Here’s my final take on the matter, summarised neatly.
- It was a terrible error of judgement, and an extremely revealing one at that, for the Union to invite Griffin and Irving. The Union was under no obligation to bring these people to Oxford, and in my opinion should never have done so.
- However, seen as the Union is a private institution, whose members voted 2-1 in favour of the event going ahead, that must be respected if one believes in freedom of speech (both for Griffin and Irving, and for the Union, incidentally).
- Consequently, those protesters who said that this was not a freedom of speech issue either hadn’t thought hard enough about what freedom of speech is, or were being dishonest.
- In the end, i was mighty pleased that so many people turned out to protest. Regarding the technicalities of the issue I likely disagree with many of the people who were protesting, but regardless of that, I think it is a wonderful and important thing when people do turn out in force to let Griffin et al know they are not welcome, whatever the Union takes upon itself to do.
2 December, 2007 at 5:43 pm |
“- Consequently, those protesters who said that this was not a freedom of speech issue either hadn’t thought hard enough about what freedom of speech is, or were being dishonest.”
- This is only true for the minority of protesters who wanted to prevent the thing from going ahead by force etc.
4 December, 2007 at 4:30 pm |
you say minority, I say overwhelming majority of people I talked to…
4 December, 2007 at 5:58 pm |
Fair do’s, different experiences and all that.
Did you get into the forum in the end?
6 December, 2007 at 12:46 am |
Presumably, Peter and Sagar, it depends upon the motivations of any given protester…
My complaint is that a lot of fairly shabby people tried to use that protest to launch their labour party careers by claiming responsibility for the thing, without actually making sure the damn thing was controlled properly.
7 December, 2007 at 2:49 pm |
I kind of like protests that are uncontrolled.
30 December, 2007 at 10:33 pm |
I came across this today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23NIsjERiYE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZeQ6Q32vaY
Not sure that Will Jones should have agreed to speak to this woman, seeing as she was present at the Tehran Holocaust Denial Conference and is associated with the Institute for Historical Review.
http://www.eurojewcong.org/ejc/news.php?id_article=645
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=30
That said – he probably can’t be blamed. I don’t carry a book round with pictures of well known anti-semites, and I doubt he does too. But, as has been said by others, anti-semites uses events like this to gain credibility, and here we have another anti-semite arguing with (and doing rather well) an Oxford student. But inviting anti-semites allows them to do this sort of thing and take advantage of organisations (like the Union) and people.
31 December, 2007 at 1:43 am |
OK, to be fair to Will:
- He’s trying very hard to be cool, calm and collected, and as i know him I can tell you from the way he’s speaking and the faces he’s pulling those are not the emotions he is feeling during that interview.
- The woman interupts him at various crucial points when he’s about to mount a proper argument, derailing him before he can say what he means to say. If it was me, I’d have told her to shut up and talked over her. But then again, Will is far more polite and conciliatory then me, and probably knew that behaving like that would have got the interview ended. I suspect that he figured he would achieve more by continuing the interview. I’m not sure he was right there, because he certainly appears to be more on her side than I know he is (Will is about as committed a liberal, descend, caring anti-fascist human being you could hope to meet).
- I also doubt he knew who she was. If he did, i’m certain he would have declined the interview.
- I’m not sure she argues with him rather well, she simply asserts things and there’s no proper exchange. When Will was an undergraduate at Balliol, he was the cleverest undergraduate I knew, he’s being outmanoeuvered by somebody who is taking advantage of his politeness in an interview setting and is clearly experienced at this sort of thing.
- Note her dishonesty at her reasons for being at Irving’s trial
- However I am a little disappointed at Will’s allowing her to get away with saying there is no holocaust denial in Irving’s work: he should have stood up to her better there.
- Finally, anti-semites have a right to conduct interviews with freely-consenting adult members of the population. Yes, i know Tryl gave them an opportunity to do this, and as i’ve already said he was an idiot for doing it. But you’re sort of implying that this means the far right should be banned from interviewing people. Doesn’t seem right to me.
31 December, 2007 at 1:47 am |
Also, Will expressly states that he hates Griffin and Irving, so he’s not doing *that* badly.
31 December, 2007 at 1:47 am |
“nasty, horrible, shabby little man”