18 NOVEMBER 1972, Page 11

Ombudsmania

Freedom of screech

Robert Conquest

I don't know about Stirling, but I lately came across a truly dreadful example, from another Scottish university, of the way in which students are encouraged to violate the rights of others and the decencies of society. Specifically, this was an expression, by the Rector of Dundee, of the view that 'freedom of speech' is compatible with the forcible prevention of speech Unpalatable to the left. Such a line is common enough in America, and in France and Germany too, but is usually put under a heavy disguise of incomprehensibe syntax ind meaningless or ambiguous polysyllables. This time it is a British phenomenon expressed in simple and shameless phrasing.

The passage I am referring to is an Interview (in the Boston Globe, June 18, 1972) given by Mr Peter Ustinov. In it he describes his duties as Rector of the University of Dundee. Possibly he has been misreported, or partly misreported. One hopes so. At any rate, what he is given as saying in direct speech, surrounded by inverted commas, is the following: I have a kind of ombudsman role, I'm supPosed to speak up on behalf of 'students. For example, I arrived in the middle of a "free Speech" issue on campus. Enoch Powell, Conservative Member of Parliament, who I suPpose is our Agnew figure in England, had bees invited by Conservatives to speak at the University, I found "Powell Go Home" signs Painted on the walls. I eventually spoke with detectives and policemen and said it should be brought home to Powell that he would not be safe. They said with normal craft pride, aS the psychiatrists call it, that he would be well protected. I asked whether they could also guarantee the safety of the students. They „said they couldn't. I then pointed out that Mr 'Well would be there for one afternoon. He Would make exactly the same speech he'd made everywhere else; whereas the students would be there for another three years and it Would be tragic if some students got expelled Or hurt simply because the police were protecting Mr Powell. They found the point well taken and Mr Powell was dissuaded from et>, ming. I was attacked and accused of gagging free speech. I said I didn't think this was true. We all know what Powell is going t° say in advance, and whatever he says is given broad publicity, it doesn't matter whether e says it on campus or elsewhere.

What could be plainer than that? From 4.t We draw certain clear conclusions. First, If one knows, or thinks one knows, what a speaker will say, then he has no right to say it. As a matter of fact, Mr Enoch Powell (with whom I for one am, incidentally, seldom in agreement) is well known for having a variety of themes and for producing striking surprises in his speeches. But even if this were not so, it would be a curious doctrine to interpret ' freedom of speech' as 'freedom only to say what you have not said before.' One wonders, too, whether the same principle would be applied to, say, Mr Frank Allaun or Miss Bernadette Devlin, who are at least equally — and many would say rather more — susceptible to the charge that one knows what they are going to say. Somehow, one has the feeling that what would apply here is that central slogan of leftiness, " It's all right when we do it."

Secondly, we now learn that if it would be possible for a speaker to speak elsewhere, he can legitimately be stopped speaking in the place he wants to speak in. This is a principle that could be extended. For example, a landlady or a club would be entitled to refuse a coloured applicant, so long as there were other places where he could get in, and this would constitute no encroachment on his freedom. Or if not, why not?

In the particular circumstances at the university at which Mr Ustinov rectorises, we are also on interesting ground. In part, this is agreeably farcical, as when students are likely to be "expelled or hurt simply because the police were protecting Mr Powell." Something seems to be missing from this picture.

So, too, the idea of the police being unable to guarantee the safety of the students as well as of Mr Powell is a sad one. It may perhaps remind one, in a way, of the failure of the British anti-aircraft batteries protecting London to guarantee the safety of the Luftwaffe pilots.

But there are further points to be made. Mr Ustinov represents himself as speaking up "on behalf of students." But it was a student society which invited Mr Powell. Mr Ustinov did not speak up on their behalf. As representative of the students, in fact, he saw his role as representing one faction of them, not all of them — indeed, on a literal reading, as representing students (or possibly others) whom he had not seen: those who had painted up "Powell Go Home!" We ought to be able to assume that if other students (or nonstudents) had painted up "Ustinov Go Home," he would instantly have left. But I do not think we can.

More seriously, one complains less of the disgraceful muddle-headedness, the intellectual corruption, the anti-libertarian prejudice than of the pandering to precisely the lowest and most anti-educational attitudes of certain students. First, it is represented as a ' tragedy ' if students are penalised for assault. That is, they are encouraged to regard themselves as infants whose tantrums will not be held against them. They are pampered, in fact, in the most regressive and childlike attitudes and granted exemption from the adult world. But the process of education is in part a process of maturing. It is not a 'tragedy' if students — or anyone else — are held responsible for their actions, it is a condition of civic society.

All in all, Mr Ustinov is encouraging thuggery. But worse still, he is a sponsor, or at least an accomplice, in teaching students a Newspeak attitude — which is to say that he is actively assisting in the process of diseducation. One would prefer totalitarian, or semi-totalitarian, views not to be taught; but if they are, even they should at least be taught at an intellectual level higher than this naive collection of untruisms.