On the evening of February 29, students of the Manchester Pro-Life Society attending an event at the Students’ Union had to be given a police escort through a frenzied mob of ‘peaceful’ protestors who shouted, “Shame on you … stay in there and die.” At one point, security feared that the demonstrators would break into the building. Eggs were thrown at windows, one girl received a rape threat, and two other female members of the Society were followed some of the way home after the meeting. A fight between two men also broke out, though there is so far no evidence that a member of the Society was involved.
This thuggish behaviour was the culmination of a vicious campaign of intimidation waged against pro-life students over the past few weeks. The “extent of the abuse has been vast,” the Manchester Pro-Life Society told me. Members have suffered “verbal abuse in person” and “several death threats,” while one student was assaulted “for being associated with the society.” Not surprisingly, many members have “been made to feel unsafe on campus.”
The first sign of trouble was on February 12 when a “concerned student” launched a petition to cancel the Manchester Pro-Life Society after its founding in January. Claiming to be “deeply troubled by the potential harm that could be caused by our university’s Pro-Life Society,” the unnamed author of the petition called on the Students’ Union to dissolve the group. At the time of writing, the petition had gained over 19,000 signatures.
Citing the 1986 and 1994 Education Acts, as well as the 2010 Equality Act, the University of Manchester Students’ Union thankfully reminded students that it “can’t block a society from forming because of their beliefs … From a legal standpoint, it’s not possible to stop a society from affiliating for their legal views that are contrary to the views of other students.”
The problem is that many students don’t believe in free speech and are prepared to take action to shut it down, as the Instagram group “Stop Manchester Pro-Life,” which organised the ‘peaceful demonstration’ on February 29, makes clear: “Free speech does NOT mean freedom of consequence.” This disingenuous assertion, which also sounds like a veiled threat, justifies the censorship of minority opinions—the speech of troublesome thinkers like Socrates who dare to question the gods of the city. In the minds of outraged students, the Manchester Pro-Life Society is heretical and must be held to account for its sins. One petition signatory even suggested that the involvement of one pro-life student studying medicine “should reflect on his career trajectory.”
Today, ‘consequence’ means a mob granting itself licence to vilify and threaten misbelievers. “These filthy tory men should not be allowed to decide what women do with their bodies. They disgust me,” wrote one petition co-signer; “I hate men,” another post said. While some complain about the alleged ‘misogyny’ of the pro-life student group, the only visible hate is that which is directed at its male founders. Even the author of the petition later edited the page to say that he was “in no way calling for any harassment or intimidation of the members/committee of the Pro-Life society personally,” an open admission that this had happened and reflected poorly on the petition.
Meanwhile, one female student told the Independent that “the society has made me feel weak and inferior to my male counterparts,” also claiming that she’s “had endless messages from girls who fear for their safety.” One wonders how these students can survive outside the sheltered accommodations of the campus, a world away from Afghanistan, where women are exposed to genuine danger. But the female student spoke of the Manchester Society as if it were made up of pro-life Taliban whose mere opinion threatened her security—an absurd notion that can only come from an excess of safety, at least for students with the right opinions.
Universities across the UK are being turned into hostile battlegrounds by an entitled, hypersensitive minority of screaming students who believe their personal opinions override other students’ right to free speech. Rather than engaging fellow students in reasoned debate, they use the excuse of ‘safety’ to bully them into submission. While the petition and its supporters have much to say about “students’ rights and well-being,” this concern only applies to students they agree with.
Pro-life students are on the frontlines of the battle for free speech in the UK, with Manchester being just one battleground. In 2021, Exeter Students for Life was subjected to a campaign of online abuse, including death threats, as well as a petition to have it disbanded. That same year, a stall run by Oxford Students for Life was trashed by fellow students at the Freshers’ Fair. In 2023, the Stirling University Students’ Union suspended the Catholic Society after they shared a post promoting pro-life vigils in Scotland; the Union was later forced to reinstate the group.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has also experienced cancel culture on campus. In October 2022, a female SPUC staff member invited by pro-life students to speak at the University of Edinburgh was shouted down by other students with megaphones. “Stop this talk right now … We are not allowing this to happen on our campus,” one person bellowed, claiming that pro-life sentiment was harmful to women. The intended theme of the talk was abortion coercion, an important topic of discussion after a Savanta ComRes survey found that 15% of British women aged 18-44 said they had experienced some form of unwanted “pressure to terminate a pregnancy.”
It’s hardly surprising, then, that one in seven students feels unable to express his views freely at universities, as the 2023 National Student Survey reported. The problem has at least been recognised to a certain degree, leading to the appointment of Professor Arif Ahmed, the first director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom set up under the Freedom of Speech Bill 2023. “There are now persistent and widespread concerns that many in higher education are being silenced, either by the activity of the university or by its inactivity. And that silencing may fall disproportionately on those who are most vulnerable,” Professor Ahmed warned.
Still, it is difficult to see how the Office for Students, under Professor Ahmed’s leadership, can protect pro-life students from the mob. Certainly, the Manchester Pro-Life Society has not benefited so far, though the Students’ Union at least upheld their legal right to exist. But even if the petition failed to force the Union to shut them down, the bullying methodology of some intolerant students acts as a deterrent to others who want to start societies with divergent viewpoints.
Minorities are said to be a protected category today, garnering special protection. As is so often the case, however, this protection doesn’t extend to minority opinions, especially anti-abortion sentiment. Pro-life students wanting to create their own society know they will likely face a wave of online vitriol, angry petitions, and even violence intended to intimidate and threaten young men and women who simply want to exchange ideas and communicate peacefully, which is the idea of the university, after all. Moreover, little or no concern has been shown for the well-being and mental health of the pro-life students targeted by the petition, the threats, and the one-sided coverage, including that of The Tab, the self-styled “guerilla army of bold and subversive student reporters,” which couldn’t be bothered to report on the shocking abuse meted out to the Manchester students.
A generation fed on cliché will only ever be able to regurgitate ideological catchwords and slogans, a lamentable blend of ignorance and pride. This holier-than-thou fervour calling for censorship is nothing new, and students would do well to study it to see where it leads. They might also heed the warning in Robert Bolt’s great play A Man for All Seasons, when the zealot William Roper tells Sir Thomas More that he’d cut down every law in England to get at the Devil, to which More replies: “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? … Do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
The spirit of Roper is frightfully alive today across many campuses, and it poses an existential threat to the hard-won right to free speech that pro-life students know they can no longer take for granted. The public must be made aware of what is taking place, particularly because universities are where future thought leaders, including politicians, academics, and journalists, are made. Looking at the current state of the university, a breeding ground for groupthink and a censorious instinct that crushes alternative ideas, Britain’s future looks bleak and decidedly undemocratic.
Vilification of Pro-Life Students Is a Threat to Free Speech
Photo by Juliana Romão on Unsplash
On the evening of February 29, students of the Manchester Pro-Life Society attending an event at the Students’ Union had to be given a police escort through a frenzied mob of ‘peaceful’ protestors who shouted, “Shame on you … stay in there and die.” At one point, security feared that the demonstrators would break into the building. Eggs were thrown at windows, one girl received a rape threat, and two other female members of the Society were followed some of the way home after the meeting. A fight between two men also broke out, though there is so far no evidence that a member of the Society was involved.
This thuggish behaviour was the culmination of a vicious campaign of intimidation waged against pro-life students over the past few weeks. The “extent of the abuse has been vast,” the Manchester Pro-Life Society told me. Members have suffered “verbal abuse in person” and “several death threats,” while one student was assaulted “for being associated with the society.” Not surprisingly, many members have “been made to feel unsafe on campus.”
The first sign of trouble was on February 12 when a “concerned student” launched a petition to cancel the Manchester Pro-Life Society after its founding in January. Claiming to be “deeply troubled by the potential harm that could be caused by our university’s Pro-Life Society,” the unnamed author of the petition called on the Students’ Union to dissolve the group. At the time of writing, the petition had gained over 19,000 signatures.
Citing the 1986 and 1994 Education Acts, as well as the 2010 Equality Act, the University of Manchester Students’ Union thankfully reminded students that it “can’t block a society from forming because of their beliefs … From a legal standpoint, it’s not possible to stop a society from affiliating for their legal views that are contrary to the views of other students.”
The problem is that many students don’t believe in free speech and are prepared to take action to shut it down, as the Instagram group “Stop Manchester Pro-Life,” which organised the ‘peaceful demonstration’ on February 29, makes clear: “Free speech does NOT mean freedom of consequence.” This disingenuous assertion, which also sounds like a veiled threat, justifies the censorship of minority opinions—the speech of troublesome thinkers like Socrates who dare to question the gods of the city. In the minds of outraged students, the Manchester Pro-Life Society is heretical and must be held to account for its sins. One petition signatory even suggested that the involvement of one pro-life student studying medicine “should reflect on his career trajectory.”
Today, ‘consequence’ means a mob granting itself licence to vilify and threaten misbelievers. “These filthy tory men should not be allowed to decide what women do with their bodies. They disgust me,” wrote one petition co-signer; “I hate men,” another post said. While some complain about the alleged ‘misogyny’ of the pro-life student group, the only visible hate is that which is directed at its male founders. Even the author of the petition later edited the page to say that he was “in no way calling for any harassment or intimidation of the members/committee of the Pro-Life society personally,” an open admission that this had happened and reflected poorly on the petition.
Meanwhile, one female student told the Independent that “the society has made me feel weak and inferior to my male counterparts,” also claiming that she’s “had endless messages from girls who fear for their safety.” One wonders how these students can survive outside the sheltered accommodations of the campus, a world away from Afghanistan, where women are exposed to genuine danger. But the female student spoke of the Manchester Society as if it were made up of pro-life Taliban whose mere opinion threatened her security—an absurd notion that can only come from an excess of safety, at least for students with the right opinions.
Universities across the UK are being turned into hostile battlegrounds by an entitled, hypersensitive minority of screaming students who believe their personal opinions override other students’ right to free speech. Rather than engaging fellow students in reasoned debate, they use the excuse of ‘safety’ to bully them into submission. While the petition and its supporters have much to say about “students’ rights and well-being,” this concern only applies to students they agree with.
Pro-life students are on the frontlines of the battle for free speech in the UK, with Manchester being just one battleground. In 2021, Exeter Students for Life was subjected to a campaign of online abuse, including death threats, as well as a petition to have it disbanded. That same year, a stall run by Oxford Students for Life was trashed by fellow students at the Freshers’ Fair. In 2023, the Stirling University Students’ Union suspended the Catholic Society after they shared a post promoting pro-life vigils in Scotland; the Union was later forced to reinstate the group.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has also experienced cancel culture on campus. In October 2022, a female SPUC staff member invited by pro-life students to speak at the University of Edinburgh was shouted down by other students with megaphones. “Stop this talk right now … We are not allowing this to happen on our campus,” one person bellowed, claiming that pro-life sentiment was harmful to women. The intended theme of the talk was abortion coercion, an important topic of discussion after a Savanta ComRes survey found that 15% of British women aged 18-44 said they had experienced some form of unwanted “pressure to terminate a pregnancy.”
It’s hardly surprising, then, that one in seven students feels unable to express his views freely at universities, as the 2023 National Student Survey reported. The problem has at least been recognised to a certain degree, leading to the appointment of Professor Arif Ahmed, the first director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom set up under the Freedom of Speech Bill 2023. “There are now persistent and widespread concerns that many in higher education are being silenced, either by the activity of the university or by its inactivity. And that silencing may fall disproportionately on those who are most vulnerable,” Professor Ahmed warned.
Still, it is difficult to see how the Office for Students, under Professor Ahmed’s leadership, can protect pro-life students from the mob. Certainly, the Manchester Pro-Life Society has not benefited so far, though the Students’ Union at least upheld their legal right to exist. But even if the petition failed to force the Union to shut them down, the bullying methodology of some intolerant students acts as a deterrent to others who want to start societies with divergent viewpoints.
Minorities are said to be a protected category today, garnering special protection. As is so often the case, however, this protection doesn’t extend to minority opinions, especially anti-abortion sentiment. Pro-life students wanting to create their own society know they will likely face a wave of online vitriol, angry petitions, and even violence intended to intimidate and threaten young men and women who simply want to exchange ideas and communicate peacefully, which is the idea of the university, after all. Moreover, little or no concern has been shown for the well-being and mental health of the pro-life students targeted by the petition, the threats, and the one-sided coverage, including that of The Tab, the self-styled “guerilla army of bold and subversive student reporters,” which couldn’t be bothered to report on the shocking abuse meted out to the Manchester students.
A generation fed on cliché will only ever be able to regurgitate ideological catchwords and slogans, a lamentable blend of ignorance and pride. This holier-than-thou fervour calling for censorship is nothing new, and students would do well to study it to see where it leads. They might also heed the warning in Robert Bolt’s great play A Man for All Seasons, when the zealot William Roper tells Sir Thomas More that he’d cut down every law in England to get at the Devil, to which More replies: “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? … Do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
The spirit of Roper is frightfully alive today across many campuses, and it poses an existential threat to the hard-won right to free speech that pro-life students know they can no longer take for granted. The public must be made aware of what is taking place, particularly because universities are where future thought leaders, including politicians, academics, and journalists, are made. Looking at the current state of the university, a breeding ground for groupthink and a censorious instinct that crushes alternative ideas, Britain’s future looks bleak and decidedly undemocratic.
READ NEXT
How J.K. Rowling Defeated the Transgender Movement
Trump Points the Way to a Future for Israel and the Arabs
Why Do These Terrorists Target Our Children?