Disinvited

Priyamvada Gopal on being silenced over Churchill and cancelled by the Home Office

Let me be upfront: I think “cancel culture” is a conservative confection, a pseudo-phenomenon coined to foment the moral panics regularly whipped up by the political right. Unfortunately, the term has also been given legitimacy by some of a liberal disposition who are unwilling or unable to assess the truth value of hyperbolic claims that there are routine and endemic “cancellations,” especially in universities, of people who are “not politically correct.” Close examination reveals that criticism, challenge and protest in their own right are frequently labelled “cancellations,” while actual cases of “no-platforming” are quite rare.

How do I square this assertion with the fact that in the last year alone I myself have had direct experience of two blatant attacks on freedom of speech? The first was the arbitrary dissolution of my Cambridge college’s working group on Winston Churchill, race and empire, set up to examine the less glorious side of its founder, Churchill. This cancellation happened after vicious attacks by the rightwing think tank Policy Exchange, which was set up by Michael Gove, a current government minister, as well as tantrums from Churchill’s heirs. References were made to wealthy donors being upset. A discussion series on Churchill that I was involved with was also halted.

My second cancellation was touted as a victory by the right-wing website Guido Fawkes, which announced that my invitation to talk at the

Home Office on my book, Insurgent Empire, had been rescinded at its behest. Forty-eight hours before I was due to speak to Home Office employees about black anticolonial campaigners for Black History Month, I received an email calling it off. Guido suggested the reason was that it had brought to the Home Office’s attention a tweet from last year in which I noted that, historically, many Asians in Africa had developed anti-black attitudes because they were deployed in imperial “divide-and-rule,” and that that legacy was reflected in some of the actions of Home Secretary Priti Patel, whose parents grew up in Uganda. This, according to Guido, was a “racist” remark that earned me a justifiable “no-platforming.” It has since emerged that the Cabinet Office has ordered “due diligence” on any potential outside speakers to determine if they are deemed “political… or have spoken against key government policies.”

To me these cancellations are not evidence of a new and dangerous “cancel culture” enforced by a censorious left and over-sensitive young people. It speaks instead to a more entrenched reality, in which right-wing political interests foment “culture wars” through which to discredit ideas deemed subversive. In parallel, they seek to give discredited and bigoted ideas the patina of freshness by claiming that they are suppressed by “cancel culture.”

This is a reality in which anti-racists can be casually deemed “the real racists” and cancelled accordingly. It is a reality in which it is acceptable for ministers to fulminate against teaching anti-capitalism or critical race theory, while spouting homilies to free speech on campus. It is a reality in which the status quo of wealth and power has long determined who gets a platform and who does not. It is a reality in which you don’t have to be actively de-platformed, as I was by the Home Office and Guido Fawkes: mostly, you are just never invited in the first place. ♦

Ken Loach Director

Ken Loach revealed that he had been expelled from the Labour Party in August 2021 because, in his words, he would “not disown those already expelled.” That was widely understood as a reference to Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader, who was suspended for saying that antisemitism in the party was “dramatically overstated.” Loach has also been accused of antisemitism himself: in 2017, he responded to a question about Holocaust denial by saying “history is for us all to discuss.”

Winston Marshall Musician

Winston Marshall quit his role as lead guitarist of Mumford & Sons after receiving widespread criticism on social media for saying that journalist Andy Ngo was “brave” for publishing a book about far-left activists in the United States and (in Ngo’s words) their “radical plans to destroy democracy.” Marshall decided to resign in order to prevent the band from receiving further public backlash.

Alexi McCammond Journalist

Days after Alexi McCammond accepted the position of editor at Teen Vogue in early 2021, screenshots of tweets she posted in 2011 were circulated which contained derogatory stereotypes about east Asians and offensive terms for gay people. More than 20 staff members at Condé Nast, the publisher of Teen Vogue, complained on social media following the appointment, and two major advertisers pulled out. McCammond, who is biracial, had publicly apologised and deleted the posts in 2019 and senior editors at Condé Nast had been aware of the tweets when she was hired. McCammond resigned and has now re-joined Axios, her former employer.

David Miller Sociologist

During an online event about free speech in February 2018, David Miller of the University of Bristol called for “the end of Zionism” and stated that Jewish students were being used as “political pawns by a violent, racist foreign regime.” A letter from the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism signed by more than 100 politicians subsequently accused Miller of “inciting hatred against Jewish students.” Miller’s tenure was terminated in

October 2021 after a university investigation found that past comments had “not met the standards of behaviour” expected of university staff.

Piers Morgan Broadcaster

When Piers Morgan said on ITV’s Good Morning Britain that he didn’t “believe a word” of Meghan Markle’s interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this year—including her comments about her mental health issues and suicidal thoughts, and accusations of racism in the royal family—Ofcom received 57,000 complaints. Markle, it was reported, herself made a formal complaint to ITV. After refusing to apologise, Morgan stepped down from Good Morning Britain later that day. An Ofcom probe later cleared

ITV over the segment, although it expressed concern over his comments about mental health.

Jenni Murray Broadcaster

Woman’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray was due to speak at an Oxford University Histor y Society event in November 2018, but she cancelled her appearance following accusations of transphobia from three student LGBTQ+ campaigning groups. The groups objected to a 2017 Sunday Times article by Murray titled “Be trans, be proud—but don’t call yourself a ‘real woman,’” in which she wrote that she is “not transphobic” but that “it takes more than a sex change and makeup” to claim womanhood. She left her job at Woman’s Hour in 2020, saying she had been banned from talking about the subject on air.

Greg Patton Professor

Greg Patton, a professor at the University of Southern California, was giving a communications lecture when he used a Chinese term that sounds like the n-word. Several students complained to the university and Patton apologised and “volunteered to step away” from his role while an investigation took place. The investigation found no ill intent on Patton’s part, and he was reinstated.

Ollie Robinson Cricketer

On the day he made his England test debut, racist and sexist tweets from Sussex cricketer Ollie Robinson resurfaced. The tweets, posted between 2012 and 2014 when Robinson was aged between 18 and 20, contained disparaging comments about women and Muslims. Robinson apologised “unreservedly” and was issued with an eight-match ban and fine.

Alison Roman Food writer

Alison Roman, a food columnist at the New York Times, made critical comments about two Asian women in a 2020 interview. Roman said she was “horrified” by model Chrissy Teigen’s kitchenware brand, stating she would “never aspire to” running a business like hers. In the same interview, she criticised organisation consultant Marie Kondo for selling crystals and other homeware items. Roman’s comments prompted allegations of racism on social media. Roman apologised to both women and said, “the fact that it didn’t occur to me that I had singled out two Asian women is… a function of my privilege.” She was suspended from her role at the Times, and then quit.

Amber Rudd

Former home secretar y

Amber Rudd was invited by an Oxford student society to speak at an International Women’s Day event about getting young women into politics. After some students objected on account of her links to the Windrush scandal, her invitation was withdrawn 30 minutes before the event was due to start. Writing on Twitter, Rudd described the U-turn as “badly judged & rude.”

Bright Sheng Composer

Bright Sheng, a Chinese-born US composer and teacher at the University of Michigan, was removed from his teaching post after students

complained about his screening in class of the 1965 Laurence Olivier film of Othello. The film shows Olivier in blackface. Sheng issued an apology afterwards, acknowledging that the film is “racially insensitive and outdated,” but more than 40 students and staff signed an open letter to the university’s principal in complaint. Sheng’s composition class was suspended, but he remains employed by Michigan.

David Shor

Data scientist and political consultant

Soon after George Floyd’s death in May 2020, and the protests and rioting that followed, political analyst David Shor tweeted a link to data suggesting that violent protests can reduce support for progressive causes, whereas non-violent protest can improve it. The tweet was met with outrage and accusations of racism. Shor apologised the next day. Shortly afterwards he was dismissed from his job at a data firm.

Felicia Sonmez Reporter

In Januar y 2020, US basketball player Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash in southern California. The same day, Washington Post

reporter Felicia Sonmez shared on Twitter a 2016 Daily Beast article that revisited 2003 rape charges against Bryant that were later dropped. Sonmez received more than 10,000 hostile messages in response. She was suspended by the Post

but re-instated the following week. Sonmez, a victim of sexual assault, had previously been prevented from reporting on sexual assault because of the paper’s concerns about bias. She has now filed a discrimination lawsuit.

David Starkey Historian

In a 2020 podcast discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, historian David Starkey stated that “the slave trade was not a genocide… otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in North America or the West Indies. Or indeed in Britain.” Starkey lost a visiting professorship at Canterbury Christ Church University,

Let the privileged and the malign say what they want without challenge and democracy will succumb to their toxicity

resigned from an honorary fellowship at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and was dropped by his publishers HarperCollins and Hodder & Stoughton. The Metropolitan Police launched an investigation into whether Starkey intended to stir up racial hatred, which was later postponed indefinitely. The comments were later edited out of the original podcast. Starkey retains a column in the Critic magazine.

Sasha White Journalist

Sasha White was fired from The Tobias Literary Agency in 2020 after she retweeted some comments that were branded transphobic, including a tweet reading: “TW [trans women] being vulnerable to male violence does not make you women.” White tweeted that she had been sacked because of her “feminist stance.” ♦