WORK|OUT European Students’ Review

REBELS WITHOUT A CASE

Freedom of speech in Oxford, the tuition fee debate in Paris and Berlin: Europe’s students are still fighting — but what are they fighting for?

| Hugh Cleary (OXFORD). The Oxford Union, one of the world’s oldest debating societies, described by a former British prime minister as “the last bastion of free speech in the western world”, broke on the 26th of November 2007 another taboo. Resisting pressure from lobbying groups on all sides, shattering a decades-old convention of the political scene, and making a considerable number of enemies along the way, the Union defended its right to controversial debate — by inviting two of Britain’s most notorious public figures. The men in question? Holocaust denier David Irving and open racist and leader of the British National Party (BNP) Nick Griffin.
Whatever one’s opinion on the limits of free speech, the decision to offer a prestigious platform to two men whose main agenda over recent years has been the dissemination of anti-Semitic, racist and extreme nationalist views was unquestionably irresponsible and dangerous. In a society where race relations constitute one of the greatest challenges of the coming years, the aggressive rhetoric of the likes of Griffin and Irving has already resulted in riots and violence and poses a very real threat to social harmony. The Union debate, however good the intentions of the organisers may have been, was a prime example of students out of touch with reality, cocooned within the abstract world of ideas, unaware of the real damage their actions could cause.

On a far larger scale, this unhealthy detachment from the ‘real world’ can be discerned in student actions across Europe. Attempted government reforms in France and Germany, involving the introduction of tuition fees or the establishment of financial independence for universities, have been widely rejected by student communities and have triggered substantial protest in both countries. We have witnessed students resisting the most basic modernisations and changes, battling to preserve a privileged position which is long out-dated. Can it be right that the working population pays the bill for students to gain qualifications which will increase their own future salaries? Why should a student be supported by the state when he takes ten years to complete a four-year course? Why should universities be prevented from selecting the students who are most likely to benefit from their course? To students, these questions sound outrageous, blasphemous even, but to the rest of society the answers are obvious: students should be funded to the extent that their learning benefits society — not completely, not indefinitely and not unconditionally. Until students accept this point of view, they will only ostracise themselves further from the majority.
The opinions of students are important. They are those of the future, they are untainted by business interests, they are independent of the establishment — but this means they must beware of the risk of becoming irrelevant to reality. Student voices have so often been a force for real good in society as a whole, but the irresponsible behaviour of Oxfordians and the anti-tuition fee protests in France and Germany show students at their worst, defending their own narrow interest — fighting for their own cause, not society’s.