Oxford students have been struggling in the past couple of weeks with the question of where we should stand on fascism. Apparently, the old antifascist answer – that the best place to stand on fascism is on its neck until it breaks – has become somewhat passé for the Oxford liberal elite. This unwillingness to aggressively smash fascism, whenever it rears its ugly head, reached its logical conclusion last Thursday night – with dozens of Union hacks lined up in the chamber of the world’s most famous debating society, seemingly breaking out into applause for the world’s most powerful fascist politician, either out of ritual or sinister admiration.

Lots of the debate around the invitation of Marine Le Pen has focused on ‘Does she have a right to a platform?’ or ‘Is this denying free speech?’ and crucially, ‘Will this invitation contribute to increased violence towards Muslims?’, but I would rather ask a different, albeit loaded, question: given that Le Pen’s invite has almost certainly contributed to a rise in legitimacy for the National Front and her brand of fascist politics, what would motivate her invitation?

It would appear, given the history of antifascist organising, that inviting Le Pen was never part of some elaborate antifascist strategy to discredit her. Listening to some right-wing students’ experiences of the event, one suspects that she was invited precisely because of her politics, rather than in spite of them.

In much of the commentary on this subject, students have referred to Le Pen as “a prominent politician”, but can never quite bring themselves to say what she really is: a fascist thug who wants to expel migrants and in 2012 attended an event organised by neo-Nazi group the Olympia Society, which bans Jews and women from its membership. When I challenged students on this in the queue, some said they agreed with her on immigration.

The photos of the Oxford Union members breaking out into applause for this defender of ‘free speech’ tell all. Far from challenging Le Pen, and in a symbolic act of respect, she was clapped into the chamber.

A recent witch-hunt against the OUSU demonstration has challenged students to prove their love of liberty by asking, ‘did you support the protests?’ I think a better question for those who attended the debate within the chamber would be, ‘did you clap Le Pen?’ 

David Browne has written ‘Why we clapped Marine Le Pen’ in response to this article which can be found here.

Yes

Politics is abstract, and politics is confusing. We are bombarded daily by political statements from politicians. The views to which we are constantly subjected are usually loose, intangible, and transient. People – especially young people – complain that they do not know what politicians and the parties they represent stand for. The more we are pandered to by precisely formulated and isolated statements, the more alienated we feel. In short, politicians try to appear to be everything for everybody, and consequently don’t really become anything for anyone.

Such is the nature of our political system that politicians often need to be slippery. But this has led many of us to feel alienated. The Office for National Statistics reports that 42 per cent of young people have no interest in politics. What is needed is a definite yet accessible way to solidify in our minds who and what our politicians are, so that we can begin to understand them, accept them, and, if necessary, reject them. By themselves, they can be who they want to be. But brought together, battle lines are drawn, contrasts are made; our politicians become defined for who they are.

TV debates are the best way of doing this. Very rarely do we see the leaders of the parties go head to head and tackle an issue. The jeering and point-scoring of Prime Minister’s Questions doesn’t come close; watch any two from this Parliament and the pattern that emerges is one of pedestrianised questions and answers, interspersed with some animated name calling. Such debates are unfocused and often irrelevant to the concerns of the voting public.

Those in powerful positions are forced to define themselves when brought together with their opponents. In the same way, politicians of minor political standing, but growing political influence, such as the Greens, are also challenged. They have the opportunity to debate on equal terms with those of a more established standing and get to prove their worth where they would have previously been unable. The Green Party has not been heard properly in the political forum, yet is gaining traction, especially with the young demographic. Thanks to the recent changes to the TV debates, the Greens will be joining the fray. The voices of their leaders will finally be heard in a fair and proper setting. Let’s see them debate their ideas and prove their worth. Will David beat Goliath, or is David not as cunning as we think he is? TV debates provide us with the opportunity to find out.

I am not arguing that TV debates are the perfect answer to our fraught political system. They are by no means conducive to political involvement and will not revitalise our political system overnight. No one thing can completely cure the political malaise from which we seem to be suffering, but refusing to do this one thing because it is not enough is better than doing nothing at all. We have had to drag some politicians to agree to the current format, and we should keep on pressuring them to do the things some of them are obviously reluctant to do. Their reluctance is a good sign: it means that they fear their proposals being transparently presented to the public.

TV debates provide a valuable forum and opportunity to force our politicians to be forthright and consistent in their positions. Keeping the debates is a step towards pressuring politicians to be clearer and more accountable. In a confusing and abstracted political world, who could possibly argue with that?

No

I do not attempt to deny for one moment that political discourse, debate, and discussion are essential ingredients of a democratic society. Yet the proposed re-run of the 2010 party leader debates is not the best recipe for this. Nor is it a particularly good way for voters to decide how to cast their vote.

Ostensibly, the 2010 televised debates were a roaring success. Yet the forthcoming General Election promises to be quite different to the last. In particular, there are many more parties attempting to challenge the hegemony of Labour and the Conservatives. Since the war, it has been only the Liberal Party and, since their 1988 merger, the Liberal Democrats who have had the de facto capability to threaten the ascendancy of the two main parties. Now the Lib Dems have been joined, even usurped, by UKIP and the Greens. The SNP and Plaid Cymru are regionally based movements and do not field candidates across the UK, but they too should not be forgotten. Indeed, the SNP may find itself in coalition government with Labour should the electorate not give a clear mandate for either of the two largest parties to rule alone.

The existence of so many parties poses a problem for the broadcasters. It is almost impossible to draw a fair line between parties which are important enough to be included in the televised debates and parties which are of insufficient importance. Indeed, there has been considerable controversy regarding the selection of party leaders to take part.

The present plan it to include seven of the UK’s political parties in at least one of the proposed instalments. This will hardly be conducive to a constructive debate. Debates are best held between two opposing sides, not seven. The proposed format is likely to lead to point-scoring rhetoric and pie-in-the-sky promises rather than mature and informed debate. Voters, many of whom are already disillusioned with politics, will struggle to make sense of the seven different opinions being offered on every issue.

There is also a danger that TV debates will once again undermine the remainder of the election campaign. In 2010, the attention of voters and political commentators focused on the oratory skills of each of the party leaders above anything else. The rest of the election campaign, such as the canvassing carried out by committed local politicians, was rendered somewhat meaningless.

Indeed, having televised party leader debates just does not fit squarely with the nature of the democracy that we have here in the UK. In the US, where there is a two-party race for the presidency, the adversarial style of a televised debate between two candidates has been popular and constructive. Yet in the UK, with a voting system which requires citizens to vote for a candidate standing for election in their constituency, rather than for a Prime Minister, debates between party leaders are somehow less relevant. Voters may like a party leader, but dislike the party’s candidate for election in their constituency. The inherent contradiction between having party leader debates and having the electoral system that we do divorces us from having a direct say in who the Prime Minister will be.

Of course we need to ensure that voters are adequately engaged with politics and have sufficient access to information regarding policy on both a national and local level. A few short televised debates between point-scoring party leaders, however, cannot achieve this.

First of all, I would like to congratulate all those involved in the Oxford Living Wage and Accreditation campaigns. It simply cannot be right that the hardworking, University staff are not sufficiently compensated. However, work remains to be done and questions need to be asked about whether our lecturers and tutors are sufficiently rewarded.

And yet, while I appreciate the achievements of this democratic activism, I do not approve of the campaign, largely orchestrated on social media, to pressure Andrew Hamilton, our Vice-Chancellor, into a pay cut. This campaign has been lazily and erroneously merged with the admirable Living Wage campaign, to allege a causal relationship between the Vice-Chancellor’s pay and the low pay of many other staff. In my opinion, this ‘pay-day’ campaign has been run on shaky evidential and moral grounds.

The evidence supplied by Oxford Defend Education (ODE) in this campaign needs to be examined. The group urges the Vice-Chancellor to forgo £305,000 of his £380,000 salary (according to the Oxford University financial statement 2012-13) to bring University pay down to a ratio of 5:1 between the highest and lowest paid workers. They suggest that this would reduce social inequality and allow the money to be distributed to the other staff.

While the motivation is sound, there is no basis for such a claim. Even this radical, and surely unrealistic, pay cut would only free up enough money to give £29 to each of the 10,442 university staff. Andrew Hamilton’s salary, despite perhaps being too large, does not cause the University to pay below the Living Wage. The issue of low pay is far more complex than ODE allows when it scapegoats Hamilton in their social media witch-hunt.

Furthermore, those attacking Andrew Hamilton for taking home such a large salary are on shaky moral grounds. I do not condone such a discrepancy in pay; the University’s justification of Hamilton’s salary does lack of transparency. He is spoken of like a CEO, who is responsible for the day-to-day running of his business, yet information is
scarce about his actual responsibilities. Thus, it is difficult to assess whether he deserves his salary.

However, since I myself have been attracted to graduate jobs with lucrative salaries, my conscience does not permit me to criticise the Vice-Chancellor. The numbers may be different, but the motivation is the same. 
I do not believe
that earning that money is inherently wrong, and, if I felt I was rightly earning it, I too would have no qualms about receiving it.

I am not alone in being partly motivated by money: Oxford students will earn an average of £54,000 a year according to a survey by Emolument. From 2009-2012, 19.6 per cent of Oxford graduates worked in either investment and banking, accounting and financial services, or law and consultancy six months after graduating, according to University data. Many of us will become ‘the rich’ that ODE resents. I would feel better placed to admonish Hamilton for his salary if I myself forgoed money to which I was entitled me. I applaud the decision of Raymond Burse (the President of Kentucky State University who took a pay-cut), but I will not pressure someone into doing so without having the moral high ground that Mr Burse does.

In short, we must commemorate the successes of the Living Wage campaign, but it is not right to sentence our Vice-Chancellor in the hysterical, precipitous, and unjust court of social media. He should be innocent until proven guilty. Let’s continue these positive campaigns, but let’s go no further with this medieval witch-hunt.