The controversial South African figure Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi has passed away. Buthelezi made a brief appearance in my book No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech when there were protests against him debating a representative of the South African government at the Oxford Union in 1985. With this in mind, I thought I’d post this excerpt from the book on anti-apartheid and ‘no platforming’ at British universities in the 1980s. It was originally posted on Patreon here.
Throughout the 1980s, there were protests and instances of ‘no platforming’ pro-South Africa speakers at British universities. The most infamous was Conservative backbencher John Carlisle. Carlisle was a prominent member of both the Monday Club and Federation of Conservative Students, and was a hard right figure within the Conservative Party. During this decade, he was most well-known for his support for apartheid South Africa and his condemnation of the African National Congress, including the imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Matthew P. Llewellyn and Toby C. Rider have described Carlisle as a ‘fierce pro-Pretoria spokesman’[1] and it was on this topic that he frequently spoke at public meetings, including at universities. Carlisle generated significant controversy during his tour of universities in 1986, with several student unions invoking the ‘no platform’ policy against his visits.
However, as well as the ‘no platforming’ of pro-South Africa speakers, such as John Carlisle, students protested against representatives of the apartheid government from speaking on campus throughout the 1980s, as part of the broader Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) in Britain. Although it had existed since the 1960s, the AAM grew exponentially after the Soweto Uprising in 1976 and by the 1980s, it had become a significant social movement, including many young people and mobilising students on campuses across Britain.[2] In the early 1980s, the NUS and AAM developed a number of joint campaigns which helped build anti-apartheid work as an important part of the student movement.[3] The ‘no platforming’ of pro-South Africa speakers and government representatives gained traction at British universities in the 1980s, building on previous anti-apartheid work on campus, such as NUS boycott of Barclays for their investments in South Africa.[4]
In February 1982, students at the University of Bath, in the words of the Anti-Apartheid Movement Annual Report, ‘provided an angry reception’ for Dr Roy McNab, ‘a former information attaché at the South African embassy in Paris and [then] the London Director of the South Africa Foundation.’[5] Later in the year, students at Bath University protested against the invitation by the Centre for Development Studies of Professor Jan Coetzee from the University of Bloemfontein.[6] Anti-Apartheid News reported that ‘in the face of anti-apartheid action’, Coetzee’s status was shifted from ‘official guest’ of the Centre to ‘personal guest’ and as picket was mounted outside the Centre, Coetzee ‘left a day earlier than planned’.[7]
In November 1983, the South African ambassador Marais Steyn encountered large student demonstrations the Universities of Nottingham and Cambridge, having to cancel one. Invited by the Conservative Association at Nottingham University, anti-apartheid protestors ‘took over the room in which ambassador Steyn had been due to speak, forcing him to abandon his speech for “security reasons”.’[8] Speaking at the local Conservative Party headquarters in Nottingham, Steyn described the students as a ‘jackbooted mob’, claiming insincerely that ‘[i]n South Africa we certainly have free speech and believe in equality’.[9] In the same month, Steyn faced around 300 protestors at Cambridge after the Union Society invited him, alongside John Carlisle, to debate the sporting boycott of South Africa. Anti-Apartheid Newsreported:
Waving banners and shouting anti-apartheid slogans, the protestors made clear their anger at the opportunity given to the ambassador to air his views on sporting links between Britain and South Africa. Their shouts could be clearly heard inside the debating chamber, where Steyn was joined by apartheid’s old ally John Carlisle…[10]
In March 1985, Steyn’s successor Denis Worrall was invited to a debate on South Africa by the Oxford Union, alongside the South African ‘coloured’ cabinet minister Allan Hendrickse and Bantustan leader, Chief Gatsha Buthelezi.[11] Following a protest by Oxford students and the local branch of the AAM, all three withdrew from the debate, which was subsequently cancelled.[12]
In September 1986, the South African Consul-General in Scotland, Dr James Alexander Shaw, was invited by the Federation of Conservative Students to speak at the University of Stirling, but was allegedly opposed by a number of students. The Times Higher Education reported that Shaw claimed:
when he arrived at the campus gates, he was met by around 20 students who warned him that 150 students had been brought in from outside by the Socialist Workers Party and others, and were picketing the hall.[13]
He further asserted that he had been told that ‘the protestors had said they would not permit him to use the campus as a platform for racism, and had threatened violence if necessary.’[14] Shaw condemned the students who protested against him, declaring:
Those students who believe their views should prevail and that the views of others should be suppressed are the step-children of Hitler, and epitomize the evil that is inherent in totalitarian systems of government.[15]
The President of the Students’ Association at Stirling University, Ian Robertson, disputed Shaw’s version of events, saying ‘there were between 40 and 50 students, who were intent on peaceful action’ and that Shaw had only heard about the protest from FCS representatives (which Shaw conceded).[16] Robertson rebutted Shaw’s characterisation of protestors as well and was quoted in the student newspaper at Stirling saying:
For a representative of a racist regime which is involved in the brutal oppression of the majority of the South African population to equate peaceful protest with the action of Hitler and the Nazis would be laughable if it were not so disgusting.[17]
The Principal at the University of Stirling also queried Shaw’s claims, replying that ‘there were no groups of students from any other university on campus’ and that ‘Dr Shaw’s allegations against the University of Stirling students are… based solely on a supposition of possible violence and not on fact’.[18] The Principal, Professor John Forty, also responded that the FCS had not informed the university of the impending visit and had not sought advice on potential security concerns.[19]
Even though Ian Robertson claimed that the protest was ‘not a no-platform issue’, a general meeting of the Stirling University Students’ Association shortly afterwards ‘re-affirmed SUSA policy of no platform for racists or fascists in the light of the recent attempt by the FCS to bring the South-African [sic] Consul-General to speak at the University.’[20]
The controversy surrounding ‘no platform’ and South African representatives reached its peak in the late 1980s, following events at the University of Liverpool. In October 1988, the Liverpool University Conservative Association invited two representatives from the South African embassy to speak at the university. After initially allowing the proposed event to go ahead under strict provisions (including no advertising of the event, restriction of entry to students only and the reservation of the right to charge the Conservative Association for any additional security costs),[21] the university administration cancelled the meeting after discussion with the Merseyside Police.[22] This was contested by the Conservative Association and after wrangling between the student group and the university, the proposed meeting was rescheduled for January 1989.[23] The Conservative Association’s newsletter stated that the banning confirmed that ‘the University’s commitment to free speech was at best questionable’ and that the action was ‘totally without justification’.[24] The newsletter called the rescheduled meeting ‘a considerable moral victory for the association [sic]’.[25]
However the January meeting was again cancelled after consultation with the police. In the ensuing legal case, the High Court judge stated that ‘[t]he police were very concerned about what in particular might happen in nearby Toxteth with its large coloured population’.[26] There was also concern about public disorder at the university after a visit by the Northern Ireland Secretary Tom King had led to ‘widespread disturbance’, when six arrests were made.[27] The university argued that they cancelled the meeting as a ‘last resort’ because ‘the threat of a breach of the peace was too substantial’, as outlined under section 43 of the Education (no. 2) Act 1986.[28] This Act had been brought in by the Conservatives in 1986 after a series of student protests against speakers at universities and compelled universities to take reasonable steps to ensure freedom of speech on campus.
Some right-wing columnists, politicians and activists complained about this move by Liverpool University. Conservative MP and Monday Club supporter, Sir Rhodes Boyson wrote a letter with Norris WcWhirter, chairman of the neoliberal group, the Freedom Association, to The Timescondemning both the disturbances during the King visit to the university and the subsequent banning of the South African diplomats, seeing it as part of a wider trend for universities to use the 1986 Act draconianly:
Liverpool University has classified visiting speakers, such as the Foreign Secretary and others, as ‘controversial’ and therefore likely to provoke violence or public disorder. Thus ministers of the Crown, elected MPs, and others are likely to be subject to the same arbitrary treatment as that given to the diplomat in question. Full censorship of visiting speakers by unrepresentative groups becomes possible by the expedient of issuing threats, as has happened at Liverpool.[29]
Also in The Times, columnist Bernard Levin argued that the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Liverpool, Graeme Davies, had failed in his moral and legal duty to uphold free speech at the university and had ‘surrendered’ to the ‘barbarians’ (echoing a term earlier used by Sir Keith Joseph to describes students in 1986).[30] Levin purported:
Liverpool’s preference for a ban on a meeting rather than on those who wish to disrupt it shows that some would take the practice of surrender even further.[31]
The out-going Chairman of the Conservative Association at Liverpool University, Joe Baldwin, accused Davies of ‘moral cowardice’ and blasted the university for the decision to force the cancellation of the meeting in December 1988:
I am totally outraged that the university has taken this decision. It has absolutely no legal or moral basis. It is abundantly clear that the University of Liverpool has flagrantly disregarded the duty laid upon it by the Act.[32]
Although Baldwin was a member of the Conservative Collegiate Forum, a successor organisation to the FCS in the late 1980s and as The Times reported, ‘appea[ing] to have stepped up controversial speaker visits in order to provoke left-wing students’, he also suggested:
This is a scandalous denial of free speech, which sets a disgraceful precedent and has handed extremists on both the left and the right [my emphasis] a licence to intimidate not just at Liverpool, but thoughout the country.[33]
But the invitation and the subsequent legal case was large seen in the mainstream and student press as a chance sought by the Conservative Association to test section 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act. As an editorial in the student newspaper at the University of Liverpool, Gazette, claimed:
The highly provocative invitation was intended to serve a purpose. LUCA claim that they were testing the 1986 Education Act (no2) which requires Universities and others to take steps which are ‘reasonably practicable’ to ensure freedom of speech within the law is secured.[34]
In May 1989, the incoming Chairman of the Liverpool University Conservative Association, Andrew Caesar-Gordon, launched legal proceedings against the university, arguing that the banning of the event was ultra viresof the university’s responsibilities under the 1986 Act, particularly with regards to the police suggestion that the event might have caused disorder in nearby Toxteth. The costs for the Conservative Association’s case were being supported by a right libertarian group called the Campaign for a Free Britain (sometimes called the Committee for a Free Britain), headed by journalist David Hart,[35] but also included long-standing opponent of ‘no platform’ and radical student politics, Baroness Cox. Lawyers for the Conservative Association argued that the university was ‘not entitled to take into consideration threats of disorder outside the university by persons not in statu pupillari’ (students of the university) and while the university could ‘take advice on the risk where there is a risk within the purview of the university’, it could not ‘take account of a substantial risk of riot elsewhere.’[36]
The university’s legal representatives baulked at this division of risk, arguing:
It is illogical, artificial and irresponsible to take into account of the risk of serious public disorder on university or outside the university involving its personnel but ignore other risks of disorder. Large-scale disorder was expected. A university cannot be expected to isolate itself from what is happening off its premises… The court should say that reasonable practicality entitles the respondents to take into account of the possibility of injury to persons or damage to property in the local community.[37]
For the university, to ignore what the police had warned may occur if the event went ahead would be a dereliction of duty to its surrounding community. The university’s lawyers suggested that with the introduction of section 43 of the 1986 Act, ‘Parliament cannot have expected universities to place themselves in an ivory tower’ and the university had performed the ‘balancing exercise’ between free speech and public order as required by the Act.[38]
In May 1990, the High Court noted that the ‘university authorities acted with the best possible motives to prevent breaches of the peace which they had good reason to believe would occur on and off their premises’, but stated that section 43 of the 1986 Act only pertained to ‘good order within the precincts of the university’.[39] The High Court found that ‘the university is not enjoined or entitled to take into account threats of “public disorder” outside the confines of the university by persons within its control’, with Lord Justice Watkins quipping:
Were it otherwise, the purpose of the section to ensure freedom of speech could be defeated since the university might feel obliged to cancel a meeting in Liverpool on the threat of public violence as far away as, for example, London, which it could not possibly have any power to prevent.[40]
The High Court suggested that if the university had simply refused permission for the event with regards to concerns about the risk of disorder within the university, they would have been within the law regarding section 43, but because ‘the threat was of public disorder without the university, then, unless the threat was posed by members of the university, the matter was… entirely for the police’.[41] This meant that the Conservative Association won the case, but because the university had acted reasonably and in good faith, the court refused to order the university pay the student group’s legal costs, which were being paid for by the Campaign for a Free Britain.[42]
While the university wholeheartedly welcomed the court’s decision,[43] the response by the Liverpool University Conservative Association and its supporters were mixed. Caesar-Gordon himself called it ‘victory at a price’, but hoped that the court had ‘handed a message to both left and right extremists that the threat of public disorder will not now be sufficient grounds for trying to halt a meeting taking place of a university campus’.[44] Although this overlooked the fact that the High Court ruled that this was only insufficient grounds if the possible disorder was to take place off campus and without the involvement of university students. Caesar-Gordon also raised the issue that the court did not object to the university’s insistence on extra security for controversial speakers, arguing that it was ‘still open for the university to charge what it wants for security measures, which could price clubs out of existence’.[45] This has remained a point of contention amongst Conservative students who have criticised universities using the 1986 Act to cancel meetings on public order grounds.
Since 1990, this case has been used to argue that universities can cancel events due to public order concerns,[46] but that there are some limits to this with regards to risks outside the university – although in R (Ben-Dor) v University of Southampton, Justice Whipple ruled that outside factors could impact whether an event should be allowed as these ‘might lead to disorder or violence within the confines of the university’.[47]
Although the ruling went actually against the university, the ruling handed down in 1990 has been used since to determine that there are limits to protection of the freedom of speech legislated for by section 43 of the 1986 Act. Originally seen as a way to hit back against the perceived power of the student unions, who were seen as the main instigator of the shutting down of free speech on campus, the 1986 Act put the powers to decide who could speak in the hands of the university authorities, which was largely reinforced by the High Court ruling. It has thus been evident since the late 1980s that universities have had to consider competing demands and legal requirements when allowing or not allowing events to take place or speakers to visit.
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[1] Matthew P. Llewellyn & Toby C. Rider, ‘Sport, Thatcher and Apartheid Politics’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 44/4 (2018) p. 579.
[2] Gavin Brown & Helen Yaffe, Youth Activism and Solidarity: The Non-Stop Picket Against Apartheid (London: Routledge, 2018) p. 6.
[3] Roger Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid: A History of the Movement in Britain (London: Merlin Press, 2005) p. 334.
[4] Jodi Burkett, ‘“Don’t Bank on Apartheid”: The National Union of Students and the Barclays Boycott Campaign’, in Jodi Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland(Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) pp. 225-248.
[5]Anti-Apartheid Movement, AAM Annual Report, 1982, http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.aam00060_final.pdf
[6] Anti-Apartheid News, July/August 1982, p. 2.
[7] Ibid.; Anti-Apartheid Movement, AAM Annual Report.
[8] Anti-Apartheid News, January/February, 1984, p. 2.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] The Times, 7 March, 1985, p. 2.
[12] Ibid.; Anti-Apartheid Movement, AAM Annual Report, 1985, http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.aam00063_final.pdf
[13] Times Higher Education, 3 October, 1986, p. 5.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Brig, October 1986, p. 2.
[18] Times Higher Education, 24 October, 1986.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Times Higher Education, 3 October, 1986, p. 5; Brig, October 1986, pp. 2-3.
[21] Daily Telegraph, 26 May, 1990, p. 8.
[22] R v University of Liverpool ex parte Caesar-Gordon (1990) 3 All ER 821.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Liverpool University Conservative Association, Society Newsletter, January 1989, A161/52, Liverpool University Archives.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] The Times, 2 December, 1988, p. 17; Daily Telegraph, 16 December, 1988, p. 2.
[28] The Times, 2 December, 1988, p. 17
[29] The Times, 22 November, 1988, p. 17.
[30] The Times, 8 December, 1988, p. 16; Daily Mail, 16 May, 1986, p. 8
[31] The Times, 8 December, 1988, p. 16
[32] The Times, 5 December, 1988, p. 29.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Gazette, 24 November, 1988, p. 6.
[35] The Guardian, 26 May, 1990, p. 4.
[36] Regina v University of Liverpool, Ex parte Caesar-Gordon (1991) QB 124.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.
[39] R v University of Liverpool ex parte Caesar-Gordon (1990) 3 All ER 821.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Daily Telegraph, 26 May, 1990, p. 8.
[43] The Times, 26 May, 1990, p. 6.
[44] Ibid.
[45] The Guardian, 26 May, 1990, p. 4.
[46] Ian Cram, ‘The “War on Terror” on Campus: Some Free Speech Issues Around Anti-Radicalization Law and Policy in the United Kingdom’, Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 6/1 (2012) p. 17.
[47] R (Ben-Dor) v University of Southampton (2016) EWHC 953 (Admin). Italics are in the original text.
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