The Oxford Union has a far-right problem

The Oxford Union has regularly been the subject of public outrage. From the 1933 ‘King and Country’ debate, upon which the Union, now, regularly looks back with pride, to the fracas surrounding a former presidential candidate’s comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, its financial model rests primarily upon attracting attention, an exchange of its establishment credibility and reputation in return for the heady fumes of public prominence. It is on those fumes that YouTube revenues and each year’s membership drives rest. So there is nothing particularly objectionable about the Union seeking speakers who will ignite that public debate and draw that attention, an even harder task in the modern media landscape.

However, with its invitations to controversial YouTuber and former UKIP candidate, Carl Benjamin, and to EDL founder and former BNP member Tommy Robinson, the Union has crossed a line. Benjamin’s invite has now been rescinded, but to invite one of Britain’s leading reactionaries, opposed to both feminism and Islam, to the Union would do nothing more than give him a chance to air his long-held views and gain credibility off the Union’s back. It took Benjamin five years to apologise to Jess Philips, an MP who has been a vocal campaigner against violence against women and girls, for saying he “wouldn’t even rape her”. This is definitive evidence that he is not some right-wing thinker or campaigner, but a provocateur of the lowest order, willing to sacrifice the well-being of others for the advancement of his own, narrow aims. Few have done more to promote the screed of anti-feminism online than his channel, Sargon of Akkad, and at a time when Oxbridge faces a reckoning with its own failure to protect students, his presence was nothing but a detriment to the University – sparking outcry from a number of student societies and organisations.

When contacted for comment, Carl Benjamin stated that, “my views are nothing more than the common-sense views of the average Englishman,” and that he, “appreciate[s] the flattery of the radicals who oppose me”. 

The invitation of Tommy Robinson – which still stands at the time of writing – is even more worrying. Again, like Benjamin, Robinson has been part of the steadily increasing right-wing extremist movement in this country, often targeting Muslims and immigrant communities. His rap sheet of criminal offences is long, and he was a prominent figure in the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally held last year, where Elon Musk spoke, saying: “Violence is coming,” and “you either fight, or you die”. This came after 2024’s protests in the wake of the Southport stabbings, for which Robinson publicly blamed immigrant and Muslim communities. His list of political affiliations is a who’s-who of the far right in the UK, from the BNP to UKIP, and now Advance UK. 

As I said earlier, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Union inviting right-wing or controversial figures; it is both how it has always functioned and how attention is captured. But there seems to be a double standard playing out in British public life, which the Union, as a centre of elite opinion, perpetrates. These extremist right-wingers, who actively promote violence against individuals and whole groups of people, are welcomed into these spaces with little challenge. Comparative figures on the left, or those who might actively challenge them, draw less attention; they don’t bring the same viewer counts and challenge the underlying social structures that maintain privilege. They were happy in 2007 to welcome Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, and David Irving, one of the UK’s most notorious Holocaust deniers, and are more than happy to roll out the red carpet again.

These rightwingers are accepted into respectable institutions like the Union and given the thin sheen of legitimacy under the guise of ‘debate’. Anyone who has watched a Union debate knows there is little chance of these men experiencing a Damascene conversion on the Union’s benches and repenting for their wrongs, or genuinely engaging with the arguments put against them. They are simply there to spout their normal lines, receive polite applause from the besuited ranks of Oxford’s students, and further their dangerous, damaging campaigns.

It might be argued that they are simply speaking into the void – that there is no need for the student body, or wider public, to consider what they say as anything serious. But history would disagree with this blase stance, which could only be held by someone who hasn’t been targeted by these groups. Just a year ago, Robinson whipped up right-wing fury to attack hotels holding asylum seekers, inspiring a broader climate of fear for the UK’s BAME communities. Robinson founded the EDL, the spiritual successor to the National Front that terrorised Black and Asian communities in the 1970s and 1980s.

My own family were harassed by the National Front, my grandfather knocked to the ground whilst out shopping with family. The Union might be a forum of free speech, but this self-serving gratification serves only to deny that it has any role in defining the boundaries of debate in a respectable society. To the Union, the lives of working-class communities, of BAME communities, are fair game for a debate, for something to list on their executives’ CVs.

In a decade, they will likely not remember the debate, but those who have to shelter at home, afraid of the baying mobs on the street, or who feel like they have committed a crime simply by being born with a skin tone below sepia, will remember. Our increasingly fractious and divided society will remember, as institutions like the Union make it clear that if you are a minority of any stripe, they don’t think you matter. Their wellbeing, your livelihoods, can and will be sacrificed for views, for cash, for attention.