The debating society that refuses to debate
Students at Bangor University are preventing discussion in the name of free speech.
The self-satirising quality of social justice activists never ceases to disappoint. This time it’s the Debating and Political Society at Bangor University which, in spite of the society’s name, has refused a request to hold a Q&A with political campaigner Jack Anderton and Reform MP Sarah Pochin. The society’s statement said it all: ‘Reform UK are not welcome at Bangor University’.
The society’s justification for its decision read like typical activist boilerplate, with the compulsory clutching of pearls:
‘We have zero tolerance for any form of racism, transphobia, or homophobia displayed by the members of Reform UK. Their approach to the lives of others is antithetical to the values of welcoming and fair debate that our society has upheld for 177 years.’
Not content with declaring that a democratically elected Member of Parliament was too controversial for public events, and that free speech can only be upheld by preventing certain people from speaking, the society implored other student groups ‘to join us in keeping hate out of our universities’.
Once again, we see how the nebulous concept of ‘hate’ is being weaponised to prevent open discussion. The reinterpretation of Reform’s policies as evidence of ‘hatred’ is to condemn what polls repeatedly tell us is the position of the majority of the British electorate. As for the scattershot accusations of ‘racism, transphobia, or homophobia’, this is all starting to feel a little dated. Don’t these students realise that very few are persuaded by these smears anymore?
The Bangor Debating Society was founded in 1849, but until now it has never claimed a mandate to act in loco parentis for all staff and students and protect them from ‘harmful’ ideas. Some members of the university will doubtless be voting for Reform in future elections. They are unlikely to appreciate this small group of pompous martinets making decisions on their behalf. Perhaps the Debating and Political Society at Bangor University would be better served by a leadership that understands the concept of the marketplace of ideas. This being central to – well, you know – debate and politics.
It is troubling to reflect on how today’s threats to freedom in higher education are largely originating from within the campus walls. As Greg Lukianoff has argued, ‘people all over the globe are coming to expect emotional and intellectual comfort as though it were a right. This is precisely what you would expect when you train a generation to believe that they have a right not to be offended. Eventually, they stop demanding freedom of speech and start demanding freedom from speech’.
It is this mentality which led to the sign spotted at Colorado State University in January 2022 which read: ‘If you (or someone you know) are affected by a free speech event on campus, here are some resources…’ These included hotlines to report free speech advocates so that they might be investigated.
This kind of intolerance is one legacy of the ‘No Platforming’ policy initiated by the National Union of Students (NUS) back in April 1974. Even at the time, critics expressed concern that the practice might eventually expand to include any speech that students found personally objectionable. The activist leadership of the Debating Society at Bangor are the living proof of such concept creep.
All of this is reflective of a broader trend across the western world. The 2026 College Free Speech Rankings by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) have revealed that ‘students continue to show low tolerance for controversial speakers, and troublingly, more believe it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker, block access to events, or even resort to violence to silence campus speech than ever before’. The trend shows no sign of reversing, since such attitudes have ‘either held steady or worsened in the past year’.
A debating society that cannot tolerate debate is abandoning its very reason to exist. We have reached the point where those students who are genuinely interested in having their views challenged will have to struggle against their authoritarian peers. Judging from the antics of the Debating Society at Bangor, they will have quite a fight on their hands.
The poor little darlings. One wonders how the hell they will be able to cope with life once they have to leave their cocooned bubble. Trouble is they’ll probably travel from bubble to bubble until they end up in positions of power and can cause chaos with no criticism or debate permitted……a bit like the aim of our current Labour leaders and the EU.
It's a psychological type that, in earlier generations, would have been told to STFU – but is now mollycoddled, indulged, and encouraged in its petty authoritarianism.
As so often, I’m reminded of P. J. O’Rourke’s description of such types as spoiled children:
"...miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless".