Anti-terror measures will make us the extremists we fear

Theresa May is pushing a terrorism bill through parliament which will place a legal duty on universities to ban radical speakers. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

In the 1860s when the Austrian ambassador complained to the home secretary, Sir George Grey, about Karl Marx and other revolutionaries, he received a brief and dismissive reply: Under our laws, mere discussion of regicide, so long as it does not concern the Queen of England and so long as there is no definite plan, does not constitute sufficient grounds for the arrest of the conspirators.

Not quite what the current home secretary would have replied, I suspect. Theresa May is rushing yet another terrorism bill through parliament. This will place a legal duty on universities to ban radical speakers mere discussion in the words of her Liberal predecessor, who probably also took a more favourable view of being labelled radical.

Fifty years ago Malcolm X came to speak in Oxford, an episode now recalled to stir the sentimental memories of the universitys alumni. Today, of course, he would never have made it to Oxford; the UK Border Agency would have turned him back at Heathrow. After all even the very silly, but vile, Julien Blanc, the seducers guru, has been banned.

Malcolm X would probably have fared better in his homeland. The United States remains a nation of laws girded by a constitution, despite police shootings and protest riots. Sadly the United Kingdom is rapidly becoming a nation of ministerial discretion and direction, ever wider administrative powers that would probably have more than satisfied the 19th-century Prussian and Austrian bureaucrats who were so worried about Marx.

Under Mays new legislation, universities will have to follow the guidance issued by the Home Office. If they fail to follow it, the home secretary will be able to issue them with directions. Far from being regarded as institutions in which the most vigorous (and contested) debates should be encouraged, higher education institutions are now to be treated as fertile ground for the radicalisation of gullible students by supporters of extremism.

This is not the first time the government has introduced legislation to require universities to ban extremist speakers, although paradoxically the first political intervention back in the 1980s was to stop universities, and student unions, banning rightwing speakers, extremists of another ilk.

But this initial, and rather one-sided, libertarianism was quickly succeeded by more authoritarian interventions. Until now, the centrepiece has been the Prevent strategy, begun under Labour and revamped by the current government.

The 2011 white paper asserted the governments absolute commitment to defending freedom of speech. But, in the very next sentence, it argued that preventing terrorism meant that extremist (but non-violent) views had to be challenged by the administrative measures it then outlined. We have travelled a long road from Greys reply to the ambassador.

There is so much wrong with the new legislation. The key terms such as radicalisation, extremism and terrorism will be defined by politicians who are advised by securitocrats, cowed by tabloid-inflamed public opinion and influenced by electoral advantage.

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Anti-terror measures will make us the extremists we fear