Trinity 2001

You are still wrong. Quite apart from whether it is right or wrong that we should prevent people who believe that Hitler was quite a good chap and, for instance, that the Holocaust never happened, from spreading their vile message (and I believe that it is right), there is an entirely separate argument, and it is the one OUSU made. Namely;

When a person's presence in an area has regularly been associated with a deliberate bussing in of supporters of the far left and right, when a person's visit to an area has regularly seen an increase in levels of inter-racial violence, and when a Student Union represents an ethnically diverse student body, it is right for that Student Union to prioritise campaigning for the rights of its students to walk the streets of *their town* free from the fear of racial violence over the rights of a *proven loony* to generate controversy to feed his over-inflated ego.

Frankly, the people who should have stopped it were the Council and the Police, by demanding that the Union stump up for the cost of the extra policing that would be required, rather than just leaving the ordinary people of Oxford unprotected while diverting the resources of uniformed officers to feed the intellectual masturbation of a private debating society.

Stopping the Irving invite remains one of my finest hours, you are still wrong.

You're right about making the Union pay for the policing of their own intellectual masturbatory habits. But I still think on principle these people should be allowed to speak. Then we expose them for the idiotic fools and racists they are. And otherwise, we're getting a little Nazi-esque about freedom of speech, no?

No, no, no. David Irving is not an idiotic fool, he is a highly intelligent and malicious one. To argue against him on his terms requires detailed knowledge of things like the correct translation of the Goebbels diaries, the types and volume of fuel used at Auschwitz, the Hoss testimony, and so on.

If I were to say, as he did, that only half a million Jews died during the second world war, do you know enough history to prove me wrong, rather than just tell me that the textbooks used in schools say different?

In addition, he had been invited to speak not about this issue (though he would have snuck it in, he always does), but on freedom of speech. In other words, all the people arguing that he should be invited to be exposed, would have been arguing... on his side of the debate. (The wrong side, since he took out a libel action in an attempt to defend his reputation. Of course he lost, and was found to have lied under oath).

We place plenty of restrictions on freedom of speech. The laws of incitement, conspiracy, defamation, and racial hatred are all examples of this. It is good that we do so, his opinions are of no value, nor is his right to propagate them. Seditious libel, you might have a case. Holocaust denial? What's the point?

Would you mind if I made this a public post?

Not especially.

it is right for that Student Union to prioritise campaigning for the rights of its students to walk the streets of *their town* free from the fear of racial violence over the rights of a *proven loony* to generate controversy to feed his over-inflated ego.

So if we could get enough people to come and start fights everytime you did something like give a speech, can we ban you from doing it? I'm sure I could find plenty of people in Oxford who would consider you a loony...

I think there's a difference between people likely to cause violence in an attempt to stop a meeting, in which case the extent to which the meeting is protected will depend on the relative costs of policing and benefits of the meeting. What we're talking about here is people associated with the speaker likely to attend and target violence at a particular group, irrespective of whether they want to be anywhere near the meeting, but want to walk from, say, St. Peter's to McDonalds.

I didn't say who I was going to get them to start fights with. If I could get people to come along and randomly beat up nearby passers-by everytime you gave a speech or whatever, would it be reasonable to prevent you from doing that?

If it were not easily feasible to prevent the violence in some alternative way (eg arresting you), then I think it would be entirely reasonable for a local Residents' Association to oppose plans to invite me, given that them getting beaten up is an easily forseeable consequence of that invitation. I can only think there would be an exception if my message were of vital importance, and impossible to get across other than through a public meeting. Holocaust denial is unimportant because it's nonsense, and is prolifically put forward on the internet and by neo-Nazi pamphleteers.

Well, you talk a lot of nonsense, and you say it in a lot of places, so there's no problem with the analogy there.

The problem with your attitude is that it focuses completely on the immediate consequences of things. Yes, preventing things happening because of the threat of violence is an easy short term answer. But doing that creates an incentive for people to make threats of violence to stop things happening, so in the long run it happens over and over again.

With the only small problem that the violence towards innocent bystanders was likely to come from supporters of Irving. The opponents were planning a REALLY SCARY, er, silent candlelit vigil.

The people could pretend to be idiots^W^Wsupport you...

Most policy positions have at least one hypothetically possible example which would make them nonsense. This one isn't even a very good one, because my right to talk nonsense is less important than people's right to walk around near their homes without being assaulted by your hired thugs.

You imply those are the only two options. Alternatively, you could just get enough police in to stop the hired thugs, thus reducing the incentive for them to do it the next time...

I don't see why people in Blackbird Leys should have to pay more tax and get less policing so that students can hear about why the Holocaust didn't happen.

Arguably central government should fund this kind of thing, rather than local authorities. But the fundamental point is that we shouldn't give in to bullies, because it sets a terrible precedent. What if next week those same bullies decided that a random Asian family living in Blackbird Leys should be hounded out of their home? Should we take the easy option and move them because that would be cheaper and easier in the short term?

Are you suggesting that either of the following are the case

1) The right to live in your own home is equivalent to the right to tour the country explaining why you don't believe the Holocaust ever happened.

2) The belief people have that such messages shouldn't be spread is morally equivalent to the believe people have that Asians shouldn't live in their country.

I wasn't suggesting either of those things, although I won't comment either way on whether I believe them or not.

The right to live in your own home is equivalent to the right to tour the country explaining why you don't believe the Holocaust ever happened.

You seem to be suggesting that we should draw a line somewhere inbetween the two. Where? Should we defend my right to tour the country explaining why I *do* believe the Holocaust happened? How about to stand outside my house doing so? What about if I want to advocate banning the BNP, or imprisoning David Irvine? What about if I want to put up posters in the windows of my home stating that the Holocaust never happened?

Yes, oddly, just as we draw a line between things the state should ban and things it should allow, and we draw a line between things the state should support, and things it should merely allow, we draw a line between rights it should protect and rights which are just claims.

I don't believe in a state being neutral as regards good and bad, and the problem with rights is that they have no moral contents. Therefore obviously lecturing on a historical fact is more worthy of protection than lecturing with the aim of perpetrating a fraud whose intended beneficiaries are the neo-Nazi movement.

To stand outside your house, or put posters up in your window, I don't have to pretend to like, but there's no law against denying the Holocaust at the moment. If someone wants to make a serious proposal to Parliament then I'll engage with that debate. At present, nobody has.

We ban people from walking around, I'm not sure why banning them from speaking is especially different, except people get worked up about free speech as if the spoken word is the only form of speech. Come on people, we have the internet, anyone who wants to hear antisemitic garbage can log on to DI's website.

Would you mind if I made this post public?

Feel free.

Hmm - would you mind if I made the security setting on this public?

Why do you think Irving should have been allowed to speak?

I'm not sure that I do....

Amy Harland, then President of the Union invited Irving to take part in a debate on freedom of speech.

This provoked an understandable backlash of people not wanting a holocaust denier to be given a platform. As part of this various people took a motion to OUSU Council asking it to condemn the invitation to Irving.

*This* is what I had a problem with - (assuming you're aware that OUSU and the Union aren't the same thing). OUSU's job is to represent students. It has no business forming policy on something happening in a private members' society, and even more so when feelings run very strong on both sides of the argument. The OUSU President was mandated to write a letter to the President of the Union expressing the view that OUSU condemned the invitation and it was *this* more than anything else that had Merton JCR up in arms. We'd passed a motion *supporting* the decision to invite him and here was OUSU trying to speak on our behalf.

Now I accept that OUSU is more or less democractic and that in a democracy sometimes decisions go for you and sometimes they don't and that you just have to live with it. But this was an area where there was absolutely no need for OUSU to be forming a policy in the first place. It didn't stop the event and served to cause an awful lot of people a great deal of work, since in an electric JCR meeting we went from condemning OUSU (note to self - shit and a pile of wank from previous term(?)) to having a disaffiliation referendum.

I'm really not sure where I stand on the question of whether he should have been allowed to speak. What I do know is that there was a great deal of propaganda put about by both sides saying that the problems (violence towards Jewish students/violence between Irving supports/left wing groups) would be caused by either people Irving bussed in/by extreme left wing groups bussed in by that side. AIUI the police were perfectly happy with the safety arrangments for the event, and I think they're rather more trustworthy that OxStu/Cherwell journalists (sorry Ria).

What happened in the end is that after a Special Private Business Meeting (which IIRC was won by the people who wanted Irving to speak - that's the only way the rest of this makes sense), Standing Committee (chief governing body) forced the President into rescinding the invitation/cancelling the debate.

Now since the people involved in the SPBM (I wasn't) were all members of the society, following the procedures given in the rules for controlling what the Standing Committee does, I don't have a problem with that, nor do I really have a problem with SC leaning on the President to force her into cancelling the debate (it's less democratic than the SPBM - and the members having voted in favour of the debate it really ought to have been allowed to take place).

As to whether he ought to have been allowed to speak - my gut instinct is 'yes'. By going out of our way to prevent people like Irving being given platforms we are playing into their hands and generating masses of publicity for them; far more publicity than they'd get by going along and speaking.

The way to deal with obnoxious views isn't, IMO, to suppress them, it's to expose them and subject them to ridicule/logical analysis. It might well have taken a QC a number of weeks to demonstrate that Irving's beliefs in regards to the holocaust were false to the required standard of proof in a court, but that doesn't mean that the general public are naive and trusting. Anyone who'd be attending a debate involving Irving will certainly be aware of his views on the subject and will be perfectly well aware that they're plain wrong. This point is perhaps even more forceful when the audience is one consisting mainly of Oxford students. It should also be noted that he was invited to speak on 'freedom of speech' not the holocaust itself.

My view might be altered if there was a real risk of danger to public safety by a particular speaker speaking in a particular venue; I don't have and never have had the facts for this particular visit - except what I've heard about the police being perfectly happy with the event. I also agree with what Ria's said above about the Union being responsible for the cost of policing in a case like this.

I can't even begin to imagine how long it would take me to pick out all the flaws in this.

1) You say OUSU's job is to represent students. Therefore if OUSU think the Union shouldn't do something, the government shouldn't do something, the University shouldn't do something, or the Dalai Lama shouldn't do something, they are entirely within their rights to form policy to that effect and convey it to the relevant decision maker.

2) It didn't stop the event. Well it, er, did, didn't it, seeing as the event didn't in fact happen.

3) What happened in the end is that after a Special Private Business Meeting (which IIRC was won by the people who wanted Irving to speak). No it wasn't, my cancellation party won by about 150 votes to 20, largely thanks to the Labour Club and J-Soc.

4) AIUI the police were perfectly happy with the safety arrangments for the event. That made it even more concerning. Given the violence we know has taken place when he's given speeches before, their complacency was worrying. Although they did say they 'couldn't guarantee the safety of people outside the event'.

5) Standing Committee (chief governing body) forced the President into rescinding the invitation/cancelling the debate.. I don't know what Standing Committee did. We won the vote, Amy Harland tried to claim that votes in SPBMs were 'advisory' rather than binding, but she'd backed down by the following morning.

6) By going out of our way to prevent people like Irving being given platforms we are playing into their hands and generating masses of publicity for them; far more publicity than they'd get by going along and speaking. Really? How much publicity has he had in Oxford in the years since the invite was rescinded, compared to the time during which his invitation was an issue?

7) The way to deal with obnoxious views isn't, IMO, to suppress them, it's to expose them and subject them to ridicule/logical analysis. In which case, why wasn't he invited to speak about the Holocaust? Why was he invited to speak on the wrong side on a debate about free speech?

8) Anyone who'd be attending a debate involving Irving will certainly be aware of his views on the subject and will be perfectly well aware that they're plain wrong. So what's the point of the debate? I thought we were trying to persuade people that he was wrong, but all we're doing is laughing at him for a bit, and allowing him to claim to gullible Americans that he was 'invited to lecture at Oxford University'.

9) I also agree with what Ria's said above about the Union being responsible for the cost of policing in a case like this. Well fine, that would effectively cancel any such event for the forseeable future anyway.

10) The logical implication of your views are that we should collect the people with the most offensive views in the country, and pay for them to be taken round door to door putting their case to the public, so that they can be ridiculed. Given that the BNP pay money to get their publicity out, do you think they consider publicity to be damaging to them?