Adam Powell Davies, Socialist Students national organiser

The Labour government has announced that it will implement new rules aimed at ‘protecting free speech’ on university campuses.

Under the new legislation – originally drawn up by the previous Tory government – the Office for Students will gain powers to investigate and potentially fine universities over complaints made by university staff, external speakers, and other ‘non-student members’. A complaints system that excludes the roughly 3 million university students living in the UK – not exactly free speech for us!

It shows how, despite paying lip-service to ‘free speech’, the Labour government only wants certain voices to be heard. Like all capitalist politicians, they pick and choose whose speech to promote or suppress according to what suits them and the system they defend.

Where is the Labour government’s outrage at the managements of twelve UK universities who, as reported this month, have paid private security firms to spy on pro-Palestinian student protesters and academics? Will this not have a chilling effect on ‘free speech’ on campus?

During the Gaza solidarity movement on campuses in 2023-24, uni bosses imposed sanctions on students and staff for protesting on campuses, often over institutions’ links to the arms industry. Labour politicians and vice chancellors claimed these protests made students scared to speak out, supposedly infringing their ‘free speech’. Why would the freedom of expression for one section of students have to come at the expense of another?

Labour politicians and vice chancellors are currently working together to destroy higher education. They have the most to gain from sowing division among students and staff, while outwardly purporting to do the very opposite under the banner of ‘protecting free speech’.

As a vital counterweight, students need our own democratic organisations which could provide a genuine forum for all students to discuss and debate different ideas, free from the meddling of management and capitalist politicians.

To free society from a tiny capitalist elite using its wealth and power to police the language and behaviour of the vast majority, we need to fight for a socialist system under the democratic control of the working class, based on meeting the needs of all, not the profits of a few. Part of that struggle includes the fight for a democratically run education system that is free and accessible to all.