Liberty and the defence of free speech.

 

The Islamophobe activist, Tommy Robinson, last spoke at the Oxford Union on 26 November 2014 and Unite Against Fascism (UAF), criticised the Union for allowing him a platform.  

I remember when they tried to no platform an English Roman Catholic mother called Victoria Gillick, who didn't want contraception being issued to people under 16, without parental consent. That must have been around 1985/86, when she addressed the Oxford Union. 

They probably did the same thing with Charlie Kirk and Malcolm X, who did believe in Black nationalism and racial separation. Muhammad Ali also addressed the Oxford Union and he believed in racial segregation and opposed mixed marriages between blacks and whites. Ali is known to have spoken at a KKK rally in the U.S. Both Charlie Kirk and Malcolm X were assassinated not long after they spoke at the Oxford Union because people wanted to silence them. 

Robinson, a convicted fraudster and former member of the far-right English Defence League (EDL) and British National Party (BNP), is scheduled to address the Oxford Union on May 28 on the motion, "This House believes the West is right to be suspicious of Islam." He will be opposed by Jacob Rees-Mogg. 

I have no time for Tommy Robinson or his toxic ideology, but as the English author George Orwell famously said,  "If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."