Exeter University was aflame with controversy this past Friday night, as a Debating Society…er…debate took place amid an ever thicker fug of controversy.  The topic is an old DebSoc standard – “this house believes that the BNP should be allowed to speak on campus” or some equivalent wording – but it is now clear that, at some point, a BNP spokesman (Bath University’s Danny Lake, was approached to speak.  Although the offer was formally withdrawn, it was far from clear that BNP members and other fascists would not be able to turn up anyway (ultimately only students were allowed into the debate, with only one identifiable potential fascist who was no less a potential Tory).  Best of all, a photograph of DebSoc president Daryl Scatcherd in full SS regalia was discovered by an enterprising local anti-fascist.  Apparently it was at a bad taste ball.  I’ll say.

 As it was, Exeter Socialist Students, the local UAF branch and various anti-fascists and Socialist Partyites from as far afield as Kingsbridge and Ilfracombe (okay, that’s not that far afield) mobilised for a protest outside.  The local TUC sent us some leaflets and all.  It was fairly impressive.  We had made it clear in the run-up that we were prepared to physically prevent BNP members from entering the venue, whatever UAF might have thought about the matter (and given the people we mobilised, it would have been a brave Danny Lake to try and get in), so every bureaucrat was on tippy-toes trying to keep them out.  Dance, puppets, dance! As it became clear that the picket was fully formed, the DebSoc heirarchy formally, in that odd earnest way they do, invited us in to take part – which was nice of them.

the debate

Onwards to the event itself – in the blue corner, besuited and bepoppied, were two grandiloquent chaps from DebSoc to propose the motion; in the red corner, two teachers from UAF. 

For those who have never been to a DebSoc debate, it is worth sketching the atmosphere somewhat – I assume the pattern holds outside of Exeter, although the advanced state of political degeneration on this fair campus may propel the general pretentiousness to particularly ridiculous heights.  Firstly – I have mentioned suits and poppies.  The reason for the suits and poppies is simple: these people pretend they are in Parliament.  When somebody says something you approve of, you say “hear hear!” very loudly and still more unironically.  If somebody says something bad, you say “shame!”.  Another gesture of approval is banging the desk with your hand.  The whole thing is rather like watching two Greek Choruses arguing over which part of the Oresteia to perform.

This should indicate quite clearly the “DebSoc demographic” – they are the very same meat for the establishment mincer, slimy bureaucratic types, shadow cabinet members in waiting that poach all the NUS delegations and sabb positions.  If the set-up is a particularly idiosyncratic part of your mainstream-political training, it is a part nonetheless, where you learn various key skills for that career. Lesson #1: how to argue somebody else’s corner – other things we’ll get to later.

Back to the debate.  The debsoc position was simple enough.  No Platform “hasn’t worked”.  We should invite the BNP up to campus, tear them to bits (metaphorically, of course), and that’ll work instead.  They obviously intended to defend the farcical “balanced platform” policy, but didn’t really get round to it – I had to have the damn thing explained to me in the pub afterwards.

The teachers from UAF didn’t really manage to land the killer punches.  The BNP are very bad; they have a core of hardline Nazis; wherever they go, violence follows. They did refute the idea that “no platform hasn’t worked” – but the DebSoc robots, in their Demosthenesian rhetorical wisdom, decided to simply ignore the point three or four times. There was also a note of exasperation from Mike Gurney – he had been there three or four times, in the same debate, and had better things to do on a Friday night.  You could almost hear 20 or so leftist students nodding sagely in sympathy (over the 50 or so embryonic bureaucrats moaning “shame!”).

Who needs floor contributions anyway? 

Typically, the odd pulled punch on the top table is not an issue, because then you have the rest of us to plug the gaps from the floor.  Which brings us to nonsensical DebSoc quirk number whatever: such contributions had to be phrased as questions, “not opinions”!  Some bloody debate.  Most of the questions were fairly banal: “I went to an independent school” – (good start) – “and we invited a BNP speaker and tore them to bits! If a bunch of teenage girls can do it, why can’t we?” (‘We’ being the Mighty Exeter Debating Society, Masters of the Universe.)  Again and again the point was made that the BNP just don’t actually care what a bunch of teenage girls at an “independent school”, or a bunch of bureau-liberals at a Devon campus think about them.  If you invite a delegation down from wherever, they will simply use it as an excuse to go to pubs, go to council estates and spread their poison there.  The ever-sharp Greg Wilton seized on this, asking DebSoc if they had the troops in these pubs and elsewhere to circumvent such spillover from their masturbatory exercises.  Criminally, the chair refused to take the question – the debate was “not about DebSoc”.  (Shame!)

And here’s the thing.  Debating Societies are not traditionally political, but rather operate tests of rhetorical mettle.  If we take their word for it, that they really are serious about showing up the BNP, then we must admit their intervention as a political one – but it is clear that there is a very important shift here which they have not really thought through.  For if you move into the realm of real politics, rather than gladiatorial discussion, you have to realise that the political battles are being fought everywhere, all the time.  DebSoc’s view on these matters is so bloody awful simply because, whatever their intentions, they still behave as though the battle ends at 9pm with the summary statements and vote.  And this is why they are unable/refuse to acknowledge Cde Wilton’s question as a serious one with relevance to the debate.  The debate was not just a debate.

For DebSoc, it was just a game.  This is Lesson #2: it’s just a game.  The real action is in hand with the political elites.  (The previous Friday, they had a mock question time debate; one of the questions was whether there should be a referendum on the new European treaty.  Many argued from the floor that there shouldn’t be one because people would be confuzzled by the Daily Mail and make the wrong decision.)

Back to the poppies

It is here that the absurdity of the establishment affectations really comes in.   If we are to believe these people, then a BNP speaker would be banned from breaking the various religious, racial etc hatred laws.  In which case – exactly what would be the point, even from the already absurdly narrow perspective offered?  In what sense would the racist ideas of the BNP be torn to bits if they are banned in advance from even being aired?  Why the BNP, even? If you really want to have a debsoc field day, invite the lovely November 9th Society, and gag them from voicing their openly-Nazi drivel.  We win in advance!

So here we have Lesson #3 for the aspiring junior ministers of DebSoc – you must learn to win pyrrhic victories, and use them to pretend the argument as such has been won – cf. Blair on almost everything (“it was in our manifesto, so we have to do it”, etc). 

And they wonder why the BNP keep on growing…