Political Commentary
The Cosgrave declaration
Patrick Cosgrave
Mr Harold Soref, the vice-chairman of the Monday Club and former Tory Member of Parliament for Ormskirk, is not a politician with whom I have ever seen eye to eye. Yet, like most of our fellow citizens, as I fancy, I felt deeply for him when a gang of masked student thugs broke up a recent university meeting which he was addressing, and forced him to flee the premises in which he was speaking. The incident — in the course of which, and after which, Mr Soref appears to have behaved with a good deal of courage — raised again in an acute form the matter of a recent amendment to a motion passed by a conference of the National Union of Students — subsequently justified in specious outpourings by Mr John 'Hitler Youth' Randall, the President of that egregious body — which announced the determination of a number of NUS members to prevent, by force if necessary, people of whose views they disapproved speaking to university audiences, on the excuse that they represented fascist or racist philosophies. At the moment the supporters of that amendment are drawing up a blacklist, while opponents are organising to have it rescinded. Since the conference which passed the amendment, moreover, my friends and colleagues, Mr Alan Watkins or the New Statesman and Mr Bernard Levin of the Times, have written at length to argue that, until students are better behaved, and until freedom of speech is guaranteed at our universities, those of us (and that includes many politicians and journalists) who receive invitations to address student audiences should decline: the original article in which Mr Watkins argued this point of view has been dubbed by Mr Levin the Watkins' Declaration. I believe the attitudes of both my friends to be profoundly mistaken, and perhaps even dangerous. No one con
cerned for freedom of political debate could disagree with either Mr Watkins of Mr Levin in their strictures on the NUS for its adoption of principles and methods reminiscent only of the behaviour of the Nazis on their way to power in Germany, and their strictures on various university authorities for pussyfooting pusillanimity in the face of the student threat. Nonetheless, the boycott idea is wrong.
In the last year I have spoken to a variety of student audiences. One accepts such invitations, as Mr Watkins says, out of a variety of motives — vanity, an idea of social service, to give some publicity to one's paper and, in my own case, sometimes to take the opportunity of putting in a few snatched hours of research work at a university library, or seeing old friends in a university town. Probably more clearly than either Mr Watkins or Mr Levin, I go to try to put across certain political ideas. Recently — say in the last fifteen months — I have spoken to both the Oxford and Cambridge University Conservative Associations, to a teacher training college in Leeds and, most recently, under the auspices of Conservative Central Office, to trainee social workers in the University of Kent and to student audiences in Sussex and Guildford. My views, as I know, are considerably to the right of those of Mr Watkins and Mr Levin, but I have never yet met anything that could be described as serious discourtesy. The nearest I came to it was at Leeds and Guildford: at the latter meeting I was accompanied on the platform by Mr Jock McEwan, the Conservative President of the London
Students' Union and Mr Jimmy Gordon, the admirable Youth Director at Central Office. At Leeds opposition took no form more serious than ordinary student heckling, and it died down quickly enough for us to have a stimulating and, I think, successful discussion. At Guildford — as Mr McEwan quickly observed — the meeting was attended by a number of people prominent on the left of the NUS who tended to turn their questions into speeches, but no serious complaint could be made about the reception. I spoke as honsestly as I could about my political views: my support of the present government of Chile appeared to shock, and questions on the subject of politics in both that country and in Spain demonstrated a good deal of ignorance on the part of the left about the facts but, I reiterate, one could make no serious complaint. 'the first purpose of these reminiscences is to do something which neither Mr Watkins nor Mr Levin did in their original arguments — go into some detail about the recent experience of one of the prospective boycotters in actually facing student audiences. Indeed, neither Mr Watkins nor Mr Levin stated that they themselves had ever had any experience of rough or unfair treatment. But there is another purpose as well, which can be served by looking more closely at some of the occasions I have already mentioned. When I spoke to the social work class in Kent I was concerned with events subsequent to the publication of the Seebohm Report, which recommended the (subsequently largely implemented) radical reconstruction of social services in this country. I was concerned to some extent with the formulation of Conservative policy on the Report, and the matter had ever since been a subject of passionate concern to me. A great deal has gone wrong since the legislation enacting the Report: in particular the social work profession seems to me to have taken a wrong — i.e. a leftward — turn; the professional body — the British Association of Social Workers — has been exceptionally uncritical of itself, and excessively critical of others; and the teaching of social work seems to me to have become
dangerously biased in a Marxist directier° while at the same time its superficiality 1195 been compounded. It is already thus clear that' I had scarcely a single supporter among 191 audience in Kent. I accepted the invitation a,1 very short notice, a situation which arese.'■ fancy because Central Office found it hard te get a Tory speaker. My hosts told me, indeed. I that Tories willing to speak to them were dila • on the ground, whether because they Wer unwilling to tackle critical audiences, 9' , because not many Tories are interested ly social work. My main opponent, moreover tl a graduate student — was singularly formed about the Conservative record 0;11 position on his subject and, I think, a little 01 t out when he discovered what my views tually were. I do not suggest that I convert t‘' anybody: I do insist that here was a world considerable importance, a world whie1n'i though critical, was neither discourteous 11'1'1 unpleasant in any way, a student world Whi9, might never have heard a Tory view had I IV' gone to speak to them. Now, neither Mr Watkins nor Mr Levin are Tories; nor, so far as I know, is either of OW involved in or interested in social work. the particular point can be extended. Both Sussex and Guildford last week, and in cussions with Mr McEwan between the tv/' meetings, I discovered first, that the tw° Conservative Associations under whose att2; pices our gatherings were held were in ril:,, early stages of formation and at present wea's;ii second, that the left-wing students such a: G stand behind the anti-free-speech amendme,T and such as attended our meeting at Girilu. ford devote a great deal — perhaps most of' ‘;! their time and energy to student politickiit, and organisation, while those who wish study and take no more than a moderstl;', interest in such extra-curripular activities political discussion spend much less time Ow such matters, and therefore are vastjy weaklpz in the running of their unions. The brutNii suggestion of Mr Watkins and Mr Levin 15 that those of us lucky enough to be able °Ise speak articulately about politics and politic a'.1
principles should give them no slipport.
Much of what is wrong with the mode-tar university structure — indeed, alriles,fa everything that is wrong with it — has heociar due to the teachers and the university ministrators and the way they have reactee`sit seismic developments in the modern world, the massive growth of state finance h°ita education and to the so-called problem of t'clac so-called generation gap alike. We have 11,81in, far too many politicians and senior universitpc administrators so lacking in principle conviction that they collapse in the face of t" first surge of student discontent: some them — Essex is a case in point — are re go so without courage or conviction that the have let generations of students esc5PtI4 learning about the purpose of university life' If we possessed a stable university c°111,Pr munity, a national student body Wil'101 Mr Watkins and Mr Levin and mYs"kli, would all find satisfactory, then it would 112=it be unreasonable to forego the sheer fag which Mr Watkins dwelt for most of his ticle — of the round of student societies 1-1 associations. It is precisely because the situ tion in our universities is profoundly distill., ing — despite my own relatively haPPc* experiences — and precisely because intelle tu41 thugs have a grip on the NUS, ar prepisely because free speech and the pl.'„ ciples that go with it are in danger, a" precisely because the moderate majorirY, t students are less involved than the extrerro5A and precisely because the values Mr Levin a' Mr Watkins and myself stand by are bein endangered that we need to help the good alit in defy the evil, even at someinc.onvenience.5 ourselves. The realy serious dangers arlA only when men of principle stand by and " nothing about their principles.
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