@icowden
You are talking about free speech again. I've said that free speech is the right to speak, but not the right to demand that university students be made to listen. There is a problem here because people in the UK are inclined to think that we have absolute right to free speech. So what does the law actually have to say?
You have also said that the university is no platforming in this instance. I asked you to look up the meaning. Did you? I don't know if you have resolved that one.
That researcher has not been no platformed. No platforming occurs when students refuse en masse to hear from a particular speaker, usually as an extra-curricular activity, rather than a defined part of their programme. At one time the state provided students with university places with free courses and grants for living expenses. That is no longer the case, universities are now part of a market with a cap on the fees that can be charged. Instead of it being the market they said it would be, the cap has become a near universal course fee. Students can borrow the money, but interest is charged, and the loans are no longer in public hands but privatised. Students then, are now fee paying customers in a market. They study in an environment that is a market in higher education, and financed in a market for finance. That means they have consumer rights, to get what they pay for. As adults they have prerogative.
The researcher has not been no platformed by students, she has been sanctioned by her employers for a reason unknown to us. The university has seized their property, and released her.
Parliamentarians sometimes refer to free speech coming from the Bill of Rights 1689. The Bill of Rights gives parliamentarians the right to free speech in the debating chamber of the House of Commons under 'parliamentary privilege'. So nothing there for ordinary citizens.
Freedom of expression is stated in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. From there it tends to be copy and pasted into international law at other levels. It is to be seen at the Council of Europe where it is ensured by the European Court of Human Rights; it is also written into EU treaty law, whereupon EU member states are required to adopt it into domestic law.
This is something of a belts and braces approach since all EU member states are members of the Council of Europe, the ECtHR, and signatories of EU treaties. The EU itself is not a member of the Council of Europe or ECtHR since it is not in itself a sovereign entity, but as an intergovernmental organisation with a legal personality it is an official observer.
Right so where does that leave the UK? It is no longer in the EU but has hencefar retained the Human Rights Act that was required by EU treaty law. The UK is still a member of the Council of Europe, and the European Court of Human Rights, and the United Nations.
The UK has agreed to and signed each paragraph of all articles of the UNDHR from where those rights are cemented at each level. The UN is the daddy. Under the relevant article of the UNDHR, free speech is not guaranteed as an 'absolute right'. It is a 'qualified right' meaning that the member state has the legal competence to vary that right under their own sovereign law. Therefore EU member states have a sovereign right to vary the extent that this right applies to ordinary citizens in their own state under their own constitutional arrangements.
For many countries the right is affirmed as part of a codified constitution, only the UK doesn't have one. Therefore the right is absolute except for statutes where the right is restricted.
Worse still, international rights law is written as a set of positive rights - a citizen is allowed only to do what is written in law as permitted.
The UK has a negative rights system - a citizen can do anything they like unless it is prohibited by statute (or case law). So it gets messy. The UK has a whole raft of acts that prohibit the free speech seemingly guaranteed by the UNDHR. You might hear somebody say we don't have free speech because 'you can not go into a theatre and shout fire'. Well actually you can do that under free speech because that form of words applied to that location are not specifically prohibited by law in the UK negative rights system. So you can, but not without consequence from infringement of some other law found somewhere in statute pertaining to the safety of others.
Further some human rights found in the UNDR are absolute. Where a case is brought between individuals with seemingly competing human rights, a primary test is to see if the rights are both absolute and require the court to set a boundary using case law. If it is seen that one claimant has an absolute right and the other a qualified right, then the absolute right holds preponderance over the qualified right.
Therefore a person has a right to freedom of expression, but only if it does not impinge or infringe upon the absolute right of another.
The wording of the article uses the term 'without frontier'. This gives us the function of the right, the right to speak truth to power, and not the right to abuse others - hence we have laws to keep us free from abuse, harassment and victimisation.
That old trope told by Stephen Fry et al 'there is no right not to be offended' is bollocks. There does not need to be a right not to be offended since we do not have the right to give or cause offence. It's a device that exposes the difference between how positive and negative rights are expressed, and not the supposed right to give or cause offence.
So does a public speaker have the right to freedom of expression in a university. Well yes, if they have been invited to be in a university space at a given date and time. However they have no more right to demand an audience than a washed-up comedian in a theatre.
And yet, we have arrived at a situation where students in the modern marketplace of a university are choosing which speakers they wish to listen to and those they don't. This is a freedom, a prerogative, just as one is free to switch off the television when Jim Davidson comes on.
The government will try to tell you that these universities are full of lefty lecturers and right on woke students, and this is a problem.
It isn't a problem it's healthy. Students have their own conscience and have the right to freedom of thought and belief.
Freedom of expression of a speaker does not hold legal preponderance over a person's right to freedom of thought, conscience or belief.
In other words, the criticism of the state is an imposition, an insistence to indoctrinate a view favourable to that government - and yes, it smacks of the tactics used in 1930s Germany.
The 'war on woke' is a state level abuse of the rights of citizens. We must rid ourselves of this government.
