Written Evidence from the Alliance of Pro-Life Students (FSU0063)
As can be seen from the following records of incidents, intolerance to the right of pro-life students to their freedom of speech is increasing, often under the guise of providing a ‘safe space’ for students.
In Nov. 2017 Oxford Students for Life organised a speaker event entitled ‘Abortion in Ireland.’ The women’s campaign organised a protest, which was openly endorsed by the students’ union. This protest blatantly violated students’ rights to freedom of speech as it involved 40 minutes of incessant and vitriolic chanting, forcing the speaker to stop and the event to be delayed by over an hour. Meanwhile, security and eventually the police needed to be involved due to lack of cooperation, even physical resistance, from the protestors.
In November 2017 KCL Life Ethics Society were denied a room booking by the Students Union for an event in which charities would ask for volunteers. The reason was cited was that University policy did not allow for charities to advertise themselves during such an event on campus. However, on further inspection it was found that no such guidelines exist within Union or University guidelines. When asked to provide evidence for this policy, there was no response from the Students’ Union. Additionally, KCL Life Ethics Society have to go through mediation prior to and during every event, including two union officers present at every event to ensure no safe space violation occurs. This undue burden is not put on other societies. One pro-life attendee at an event on medical ethics in November was recognised by one of the union officers and was told she was not allowed to speak.
In November 2017 Glasgow University Protection of Unborn People Society were denied affiliation to the Students’ Union. In an email they were told “We do not feel that the aims of your society aligns with the ethos of the SRC and its values and therefore we cannot affiliate your society.” with no reference to any policy outlining the ethos of the union, or where precisely their aims violated that ethos.
In November 2017 a student who sought to start the Stirling Pro-Life Society was refused affiliation by the Students’ Union on the grounds of ”violating union policies regarding discrimination and equal opportunity. ” However, on reading the Union policy, no such violation was found nor was any advice given on how to amend the society constitution. One member of the committee that approves societies was known to be actively pro-choice in such a way that gave the impression that there was no impartiality in the Student Union’s decision.
At the end of 2016, a group called ‘Strathclyde Life Action’ were barred from forming a pro-life society, and the Student Union used their ‘safe space policy’ so to do. This safe space policy ought to allow students to have a space to expresses themselves freely and comfortably, without fear of harassment or intimidation due to their race, sex, gender, political ideology, religion, or any other irrelevant distinction. This safe space should have protected pro-life students, but instead was used to silence them.
In December 2016, Newcastle Life Society had to fight against a proposed deratification. The motion accused the Life Society of being discriminatory, and being a place that “shames students” without any evidence to support these claims.
An event hosted by the life society was protested, and the Students Union had to remind those complaining of the existence of the Life Society that “DUSA would only intervene in an event hosted by a society or other group if it was illegal or breached either DUSA or the University of Dundee’s rules and regulations, which this talk did not.” The fact that this has to be reiterated means that there is not a culture of freedom of speech on campus.
Together these two organisations launched a document called ‘Keeping Campuses Pro-Choice’, which aims to try and silence pro-life students on campus, and to close down debate.
This university was subject to a proposed motion to de-ratify them. Thankfully this is an instance where the university union upheld the principles of freedom of speech, stating “We are committed to facilitating respectful, inclusive debate.”
A debate entitled “This House Believes Britain’s Abortion Culture Hurts Us All” between journalists Tim Stanley (Telegraph) and Brendan O’Neill (Spiked) was protested by Christ Church JCR, and eventually cancelled by the college. The protest was sparked simply because the two speakers were male, and some students were ‘offended’ by the prospect of two men discussing an issue they deemed to be for women only.
They faced a pro-choice motion that was so narrow in its scope that even pro-choice members of the union were appalled: “I’m pro-choice myself, but I believe that those who are pro-life should have an equal opportunity to voice their opinion and enter the debate on an equal level with me. I also believe that if the union is to achieve its vision of supporting every student and being totally inclusive, then it must remain neutral on contentious issues like this, where student opinion is divided. To narrow the debate and isolate a group of students would go against those principles. Truly pro-choice students recognise that neutrality on contentious issues is necessary for proper debate to happen on campus.”
At the Freshers Fayre in 2014, the Students Union Women’s Campaign stole leaflets, put up flyers, talked to Life Society committee members under misleading conditions, and accused them of homophobia, merely because they did not like the fact that they existed as a society on campus.
In 2015 the National Union of Students, in conjunction with Abortion Rights (a group that campaigns for expansion of abortion in the UK) organised a protest at March for Life UK. While Abortion Rights is well within their rights to protest, it is worrying that the national body that is supposed to represent all students (not just the ones with politically correct views) has decided to openly endorse this one particular viewpoint, which not all students share.
King’s College London students faced an aggressive pro-choice motion, which would have agreed to “actively condemn any anti-choice activity on campus”. This motion was withdrawn by the submitting student, but had it been continued, the Union representatives were very clear in meetings held with concerned students that they would have enforced the policy. Later that academic year, KCL voted in a ‘safe space’ policy, which has since been used to stop pro-life activity on campus.
They faced a pro-choice motion that was voted down the first time, and in undemocratic fashion, the students brought the motion forward practically every two weeks until they had managed to get together enough people to vote it into Union policy. The union’s undemocratic structure meant that the pro-choice students could shove their vote through without a care for proper democracy or respect for the results of a vote.
At their freshers fayre, the Oxford Students for Life group had to submit their material in advance to the union, and were only allowed to use one of their given options. They were limited in the images that they were allowed to use, despite nearly identical versions of some of the censored images belonging on the front covers of science textbooks.
https://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/news/0009557-oxford-students-union-censors-pro-life-material.html
They passed a Pro-Choice motion that stated that any pro-life event must feature a pro-choice speaker. This goes against freedom of speech in that it polices what student may or may not hear at university. There was no motion to make sure that every time the atheist society had a speaker a religious speaker was also in attendance, or every time a Labour speaker came there was also a Conservative speaker, showing that this was a thinly veiled attack on the freedom of speech of pro-life students.
All of these incidents, when taken together, show that pro-life students are facing an increased amount of oppression on campuses across England, Scotland, and Wales. These attempts to suppress freedom of speech originate in a small segment of the student population. Student Unions themselves tend to more often listen to the voices of this small minority of students than the voices of the majority - most students, even if they are pro-choice, have no problem with the existence of a pro-life society at university. Many student unions do not have very clear, or very coherent, democratic policies in place, which means that voting pro-choice, or no-platforming, or safe space policies into official union policy is surprisingly easy, given the restrictions they place on freedom of speech. If unions had better guidelines for democratic policies, and if their union officials faced actual sanctions for disregarding freedom of speech, the unions, and therefore the university environments, would become both more democratic and more open to diverse viewpoints.
19 December 2017