No Platform

"No platforming is the subject of much polemic but very little in the way of grounded knowledge. No matter how many times activists remind us that choosing not to give a racist, sexist or transphobic speaker a platform is not the same as censoring their words, free speech absolutists say the contrary. In No Platform, Evan Smith has given us a detailed reconstruction of the history of the principle in Britain, avoiding the very polemic that its defenders are accused of, and using student and activist accounts to read against the grain of a prevailing narrative that constantly undermines the fight against gendered bigotry and racial hate. At a time of rising openness to white supremacism, No Platform is a must-read for all who seek to learn from the past in order to build for a more just future." - Alana Lentin, Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis, Western Sydney University "Evan Smiths No Platform is an essential read for anyone interested in the contemporary reactionary context. Smith offers a lucid, powerful and thoroughly researched history of the no platform tradition and its impact on the moral panics created by the right and the shaping of much of our political discourse today. It is not just an exceptional academic work, it is an incredibly useful and empowering account of why bad ideas cannot be allowed to thrive unchallenged and how they can and should be defeated." - Aurelien Mondon, Senior Lecturer at the University of Bath (PoLIS Department) "Evan Smiths authoritative account of no platform politics is both a compelling contribution to the field of far-right studies, and a critical contemporary intervention. Contrary to the lazy assumption that the tactic is nothing more than an anti-democratic refusal of thought and engagement, his nuanced account of its shifting and conflicted historical shape reveals it as a focus through which situated understandings of free speech, democratic expression and political equality have been consistently formed and negotiated." - Gavan Titley, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media Studies, Maynooth University "This book provides a historical intervention in the current debates over the alleged free speech crisis perceived to be plaguing universities in Britain, as well as North America and Australasia. No Platform is for academics and students, as well as the general reader, interested in modern British history, politics and higher education. Readers interested in contemporary debates over freedom of speech and academic freedom will also have much to discover in this book." - Kirk Meighoo, New Books Network. "Evan Smiths thoroughly researched and highly engaging new book, places no-platform into its proper historical context and charts the ways it has, as a tactic and a policy, been changed and contested over the course of the twentieth century. The book...makes use of the student press, left-wing publications, parliamentary debates, and other sources in order to demonstrate no-platform has a much longer and more complex history than current discourse acknowledges whilst avoiding being merely a polemic on the contemporary situation." - Hallam Roffey, Twentieth Century British History. "Evan Smith looks at a type of antifascist organizing in No Platform...Smith centers his history on one particular institution as a commentary on the broader social movement: the National Union of Students....No platforming itself has become central to discourse on antifascism, so the books insights extend far beyond the campus. Instead, they look at the way that speech, as an amorphous context, is heavily political, both in who has access to speech and who doesnt....What No Platform makes clear is that this debate started decades ago and is happening all the time, right now, as social movements attempt to meet their goals in a changing environment." - Shane Burley, au

Evan Smith is a research fellow in history at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University in South Australia. He has published widely on the history of political extremism, social movements, national security and borders in Britain, Australia and South Africa. He is the author of British Communism and the Politics of Race (2018) and co-editor (with Jon Piccini and Matthew Worley) of The Far Left in Australia since 1945 (Routledge, 2018).

1. No Platform in Historical and Contemporary Context 2. Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Free Speech before No Platform 3. The Student Movement and the Prelude to No Platform 4. The National Union of Students and No Platform in the 1970s 5. Expanding No Platform in the 1980s 6. Hard Right Politicians and Student Protests at Universities in the 1980s 7. Into the Twenty-first Century 8. Why No Platform Matters