Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Alex Sobel Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Although I was stuck getting here, I have listened to a number of speeches. It is entirely normal for me to disagree with speakers and to find what they say objectionable, but I have to say that I heard a couple of speeches—not by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) but by other Members who spoke before her—that I felt were verging on hate speech themselves and were objectionable to a number of minority groups in this country. I felt that the quality of some of this debate was demeaning to this House.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alex Sobel]

I will give way, although I might not agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has to say.

[Dr Lewis]

Indeed, and that surely is the point. What really worries people on the Conservative Benches is that what starts off with the justified condemnation of hate speech ends up by saying that people speaking in a free Parliament are verging on hate speech themselves. Can the hon. Gentleman not see the slippery slope of the argument he is putting forward?

[Alex Sobel]

I will make an argument about the slippery slope. I think there are Government Members, and maybe even some Opposition Members, who feel that supporting the Bill will settle some old scores, make a dog whistle to people who want to hear it and give a nod and a wink to a certain sort of constituent.

As somebody of Jewish descent whose family members came from the war generation in eastern Europe, I feel strongly that the slippery slope we are going down is one that Government Members may not be able to control. I am not saying that they are like this themselves, but other forces in society will take advantage of and utilise this type of legislation in a way that the Government will cease to have control over. It will create a runaway train effect. I do not want that to happen in this country; people like me and others in this Chamber would find it a difficult country to live in.

We just need to look at what happened yesterday to three of our brave England footballers after they missed a penalty—something that happens to every footballer during their career—and the horrendous racism that they experienced. I will come back to the subject, but I was deeply uncomfortable at some of the previous contributions to the debate and I felt that I had to raise that.

During my time at the University of Leeds—I was both a student and staff member there—the two most notorious new faces of the British far right made our campus the site of their race war. Their story tells me all I need to know about why this Bill should never reach the statute book. During my year on the executive of the Leeds University union, supporters of Claire Fox, now Baroness Fox, of Living Marxism, established a free speech society to remove the students’ “no platform for racists and fascists” policy in the name of libertarianism—maybe the reason why many Government Members support the Bill.

Two unknown first-years joined the society and when the adherents of Baroness Fox graduated, those two took over the society and stepped up their activities on campus. Many known racists and fascists were seen in their company on campus. It was difficult to administer the policy and legal framework that now exists and to vet those whom the free speech society were platforming in rooms they were trying to book out.

The two people involved were Chris Beverley and Mark Collett—now two of the most notorious fascists that this country has seen. Mark Collett was tried alongside Nick Griffin in 2006; I will come back to that. They were both in a number of notorious documentaries produced in the 2000s; I suggest that Members who do not know of them should watch “Young, Nazi and Proud” to understand more about these two characters.

The issue came to a head in Collett’s and Beverley’s attempt to overturn the “no platform for racists and fascists” policy at the general meeting of the students union. It happened to be held in the refectory that had hosted “The Who” in their seminal “Live at Leeds” concert. There were easily over 300 people there. Many, many Jewish students, as well as the campus rabbi and I, spoke against the attempt to remove the policy. Collett and Beverley were the only ones to speak in favour—and in a highly inflammatory way. Their attempt was overwhelmingly defeated.

It had been clear for some time to all on campus who Collett and Beverley really were, but the mask slipped for everybody everywhere that day. If the policy had passed, Collett and Beverley would have invited figures such as Nick Griffin and David Irving, this country’s leading holocaust denier, on to campus under the auspices of free speech. The free speech society soon ran into trouble and at the following AGM the students union fully understood the issue of these two fascists but gave them a room, fearful of legal action. The meeting did not go ahead and the society, which was acting as a front for fascism by that point, was disbanded. That was due not to any policy of the students union, but to protests by students themselves.

Just five years later, at about the same time as Mark Collett was on trial with Nick Griffin at Leeds Crown court for race hate crimes, at Leeds University in February 2006, a contributor to the university newspaper Leeds Student gave an interview to Dr Frank Ellis, in which the academic expressed support for the bell curve theory that said that there were racial differences in average intelligence. The Leeds Student also published an article by Ellis, “Time to face the truth about Multiculturalism”, in which he described the Parekh report as

“a very nasty anti-white tract”.

He then went on to be interviewed in the media, and the students union put out a statement calling for his dismissal. Leeds University condemned Ellis’s views as “abhorrent”. I had left the university by then, but I went to meetings there and objected, as a member of the alumni committee, to his continued employment. Ellis was subsequently suspended by the vice-chancellor pending disciplinary proceedings, which never concluded because he retired early.

My point is that if this law had been in place, the student union and the university would never have taken any action against these radical, far-right fascists, whose only intent is erasure of diversity on the planet: the erasure of people like me, Charlotte—I am sorry, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols)—and others in this Chamber. That is why people need to be really careful about how they use free speech. Free speech is something that we all defend—we all talk about pluralism—but it can also be a cover for something much deeper and much more unpleasant, with the consequences that we all know and speak strongly against in this Chamber every year. Yesterday we marked Srebrenica Memorial Day. This Government need to be very careful on the dark road that they are taking us down.