Fettered freedom
Even in an age already dulled by the puling and selfish insensitivity of university students, it comes as something of a shock to find the National Union of Students, in conference at Liverpool, grandly deciding that, having already announced a policy of breaking up meetings of the Monday Club and such as may be addressed by Mr Enoch Powell, they will allow the Conservative Party and the Federation of Conservative Students to hold meetings in relative peace, provided these bodies say nothing displeasing to the far left of the NUS: "If this is limiting freedom of speech," said Mr John Randall—President, forsooth, of this dangerously idiotic body — "then we plead guilty." No doubt there will be many Labour politicians, and a sufficient number of unthinking and trend-hopping university teachers, found to applaud this kind of extremism, pleading it represents healthy activism among youth, and a commitment to whatever utopian sociological theorising is currently fashionable. But Mr Randall's speech, and, indeed, much of what went on at the Liverpool conference, must surely bring measurably nearer the day when the rest of society — embodied in this case in the local authorities which provide most student grants, and in the central government which provides a great measure of financial support for university expansion — will call a halt to the intellectual thuggery of the student body. Fortunately, there is no immediate prospect of an increase in grants such as the NUS have been campaigning for: with insight, intelligence and courage it would actually be possible to reduce, if not grants, the number of students at our universities, so as to ensure that those who gain a priceless opportunity at the expense of society will do at their various establishments what society is paying for — study.
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