September 21, 2005

A game of skill for two players or more

Does this remind anyone of anything?

Are there any former SU Officers out there interested in playing top CR pub game "well in my day we would have"?

(Thanks to Tom A, Harry's Place comments, for the above link)

Posted by SP at September 21, 2005 10:56 PM
Comments

We would have: pretended the Uni management were management and defended our right to invite any old neo-fascist onto campus, except of course the type of neo fascist that we no-platformed...

Posted by: JA at September 24, 2005 06:53 PM

Well I got involved at UCL when the debating society (not the union) wanted to host John Carlisle - A conservative MP and pro South Africa (in the days of Apartheid) as a speaker. Various people wanted him banned under the "no Platform for racists" policy.

However I had to get involved in a ruling that he could speak.. you cant just ban Tory MPs.

However at UCL we did ban the Bible Society as it was acting in a cultish type fashion and there were a few cases of students getting heavily involved and dropping out of their classes. Certain lecturers had become very concerned. There certainly wasn't an uproar about that banning.

On Hizb.. Maybe the Government should just ban the organisation and as such it wouldnt cause such a problem for student unions..

Posted by: Mikey at September 30, 2005 06:54 PM

Maybe a state ban would be a good idea but to make such a judgement call requires knowledge of how it would play amongst people we do not want to further alienate.
Frankly, I've no idea!

Posted by: jane ashworth at October 2, 2005 04:31 PM

Carlisle was a favorite target at the time. When he came to Durham, Anti Apartheid booked all the rooms (including the one the Tories advertised him speaking in) and offered them the use of it provided he debated someone for the AA society. We also had quite a successful demo. He declined of course and we didn't lose the freedom of speech argument.

Posted by: SP at October 3, 2005 09:52 AM

Of more recent days, I recently heard that David Irving (the holocaust denier) was due to speak at Nottingham University.

The Chancellor (or Dean or whatever the top bod is called these days) received a number of calls of complaint. Concerned about freedom of speech he didnt want to ban him, but wrote a letter to David Irving saying something along these lines...

"Following your invitation to speak, we are concerned about the increased security required that will need to be provided. As a result you are welcome to speak, but you will need to pay for the security".

Dvid Irving decided against speaking...

Posted by: Mikey at October 4, 2005 09:31 AM