY
He said his group deals “daily” with grievances and casework on academics who have been “disciplined or threatened” for speaking their minds in “institutionally captured” universities.
Anonymous complaints lead to disciplinary action and a “knock on the door” from university authorities – some of which hold policy clauses which threaten further punishment if academics speak out about their disciplining, Prof Hayes said.
He added: “These things drag on for months. The process is the punishment, and it’s very upsetting for the person involved and for their colleagues as well. And often they don’t lead to anything!”
Like the FSU, Afaf boasts a set of lawyers who can step in if needed. The two groups work “very closely”, Prof Hayes – who sits on the Union’s advisory board – said.
Like Lord Young’s FSU, Afaf boasts a set of lawyers who can step in if needed
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“We spend days and weeks involved in all of this casework. We don’t just defend free speech – we actually take up cases.”
These can end up at emploment tribunals – but as Prof Hayes warns, battling “captured institutions” can be an uphill battle.
The Afaf director asks: “Why don’t you ask all the vice chancellors in the country: ‘Is there one vice chancellor who dares say biological sex is real?’ Their management, HR and all their EDI networks would turn against them.
“I don’t think it’s malicious. In a way, they’ve just absorbed it… It’s the institutional structures, the networks and the committees which have been, in a sense, captured without even thinking about it.”
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Black Lives Matter protesters in Oxford, 2020
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But he stressed that campaign groups can only go so far.
“We’re constantly campaigning and meeting with Phillipson and her advisers. But, in a way, that’s giving in on academics. I always think academics should stand up for academic freedom and students, no matter the difficult circumstances,” Prof Hayes said.
“It’s up to you as free-thinking individuals to use your own agency to say: ‘I challenge this.’
“We can give legal advice, but also, academics often just need the confidence to challenge what’s happening to them.
Transgender rights protests in Oxford, 2023
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“I want as many academics as possible to make a public statement that they’re in favour of free speech. I want more and more people to sign that statement. If they did that and made a public statement, a commitment to free academic inquiry, then we would change everything.”
Prof Hayes has heaped praise on other free speech groups around the country, including Free Speech Champions and the London Universities’ Council for Academic Freedom (Lucaf).
But unlike academics, students can only go so far – not least, because they leave university after a few years.
Jaiden Long is the convenor of Afaf’s student wing, Student Academics For Academic Freedom (Safaf), and a first-year student at Queen Mary University of London.
“It’s very good that we’ve got Jaiden, who’s a first year student. So at least he’ll last two or three years,” Prof Hayes said.
Safaf is a much younger offshoot of its parent group, having only been set up in May last year.
Long told GB News: “It’s run by students, for students. It’s a proper student organisation.”
Like Afaf, he stresses that Safaf is “non-partisan”. “We don’t subscribe to any particular politics, besides the politics of having free speech,” he said.
One of Safaf’s most “notorious” members is Connie Shaw, the Leeds University student who was “silenced” for her gender-critical views.
Students are just as susceptible to attacks on free speech, Long said – but unlike the “grown-up” Afaf – it lacks the lawyers to make the case. In cases like Shaw’s, however, the FSU can step in.
And like Prof Hayes, the Safaf convener is firm that the groups acting against free speech do not do so “out of evil and malice in their heart” – but nonetheless end up maintaining a “virtue-signalling” status quo.
He pointed to the Speakeasy National Movement, a pro-free speech society at Exeter University which butted heads with its student newspaper after hosting a debate on Islam as last summer’s unrest began to brew.
Exeter’s student union then became embroiled in the row, which soon descended into arguments over “Islamophobia”, Long said. The university’s Speakeasy Society is still running.
“These things are like sneezing,” he said. “Someone sneezes and then the bacteria grows everywhere. It’s not like one person is driving everything. It’s a sort of contagion. And it snowballs, more often or not.”
One of Long’s fellow students at Queen Mary, Shiven, said: “There are dominating views by certain students who believe there are correct ways of thinking on a given issue.
“I have called out my peers for making generalised and untrue statements like ‘the UK and US are white supremacist countries’, only to find out after seminars that others agreed with me but felt too intimidated to speak up.
“More often than not, it’s students who reject views and want to silence others’ opinions, rather than academic staff.”
“There’s plenty of things we [Safaf] still need to do. Plenty things in the works. We want to give students a place to express themselves freely and give them a sense of support,” Long says.
“We’ve been going for a few months now, not a full year. But I think we’re doing quite well so far.”
As for a beacon of hope, he said that an “undeniable, unexplainable shift” is coming thanks to the return of Donald Trump to the White House – though it hasn’t yet made its way to Britain’s universities.
Oxford University’s new chancellor William Hague could be a ‘beacon of hope’, Jaiden Long said
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In the meantime, Oxford University’s new chancellor William Hague could be that beacon, Long said.
“He’s just taken over – and if he does actually affect change, even just on a cultural level, that might be the free speech tsunami breaking over these archaic barriers to freedom of expression.”
Oxford alumnus William Mackesy is the co-founder of Alumni for Free Speech (AFFS) – and has been a leading voice for years, having helped set up the Free Speech Champions.
With less to lose than students or staff by sticking their necks out, Mackesy’s AFFS can be more aggressive in ramping up the pressure on universities to protect free speech.
William Mackesy, co-founder of Alumni for Free Speech (AFFS)
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“My co-founder Andrew Neish is a working KC, and I used to be a corporate lawyer. We quite quickly worked out that the law is actually quite strong, and the universities aren’t complying,” he said.
By harnessing alumni influence and existing law, the AFFS can bring universities to comply with “what they should be doing”, Mackesy added.
That comes through Best Free Speech Practice (BFSP), a kind of constitution described as a “non-partisan project whose aim is to identify what the legal requirements are for free speech protection in the UK, and what the consequent requirements are in practice”.
Far from the campus front lines, the AFFS can write in and “add weight” to what Mackesy called an “amazing network on the ground” – groups like Afaf and Lucaf.
“In principle, we can cover all universities,” he said. “We got stuck into the Helen Joyce affair at Cambridge and Steven Greer at Bristol.
“We wrote detailed letters about how they breached the law. And, basically, universities’ instincts are to batten down the hatches and not respond. But if you go on inflicting pain, you begin to hear round the corners.
“It’s a sort of free speech arms manufacturing. The BFSP is arming all of these groups on the ground. We’re outside universities. We’re lawyers providing legal arms.
“Universities obviously don’t like outsiders interfering. But they are wary of something called alumni.”
Like Prof Hayes, Mackesy said vice chancellors were in a difficult position – but warned that they were still “operating in the 1970s” and need to pull themselves into the digital world – where “online pile-ons can happen within minutes of somebody saying something”.
They must “enforce their rules, intervene early and say: ‘Look, you’re in breach of our code. You’re going to be in trouble if you organise this online pile-on’,” Mackesy said.
AFFS’s lawfare could soon face trouble – in January, Labour said it would look to remove the part of the Free Speech Act which allows people to sue universities that fail to uphold their duty to protect freedom of speech.
The ability to sue could result in long and costly legal battles at a time when many universities were already struggling financially, the Government has said.
‘Freedom of speech is integral to the purpose of universities,’ Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott told GB News
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“If the Act doesn’t get implemented, it’s time for more academics to speak up,” Prof Hayes warned, while Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott has put her weight behind enshrining it in law.
She told GB News: “Freedom of speech is integral to the purpose of universities. Academics and students alike deserve to have the right to express their views and challenge opinions without fear of being cancelled.
“It’s encouraging to see so many groups forming to protect free speech on university campuses.”
On the progress of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, Trott added: “Labour were wrong to decry our Free Speech Bill as a ‘Tory hate charter’.
“As the party that promotes and protects our hard-won freedoms, the Conservatives will always stand unequivocally for free speech.”
A spokesman for the Free Speech Union told GB News: “It’s great to see the emergence of all these little platoons dedicated to defending academic freedom and free speech on campus.
“We work closely with all of them and, collectively, I think we’ve made a real difference.”