'Rule of the mob' is curbing free speech in universities warns former equalities chief Trevor Phillips

Free speech is being restrained as universities follow the 'rule of the mob', the former equalities chief Trevor Phillips has said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph. Mr Phillips argued that vice-Chancellors in charge of the academic institutions needed to take a stand in order to prevent the erosion of free speech.

The former chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, who wrote the original 'No Platform Policy' for the National Union of Students, argued that the policy was now being used in an 'authoritarian' way. He added that what was initially implemented to protect people was now being used to restrict the voices of those with whom they disagreed with. The policy, which was created in the early 1970s, was a form of boycott to the rise of the National Front and other violent and racist groups and aimed to prevent them from speaking to students on campus or organising speeches.

Mr Phillips told The Sunday Telegraph: 'People have taken that and stretched it beyond all recognition into something ugly and authoritarian.

'People use what was originally a protective proposition to damn others with whom they disagree


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6662443/Free-speech-curbed-warns-former-equalities-chief-Trevor-Phillips.html