The HR machine is undermining free speech
Things have come to a pretty pass when we have a Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill like the one that reaches the House of Lords next week. Freedom of speech is the mental lifeblood of a university. Why does it need setting out in law, you might ask. It should be as superfluous as parliamentary legislation insisting that rugby be played with a prolate spheroid ball.
Yet we do need it. In recent years, universities themselves have repeatedly either ignored infringements on free speech, such as the cancellation of speakers deemed “inappropriate”, or actively promoted infringements.
Cambridge attempted to permit freedom of speech only to those who showed “respect” to the ideas with which they disagreed. Luckily, senior members of the university revolted. They pointed out that one cannot conscientiously respect all opinions: what one can and should do is tolerate them.
The new Cambridge definition was thrown out, but the problem continues across higher education. Some woke doctrines explicitly regard freedom of speech as an invention of white people to maintain their “supremacy”. Attempts to “decolonise” academic studies usually involve the suppression of freedom of speech. Academics and students alike do need legal remedy, for which the Bill provides, when they suffer for exercising that freedom or are forbidden from doing so.
The Bill also establishes a “director for freedom of speech and academic freedom” on the board of the regulator, the Office for Students. This is sometimes called a “free-speech tsar”, a comically inapposite term, since tsars and freedom rarely coexist. It illustrates the problem of government engaging in this subject; but since government is ultimately the source of most university funds, it does have a duty to monitor the misappropriation of taxpayers’ money for ideological purposes.
What is emerging, however, is that the worst threats to freedom of speech in universities (and in other workplaces) do not come from explicit prohibitions. They are to be found in the vast multiplication of human resources (HR). What used to be called personnel, dealing with things like pay questions and dismissals, has become a monster machine for imposing new rules of behaviour and language not necessarily wanted either by management or staff. HR is a third force in the workplace, politically driven.
HR tools include encouraging the anonymous denunciation of colleagues, accepting an accusation against someone just because a person (not even, in all cases, the accuser) says someone else was made to feel “uncomfortable”, and the mandatory training of all staff that forces them to accept HR’S own definitions of what is “inappropriate”. Probably the best way to defend freedom of speech in the workplace would be simply to cut HR departments by 90 per cent. Government could set an example by starting this in the public sector.
As the rail strikes begin, people
speak of a “summer of discontent”, with disputes spreading to teachers, nurses etc. This is intended to echo the Winter of Discontent of 1978/9 when Shakespeare’s famous phrase from
Richard III was applied to the strikes that crippled the country.
The comparison may be right industrially, but it is wrong politically. In 1978/9, the Labour government of Jim Callaghan, which did not have a parliamentary majority, was limping towards its last days.
The Winter of Discontent gave Margaret Thatcher the impetus for her first election victory and a mandate for change. This summer is different. We have a Tory government with a big majority, no general election imminent, and no clear alternative vision from Labour. Sir Keir Starmer seems to be having such difficulty deciding which side to be on in the rail dispute that he may miss the political train.
The more accurate comparison is with the early 1970s. Then the Conservative government, led by Edward Heath, had no imminent threat to its majority and faced a Labour Party much too in hock to the trade unions to take the lead against militants. In 1971, the Tories brought in an Industrial
Relations Act, designed to prevent “wildcat” strikes. It set up an Industrial Relations Court, with criminal sanctions for those ignoring its rulings.
The Act was a disaster. It created martyrs (the “Pentonville Five”) and united union members against the government. Heath then imitated his Labour predecessor, Harold Wilson, and went down the primrose path (another phrase of Shakespeare’s) of prices and incomes policy. Government, management and unions were supposed to cure inflation and prevent strikes by agreeing “fair” wages and prices. This hopeless task collapsed in rancour. Heath called a premature general election to win a mandate against the miners’ strike, and lost.
In 2022, the Tories are working hard to embarrass Labour about strikes. It is a well-tried tactic, but it is not enough. It will not save the Conservatives if they are either too rigid about how they handle each dispute or too accommodating to the unions. (Heath exhibited both these faults at once.)
In one way, the task is easier for the Government now because the union movement is weaker than it was then. In another, however, it may be trickier. Fifty years ago, many powerful unions – the engineers and electricians, for example – were strong in the private sector and so had a grasp of economic reality. Today, big unions dominate the public sector alone, and therefore can hurt taxpayers almost with impunity. If the Tories get the handling wrong, they will deservedly be blamed.