Lord Patten at Oxford Literary Festival.
This keynote event in the Oxford Literary Festival featured Lord Patten of Barnes, the former Chairman of the Conservative Party and retiring Chancellor of Oxford University, talking to Professor Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, and author of Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World. He also co-wrote the University of Oxford’s freedom of speech statement, which identifies free speech as the lifeblood of a university.
The Oxford Literary Festival has set an excellent example by refusing many calls to "no-platform" controversial figures, in this and previous years. This is welcome, and admirable, and encourages organizers of other events to be braver and not cave in to threat or gangster tactics.
The speakers both started by saying that they supported free speech, yet neither of them welcome the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act, the act passed under the last government, and now only very reluctantly and tardily being implemented by Bridget Phillipson in a diluted form. They agreed that government intervention was unwelcome and universities should be responsible for their own free speech policies. But that policy has visibly failed. Universities have been captured by activists and ideologues, and lecturers have been sacked for their perfectly reasonable views, with case after expensive case dragging through the courts and employment tribunals.
What is the point of advocating a failed policy?
Lord Patten and Professor Ash strongly agreed that Elon Musk has "destroyed Twitter" and "doesn't really believe in free speech". They seemed very happy about the pre-Musk days when campaigners such as Kellie-Jay Keen (Posie Parker) and Meghan Murphy were banned from Twitter along with more than 50,000 "terfs" as the trans-activists called us. (I have the honour to be on one of their official lists. I even have a number). In the good old days you got suspended from Twitter or Facebook, sometimes permanently banned, for saying "transwomen are men", but not for bombarding women with death threats, rape threats, contemptuous insults, foul language, obscene messages and pictures, nor for "doxxing" them i.e. posting private information about them. The fanatics who published J.K.Rowling's home address and a photograph of her house, in 2021, to encourage assassination attempts, had no steps taken against them.
Not only could you easily buy fake "followers" on the old Twitter, but unlimited misinformation was put out for year after year e.g. about puberty blockers being safe and "gender-affirming surgery" being able to change people's sex. The result was that most MPs and even the Archbishop of Canterbury believed it. Now at least you can label misinformation with a "community note" pointing to evidence that refutes it.
Patten and Ash honestly think the previous state of affairs was better. They indulged in a shared nostalgia for the days of "woke" censorship and control. This was not what I hoped for in a discussion about "free speech".
They both profess to believe in democracy, yet agreed in deploring everything about the current government of the USA while thinking a standing ovation is deserved by Canada - a country where a PM who hasn't had a parliamentary majority for at least five years, and who suppressed dissent by freezing the bank accounts of his political opponents, has just been succeeded by another of the same stamp without any election being held. I am genuinely puzzled at what definition of "democracy" they are applying.
The question of how fairly or unfairly the Trump government has treated universities is not, as was said, simply a matter of "free speech". Universities such as Colombia permitted prolonged occupation of the campus by mobs led by professional activists who impeded students from attending lectures or accessing libraries. The activists explicitly advocated an agenda that posed a serious threat - a lethal threat - to the safety of other students.
The pair concluded by lamenting the fact that there is "no good news" nowadays. Really? What about the fact that American and British women athletes can now, once again, compete in sports against other females without men stealing their medals and trophies? What about the fact that the UK sentencing council has now agreed to withdraw its two-tier policy? Both of these huge triumphs were much influenced by the changed policy introduced by the man they call "the dreadful Mr Musk".
And what about the fact that four astronauts who had been stranded on an orbiting space station for nine months were rescued only the other week, saved from certain death?
If Lord Patten and Professor Timothy Garton Ash would occasionally listen to some news media apart from the BBC which they both extolled, they might hear the other side of the story.