Ask someone how they’re feeling and you are most likely to be met with a response along the lines of ‘tired’, ‘shattered, ‘exhausted’ or knackered’. Whatever the variation of the feeling, the root cause is the same lack of sleep . Ask anyone how many hours shut eye they got last night and the number is most certainly less than the eight and a half recommended for young adults.
It’s quite alarming for young people to feel this way. University students should not be feeling weary as if they are eighty as opposed to eighteen. We are chronically tired, though in a twisted sort way we feel like we revel in it. We freely admit our exhaustion to those who will listen in a way we wouldn’t do with any other ailment . We relish in telling our friends about our sleep deprivation like it’s a badge of honour.
If there’s one thing we shouldn’t be bragging about, it actively impairing our judgment and cognitive ability. It is as if the work we do when stressed and mentally drained is somehow more respected or of better quality. Spoiler alert: it’s not
Whether its inanely scrolling through your phone till 3am, dancing at the club till 4 am, essay crisis till 5 am or best of all, ‘the all-nighter’ the realities of student life mean we just aren’t getting enough sleep. The sight of sitting next to someone in a lecture, still jittering from their last espresso, is all too familiar to most of us.
As much as we may convince ourselves this is an “Oxford problem”, sadly it is everywhere and will unfortunately follow us long after we graduate. Many of the careers and internships we aspire to will similarly steal us away from the well needed rest we want and deserve. We will be surrounded by people who leave the office after midnight, and return the next morning for eight, and casually act like it is what a sensible modern workplace demands of us.
Of course, we are all guilty of the occasional late night. Sometimes things need to be done for a deadline, or we want to stay till Mr. Brightside comes on. Sometimes you have 4-month-old crying infant to feed, in which case you truly do have a good reason to feel tired— nourishing human life is of course exhausting. What I do object to is the relentless lack of sleep we subject ourselves to for no good reason. We leave ourselves feeling nauseated the next day, anxious, and almost certainly less capable of doing work. As much as we may want it to, four hours sleep does not make us better versions of ourselves.
The first signs of sleep deprivation are being grumpy, irritable and impatient. Most people feel on edge or emotional after an all- nighter. This tiredness builds up week after week, all the while you are unknowingly damaging your immune system. Granted that most won’t be facing life threatening illness, but this is just one of the reasons, colds, fevers and flus take longer to go away at Oxford than at home.
This culture of ‘sleep deprivation one upmanship’ has been recognised by Arianna Huffington in her book ‘The Sleep Revolution’. After collapsing from exhaustion and waking up in a pool of her own blood, Huffington began to extoll the benefits of shut eye. She questions the long accepted belief that we must burn ourselves out in order to achieve something. This greatly differs from the listicles we read about where successful people are supposed to wake up at 4:30 am, hit the gym, drink a smoothie, do some reading whilst also checking the stock market. Holding ourselves to the standards to Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffet will only ever end in disappointment.
Another part of our lives which prevents us from unwinding is technology. Electronic devices emit blue light which supresses melatonin levels, making it much harder to fall asleep. Late night Instagram stalking is not conducive to a restful night. When we have so much connectivity in our hands, it also creates a sense that there is more to do and see. Checking the news, emails and messages compulsively can become a never-ending habit.
People often defend their choices by saying “there’s only 24 hours in a day- I want to make the most of it by doing everything I can”. If we are getting those solid eight hours however, we stand to make the other 16 so much better. Unsurprisingly, life has a better quality when you aren’t miserable and sick
A busy lifestyle especially the kind we have in these short eight-week terms, leaves us trying to micromanage our lives- scheduling and allotting time for everything and everyone. FOMO dogs our experience at Oxford. There’s always a feeling that we are not making the most of our privileged position and the opportunities presented to us. There’s so much to do from rowing, music, sport, drama, student politics, clubbing, *cough* student journalism, dating, volunteering, all while we are apparently meant to be applying for internships. You can’t conceivably juggle all these things- no one can. So by giving some of them a miss you aren’t committing a cardinal sin, you’re just admitting that you are a human.
So why not put your phone on airplane mode or at least ignore some of those swollen group chats and make some time for yourself. Even if its mere twenty minutes, it’ll leave you feeling less frazzled. Also learn how to say no to the commitments you just aren’t feeling up to.
In short, most of our exhaustion comes from guilt. A guilt that we are not doing enough for others, for our work and social life. But in truth, most people are not doing enough for their wellbeing. If we are to change this cycle, we need to remember to put our health first. So go ahead, close your laptop, then your eyes, and get the rest your body needs.
In the weeks running up to the referendum, copies of the Good Friday/ Belfast Agreement were sent to every home in Northern Ireland, each branded with the words: “It’s Your Decision”. On Friday, 22 over two million people across the north of Ireland made that decision to endorse the Agreement. Years of negotiation – involving the political parties of Northern Ireland and the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland – had finally resulted in an international peace agreement. From 1968 until 1998, Northern Ireland had suffered from conflict over issues of civil rights, identity and, the constitutional position: in one corner of the British Isles, over 3,600 were killed in what is commonly known as ‘the Troubles’. The Agreement was not a perfect settlement, but many believed that it was the best means to achieve a peaceful society.
We had not yet reached our first birthday when the Agreement was endorsed by the people of Ireland. Two decades later, young people like us are frustrated: frustrated with the absence of devolved government for almost 500 days; frustrated with the increasingly balkanised nature of politics and rhetoric; frustrated with the failure to deliver a truly peaceful society. It is not only young people who are frustrated – polling from LucidTalk (published in the Belfast Telegraph in June 2017) revealed that over 60% of the local community in Northern Ireland wanted to see reform to the system of government.
With this context in mind, we sat down with Sir Jonathan Phillips to reflect on Northern Ireland’s journey in the last twenty years – where have we come from, where are we now, and where is it that we are going?
Drawing from his wealth of experience, Phillips empathises that the current team of negotiators tasked with restoring devolved government are stuck “between a rock and a hard place”. His arrival in the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) as Permanent Secretary in 2002 had been a baptism of fire. Within weeks the Assembly collapsed, fundamentally because IRA weapons had not been decommissioned. Over the next eight years, he worked with all stakeholders to restore devolved government and create more sustainable structures. We ask how such experiences compare to the prevailing situation.
According to Phillips, the process leading up to the Good Friday Agreement and its subsequent implementation involved the British and Irish governments moving “pretty much in lockstep”. Considering the various factors at play, it was ultimately this “enormously strong co-operation…[which] carried the process to the devolution of justice and policing powers in 2010″. In contrast, recent rounds of negotiation have left the impression that both governments were “not on precisely the same page”.
Despite the small but significant differences remaining between the DUP and Sinn Féin on provision for the Irish language, Prime Minister Theresa May and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar arrived in Belfast in February, hoping to close the deal. Far from strengthening the image of both governments’ commitment to make Northern Ireland work, the leaders were placed in an embarrassing position when the deal failed to materialise.
Relations have undoubtedly been affected by the exogenous shock of Brexit. Phillips adds that the rhetoric exchanged between the Dublin and London governments is “of a kind [he] cannot remember” in recent times, perhaps not since the 1980s. If Phillips is right to emphasise the crucial role of the British and Irish governments in forging agreements in Northern Ireland – and many commentators would agree – then another breakthrough soon looks improbable.
Brexit was the surprise 18th birthday present for our generation, the Good Friday Agreement generation. At the time of the referendum, Northern Ireland seemed to be heading in the right direction. Assembly elections in May 2016 had returned the DUP and Sinn Fein as the largest parties. In a surprise move, the three smaller parties decided to enter into Official Opposition rather than share power in the Executive. It was hoped that this Opposition could hold the Executive to account and offer a real alternative for the voters. The inclusivity of the peace process culminating in the Good Friday Agreement, had been exchanged for the exclusivity of a political process. The DUP and Sinn Fein responded by promising to “get on with the work”, a supposed symbol of how far the two parties had travelled together in the past ten years. A draft programme for Government was agreed and released for consultation.
By January 2017, however, the Executive had collapsed over the botched Renewable Heat Initiative (RHI). There were naturally a range of factors which made the breakdown of government more likely but one can certainly put forward the case that Brexit made politics more complicated. When asked about his thoughts on Brexit and the efforts to restore devolved government, Phillips states that it is hard to offer certain judgements from outside the current discussions.
Nevertheless, he surmises that it will be enormously dif cult to restore the Executive before the Brexit framework has been decided. The current uncertainty and disagreement over the future status of the Irish border makes progress unlikely.
Aside from its implications for the constitutional future of Northern Ireland, several politicians from across the British Isles have raised concerns about civil disorder in the event of a hard border post-Brexit. At a recent event in London, former Prime Minister John Major suggested that a hard border would “divide communities that are now united” and provide “a focus for protests from fringe groups – either unionists or nationalists”.
Admittedly several leading Brexiteers, Jacob Rees-Mogg among them, have dismissed such speculation outright and are committed to maintaining a frictionless border, whatever the outcome of the EU negotiations. It is nevertheless a scenario that should be considered seriously.
One of the most innovative provisions of the Good Friday Agreement – and a critical issue underpinning ‘the Troubles’ needing resolution in the agreement – was the question of citizenship. The Agreement guaranteed individuals in Northern Ireland the right to both Irish and British citizenship. Nationalists could imagine themselves as part of the wider community on the island of Ireland, while Unionists continued to feel secure in their membership of the United Kingdom. The success of this arrangement – certainly in the eyes of the Nationalist community – depended on the existence of a frictionless border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. While no one yet has been able to describe the shape of a hard border, many fear that the existence of any physical infrastructure will divide communities and weaken the Agreement.
For Nationalists in Northern Ireland, citizenship means much more than a passport – it means the right to freely and easily commute, travel and trade across the island. It must be stated that violent republicans represent a tiny proportion of the Nationalist community and young people are overwhelmingly committed to achieving their political ambitions through democratic means.
But even a cursory glance at Irish history will reveal that violent political organisations have been fuelled by the use of symbols and propaganda – the hard border may provide ammunition to such groups, in more ways than one.
In the run up to the centenary of the Northern Ireland state in 2021, the constitutional position of the six counties has never been more precarious. Republicans feel emboldened by the prospect of an Irish unity vote in the wake of Brexit. While unionists feel confident that they can carry the day in any future border poll, they are worried that the British government will undermine the strength of the Union by negotiating regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the EU or moving the border with bloc into the Irish Sea. Ultimately for devolved government in Northern Ireland, as well as most other matters in British and Irish politics today, it “all comes back to Europe”, Phillips says.
When working in the NIO, Phillips helped the British government maintain a position of benign neutrality as a guarantor of the Agreement. We ask him how the parliamentary arithmetic at Westminster, given the Tory-DUP confidence and supply arrangement, impacts on the British Government’s ability to continue acting in this manner. He believes that while the British Government “could well be behaving with absolute impartiality”, it is exceedingly difficult for them to “escape the perception that they may not be.”
Phillips makes the interesting point that sometime soon we could see Sinn Fein entering into a confidence and supply arrangement of some kind with one of the biggest parties in the Irish Republic. Unionists would then question the neutrality of the Irish government with equal temerity.
When asked about the most successful aspect of the Agreement, Phillips lauds it as overall a “model of ambiguity”. It enabled entrenched opponents to compromise. On the principle of consent for the future constitutional status of Northern Ireland, the timing of a border poll and questions of identity, the Good Friday Agreement provided a framework which could embrace almost all points of view. By contrast recent rounds of talks demonstrated the limits of ambiguity.
Since the collapse of devolved government in January 2017, the issue of Irish language provision has come to the top of the political agenda and is currently a stumbling block in finding a solution. Sinn Féin demand a stand-alone Irish Language Act, modelled on similar cultural legislation in Scotland and Wales, while the DUP has been staunchly opposed.
It would be unfair to say that most in the DUP are anti-Irish language, the majority feel that it has become politicised as a result of Sinn Féin’s influence and believe that other minority languages deserve equal protection. Earlier this year, a solution seemed possible when both parties – although this is disputed by sources within the DUP – provisionally agreed to an all-encompassing Culture Act.
This is a prime example of constructive ambiguity at work, an agreement that both sides can claim as a victory. Despite this, the deal fell through at the last minute when the DUP realised it could not carry its base on the issue.
Could this constructive ambiguity have worked in previous years? Since the Agreement, Northern Ireland has lost some of its most influential and effective leaders. The principle architects of the Agreement from the Northern Ireland side, John Hume of the SDLP and David Trimble of the UUP, were sidelined by the electorate within ten years.
In their place emerged the DUP and Sinn Féin. We ask Phillips about his experiences of working with former DUP leader Peter Robinson and the late Martin McGuinness. Both were very effective in carrying their bases with them, Phillips comments, demonstrating great ability to sell compromise and ambiguity as a win for their side.
The current generation of political leaders in Northern Ireland had yet to demonstrate that capability.
Phillips points out that the real tragedy of the last 20 years is the fact that politics has become more ‘tribal’, not less. Two decades on and there are still more than one hundred peace walls separating communities across Northern Ireland. When it comes to education, 80% of Catholic and Protestant children attend different denominational schools. Almost all social housing is segregated. These examples testify to the failure to create a shared and integrated society and demonstrate that the tribal nature of our political leaders ultimately trickles down to tribalism in our communities.
After the process of devolution was completed in 2010, it could be said that the stabilisers were taken off the Northern Ireland political bicycle too soon.
Everyone felt that it was time to let Northern Ireland forge its own way.
We can find many people to blame for the collapse of the Assembly. The British and Irish Governments backed away too soon, perhaps. Equally, parties and politicians in Northern Ireland could be said to have lost their focus, lost their balance and not advanced fast or hard enough towards lasting settlement.
We can blame a whole variety of people, factors or circumstances. On the 22nd May 1998, the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland took the giant step, and voted three-to-one for the fresh start promised in the Good Friday Agreement.
The Good Friday Agreement Generation – the young people of Northern Ireland today – have a responsibility over the coming years and months, two decades after that Agreement was endorsed by their parents and grandparents, to rediscover the hope; to drive forward with ambition and optimism; in spite of and because of our current stalemate.
The current approach to Brexit is mired in chaos and confusion. After 40 years of Eurosceptic rhetoric, the government is still unable to agree with itself, let alone the EU, the kind of Brexit it wants. While Tory MPs and journalists scramble to evade responsibility – Fraser Nelson, editor of the Eurosceptic Spectator magazine, recently blamed these troubles on the fact that Tory Eurosceptics were “reformers not leavers” who had “never really gameplanned” actually leaving – Britain’s future prospects are under grave threat. This amateurish and chaotic approach to Brexit makes the case for a people’s vote quite by itself.
It doesn’t have to be like this. We are not doomed to roll over and accept whatever halfbaked deal David Davis brings back from Brussels.
In April, the People’s Vote campaign was launched to ensure that the people can have the final say on Brexit. It seems a little strange that political figures who have spent their careers campaigning in the name of democracy to allow the public a say on European matters have found themselves rebuffing calls for the electorate to confirm or reject Brexit.
Yet in the increasingly surreal world of Brexit Britain, the angry rejection of the idea of another vote has taken on precisely this tone. Those campaigning for the people to have the final word have become saboteurs to be crushed. The people have become the enemies of themselves. Yet, I believe, a vote to confirm or reject the deal eventually negotiated is a democratic imperative.
The mandate from June 2016 is simply not strong enough to carry out this immensely harmful project. The variety of voices from the leave campaigns, from the MEP Daniel Hannan’s insistence on a globe-trotting free-trading Britain, to the nativist isolationism of the Faragebacked Leave.EU, means that the vote was not a majority for any one form of Brexit.
People voted for a spectrum of engagement with Europe and institutions, with models for a post-Brexit Britain resembling anything from Norway to North Korea. We need a vote where the facts of Brexit are on the table. In a general election, people not only can vote on the manifestos that parties can implement in government, but they can also punish leaders for reneging on them. No such democratic safeguard exists from the referendum — there was no one clear set of principles and policies that voting Leave signified. Vote Leave will not have to fight another campaign or defend the promises that they made to the electorate. Rather than being just a ‘re-run’ of the vote from June 2016, this will be the first referendum on the reality, rather than the fantasy, of Brexit.
Then there’s the new information that has come to light since the vote. There’s the fact that our economy has gone from the fastest to the slowest growing in the G7. The fact that EU-national NHS staff are leaving in droves. A divorce bill of £40 billion, not mentioned once in the campaign, will continue being paid off until 2064 – by our generation. The attempt to negotiate a solution to the Irish border shows how the Brexiters’ irresponsibily blithe dismissal of such difficulties before the vote has become exposed by the realities of geography and international law.
It’s simply wrong to say that Brexit is an “unstoppable express” as Boris Johnson has done. Lord Kerr, who wrote Article 50, has said that it can be unilaterally withdrawn, and the rest of the EU has made it clear that Britain would be welcomed back in. Attempts to sow doubt over this are yet another example of Leave-backers playing fast and loose with the facts. Brexit is more important than any one general election.
We won’t get another look at it in another four or five years. It is a hugely significant process that will have wide-reaching effects on the population for generations to come. 1.5 million young people – including most freshers at this university – have turned 18 since the vote, yet will be denied a say on this generation-defining issue.
The only way to settle our future is to return to the ballot box and let the country make a choice on the final deal: a people’s vote for our future.
I’m not really sure what to expect when I sit down to preview the Oxford Revue’s new show, Funny Friends. Comedy, when done badly, can be the most cringe-worthy experience in the world – especially if you’re the only audience member. It is fortunate, then, that the sketches I saw left me completely blown away, and genuinely saddened when the preview had to end after half an hour.
The show features a range of sketches, catering to a range of humours. My personal favourite featured an overly cheery housewife arranging the flowers and cake for her husband’s funeral, but those with a more topical taste in comedy might enjoy the trailer the group have just released – which featured two incredibly sweary builders catcalling a range of feminist slogans.
Indeed, from what I have seen of the Revue this term, feminism is something that is integral to the group’s social motto. I am told by the director that half of their committee is female, that the show will be compered by a female comic, and that their last show, No Market For Old Men, featured an entirely female cast and female team of writers. Given that comedy is an industry that is notoriously gender imbalanced – from my basic research from Google, the comedy website Chortle lists around 1,300 male comedians, and only 300 female comics – this commitment to equality of opportunity seems all the more important. The sketches that reference toxic masculinity are also expertly handled and laugh-out-loud funny, inclusive and topical without being tokenised.
The Oxford Revue’s annual Playhouse show has been a part of the Oxford comedy scene for as long as anyone can remember. A roundup of all the best student talent in the country, it also features the Cambridge Footlights and the Durham Revue – and while I can’t attest to the quality of their sets, having only seen Oxford’s offering, the troupe that spawned Fry and Laurie and half the Inbetweeners can surely be trusted to produce something funny.
For two hours of laugh-out-loud comedy, you can’t go wrong with The Oxford Revue’s Funny Friends. With student discount still valid until Sunday, I would advise booking soon to grab the best seats – and who knows, you might even catch a rising star in action? This is the troupe that produced Monty Python, Rowan Atkinson and Sally Phillips after all. All I can say is I left with a smile on my face, feeling genuinely uplifted, and overwhelmingly impressed with the comedy talent I had witnessed. A definite must-see.
There was a time when the only way to meet single hopefuls was to physically place yourself in the same room as them. Whether it was a sweaty club, tea parlour, or chess society, the scenario was the same. You talked, you touched each others’ chests, a priest had to be there.
These days, you can get all the validation of a stranger finding your fleshy shell appealing without any of the vulnerability that comes with eye contact. Dating apps have caged that nervous first encounter safely behind a blue light-emitting screen.
For some, it’s the Deliveroo of people: a plethora of options available at your convenience. For naysayers, it’s also the Deliveroo of people: leaves you feeling greasy, with the product looking a lot different to how it did in the pictures.
Even if you’d rather be playing Snake than matching with one, you have to admit gamifying your love life is efficient. You can have indiscriminate flirtations, quests for true love, then become disillusioned, abandon romance and commit to a life of celibacy, all while having a poo.
Sure, judging people entirely on their appearance is shallow, but at the end of the day you can’t drown in a paddling pool.
Not to mention the informative qualities of that fair fish-filled sea. Before breakup news has broken, the new singletons appear in my feed, sad and over-eager to get back at their true love. And gone are the days of Orange Is The New Black references; if she’s into women too, we’ll match sooner or later, no need to play sexuality battleships to determine if she’s interested.
As we all give up and let Charlie Brooker write the script, dating apps are becoming a cornerstone of modern life. When relationships are kindled on Twitter and Instagram, the question becomes – what isn’t a dating app? Essentially all we’re doing is making the same bad decisions as always, just faster, and with less mobile data remaining.
Dating Crap: Sam Juniper
The sheer scale of abuse levelled at women, ethnic minorities, and transgender individuals on dating apps is catastrophic. I’m not denying that this sort of behaviour doesn’t exist elsewhere in society – it’s omnipresent – but it’s undoubtedly magnified by the smokescreen of pseudo-anonymity afforded to the perpetrators of said abuse through dating apps. The chances of facing any genuine repercussions for making misogynist, racist, or transphobic remarks are minimal; only a tiny fraction are outed online. You can create a horrible atmosphere and ruin someone’s day with relative ease.
Despite having the profiles of hundreds, if not thousands, of singletons in your area literally at your fingertips, dating apps occasionally have the somewhat paradoxical effect of leaving its users feeling lonely or invalidated. If you’ve wasted a solid hour swiping left and right but end up with little to show for it, save for a handful of matches and unanswered messages, it’s understandable that one would be overcome with a feeling of implicit rejection.
This feeds into a wider problem which has arisen with modern dating: everything you say and do is put under a microscope. If you were to chat up a cute stranger in a bar, would you open with a witty remark concerning something you’d observed about them from afar? Or worse, with an improvised poem? No, you wouldn’t; it’d come across as weird and overly familiar. On Tinder however, approaches such as these are commonly employed in the hopes of standing out from the crowd – this distorts conversation away from genuine human interaction.
Everybody’s profiles are curated to project the most flawless version of themselves they possibly can. It’s all reduced to a superficial environment where you’re judged chiefly on a few photos and perhaps a bio. Fuck an app. Why not get to know someone in person? The awkward way, the messy way, the normal way, but the authentic way. Ask that fit boy on your course if they want to go for a coffee. Invite that that pretty girl you kissed at Bridge to lunch. So, what if they say no? It makes zero difference to your world.
10 dried red chillies
10 dried shrimps
8 cloves of garlic
6 shallots
3 tbs of palm sugar
1 tsp of sea salt flakes
3 tbs of vegetable oil
For the crab meat in curry sauce:
200g of white and brown crab meat
2 tbs of mild curry power
2 tbs of olive oil
2 cup of full fat milk
2 onions
1 green celery, including the leaves
3 stems of spring onions
3 green chillies
2 tbs of the chilli paste (above)
2 tbs of soy sauce
For the Thai Jasmine rice: 2 cups of Thai Jasmine Rice
For the garnishes:
2 spring onions
Green celery leaves
2 red chillies
Method:
Chilli paste/oil:
Start by soaking the dried chillies until they are soft and grill the garlic and shallots in the oven at grill mode 240 C for five to eight minutes until they are slightly burnt.
Also crush and grind the dried shrimps until they turn to coarse powder then remove them from the mortar.
Then mix the soaked chillies, grilled garlic and shallots in the food processor and add the dried shrimps.
Add the vegetable oil in the heated saucepan and stir fry the paste for five minutes before adding palm sugar. Keep stir-frying the paste for another ten minutes until it is caramelised. Finally, remove from heat and leave it to rest.
Crab meat in curry sauce:
Firstly, stir fry the curry powder with olive oil in a sauce pan until fragrant and keep adding milk to make the curry cream sauce. Add the chopped garlic, julienned onion, spring onion, green chillies, celery, and then the chilli paste and soy sauce.
Finally, throw in the crab meat and reduce the sauce to a low heat until serving
For the Thai rice:
Boil the rice on high heat until the water starts to run out and then continue to cook the rice on a low heat for another five minutes. Stir the rice and leave it in the pot covered with the lid.
For the garnishes:
Julienne the spring onions and the red chillies and then soak them in water together with the celery leaves. Serve the crab with the jasmine rice and top with extra curry sauce and garnished vegetables.
“It’s time to stand up to the stupid bans of the student Stasi and protect free speech in the UK”, read the headline. As Brendan O’Neill, a man charitably given the title of ‘political commentator’, re-wrote his rant about the ‘free speech crisis’ at Britain’s universities yet again, this time in The Sun, the Joint Committee on Human Rights was performing its own investigation to find out if the media’s obsession with ‘snowflake students’ was based in any substantive fact.
The conclusion? That media reports of a free speech crisis are “clearly out of kilter” with reality. A few weeks after the report’s publication, I talk to Harriet Harman, the Committee’s chair, to discuss its findings. While the report was firm in its declaration that the media is overwhelmingly sensationalist in its claims that ‘no-platforming’ is rife on campuses up and down the nation, Harman says that there is still definitely cause for concern.
“We went into it with an open mind,” she tells me. “And what is clear is that there is a problem, and it is rooted in a number of causes.
“We started our enquiry because [former universities minister] Jo Johnson was making big proclamations that students were repressing the right of free speech,” she says, “and that campuses were restricted and that students weren’t able to debate because of what other students were doing. The right of free speech is a really important and basic human right.”
Few would contest this claim, even at this university, named the most “ban-happy” earlier this year by O’Neill’s spiked magazine. And Harman recognises this: when I ask if the shutting down of debate is as sinister as its portrayal suggests, she is quick to disagree.
“It’s well-intentioned,” she says, “but if you’re the administrator responsible for a policy then you want to make loads of application forms, time limits, procedures, and you think you’re being helpful, but by the end of it you’ve got an organogram which covers several pages of A4, [then you are] actually not an enabler of free speech but an inhibitor.”
Harman, 68, is the current chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights
Most of this explanation seems alien to the majority of Oxford students, but it is the reality within certain British universities.
“The irony is that the way universities go about this is that they have a policy on free speech and then loads of procedures,” Harman explains. “If a student society wants to organise a meeting, then some universities have really onerous applications and time limits, some even asking for a copy of the speech that will be given in advance, and having to have permission from the authorities before someone can speak. So the procedures and application forms, the hoops that universities make students jump through in order to organise a meeting, are too onerous.”
As she tells me this, I cannot escape the thought that Harman seems an odd choice to be heading up a government committee investigating the state of free speech in universities. Having graduated from the University of York in 1972 and grown up in an era when the term ‘safe space’ meant the amount of room left in a strongbox, she does not seem to be a natural fit for the role.
Universities minister Sam Gyimah recently called for the first government intervention into universities’ free speech policy since 1986
Gyimah, a Somerville alumnus, is about as brazenly in favour of free speech as possible: he is an ex-president of the Oxford Union, an institution which brands itself as ‘the last bastion of free speech’, and part of the generation of Tories who are ‘conservative’ in party, not politics. Harman, meanwhile, has relished her lack of frontbench involvement since the 2015 General Election: she has sat on the Joint Committee on Human Rights since last November, and is a serene, respected voice within the party.
It is for that reason that her position within the enquiry might make more sense than would seem to be the case for a 68-year-old Labour veteran investigating student culture. Harman’s is a powerful voice within the Commons. She commands cross-party respect not just because of her experience, but because of the reputation she has cultivated over a 35-year career as an MP. For a progressive politician, she is remarkably measured, and the questions she says she asked at the start of the enquiry – “is there a major problem? Is it just up by the Daily Mail?” – show an impartiality and open-mindedness that are so often lacking within the intensely partisan nature of British politics. In an era of performative politics, Harman is the sort of politician that the Commons needs.
It is, therefore, important to note how alarmed she seems by the latest means of protest among students. “There is a problem which really has to be stamped out, and cannot be tolerated,” she says. “It’s never in any circumstances acceptable when masked people wearing balaclavas burst in to disrupt a meeting and stop it happening.”
It might seem shocking that this can happen on campus in a liberal democracy. But it is not something new, and incidents along the lines that Harman describes have become increasingly regular in the past three years.
Indeed, the committee’s report is quick to use an Oxford protest as an example. “An event called “Abortion in Ireland” organised by the Oxford Students for Life society in November 2017 was disrupted by a protest organised by the Oxford Student Union Women’s Campaign,” the report says. “The protest was held inside the room, and prevented the speakers from being heard for around 40 minutes of the event. Police were called, and the event organisers were asked to move rooms twice before the event could proceed. Despite the disruptive nature of the protest, the Student Union published two statements in support of the protest the next day.”
This is where the crucial finding of the report comes to light. Harman insists that so-called ‘hate speech’ is, in the majority of cases, within the law, whether we like or not; and that unless speech is unlawful, it should be allowed.
“When that happens, the papers always assume those are students, and that is not always the case,” she says. “They might be people from outside coming in and disrupting a meeting, and if they do that, that’s threatening behaviour, and a breach of the peace – there are criminal offences related to that. If they are students doing it, wearing balaclavas, disrupting the meetings of other students, then they should be disciplined, without question or doubt.”
Harman continues to suggest students should foot most of the blame for the shutting down of debate, and tells me that ‘safe space’ culture is out of control. “It’s perfectly acceptable within unis to have ‘safe spaces’ whereby people from one religion can get together as people of that religion in order to discuss their religion or do their worship,” she says, “and they want that to be a space that they can do that without opening it up. It might be that you have a meeting for women who have been victims of sexual harassment, a space where the people there are just people who have experienced sexual harassment, or indeed men for that matter.
“What you shouldn’t do is leap from that to saying the entire university campus is a safe space, or all university premises are a safe space, and anybody who is likely to say something that is insulting or offensive to anybody can’t do that because the uni is a safe space.
“The concept of safe spaces has been abused in a way that inhibits free speech. It’s got its place, but it can’t be comprehensively assigned to everything.
“‘Hate speech’ is not unlawful,” Harman says. “What is unlawful is speech which incites racial hatred. What was put in our guidance is quite clear. A lot of the concepts around people think are law, but they are not. Therefore, what we do is we say: ‘you can do anything you want, but here’s the law, and you can’t do anything that’s unlawful’.”
This is not, it should be noted, a popular opinion among the left. Last week, a group of students campaigned on the High Street against O’Neill’s invitation to speak at a dinner at Queen’s College. O’Neill’s speech – since published in full online – was inflammatory, and undoubtedly offensive: “The word ‘transphobia’ is used to demonise the belief that men cannot become women. Fighting transphobia isn’t about ending discrimination against trans people – it is about silencing moral views that are now considered unacceptable,” he wrote.
Protesters gathered outside Queen’s College last week to protest the invitation of Brendan O’Neill to speak at a dinner (Photo: Daniel Hall/Cherwell)
But according to the report, O’Neill fell some way short of the line. “The entitlement is not in the speaker, the entitlement is in the students who invite the speaker who they want,” Harman says. “It is down to the speaker not to break the law. If I invite a speaker down, then it is not my responsibility if they break the law – it’s theirs. And everybody should stay within the law.”
But this is not just about students. It is also about bureaucracy, and the people Harman labels “well-intentioned inhibitors of free speech”.
What is the Prevent duty?
The duty in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act
2015 on specified authorities, in the exercise of their functions, to have due regard to the
need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism
“The Prevent duty certainly has a chilling effect on many students fearing that they might get reported under the Prevent duty secretly by their uni, if they invite a certain speaker down to attend a meeting and then ask questions which are deemed by somebody to be in breach of the Prevent duty,” she tells me. “The way the Prevent duty is operating – and we heard this first-hand from students – is undoubtedly inhibiting free speech, and that’s why we called for there to be a [fresh] review.
“The government itself is responsible for some of the inhibition on free speech,” Harman says. This is when the fact that she no longer has a party line to tow in the same way she used to is useful: while an attack on the Prevent duty, for example, might seem like a cry against the Conservative Party, it falls under the ‘Contest’ strategy developed during Tony Blair’s time in office. Harman’s criticisms can be treated with less cynicism that most.
Harman has called for a review into the Prevent duty
“I don’t think it’s about changing the law, I think it’s about stopping the agencies all overlapping and oppressing students, and weeding out the bad and conflicting advice.”
With so many different ideas floating around free speech – universities and student unions often contradict both each other and the national guidance – it is no surprise that the waters have become this murky. “You’ve got conflicting guidance from the uni authorities, from the Prevent guidance, from the Charities Commission, from the Equality and Human Rights Committee – you’ve got four lots of conflicting guidance, and that makes it a minefield.
“So what [we have] done is issued our own comprehensive and clear guidance for use by student societies or by uni administrators. And we’re urging the government to adopt it, and we’re distributing it to societies and to unis, because we’ve got an expert committee, we’ve collected evidence, we’ve seen what the problem is, and we’ve produced this guidance in order to solve it.”
Harman makes things seem simple and clear-cut, even when they are not. But as I put the phone down, I remain wholly unconvinced by the report’s findings. One set of guidelines is unlikely to change free speech culture across universities, and however much the government tries to intervene, I suspect that this remains an issue that will be discussed to death with minimal change. There is no free speech ‘crisis’ on university campuses, regardless of what right-wing commentators want to say. Of course, we should be concerned by the precedent set by censorship – but this is not the calamity that right-wing commentators would like us to think it is.
Harman’s report may serve some purpose, and there is no doubt that she is the right sort of politician for the role she had, but we should not expect much to change as a result of it. Isolated incidents of censorship will continue to spring up, but introducing guidelines misses the point almost entirely: if the Theresa May portrait ‘scandal’ tells us anything, it is that students will always want to scrutinise governments, and protest against them. As much as Harriet Harman and her report might think they can change a culture, a set of guidelines is unlikely to achieve much.
The portrait, erected as part of a celebration of the department’s female alumnae, was removed following outrage over the decision to display it.
The University said at the time that the portrait had been removed because it was “obscured by posters bearing various messages”, and that it would be re-displayed so it could be seen as intended.
However, the portrait is yet to be re-displayed.
Since the portrait’s removal, various groups have affixed messages to the space it occupied.
These included a letter pledging support to the “Women of Yarl’s Wood”. It referred to hunger strikes and protests carried out by more than 100 women in the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre.
A spokesperson for Oxford University said: “The School of Geography and the Environment will be reinstalling the portrait of Theresa May as soon as possible in a way that allows it to be viewed as intended.
“Considerations include both the security of the picture and maintaining the display’s overall theme of celebrating the achievements of female alumnae.
“The School values academic and critical debate and is also exploring ways to facilitate discussion among staff and students of issues related to the display.”
There are very few certainties in the wildly unpredictable cut and thrust of Twenty20 cricket – even the number of deliveries in the game is another soon to be lost (cc: ECB) – but The Parks remaining a fizzy Dark Blue fortress for another year is surely one of them.
Oxford regained their T20 Varsity crown in emphatic style on Friday afternoon, The Blues extending an unbeaten home record against Cambridge’s lighter shade that now stretches back nine years and ten fixtures. There have been last-gasp triumphs and epic encounters, but this crushing victory will live long in the memory; the day that Oxford cracked the code.
Records fell early, continued to tumble like rows of jägerbombs at the Fever bar, and had been scorched sensationally by the end of an intoxicating first hour of play as Oxford found red hot form and an express route to the boundary rope.
Captain Dan Escott won the toss and showed no hesitation in batting first on a pristine deck, although he himself dropped to batting at three in the order, allowing Pembrokian left-hander Jamie Gnodde to open up – nullifying the key threat of Cambridge’s opening slow left-armer Tom Balderson.
Gnodde and Matty Hughes settled themselves with two watchful overs yielding just two runs, before exploding into a clinic of controlled, aggressive stroke-play. A first boundary off the blade of Hughes sparked a second, then a third from Gnodde; in the blink of an eye and a flash of willow the duo had scored nine boundaries in the space of ten balls and raced to 51 for no loss off five overs.
Gnodde progressed through the gears, seeing it like a pink cricket ball initially but evidently more a beach ball by the time the powerplay overs had concluded – the analogy reinforced by the prolonged periods the ball seemed to spend in the sky as it arced off the bat and evaded Cambridge fielders: the placement perfect even when the timing was miscued.
When Gnodde eventually fell for a magnificently crafted 76 off just 35 balls, he and Hughes had eviscerated the complete collection of Cambridge bowlers and seared past the first-ever century opening stand (126 in total) in the fixture.
Hughes, who had set the chaos whirring into motion, was sensational at the other end and repeatedly dipped onto one-knee to dish out punishment of the highest order: cross-batting for six in the eyeline with hand-speed matched only by dexterous paddles and scoops. It was a third consecutive half-century in the T20 fixture for last year’s captain and his quickest yet – a phenomenal achievement in the context no man has ever even registered a second.
Such was the gulf in class between the two sides, there may have even been room for a personal battle between the two openers as Gnodde nudged himself to 76 and onto the leading individual score in the fixture. Cambridge learnt the hard way that a man who has struck 82 against a touring Afghanistan side (cricket’s newest global power) should not be serve as an invitation to shuffle a pack of medium-paced options.
A series of late cameos, and some punishing strokes from Alex Rackow, pushed the Dark Blues beyond 200 and to yet another record: a mammoth total of 214-6.
By the time opening bowler Kartikh Suresh returned to deceive the Oxford middle order to take a flurry of late wickets with an array of slower balls, the damage had been done and Oxford had been handed a first glimpse of the strategy to negate the lethally fast outfield.
To say Cambridge were never in the chase would be a slight distortion of the truth, but from the moment Hughes castled captain Darshan Chohan’s stumps with the very first ball, Cambridge were, more or less, for better or worse, out of the chase. The Parks erupted into a cauldron of noise and the Dark Blues were not in the mood for mercy, tightening the screw willingly.
Alistair Dewhurst showed stout resistance for the visitors with some fine ingenuity behind square of the wicket. As time passed still he stood, a scaffold upon which no actual building work was taking place; partners coming and going; no batsman lower in the order emerging into double figures to tell the tale.
Eventually Cambridge reached the halfway point. The problem was that it was it came in the 17th over.
A full scorecard, and a report of the Women’s Blues 106-run win will follow in Friday 25th May’s paper.
Lord’s, June 2009. As the crowd begins to fill up ahead of the men’s World T20 final between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, New Zealand seamer Nicola Browne runs into bowl. England’s Claire Taylor hoists a length ball over mid-off, which squirts away for four, and her teammates rush onto the pitch. It is England’s second major tournament win of the year, and women’s cricket is on the back pages the following morning. They have won everything there is to win, and have done so in style.
“Those watershed moments certainly bring exposure,” Taylor tells me over a cup of coffee ahead of her MCC side’s fixture in the Parks against Oxford. “They bring press coverage: when there’s this idea that we can say ‘England are the best in the world’, and playing against the best players in the world, it’s great for our players, and it’s great for the spectators to see cricket being played at the highest level.
“But there needs to be a continuous development of the game. We need young girls starting the game, picking up a bat. We lose players throughout the age groups, so we need to make sure that we have the right structures in place. We need to make sure it’s not just about what happens at the elite end of the game. We get both that gradual growth, and the international competitions which provide exposure.”
Since her retirement in 2011, Taylor has been something of an ambassador for women’s cricket. She was a trailblazer, who brought modernisation to a sport that has changed almost beyond recognition between her debut, in 1998, and the present day.
Taylor was part of England’s all-conquering 2009 side
“It’s incredibly different now,” she says. “The professionalisation of the game is both within the players themselves, and also within the professional structures that support the game.
“That level of one-to-one coaching just wasn’t there when I started – the senior players within a club might have been the coaches, and the senior players in a county team might give you some hints and tips, but there wasn’t really that coaching structure that there is now across all age groups.
“[That] means that individual players have had much more exposure to coaching within their careers. From my personal perspective, reaching out and getting specialist coaching at that point was essential – I had had coaching before, but having that individualised, specialised level made a real difference to me.”
Indeed, Taylor’s rise to the top and the role that her personal coach, Mark Lane, played within it are both well-documented. After leaving Oxford with a degree in Maths and a double Blue (Taylor also played hockey to a high level, and was named in several England age group training squads), she sought out specialist, one-to-one coaching in a bid to break through at the top level. Soon after, that ambition was realised: going into the 2001 Ashes Test at Headingley, her top score in an England shirt was paltry 18; after, it was a punchy, defiant 137.
But throughout Taylor’s career, the women’s game was semi-professional at best. It was only in 2014 that the England side because fully professional, and Taylor had a job in IT on the side for the most part of her time in the game.
“It would have been great to be able to earn enough money from cricket to not have to have a second job,” she says. “And yet, having a separate job meant it was easier to transition to real life afterwards. It also gave me a bit of a challenge outside of cricket, a different mental challenge, which is important.
“I wonder how much [being professional] would have changed the way I played. Because suddenly, instead of playing purely for the challenge and the love of the game, you’re playing because you’re dependent upon it to pay your mortgage, or to pay the bills, or whatever.
“Does that change the way you take risks? Does that change the way the game is structured around you? I never had to face that, so from that perspective I’m quite glad that I played cricket because I loved it.”
Taylor has always been an innovator – above, she plays a reverse lap against India
It is a surprising admission. Meg Lanning, the current Australia captain, currently earns in the region of $300,000AUS (£167,000) a year from her national contract alone, and it is an alien idea as an outsider looking in that Taylor could think that sort of salary would be worth turning down in case it changed her batting style.
But that is the sort of player she was: Taylor took risks, played with flair, and looked to attack at every opportunity. Playing it safe isn’t in her DNA.
Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that she is open to the idea of change. Just under a month ago, the ECB announced a proposal to introduce a new 100-ball format into the game in 2020, which would see a women’s tournament run alongside the men’s with identical branding for both teams.
While many figures within the game are resistant to the proposals, Taylor is willing to give the idea a go.
“We always knew the KSL [Kia Super League] would be changing, as it was a four-year contract. We knew it was going to change, we just didn’t know what it was going to change to – we expected another T20 competition. The Women’s Big Bash has worked really well: the branding is similar across the sides, and it works alongside the guys. It’s going to be really interesting over the next few months as information comes out about ‘The Hundred’ to see how that’s going to sit in to attract a new group of spectators.”
Another charge levelled against the game’s administrators is that they have been patronising. Izzy Westbury, the domestic cricket broadcaster of the year, tweeted last month: “Seems a little condescending, the idea that *mums* (and it was explicitly mums) and kids need cricket simplified to understand it” after Andrew Strauss outlined the tournament’s target audience.
But Taylor is willing to give Strauss and the ECB the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t think it needs simplifying, but then I know it inside out. [It’s about the] gradation of bringing people into the game: are we going to bring them into the game from 100-ball cricket, and then get them playing? That’s what I’d be really interested in, getting more girls, women, mums actually playing – that’s going to happen through soft-ball festivals, and we’ll get mums involved when their children are playing, not just spectating.”
Taylor is an innovator, a progressive voice within a rapidly-advancing game. Women’s cricket has changed beyond recognition since Taylor first broke into the game – and she is firm in her belief that it will continue to do so.
