No Platform

This book is the first to outline the history of the tactic of ‘no platforming’ at British universities since the 1970s, looking at more than four decades of student protest against racist and fascist figures on campus. The tactic of ‘no platforming’ has been used at British universities and colleges since the National Union of Students adopted the policy in the mid-1970s. The author traces the origins of the tactic from the militant anti-fascism of the 1930s–1940s and looks at how it has developed since the 1970s, being applied to various targets over the last 40 years, including sexists, homophobes, right-wing politicians and Islamic fundamentalists. This book provides a historical intervention in the current debates over the alleged free speech ‘crisis’ perceived to be plaguing universities in Britain, as well as North America and Australasia. No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech is for academics and students, as well as the general reader, interested in modern British history, politics and higher education. Readers interested in contemporary debates over freedom of speech and academic freedom will also have much to discover in this book.

Platform No. 10 On a bustling railway platform, an unexpected story is waiting to unfold. Fleeing from a troubled past in an orphanage in Patna, a young and destitute boy, Ami, finds himself on Platform No. 10 in Delhi?s Nizamuddin station, where Shetty Dada rules the platform boys with an iron fist. During the day, Ami tries his best to stay out of trouble, avoiding both the havaldars and the ragpickers, who sniff glue up on the roof. During the night, he dreams of home, and of one day having a family of his own. Meanwhile, in another part of the city, Janaki, an affluent young widow, finds herself struggling to hold on to her husband?s vast fortunes. Disillusioned by the betrayal of her family at the prospect of wealth, Janaki wonders whether she?ll ever find happiness again, and the strength to move on. When life brings Ami and Janaki face to face on Platform No. 10, their disparate worlds collide, setting off a series of events that will forever change their destiny.

No Free Speech for Fascists explores the choice of anti-fascist protesters to demand that the opportunities for fascists to speak in public places are rescinded, as a question of history, law, and politics. It explains how the demand to no platform fascists emerged in 1970s Britain, as a limited exception to a left-wing tradition of support for free speech. The book shows how no platform was intended to be applied narrowly, only to a right-wing politics that threatened everyone else. It contrasts the rival idea of opposition to hate speech that also emerged at the same time and is now embodied in European and British anti-discrimination laws. Both no platform and hate speech reject the American First Amendment tradition of free speech, but the ways in which they reject it are different. Behind no platform is not merely a limited range of political targets but a much greater scepticism about the role of the state. The book argues for an idea of no platform which takes on the electronic channels on which so much speech now takes place. It shows where a fascist element can be recognised within the much wider category of far-right speech. This book will be of interest to activists and to those studying and researching political history, law, free speech, the far right, and anti-fascism. It sets out a philosophy of anti-fascism for a social media age.