3 days ago
EUAN MCCOLM: Shouldn't we worry about the youth we're creating for the future?
It was once a crucible of intellectual inquiry, a revered institution where some of the greatest minds in politics were sharpened.
The late Labour leader John Smith, the much-mourned Liberal Democrat MP Charles Kennedy and Scotland's inaugural First Minister, Donald Dewar, were all schooled in the great art of debate at Glasgow University Union.
In the chamber of the GUU in Glasgow's West End, they – and others, including broadcaster and journalist Andrew Neil and banker Angus Grossart – learned the skills that would take them to the top of their professions.
And they did so while – often ferociously – disagreeing with their fellow students.
On Saturday, a women's rights group was thrown out of the GUU after staff complained that banners bearing feminist slogans made them feel unsafe.
Words such as 'Women's rights are not a hate crime ' and 'I'm not a vet – but I know what a dog is' were considered so dangerous by management at the union that members of Let Women Speak – whose booking to meet there had previously been accepted – were refused service and kicked out.
Earlier, those feminists had gathered outside the nearby Kelvingrove Museum to demand – months after the Supreme Court ruled that sex is a matter of biology rather than feelings – recognition of women's legal rights.
Inevitably, a counter protest of angry misogynists disguised as progressives turned up to try to drown out the words of the participants.
Those shouting down feminists outside the museum had the law on their side. Quite correctly, their right to free speech allowed their protest to go ahead.
However, management at the GUU are not on such solid ground. Let Women Speak – headed by activist Kellie-Jay Keen – had paid in advance for use of a space within the union for their post-rally gathering.
Ms Keen has already announced plans to launch legal action against the union, which – in common with other organisations captured by crank ideologues – is now on course to learn a costly lesson in the law. Discrimination against anyone on the basis of their entirely legal beliefs is no trifling matter.
Shortly after the group was evicted from the GUU premises, Ms Keen said the male manager told them he was closing the bar because the women's beliefs and opinions could constitute harassment towards their staff and make them feel unsafe.
How much more of this nonsense are we expected to tolerate?
There is a tendency for us, when we age, to romanticise the past and our place in it.
Times were tougher, people worked harder, bullets were faster… the list of ways in which we ancients dismiss the challenges facing the young people of the day is long and varied.
Pub bores sneer at their every choice; from their politics (always wrong) to their preferred breakfast (the idea of eating avocado on toast really upsets some people), there is no end of critical commentary about their fecklessness.
I've always tried not to be that man. It's not always easy.
Frequently, during political debate, we hear talk of the future we are creating for our young people.
Environmental activists argue – with science on their side – that more must be done to halt the devastation caused by climate change while others focus on the ongoing housing crisis, demanding more affordable properties and arguing for rent restrictions.
The increased use of short-term contracts and the continuing transformation of traditional industries add to the feelings of uncertainty with which young people must wrestle.
If those of us longer in the tooth are honest, we must admit that – in so many ways – we had things easier.
If you left school in, for example, the 1980s, there were college places, better quality apprenticeships and plentiful white-collar traineeships in banks and insurance companies.
Yes, fewer young Scots went to university but those who did were more likely to find good jobs upon graduation than students today.
And, once in work, the purchase of a house was a reasonably straightforward process rather than a pipe dream for all but the most fortunate.
At some stage in life, usually in childhood, we all learn that the world does not care about our problems. There are some good, compassionate people who do, and great campaigning organisations that give focus to their concerns.
But reality does not give a hoot about our battles or our feelings. The world keeps spinning while we struggle by.
Difficult though the realisation that the world cannot be shaped to accommodate
our needs – or whims – may be, it is a useful developmental stage.
Exposure to reality – messy and unfair – breeds resilience. To employ the old cliché, what does not kill us, makes us stronger.
How disturbing, then, that the GUU's position is that feminist slogans should be considered a threat to safety.
Members of Let Women Speak and other campaigning groups argue that, when it comes to the debate over gender, those who pose a real danger are the activists who continue to campaign for the prescription of powerful puberty-blocking drugs to emotionally confused children and the placing of trans-identifying men in women's prisons.
What happened at the GUU last Saturday is in keeping with the aggressive way trans activists have reacted to feminists at higher education establishments across the UK and beyond.
The Aberdeen-born philosopher and writer Kathleen Stock was hounded out of her lecturing job at the University of Sussex by students and – for shame – staff for refusing to adhere to the belief that a man can become a woman because he says so.
The academic was terrorised by anonymous activists to the point at which she needed personal security to go about her everyday life.
Eventually, Professor Stock received compensation from the University of Sussex, which was also fined £585,000 by the Government's Office for Students for its failure to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom.
In January last year, an employment tribunal found that the Open University (OU) had discriminated against Jo Phoenix, a professor of criminology.
The tribunal agreed bosses had failed in their duty to protect Professor Phoenix from harassment by colleagues and management.
Like Kathleen Stock, Professor Phoenix's crime was to believe in the immutability of sex and the importance of women's rights.
In common with the University of Sussex and the OU, the GUU is failing all who attend by censoring and excluding feminists with perfectly mainstream views.
What terrible damage trans extremists have wrought across the higher education sector. Theirs is a culture in which intellectualism withers and dies.
It remains legitimate to worry about the future we're creating for young people but there are also concerns about the young people we're creating for the future.
