Frontline
Just this moment walked in through the door back from the protest this evening, so here are some unvarnished reflections. As per usual, this place seems to be teeming with pro-Irving and Griffin activists (sorry, I cannot imagine another more appropriate way to describe people who promote ideas by enabling and defending their promulgation on a prestigious platform).
At 5.45pm, when I arrived, St Michael’s Street was home to three outside broadcast vans, swarms of journalists of all stripes and channels, some burly security guards with their SIA identification nowhere visible and a few protesters. I amused myself chatting to Matt Wilkinson of the Oxford Mail, who didn’t believe me when I said that more than a thousand were expected; he must have been surprised later on. More than six years ago, the last time the Oxford Union invited David Irving, there were a bunch of us organising, luckily more sucessfully, to keep him out of our city; I had a real moment of throwback as I bumped into David Mitchell, then a J-Soc stalwart and now a student rabbi, on my way to the demo, both of us grimacing ruefully at being back in Oxford having the same old arguments.
At its height, the demo stretched from Cornmarket to New Inn Hall Street, everyone packed tightly in together, rocking against the gates of the Union. Unite Against Fascism placards were next to handpainted signs calling on Oxford students to unite against the BNP, and more intrepid protesters scrambled up to perch precariously on the wall of the Union. As the samba band played and music rose from the sound system, the protesters, far more than a thousand I would have thought, shouted, sang and booed. Coachloads from London, Manchester and Liverpool, Oxford alumni, the Trades Council, the Labour Club, representatives from the Union of Jewish Students and NUS, Labour and Green councillors and even George Galloway joined in, calling on the Union to reject the BNP. Packed tightly in, three metres from the gates, I felt the crowd surge forward, and saw some protesters slip past the guards and police and into the Union gardens. We found out later, from listening to the live TV broadcasts over the shoulders of cameramen, that they got into the union debating chamber and delayed and disrupted the debate.
Back on the streets, the focus turned to the other entrance of the Union, on Frewin Court, as rumours spread that union members were being let in that way. Protesters surged round the corner, and arguments developed with union members waiting in frustration in a loose queue outside Gap to be let in, with little chance of success. It became clear how many police were deployed as we rounded the corner, particularly to watch a small group of men dressed in black, with their faces hidden by black scarves, carrying the banner of Bath AntiFa bearing the legend “no pasaran”. Some students, not seeing the banner, mistook the group for the far right, and certainly the police were not about to let them get close to the building, despite their best efforts to break out of the cordon. The BNP were not obviously present, though there were many snappers mingling with the corwd, and no doubt many photos will presently turn up on Redwatch. I hope that the nasty answerphone messages left for David Williams, a Green councillor who wrote opposing the invitations in the Oxford Mail, are the worst that happens.
As I was beginning to think about going home, I bumped into Evan Harris, the Lib Dem MP who spoke alongside Griffin and Irving this evening, stood outside. Having stood against him at the last election, our relations are none too cordial, so I went over and asked bluntly whether he’d attended in the end, hoping he’d at least had the decency to cancel at the last minute. Of course he hadn’t; apparently seeing the protesters climbing the walls of the union had only made him more determined to speak, and he had done so. I said how disappointed I was in him, which under the circumstances was, I thought, rather restrained of me. He then, exceedingly oddly, changed the subject and launched into criticism of my position on abortion. Incredibly strange. Worth remembering the credibility he gives to racists, mind.
So there we are; a successful evening in terms of not letting the BNP and Holocaust deniers swan about our city unchallenged, but a desperate one in that they’d even been invited. Who knows, and who cares, what was said in the rearranged and long-delayed meetings, when they finally started? I’m sure the clever clever undergraduates of Oxford University wiped the floor with Irving and Griffin, but what use is that when BNP leaflets are even now being printed saying “Of course, our leader Nick Griffin is a credible leader of a mainstream political party; after all, he was invited to the prestigious Oxford Union debating society at Oxford University, where Bill Clinton and Mother Teresa have spoken…” The damage is done, and now it’s apparently acceptable to give these types credibility, prestige and profile, all the while protesting your anti-racist credentials. Well done, Luke Tryl, and well done, Oxford Union.
The Oxygen of Publicity!
Denying Sinn Fein a platform didn’t stop them,in fact it may have helped their cause considerably.
I am gay, and like Dr Evan, Jewish - and I find your talk of “pro-Griffin” activists to describe those of us who believe in free speech hugely offensive. You’re a patronising, pathetic, hectoring child - you think you’re so superior chiding Evan and telling him you’re “disappointed in him” - that man has more guts and more brains in his big toe than you’ve got in your whole body. Do us a favour and No Platform your own blog.
Manfarang - do you seriously believe that not inviting NG and DI to the Oxford Union would be helping their cause ‘considerably’? Considerably more than giving them a platform like this?
Chris H - I think the personal tone of your comment doesn’t do you any credit.
For goodness sake, what have these men got to say that is worth listening to or debating with?Freedom of speech does not necessitate that we invite people with vile agendas to speak at the OU or anywhere else for that matter. I don’t see that ‘debating’ with such discredited characters achieves anything but to give these people ‘credibility, prestige and profile’ as Antonio says.
Well done for demonstrating your disaproval about what these two men were likely to say, but what about the sentiments: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” & “think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too”?
Scribbles, after the bile this idiot woman has spewed about Evan Harris (eerily redolent of something I read in the Daily Mail recently) - it’s hard not to be a little personal.
Well, according to the attendee the BBC chose to interview; “I think it was a very balanced argument and both sides did really well.”. So, clearly the baby debaters did a great job of ridiculing them and wiping the floor and whatever other crap they claimed they were going to do.
Chris H - I dislike Evan, as you dislike me. So far, so irrelevant. I also have a set of disagreements with him on politics and policy. I think that lending the credibility of an elected MP from a mainstream political party to a debate featuring the leader of the BNP and a Holocaust denier is at the very least monstrously irresponsible and shortsighted, giving as it does confidence and succour to racists. As for bile, well, I’ve just looked back through my posts on Evan, and I have agreed with him and said so on animal testing; reprinted Zoe Williams and other feminists on Evan’s frankly odd tactics for someone who is pro-choice; called out the Oxford Lib Dems, including Evan, for taking Tory votes in Oxford (not, if you look at an electoral map of Oxford, an out-there proposition); reprinted an attack on Evan’s opposition to incitement for religious hatred. Not personal attacks, but political ones, and not anywhere close to the vitriol of the Daily Mail’s profile of him, which was way over the top.
Brian - I am not convinced that opposing a gratuitous and entirely unnecessary invitation to racists and Holocaust deniers has put me in the position of making windows into men’s (or women’s, for that matter) souls.
“As per usual, this place seems to be teeming with pro-Irving and Griffin activists (sorry, I cannot imagine another more appropriate way to describe people who promote ideas by enabling and defending their promulgation on a prestigious platform).”
Are you actually incapable of distinguishing between those who agree with Griffin and Irving and those who simply think that they should be allowed to speak irrespective of how vile their views may be?
Chris - what astounds me is that there are people who think that the views of Griffin and Irving are vile but are still willing to give them airtime and publicity. That doesn’t make them racists or Holocaust deniers; it does get them periously close to giving comfort and aid to those with vile views. What a sensible and effective way to fight racism in the UK.
Of course freedom of speech is important and Irving and Griffin have the right to say what they believe.
But accepting their right to express their vile opinions is not the same as inviting them to do so on a fairly major platform. I really do question the motivation of someone who invites two Holocaust deniers to speak at their event.
[C4 breaks the comments policy by calling the Labour party and me fascists. Comment deleted. Wish he'd learn. Antonia]
I think it’s right that, the thing going ahead, Evan continued to appear. There would have been nothing worse than allowing Griffin and Irving to have an effectively unopposed platform - as they are usually allowed to choose with their party rallies and broadcasts where they get to pick the scene, platform and agenda. If one is going to offer these views a platform it is absolutely incumbent on the rest of us to ensure they are countered as effectively as possible on every occasion.
The problem I have with an absolute “no platform” position on this is that I think it actually makes them more threatening somehow. Part of what the “no platform” people are saying is that they can read, hear and make up their minds about these guys, but they’re far too dangerous for the rest of us to be able to do the same with. And that plays into their hands. Once people take it into their own hands to censor something, even something as abhorrent to the vast majority of us as this, it gives them, as Margaret Thatcher found out with the IRA, more reasons to gripe and get their faces on the television pretending to be reasonable people.
It just seems so odd that these are the same people who lambasted Thatcher for no platforming the IRA, and who tend to oppose no platforming HuT. Weird.
[...] I suspect I am out of line with most of the UAF, and with Antonia, but I am not in favour of the attempts to prevent David Irving and Nick Griffin speak at the Oxford Union. [...]
I keep reading that Griffin’s views are vile, well I’ve just had a look at their web site and I can’t see anything ‘vile’ on there. I guess I’m just a bloke in the street and not a Guardian reader or the like…..
[...] Oxford Councillor Antonia Bance has one take on it; Skuds has a rather different one. [...]
“[C4 breaks the comments policy by calling the Labour party and me fascists. Comment deleted. Wish he’d learn. Antonia]”
That’s a bit rich, Antonia. I went along to the debate, to argue against Irving and Griffin, and your friends in the protest called me “fascist scum”. You yourself have tarred us all as “pro-Irving and Griffin activists”.
Can’t you see that there’s a massive difference between sticking up for someone’s right to express their views, and agreeing with those views themselves?
Those of us who supported the Union debate are as anti-fascist as you are - but we have a different way of expressing it. We believe that the best way to take votes from the BNP, and to win their supporters back to the tolerant mainstream, is to argue against them in public at every opportunity, and to give them as much rope as possible.
If you believe that isolating them and forcing them to the margins of discussion is a more productive way of combatting racism, then you’re perfectly entitled to your views. Fair enough. But please don’t make out that we’re in any way fascist-sympathisers or supporters. It’s unfair, divisive, and simply wrong.
[C4 calls me a fascist. Comment deleted. Antonia]
Paul @ 15 - That’s exactly why they need to be seen and heard and argued with in as civil a way possible. They are very careful in what they write for public consumption to hit the right buttons and avoid the wrong ones. And stopping people from hearing them and seeing them for what they are means that the only content people do see of them is this anodised for-public-consumption stuff and they feel reassured.
Hi Jonny,
You’re quite right that shouting at the people who were going in to listen to the debate was wrong and counter-productive.
I do note, though, that you are also prepared to dish out insults to people who don’t agree with you about this issue, calling them ‘useful idiots’, ‘more dangerous than Griffin or Irving’, ‘cowardly’, ’smug and complacent’, and ‘massaging their egos’.
If you want to know more about Irving, by the way, ‘Telling Lies about Hitler’ by Richard Evans is very good, and might help you with some of the fascists who have popped up in your comments to defend him.
“We believe that the best way to take votes from the BNP, and to win their supporters back to the tolerant mainstream, is to argue against them in public at every opportunity, and to give them as much rope as possible.”
So to be clear, you think the best way to reduce the level of BNP support would be if we helped deliver a 2-sided leaflet to every home in the country, with the BNP case on one side, and the case against them on the other?
The only blow anyone landed on Irving according to your account was over his opposition to his daughter marrying outside her race. Ironically, probably the one thing he has in common with the people he hates…
In response to the following comment:
‘“As per usual, this place seems to be teeming with pro-Irving and Griffin activists (sorry, I cannot imagine another more appropriate way to describe people who promote ideas by enabling and defending their promulgation on a prestigious platform).”
Are you actually incapable of distinguishing between those who agree with Griffin and Irving and those who simply think that they should be allowed to speak irrespective of how vile their views may be?’
Chris, you can think what you like. Frankly I don’t care. I do care what effect your actions have. In this case, those who agreed with Griffin and Irving and those who thought they should be invited to speak irrespective of how vile their views were took actions which had a similar effect - to allow fascists to credibly present themselves as a mainstream. It doesn’t really matter whether you agree with Griffin or not if your actions have the same effect as if you did agree with him.
The sheer arrogance of Oxford students never ceases to amaze me. Some people actually thought that by arguing against Griffin and Irving in front of a small group of other students they could do more damage to them than the benefits gained from putting in leaflets across the country that the BNP are a mainstream political party and recently spoke on the winning side in a debate in the prestigious Oxford Union. This smacks of an insular world-view in which Oxford students are more important and better than everyone else.
[C4 calls me a fascist. Comment deleted. Antonia]
I disagree with Antonia - we’ve got to allow the likes of Griffin an occasional forum to be heard in. It’s a distasteful side to having a functional democracy and our practicing free thought, but it’s necessary. The sad thing is that the Oxford union can’t secure any more high-profile speakers from one of the mainstream political parties, or a different field entirely? They’ve only 20 or so debates a year - I’d have thought that inviting Griffin is scraping towards the bottom of the barrel…
Chris- what has being gay and Jewish got to do with the fact that you will quite happily give succour to fascists by giving them a platform from which to pollute the environment with their ideas? Are you somehow allowed to do that if you are gay and/or Jewish?- I doubt it?
People are quite correct in saying that many people will think the Oxford Union is showing-like the leopard- its spots in giving the freedom of speech to fascists that fascists would deny to others.
Completely agree. Anybody who ever votes BNP, or even thinks about voting BNP, should be locked up for ever and ever and the key thrown away. In fact, to be honest, this could be extended to anybody who does not vote Labour, or even thinks about not voting for Labour, a bit like in the Eastern Bloc in days of yore.
Right, that’s that fixed.
In amongst all of the very worthy comments about free speech, the quoting of Voltaire and the writing of letters to the Times by Lincoln College undergraduates about how historians are offended by the idea of no platforming someone, there has been little mention of the most important factor in Griffin and Irving speaking at the Union: the threat to people’s safety. One young black woman was physically threatened and racially abused while campaigning against their invitation to speak, people with baseball bats followed individuals away from the demonstration on the night itself, and I was at a UAF rally where two promoters of “free speech” heckled the leader of Oxford’s J-Soc and, at mention of Edwina Currie’s support for no platform, loudly said “Well, she’s a Jew”. The debating Union has a responsibility to protect and a duty of care to students. They abdicated it, and endangered people, by inviting these two vile racists.
Did Griifin and Irvin have something obnoxious to say? I wouldn’t know as someone else decided I’m not mature enough to listen to them talk on free speech in an open debate.
I do know that what they had to say wasn’t illegal, because the police didn’t arrest them.
epsilon: perhaps it’s the really rather definition of “fascist” that makes us want to extend freedom of speech to all. So Hizb ut Tahrir must be allowed a platform. The IRA must be allowed a platform. Any homophobic, misogynistic anti-semites Ken cares to put on display must be allowed a platform. The only ones who aren’t are members of this rather sad little troupe of paleo-conservatives and ethnonationalists who puport to speak for a very small number of white working class people. It seems rather odd, doesn’t it?
Antonia can accuse us of giving being “pro-Griffin”. I accuse you, and her, of doing far more to help him personally, and also fact far more to advance his cause of martyrdom, tension and taboo speech. Well done you.
What is also conspiciously absent from the media coverage of the aftermath of the debate are stories such as this:
“BNP LEADER HUMILIATED AT OXFORD UNION
DISCREDITED HISTORIAN DISCREDITED SOME MORE
Last night at the Oxford Union, BNP leader Nick Griffin and Holocaust denier David Irving could only watch as all vestiges of credibility evaporated as the students speaking against them proceeded to demolish their arguments. Such was the weakness of the cases made by Griffin and Irving that they will never again be able to present themselves as remotely credible figures.”
So where was this great demolition of arguments that those arguing in favour of the invitation kept making so much of?
Tim, you don’t think attention was rather distracted by Galloway and a bunch of muppet students trying to stop the event taking place? Again, you really must invest this pair with brains and cunning beyond that with which I credit them.
Chris -
Do you seriously think that without all the demonstrations the amount of publicity generated saying the BNP made fools of themselves would’ve outweighed the benefits they could’ve claimed by putting in leaflets that they are a mainstream party and have recently spoken at the prestigious Oxford Union?
btw, on the logic Antonia espouses, the Oxford Union have to invite any of the speakers you list above. But on their own logic (and yours), it’s an interesting question as to whether they have to invite Hizb ut Tahrir now. Of course, if they did it would have to be on an issue which made it more difficult to attack them - perhaps “This House oppposes racist attacks on Muslims”?
[...] Despite the conditions, bloggers seem to have been getting out and about with commendable energy in the past week. Kate on Cruella-Blog was at the Reclaim the Night march in London, while Antonia was in the frontline of the protest against the Oxford Union debate. On the other side of the wall, Jonny from Hug a Hoodie was watching the debate [...]
Tim, I wouldn’t invite any of them, and I wouldn’t have invited Griffin or Irving, they’re not very useful or bright people - I just think they should be allowed to speak. Many of Antonia’s allies on this are very selective about which fascists they want to ban from speaking, for perhaps aesthetic or narrative reasons.
The Oxford Union has a right to invite who they want, you don’t have a right to bully them out of that decision, misguided though it may be. Just grow up and accept that free speech is good for us.
I missed out an important “don’t” in the first sentence of my second paragraph above. Apologies.
[C4 calls me a fascist cunt, and challenges me to sue him. No, C4, to sue you for leaving comments about me on my own website would mean suing myself, and that's a bit silly. I'll just delete you instead. Antonia]
Just for the record (since I presume that C4’s comment at #35 will be disappearing shortly), C4 has challenged Antonia to sue him for libel for repeatedly calling her a “fascist”.
If I understand the laws of libel correctly (and I have not yet studied law) in order to defame someone you don’t just have to tell an untruth but you have to lower their standing in the eyes of a reasonable member of society.
So does C4 calling Toni that really lower her in the eyes of a reasonable member of society? Or does no-one take C4 seriously in the first place? (Now that’d be an interesting line of defence…)
Many people I know, having been abandoned by the Labour Party, as well as the conservative and Lib dems, feel the only way to get the these parties to listen and notice them, is to vote BNP.
I live in a working class area, its a staunchly Labour area, or was, in the last local elections lib dems came within 200 votes of ousting the Labour candidate, an unheard of and unprecedented event. Having spoken to many people a majority have stated that had there been a BNP candidate they would have voted for him/her!
The reason, easy:
NuLabour, its really not working and never has!
Schools, dumbed down and not working!
NHS, To many chiefs and not enough indians!
Immigration, Taking jobs that crappy schooling has forced local kids to take due to poor education!
Economics: Taken more in indirect taxation than any other party ever!
Council Tax, More than doubled in the 10 years under Labour!
Smoking ban, and how many pubs are losing money?
ID Cards, that no-one really wants.
ID Database, That will fail because labour know nothing about data bases or biometrics.
Child Benefit, details given/stolen/lost!
Northern Rock, underwritten by the taxpayer!
Thats of the top of my head, Im sure others can remember even more!
But ultimately, Labour has had the money and done nothing with it, except line their own and their cronies pockets!
WEll done to the Comrades in Oxford
you will always get traitors who would open the oven gates
When the Left fought Hitler in Spain,and Churchill was backing Franco, no one ever believed us then that WW2 was comming
We must always seek a popular front against Nazi’s. Oxford is amazing to have had Ted Heath who backed the Republican cause and a local Lib Dem who thinks hes more important than his party and the wider movement - shame on him
Well done to you all - Red Front
Antonia is just like her hero Gordon “McStalin” Brown - a bottler.
Mike: Your comment about oven gates and libertarians was utterly disgusting. You are entitled to freedom of expression, but so am I. Don’t judge me by your own degraded fascist standards.
A bottler, C4? For deciding not to sue myself for hosting comments which libel me?
“A successful evening in terms of not letting the BNP and Holocaust deniers swan about our city unchallenged”
Well, protest or not, they were hardly going to be unchallenged seeing as they were here to go to a debate- although you would have preferred that their opposition refused to go. I thought it was a stupid publicity stunt to invite them, but the protest will have seemed to give them more credibility in the eyes of many people, not less- why don’t you want people to hear their opinions and decide for themselves? What are you afraid of? And the sheer, personal hatred on display (as seen in your post)- not wanting to share the same streets or breathe the same air as people who you disagree with- was very off-putting to the cause. Irving and Griffin probably came out of it quite well, but not for the reasons you think.
Sorry Beehive, it’s Saturday night, and I can’t be bothered. Am bracketing you with all the other pro-Irving and Griffin activists who come and say hello to me now and again, pointing you in the direction of the thread above, in which your facile points have been answered time and time again, and wishing you a calm and peaceful Saturday.
Am bracketing you with all the other pro-Irving and Griffin activists who come and say hello to me now and again, pointing you in the direction of the thread above, in which your facile points have been answered time and time again
What a disgusting smear. Resign you whore