Podcasts about monday club

Let's get brutally honest… there's always one.The high earner. The it girl. The diva who makes you the most money and low-key runs your salon—until you realize, wait a minute, I'm the freaking owner.In this episode, we're unpacking a hard but necessary leadership lesson: what happens when you give your power away in exchange for keeping the peace (and the revenue). And how to take it back without burning it all down.Here's what we're diving into:How fear of loss (aka people pleasing) disguises itself as leadershipWhat really happens when you let money talk louder than your missionThe ripple effect of giving one stylist too much powerWhy every salon has “that girl”—and how to handle her differentlyThe exact moment things shifted and the culture started healingWhat it looks like to lead from confidence, not cortisolHow to set standards everyone can thrive under (without exceptions)If you've ever been stuck between protecting your culture and pleasing your highest earner… this one's for you.Ready to lead with clarity instead of fear? Join us inside The Monday Club—your leadership gets to grow in a room like this.You built this business for a reason. Let's lead it like we mean it.

Hiring quickly to fill a gap might feel like survival—but it can cost you your culture, your sanity, and your bottom line. In today's episode, we get brutally honest about one of the biggest leadership mistakes you can make: hiring for potential instead of alignment.We're talking about:Why liking someone is not enough to bring them onto your teamThe expensive (and exhausting) fallout of hiring without systemsHow self-leadership and clear expectations set your team—and you—up to winThe real role of systems in protecting your energy and your businessWhat Lexi would tell her younger self before every hiring decisionIf you've ever made a hiring decision you regret—or want to avoid one—listen in and you'll walk away with clarity and confidence.

Halfway through the year. Did that hit you like a freight train too?If you're feeling like time is flying and you're still winging it behind the scenes of your salon, this episode is a pause-and-check-in moment just for you.We're not just talking about goals or vision boards—we're talking about what it actually takes to be the kind of leader your business needs. Not the perfect kind. Not the always-likes-confrontation kind. The durable kind. The kind that knows how to have hard conversations without ghosting the whole team or turning into Miss Trunchbull overnight.Inside this episode:Why “not being a natural leader” isn't a problemWhat really causes salon owners to burn out on leadershipThe leadership traps we all fall into (people-pleasing, ghosting, overcorrecting… sound familiar?)How separating your likability from your leadership is the unlockWhat every good leader actually has (hint: it's not charisma)Why you need tools, not just inspirationYou don't need to be born for this. You just need the right tools and a little bit of help from someone who gets it. Good news—that's exactly what we've built.Come find out what it looks like to stop surviving leadership and actually get good at it.And for even more support you didn't know you were missing, check out The Monday Club: https://www.lexilomax.com/monday-club

Ever had one of those days where you fantasize about locking the salon doors and tossing the keys into the ocean? Same. In this episode, we get real about the defining moments that shaped our journeys as salon owners. This is for the days when you're carrying too much and wondering if it's all even worth it.Inside this episode:Why your first goals still matter, even if they make you laugh nowHow a foundation built years ago still shapes what's working todayWhat it really means when you're questioning everythingWhy support systems (emotional and structural) are non-negotiableThe truth about burnout, leadership, and why it feels so personalIt's normal to want to walk away sometimes. But it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. You're just tired. Let's talk about it—and how to build something strong enough to carry you through.If you need help with all of this (especially building those essential systems), you need to check out the Monday Club. Learn more here: https://www.lexilomax.com/monday-club

Being a salon owner is deeply emotional work—even if no one tells you that upfront. In this episode, we're talking about what it really means to be an emotional container in your salon: for your team, your clients, and everyone in between.Whether it's handling trauma-dumping clients, overly chatty assistants, or the team member who always has “just one more thing,” you're constantly being pulled on emotionally. And the truth is? You were never meant to carry it all.We're diving into:Why leadership becomes emotional labor without boundariesThe mindset shift needed to stop being your team's therapistEmotional containers vs. emotional filters—and why you need bothHow to set systems in place that protect your energy and leadershipThe red flags of burnout, resentment, and why they sneak in fastYou don't need to become cold or unapproachable—you just need to lead with clarity instead of carrying everyone else's chaos. This episode is your permission slip (and practical guide) to do exactly that.Ready to create leadership systems that protect your energy, not drain it? Join the Monday Club for emotional filter templates, leadership support, and done-for-you resources to help you lead with strength: https://www.lexilomax.com/monday-club

If you've ever walked away from a team meeting with your heart pounding and your mind spinning, this episode is for you.Leading a team isn't just about systems and strategy—it's deeply personal. And when things don't go as planned, it hits different.In today's episode, we get real about the emotional side of salon ownership, why leadership is personal, and how to care deeply without letting every bump in the road derail your confidence. Here's what you'll hear:Why leadership is emotional—and why that's not a bad thingHow to separate feelings from feedback in hard conversationsThe importance of having a safe space to process challengesWhat happens when you don't have systems to support you emotionallyWhy the right support (like the Monday Club!) changes everythingSalon ownership is more than a job—it's a calling. And leading well means learning to protect your peace while still showing up fully for your team. Whether you're navigating growing pains or feeling emotionally spent, this episode reminds you: you're not alone, and you're doing better than you think.Join the conversation inside the Monday Club—your safe space to lead with clarity, strategy, and heart: https://www.lexilomax.com/monday-club

If your business feels fragile—even while the numbers look good—you're not alone. Most salons skip a crucial step when growing: building out backend systems that actually support their success. In this episode, we're talking about what it really takes to scale sustainably, why working harder isn't the answer, and how to stop relying on sheer willpower to hold everything together.You'll learn why strong systems—not just talent or hustle—are the key to real growth, and how to shift from reactive leadership to a business that runs with rhythm. Whether you're managing a team, juggling behind-the-chair work, or just trying to stay ahead, this is the mindset and strategy shift that changes everything.If you're ready for structure, clarity, and actual ease in your salon, this one's for you.In this episode, we cover:How I'm rebuilding my business for next-level growth (and what that means for you)Why you can't scale chaos—systems that actually support you and your teamThe hard truth about doing “all the things” but still feeling stuckReady for less stress and more strategy?Join us inside The Monday Club here: https://www.lexilomax.com/monday-club

Hello and welcome to Bethel Evangelical Church in Gorseinon and thank you for checking out this weeks sermon recordings. The 20th of April saw us host our All-Together Easter Sunday morning service, with a livestream available via Facebook. The service was led by our pastor, Dafydd Williams, with contributions from the children of Monday Club. […]

This week we're chatting about the fake ticket scandal at Sabrina Carpenter concert, girthy mozzarella dippers and the REAL things we want to do as tourists! And in the second half we're joined by Gary and Wardy from The Monday Club for some nostalgic chat! https://open.spotify.com/show/76TwAEU70OVw39WNJLeof1Check out our *NEW* weekly vlog on YouTube!: https://youtu.be/yL1erq_Sup4?feature=sharedUNLOCK OUR EXTRA JUICY BONUS EPISODE ON SPOTIFY: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/girlsoverheard/subscribeJoin the group chats on Patreon and unlock a full extra episode every Wednesday! https://www.patreon.com/c/GirlsOverheardSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aOtGuxPxIenVDwmUwWjOhPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/GirlsOverheardGirls Overheard Insta: https://www.instagram.com/girlsoverheardGirls Overheard TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@girlsoverheard Ash: https://www.instagram.com/mamareid/Eilidh: https://www.instagram.com/eilidhwells/Lauren: https://www.instagram.com/lauren.fairbairn/FAQHow do I send a message in to you guys?The best way is to WhatsApp or message us on 07428957885! You can send us a text, a voice note or even any TikToks you want us to chat about! And don't worry, we will always keep you anonymous!How many episodes do you release every week?We put out our main episode on a Monday and our bonus episode, Confession Sessions goes out every Wednesday! This one has even more stories and juicier gossip so it's available for our Patreon Rat Pack. Join us over there and you'll get access to our forums, first access to live show tix and more! When is your next live show? We haven't announced any live shows for 2025 but any new dates will always be announced on Confession Sessions first so make sure you're on there!Where can I find you on socials?We're on Instagram and TikTok as @girlsoverheard so come join us! Email: girlsoverheardpodcast@gmail.com

KCBX intern Meher Ali gets answers to questions about green waste bins, in a conversation with Rachelle Paris, the city's Solid Waste & Recycling Coordinator. Ash Mehta, local wine retailer, speaks with KCBX's Stu Soren about recent changes in the wine industry. KCBX's Alyssa Toledo explores how The Monday Club's centennial pays tribute to its past while looking forward to the next hundred years. The Budget Café in San Luis Obispo is a mirror of the unpretentious side of San Luis Obispo, according to KCBX's Tom Wilmer. He speaks with the owner of the iconic cafe.

Hometown Radio 09/23/24 3p: Spotlight on the Monday Club

On this episode, Kat is joined by Demi Broughton, a key member of the team behind the High Performance Podcast. As the Corporate Events Manager she shares her top strategy for enhancing both personal and professional performance. KEY TAKEAWAYS It's very easy to criticise other – as a society we're very good at it – and lay blame on others. There aren't enough people celebrating those small, unseen things that people are doing that are really good. Monday Club is something that I hope breaks through the mould of what you see on LinkedIn on a Monday and highlighting people I've enjoyed working with or are going unsung. A negative habit that has affected both my private and professional life is: First thing in the morning, before I've said hello to anyone, I've reached for my phone and read emails. We're not being paid or expected to do that, so why are we doing it? It created a sense in me of never switching off. I now don't touch my emails until I've had my morning cup of tea. I would never go to bed not knowing what tomorrow looks like. Of course, anything can happen at any time that I'm not in control of, but it sets me up so that when I wake up in the morning, I'm only revisiting what's already been put in place for me. It takes the weight off. How I was able to break negative habits and bring in positive ones was I just reached breaking point with them. I don't advise people to reach rock bottom before they change, but I didn't want to live that way anymore; constantly being tired, developing physical and mental problems due to fatigue and blowing off social engagements because I didn't have anything left in the tank.   BEST MOMENTS “We have a very flat hierarchy: Everyone is a manager in some sense of the word (running their own departments, owns what they do, has autonomy and power).” “Machines need to be switched off to recharge. So do we.” “Don't have you phone ion your room but have a physical notepad and pen in case your brain is racing so you can write down in order what your day is going to look like.” “What would you want people to say about you at your eulogy? I'll be damned if what they read out at mine wasn't conducive with the life I want for myself knowing I had full control over achieving that.” ABOUT THE GUEST Demi Broughton is an award winning Corporate Events Manager at The High Performance Podcast, she's responsible for planning, organising, and executing engaging and impactful events for listeners, guests, and sponsors. Demi leverages her expertise and skills to create memorable experiences that showcase your mission, values, and goals. Being well experienced in the industry, working with various clients and partners, from small businesses to global corporations. Demi is passionate about delivering high-quality events that inspire, educate, and entertain the podcast's audience, and that reflect its field of expertise: high performance in business, sports, and life. LinkedIn ABOUT THE HOST Kat started her career as a teacher, before moving into Tech where she worked in different executive roles within teaching and consulting working across the globe, both in the public and private sectors. Despite appearing 'successful' on the outside, she paid a heavy ‘life' price. In 2016, her whole world collapsed. The reason? The compound effect of years of unhealthy and toxic habits that destroyed her health, relationship and career. She suffered a severe breakdown and lost everything. In the middle of this she got headhunted for her first CEO role. She rebuilt herself by changing just one small habit and built a series of positive habits which has transformed her professional and personal performance, resulting in her becoming the healthiest and happiest version of herself. She is a positive habits international keynote speaker and teacher, giving talks and delivering high-impact programmes to organisations across the globe. LinkedIn Instagram

Hometown Radio 03/25/24 3:30p: Spotlight on The Monday Club

Jim Dantona of the SLO Chamber of Commerce discusses the challenges facing small business owners on the Central Coast with Michael and Payden Hughes of Gymnazo. On the Nonprofit Story, host Dr. Consuelo Meux visits with Mary Qualls of The Monday Club- and learns about the history of their building and their charitable work. KCBX's Tom Wilmer and Cal Poly journalism student Addie Uhl meet with award-winning author and poet, Joan Gelfand, to talk about her book ‘Outside Voices: a Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution'.

Live Recorded Set from VirtualDJ Radio ClubZone

Live Recorded Set from VirtualDJ Radio ClubZone

Hometown Radio 02/07/23 3:30p: Spotlight on the Monday Club

Fee Saghafi has a reputation of being one of the loveliest humans in the sport of CrossFit, and if you ever needed confirmation of that - listen to this episode.We chat about what that reputation means to her, but also the pressure that comes with it. The conversation delves into she looks after both her Physical and Mental Health, what her 2024 season looks like, and how much going to the Games means.As always, don't forget to like, rate and subscribe to be the first to hear all about our new episodes and content!This episode is sponsored by Monday Club Fitness - a fitness and lifestyle brand based on three principles: Friends. Fun. FitnessAs a new brand on the block, they've quickly grown a large following for their gymnastics grips that not only glue you to the bar with confidence, but ensure you stand out from the crowd at the same time.Check out their website www.mondayclubfitness.com to grab yourself a pair of the grips that everyone is talking about. There is some top quality apparel on there too, so get yourself online and become a member of the Monday Club!For the next two weeks you can get 10% off any purchase of MCF grips using the code WYTA10Welcome to the Monday Club!@fee.saghafi@leahsherlock_@wodyoutalkinabout@mondayclubfitnessIf you'd like to support the show, or just buy me a coffee - you can do so here - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/leahsherlock

Hometown Radio 02/06/23 3p: Community Spotlight shines on the Monday Club

Live Recorded Set from VirtualDJ Radio ClubZone

NUFC MATTERS The Monday Club Fans Forum World Cup And NUFC

So we went live this sunday on youtube rather than a pre record... mainly because Jamie went on holiday and Sam is lazy This Episode is brought to you by Verso, Fuse boards and electrical accessories Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpA2PWsmPhwJb_eEnF3ywpQ Website - https://www.versoelectrical.co.uk/ My install https://www.versoelectrical.co.uk/myinstall Electricians Monday club podcast is for electricians, apprentices and anyone associated with the electrical trade, every week we record a podcast to talk about important subjects that's electricians care about! But along the way you will find crazy stories lots of banter and hopefully come out the other side informed but amused…. Electricians Monday Club Merch https://www.bayspokeprinting.co.uk/product-page/electricians-monday-club-t-shirt Electricians Monday Club Hosts Fatsam - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0b-RgisV23n5R2w3fHUaA A industrial and commercial electrician who worked in London on every major project for the last 10 years, expert in industrial relations between agency electricians and tier 1 contractors. Still on the tools managing projects for the NHS and private hospitals Jamie blatant - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCduaH-Au7koVBVwj_5f1OSA Industrial electrical engineer - British army reserve electrical engineer -STEM ambassador - youtuber - and now electrical engineering trainer passionate about engineering, science, and the built environment. easily excited by all manner of pipes and cables and the need to pass on skills and information to others. #electrician, #electriciansmondayclub, #evchargerinstallationuk, #mondayclub, #niceic, #Electricalsolutions, #nickbundy, #nickbundyelectrical, #Podcast, #electricalPodcast, #ElectriciansPodcast, #Electricianstoolbag, #Electriciansbelt, #Electriciansworkwear, #womeninthetrades, #femaleelectrician, #Electricialdiscussion, #BS7671, #BANTER, #dewalt, #millwakee, #bosch, #dses.uk, #davidsavery, #beanbagface,

What you Don't need to know about sparking – Electricians Monday Club This Episode is brought to you by Verso, Fuse boards and electrical accessories Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpA2PWsmPhwJb_eEnF3ywpQ Website - https://www.versoelectrical.co.uk/ My install https://www.versoelectrical.co.uk/myinstall This Weeks Guest is – LIZZIE ELECTRICAL Electricians Monday club podcast is for electricians, apprentices and anyone associated with the electrical trade, every week we record a podcast to talk about important subjects that's electricians care about! But along the way you will find crazy stories lots of banter and hopefully come out the other side informed but amused…. Electricians Monday Club Merch https://www.bayspokeprinting.co.uk/product-page/electricians-monday-club-t-shirt Electricians Monday Club Hosts Fatsam - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0b-RgisV23n5R2w3fHUaA A industrial and commercial electrician who worked in London on every major project for the last 10 years, expert in industrial relations between agency electricians and tier 1 contractors. Still on the tools managing projects for the NHS and private hospitals Jamie blatant - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCduaH-Au7koVBVwj_5f1OSA Industrial electrical engineer - British army reserve electrical engineer -STEM ambassador - youtuber - and now electrical engineering trainer passionate about engineering, science, and the built environment. easily excited by all manner of pipes and cables and the need to pass on skills and information to others. #willelectrical #electricianstv #electrician, #electriciansmondayclub, #evchargerinstallationuk, #mondayclub, #niceic, #Electricalsolutions, #nickbundy, #nickbundyelectrical, #Podcast, #electricalPodcast, #ElectriciansPodcast, #Electricianstoolbag, #Electriciansbelt, #Electriciansworkwear, #womeninthetrades, #femaleelectrician, #Electricialdiscussion, #BS7671, #BANTER, #dewalt, #millwakee, #bosch, #dses.uk, #davidsavery, #beanbagface,

SportsJOE's Niall McIntyre chats with Newcastle West's Mike McNamara who, at 36, won man-of-the-match in the Limerick SFC final.

NUFC Matters The Monday Club

NUFC Matters The Monday Club Fans Forum

You NEED to know this about – Manufacturing – Electricians Monday Club This Episode is brought to you by Verso, Fuse boards and electrical accessories Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpA2PWsmPhwJb_eEnF3ywpQ Website - https://www.versoelectrical.co.uk/ My install https://www.versoelectrical.co.uk/myinstall This Weeks Guest is – Will from Verso Electricians Monday club podcast is for electricians, apprentices and anyone associated with the electrical trade, every week we record a podcast to talk about important subjects that's electricians care about! But along the way you will find crazy stories lots of banter and hopefully come out the other side informed but amused…. Electricians Monday Club Merch https://www.bayspokeprinting.co.uk/product-page/electricians-monday-club-t-shirt Electricians Monday Club Hosts Fatsam - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0b-RgisV23n5R2w3fHUaA A industrial and commercial electrician who worked in London on every major project for the last 10 years, expert in industrial relations between agency electricians and tier 1 contractors. Still on the tools managing projects for the NHS and private hospitals Jamie blatant - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCduaH-Au7koVBVwj_5f1OSA Industrial electrical engineer - British army reserve electrical engineer -STEM ambassador - youtuber - and now electrical engineering trainer passionate about engineering, science, and the built environment. easily excited by all manner of pipes and cables and the need to pass on skills and information to others. #willelectrical #electricianstv #electrician, #electriciansmondayclub, #evchargerinstallationuk, #mondayclub, #niceic, #Electricalsolutions, #nickbundy, #nickbundyelectrical, #Podcast, #electricalPodcast, #ElectriciansPodcast, #Electricianstoolbag, #Electriciansbelt, #Electriciansworkwear, #womeninthetrades, #femaleelectrician, #Electricialdiscussion, #BS7671, #BANTER, #dewalt, #millwakee, #bosch, #dses.uk, #davidsavery, #beanbagface,

SportsJOE's Niall McIntyre caught up with David Neary and Colin Compton, the two of them perched in Anthony Beirne's bar in Strokestown, where the Monday club celebrations were in full swing.

NUFC Matters The Monday Club Fans Forum With Steve Wraith And Joe Walker

Welcome to Ep. 37 of The Football Pod 2.0 - James O'Donoghue and Paddy Andrews are back talking Gaelic Football with Tommy Rooney. Club action is heating up, we've got some early winners, Monday club memories and big games ahead - the lads talk the perfect pre-season, biggest regrets in their careers and much more too, enjoy! (00:30) – New winners as the exclusive Monday Club opens up! (22:00) – Kerry's case for Regional Championship vs. Meath and Dublin. (38:00) – Perfect pre-season, big regrets, players to watch in 2023. You can hear the podcast first in the 'The Football Pod' feed or also in the 'OTB GAA' feed - be sure to subscribe and leave us a review or comment if you enjoy! We want to hear your thoughts - use social media or email: thefootballpod@offtheball.com

SportsJOE's Niall McIntyre chats with Westmeath's Niall Mitchell who, after losing a county hurling final last weekend, scored a goal and won a county football final with the Downs this weekend.

Welcome to Ep. 37 of The Football Pod 2.0 - James O'Donoghue and Paddy Andrews are back talking Gaelic Football with Tommy Rooney. Club action is heating up, we've got some early winners, Monday club memories and big games ahead - the lads talk the perfect pre-season, biggest regrets in their careers and much more too, enjoy! (00:30) – New winners as the exclusive Monday Club opens up! (22:00) – Kerry's case for Regional Championship vs. Meath and Dublin. (38:00) – Perfect pre-season, big regrets, players to watch in 2023. You can hear the podcast first in the 'The Football Pod' feed or also in the 'OTB GAA' feed - be sure to subscribe and leave us a review or comment if you enjoy! We want to hear your thoughts - use social media or email: thefootballpod@offtheball.com

NUFC Matters The Monday Club Fans Forum with Steve Wraith, Joe Walker And YOU!

NUFC Matters The Monday Club With Steve Wraith And Joe Walker

SportsJOE's Niall McIntyre has a chat with Shinrone wing back Killian Sampson, whose four points from play helped his club to their first ever Offaly senior hurling championship.

The title of this podcast is a pun on doors and on the future.  I start by playing "Light My Fire" written by the Doors, and truly one of the greatest pieces in the history of Rock and Roll.  Then I talk about how Project Hope and Fairness represents a door to the future of the chocolate business.  And then I mention two big events:  my being part of the Ivoirian exhibit at the Salon du Chocolat, the world's biggest annual chocolate event, which happens in Paris and the second event is our upcoming fundraiser on Thursday, December 1 at the Monday Club in San Luis Obispo, CA, 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM.And the next pun is on the future because I review the book, "Ministry for the Future," which has to do with our collective future here on planet Earth.  I finish the podcast with another Doors work of genius:  "Riders on the Storm."I mention in the podcast that you can visit YouTube to see videos of cocoa and chocolate production in the mini-factory of SOCOPLAN, an agricultural cooperative in the village of Depa, Côte d'Ivoire.  To watch cocoa videos, ---> https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtOMzkAdojOV_bfgZA-8p87Z5F9oST31BTo watch chocolate videos --->  https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtOMzkAdojOXOgrHuYGKlpcKegPtEGzJCAnd as always, please consider helping us help the cocoa farmer!  You can send a check to:DONATIONS, PROJECT HOPE AND FAIRNESS1298 Warren RoadCambria, CA 93428-OR-  go to www.projecthopeandfairness.org, scroll down to Donate and click!  Et Merci!

NUFC Matters The Monday Club With Steve Wraith And Joe Walker

NUFC Matters Monday Club (Sunday Service) With Steve Wraith And Joe Walker

NUFC Matters The Monday Club With Steve Wraith And Joe Walker

NUFC Matters The Monday Club With Steve Wraith And Joe Walker

NUFC Matters The Monday Club With Steve Wraith & Joe Walker

NUFC Matters The Monday Club Transfer Show with Steve Wraith & Joe Walker

DNO meter boxes - Electricians Monday club podcast

sam, summer and jamie

Hometown Radio 07/08/22 3p: Pet & Pie of the Week. Then Spotlight on the Monday Club

Mike Isaacson: If your free speech requires an audience, might I suggest a therapist? [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Welcome once again to The Nazi Lies Podcast. I am joined by two historians today. With us is Evan Smith, lecturer at Flinders University in Adelaide, and David Renton, who taught at a number of universities in the UK and South Africa before leaving the academy to practice law, though he still finds time to research and write. Each of them has a book about today's topic: the free speech crisis. Dr. Smith's book, No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech, chronicles the No Platform policy of the National Union of Students in the UK from its foundation in 1974 to the present day. Dr. Renton's book, No Free Speech for Fascists: Exploring ‘No Platform' in History, Law and Politics, tells a much longer story of the interplay of radical leftist groups, organized fascists, and the state in shaping the UK's speech landscape and their significance in politics and law. Both are out from Routledge. I have absolutely no idea how we've managed to make the time zones work between the three of us, but welcome both of you to the podcast. Evan Smith: Thank you. David Renton: Thanks, Mike. Mike: So David, I want to start with you because your book goes all the way back to the 1640s to tell its history. So what made you start your story in the 1640s, and what did contention over speech look like before Fascism? David: Well, I wanted to start all that time back more than 300 years ago, because this is the moment when you first start to see something like the modern left and right emerge. You have in Britain, a party of order that supports the state and the king, but you also have a party which stands for more democracy and a more equal distribution of wealth. And essentially, from this point onwards in British, European, American politics, you see those same sites recreating themselves. And what happens again, and again, and again from that point onwards for hundreds of years until certainly say 50 years ago, you have essentially the people who are calling for free speech, whether that's the levellers in 1640s, Tom Paine 100 years later, J.S. Mill in the 19th Century. The left is always the people in favor of free speech. In terms of the right, if you want a kind of the first philosopher of conservatism, someone like Edmund Burke, he's not involved in the 1640s. He's a bit later, about a century and a half later. But you know, he supports conservatism. So what's his attitude towards free speech? It's really simple. He says, people who disagree with him should be jailed. There should be laws made to make it harder for them to have defenses. And more and more of them should be put in jail without even having a trial. That's the conservative position on free speech for centuries. And then what we get starting to happen in the late 20th century, something completely different which is a kind of overturning of what's been this huge, long history where it's always the left that's in favor of free speech, and it's always the right that's against it. Mike: Okay. Now, your contention is that before the appearance of Fascism, socialist radicals were solidly in favor of free speech for all. Fascism changed that, and Evan, maybe you can jump in here since this is where your book starts. What was new about Fascism that made socialists rethink their position on speech? Evan: So fascism was essentially anti-democratic and it was believed that nothing could be reasoned with because it was beyond the realms of reasonable, democratic politics. It was a violence, and the subjugation of its opponents was at the very core of fascism. And that the socialist left thought that fascism was a deeply violent movement that moved beyond the traditional realm of political discourse. So, there was no reasoning with fascists, you could only defeat them. Mike: So, let's start with David first, but I want to get both of you on this. What was the response to Fascism like before the end of World War II? David: Well, what you do is you get the left speaking out against fascism, hold demonstrations against fascism, and having to articulate a rationale of why they're against fascism. One of the things I quote in my book is a kind of famous exchange that takes place in 1937 when a poet named Nancy Cunard collected together the writers, intellectuals, and philosophers who she saw as the great inspiration to– the most important writers and so on that day. And she asked them what side they were taking on fascism. What's really interesting if you read their accounts, whether it's people like the poet W.H. Auden, novelist Gerald Bullitt, the philosopher C.E.M Joad, they all say they're against fascism, but they all put their arguments against fascism in terms of increased speech. So C.E.M Joad writes, "Fascism suppresses truth. That's why we're against fascism." Or the novelist Owen Jameson talks about fascism as a doctrine which exalts violence and uses incendiary bombs to fight ideas. So you get this thing within the left where people grasp that in order to fight off this violence and vicious enemy, they have to be opposed to it. And that means, for example, even to some extent making an exception to what's been for centuries this uniform left-wing notion: you have to protect everyone's free speech. Well people start grasping, we can't protect the fascist free speech, they're gonna use it to suppress us. So the Left makes an exception to what's been its absolute defense of free speech, but it makes this exception for the sake of protecting speech for everybody. Mike: Okay. Evan, do you want to add anything to the history of socialists and fascists before the end of World War Two? Evan: Yeah. So just kind of setting up a few things which will become important later on, and particularly because David and I are both historians of antifascism in Britain, is that there's several different ways in which antifascism emerges in the interwar period and several different tactics. One tactic is preventing fascists from marching from having a presence in public. So things like the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 is a very famous incident where the socialists and other protesters stopped the fascists from marching. There's also heckling and disrupting of fascist meetings. So this was big meetings like Olympia in June 1934, but then also smaller ones like individual fascist meetings around the country were disrupted by antifascists. There was also some that are on the left who also called for greater state intervention, usually in the form of labor councils not allowing fascists to congregate in public halls and stuff like that. So these kinds of arguments that fascism needs to be confronted, disrupted, obfuscated, starts to be developed in the 1930s. And it's where those kinds of free speech arguments emerge in the later period. Mike: Now immediately after the Second World War, fascist movements were shells of their former selves. They had almost no street presence and their organizations usually couldn't pull very many members. Still, the response to fascism when it did pop up was equally as vehement as when they organized into paramilitary formations with membership in the thousands. Something had qualitatively changed in the mind of the public regarding fascism. What did the immediate postwar response to public fascist speech look like, and what was the justification? Evan, let's start with you and then David you can add anything he misses. Evan: David probably could tell the story in a lot more detail. In the immediate post-war period in Britain, Oswald Mosley tries to revive the fascist movement under the title The Union Movement, but before that there's several kind of pro-fascist reading groups that emerge. And in response to this is kind of a disgust that fascists who had recently been imprisoned in Britain and their fellow travellers in the Nazis and the Italian Fascists and the continental fascists had been, you know, it ended in the Holocaust. There was this disgust that fascists could be organizing again in public in Britain, and that's where it mobilizes a new kind of generation of antifascists who are inspired by the 1930s to say "Never again, this won't happen on our streets." And the most important group and this is The 43 Group, which was a mixture of Jewish and communist radicals, which probably David can tell you a little bit about. David: I'd be happy to but I think before we get to 43 Group, it's kind of worth just pausing because the point Mike's left is kind of around the end of the Second World War. One thing which happens during the Second World War is of course Britain's at war with Germany. So what you start to get is Evan talked about how in the 1930s, you already have this argument like, “Should stopping fascism be something that's done by mass movements, or should it be done by the state?” In the Second World War the state has to confront that question, too, because it's got in fascism a homegrown enemy, and the British state looks at how all over Europe these states were toppled really quickly following fascist advance, and very often a pro-fascist powerful section of the ruling class had been the means by which an invading fascism then found some local ally that's enabled it to take over the state and hold the state. So the British state in 1940 actually takes a decision to intern Oswald Mosley and 800 or so of Britain's leading fascists who get jailed initially in prisons in London, then ultimately on the Isle of Man. Now, the reason why I'm going into this is because the first test of what the ordinary people in Britain think about the potential re-emergence of fascism comes even before the Second World War's ended. When Oswald Mosley is released from internment, he says he has conditioned phlebitis, he's very incapacitated, and is never going to be politically active again. And the British state buys this. And this creates–and an actual fact–the biggest single protest movement in Britain in the entire Second World War, where you get hundreds of people in certain factories going on strike against Oswald Mosley's release, and high hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions demanding that he's reinterned, and you start to get people having demonstrations saying Mosley ought to go back to jail. That kind of sets the whole context of what's going to happen after the end of the Second World War. Mosley comes out and he's terrified of public opinion; he's terrified about being seen in public. He's convinced that if you hold meetings you're going to see that cycle going on again. So for several years, the fascists barely dare hold public meetings, and they certainly don't dare hold meetings with Mosley speaking. They test the water a bit, and they have some things work for them. Evan's mentioned the 43 Group so I'll just say a couple sentences about them. The 43 Group are important in terms of what becomes later. They're not a vast number of people, but they have an absolute focus on closing down any fascist meeting. We're gonna hear later in this discussion about the phrase "No Platform" and where it comes from, but you know, in the 1940s when fascist wanted to hold meetings, the platform means literally getting together a paste table and standing on it, or standing on a tiny little ladder just to take you a couple of foot above the rest of your audience. The 43 Group specialize in a tactic which is literally knocking over those platforms. And because British fascism remained so isolated and unpopular in the aftermath of the Second World War, you know, there are 43 Group activists and organizers who look at London and say, "All right, if there going to be 12 or 13 public meetings in London this weekend, we know where they're going to be. If we can knock over every single one of those other platforms, then literally there'll be no fascists to have any chance to find an audience or put a public message in Britain." That's kind of before you get the term 'No Platform' but it's almost in essence the purest form of No Platforming. It's people being able to say, "If we get organized as a movement outside the state relying on ordinary people's opposition to fascism, we can close down every single example of fascist expression in the city and in this country." Mike: Okay. So through the 50's and 60's, there were two things happening simultaneously. On the one hand, there was the largely left wing student-led free speech movement. And on the other hand, there was a new generation of fascists who were rebuilding the fascist movement in a variety of ways. So let's start with the free speech movement. David, you deal with this more in your book. What spurred the free speech movement to happen? David: Yeah. Look in the 50s and 60s, the free speech movement is coming from the left. That's going to change, we know it's going to change like 20 or 30 years later, but up to this point we're still essentially in the same dance of forces that I outlined right at the start. That the left's in favor of free speech, the right is against it. And the right's closing down unwanted ideas and opinion. In the 50s and 60s, and I'm just going to focus on Britain and America, very often this took the form of either radicals doing some sort of peace organising–and obviously that cut against the whole basic structure of the Cold War–or it took the form of people who maybe not even necessarily radicals at all, just trying to raise understanding and consciousness about people's bodies and about sex. So for the Right, their counterattack was to label movements like for example in the early 60s on the campus of Berkeley, and then there's originally a kind of anti-war movement that very quickly just in order to have the right to organize, becomes free speech movements. And the Right then counter attacks against it saying, "Essentially, this is just a bunch of beats or kind of proto-hippies. And what they want to do is I want to get everyone interested in drugs, and they want to get everyone interested in sexuality, and they want everyone interested in all these sorts of things." So their counterattack, Reagan terms this, The Filthy Speech Movement. In the late 60s obviously in states, we have the trial of the Chicago 7, and here you have the Oz trial, which is when a group of radicals here, again that their point of view is very similar, kind of hippie-ish, anti-war milieu. But one thing is about their magazines, which again it seems very hard to imagine today but this is true, that part of the way that their their magazine sells is through essentially soft pornographic images. And there's this weird combination of soft porn together with far left politics. They'll get put on trial in the Oz trial and that's very plainly an attempt– our equivalent of the Chicago 7 to kind of close down radical speech and to get into the public mind this idea that the radicals are in favor of free speech, they're in favor of extreme left-wing politics, and they're in favor of obscenity, and all these things are somehow kind of the same thing. Now, the point I just wanted to end on is that all these big set piece trials–another one to use beforehand is the Lady Chatterley's Lover trial, the Oz trial, the Chicago 7 trial, all of these essentially end with the right losing the battle of ideas, not so much the far right but center right. And people just saying, "We pitched ourselves on the side of being against free speech, and this isn't working. If we're going to reinvent right-wing thought, make some center right-wing ideas desirable and acceptable in this new generation of people, whatever they are, then we can't keep on being the ones who are taking away people's funds, closing down ideas. We've got to let these radicals talk themselves out, and we've got to reposition ourselves as being, maybe reluctantly, but the right takes the decision off of this. The right has to be in favor of free speech too. Mike: All right. And also at this time, the far right was rebuilding. In the UK, they shifted their focus from overt antisemitism and fascism to nebulously populist anti-Black racism. The problem for them, of course, was that practically no one was fooled by this shift because it was all the same people. So, what was going on with the far right leading into the 70s? Evan, do you want to start? Evan: Yeah. So after Mosley is defeated in Britain by the 43 Group and the kind of antifascism after the war, he moves shortly to Ireland and then comes back to the UK. Interestingly, he uses universities and particularly debates with the Oxford Union, the Cambridge Union, and other kind of university societies, to find a new audience because they can't organize on the streets. So he uses–throughout the '50s and the '60s–these kind of university platforms to try and build a fascist movement. At the same time, there are people who were kind of also around in the '30s and the '40s who are moving to build a new fascist movement. It doesn't really get going into '67 when the National Front is formed from several different groups that come together, and they're really pushed into the popular consciousness because of Enoch Powell and his Rivers of Blood Speech. Enoch Powell was a Tory politician. He had been the Minister for Health in the Conservative government, and then in '68 he launches this Rivers of Blood Speech which is very much anti-immigration. This legitimizes a lot of anti-immigrationist attitudes, and part of that is that the National Front rides his coattails appealing to people who are conservatives but disaffected with the mainstream conservatism and what they saw as not being hard enough in immigration, and that they try to build off the support of the disaffected right; so, people who were supporting Enoch Powell, supporting the Monday Club which is another hard right faction in the conservatives. And in that period up until about the mid 1970s, that's the National Front's raison d'etre; it's about attracting anti-immigrationists, conservatives to build up the movement as an electoral force rather than a street force which comes later in the '70s. Mike: There was also the Apartheid movement, or the pro-Apartheid movement, that they were building on at this time as well, right? Evan: Yeah. So at this time there's apartheid in South Africa. In 1965, the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia has a unilateral declaration of independence from Britain to maintain White minority rule. And a lot of these people who are around Powell, the Monday Club, the National Front, against decolonization more broadly, and also then support White minority rule in southern Africa. So a lot of these people end up vocalizing support for South Africa, vocalizing support for Rhodesia, and that kind of thing. And it's a mixture of anti-communism and opposition to multiracial democracy. That's another thing which they try to take on to campus in later years. Mike: So finally we get to No Platform. Now, Evan, you contend that No Platform was less than a new direction in antifascist politics than a formalization of tactics that had developed organically on the left. Can you talk a bit about that? Evan: Yeah, I'll give a quick, very brief, lead up to No Platform and to what's been happening in the late '60s. So Enoch Powell who we mentioned, he comes to try and speak on campus several times throughout the late 60s and early 70s. These are often disrupted by students that there's an argument that, "Why should Enoch Powell be allowed to come onto campus? We don't need people like that to be speaking." This happens in the late 60s. Then in '73, Hans Eysenck, who was a psychologist who was very vocal about the connection between race and IQ, he attempts to speak at the London School of Economics and his speech is disrupted by a small group of Maoists. And then also– Mike: And they physically disrupted that speech, right? That wasn't just– Evan: Yeah, they punched him and pushed him off stage and stuff like that. And a month later, Samuel Huntington who is well known now for being the Clash of Civilizations guy, he went to speak at Sussex University, and students occupied a lecture theater so he couldn't talk because they opposed his previous work with the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. This led to a moral panic beginning about the end of free speech on campus, that it's either kind of through sit-ins or through direct violence, but in the end students are intolerant. And that's happening in that five years before we get to No Platform. Mike: One thing I didn't get a good sense of from your books was what these socialist groups that were No Platforming fascists prior to the NUS policy stood for otherwise. Can we talk about the factionalization of the left in the UK in the 60s and 70s? David, maybe you can help us out on this one. David: Yeah, sure. The point to grasp, which is that the whole center of British discourse in the ‘70s was way to the left of where it is in Britain today, let alone anywhere else in the world. That from, say, ‘64 to ‘70, we had a Labour government, and around the Labour Party. We had really, really strong social movements. You know, we had something like roughly 50% of British workers were members of trade unions. We'll get on later to the Students Union, that again was a movement in which hundreds of thousands of people participated. Two particular groups that are going to be important for our discussion are the International Socialists and International Marxist Group, but maybe if I kind of go through the British left sort of by size starting from largest till we get down to them. So the largest wing we've got on the British left is Labour Party. This is a party with maybe about half a million members, but kind of 20 million affiliated members through trade unions, and it's gonna be in and out of government. Then you've got the Communist Party which is getting quite old as an organization and is obviously tied through Cold War politics to the Soviet Union. And then you get these smaller groups like the IS, the IMG. And they're Trotskyist groups so they're in the far left of labor politics as revolutionaries, but they have quite a significant social heft, much more so than the far left in Britain today because, for example, their members are involved in editing magazines like Oz. There is a moment where there's a relatively easy means for ideas to merge in the far left and then get transmitted to the Labour Party and potentially even to Labour ministers and into government. Mike: Okay, do you want to talk about the International Marxist Group and the International Socialists? Evan: Do you want me to do that or David? Mike: Yes, that'd be great. Evan: Okay. So as David mentioned, there's the Communist Party and then there's the International Socialists and the International Marxist Group. The International Marxist Group are kind of heavily based in the student movement. They're like the traditional student radicals. Tariq Ali is probably the most famous member at this stage. And they have this counter cultural attitude in a way. International Socialists are a different form of Trotskyism, and they're much more about, not so much interested in the student movement, but kind of like a rank and file trade unionism that kind of stuff, opposition to both capitalism and Soviet communism. And the IS, the IMG, and sections of the Communist Party all coalesce in the student movement, which forms the basis for pushing through a No Platform policy in the Nationalist Union of Students in 1974. Mike: Okay. So in 1974, the National Union of Students passes their No Platform policy. Now before we get into that, what is the National Union of Students? Because we don't have an analogue to that in the US. Evan, you want to tackle this one? Evan: Yeah. Basically, every university has a student union or a form of student union–some kind of student body–and the National Union of Students is the national organization, the peak body which organizes the student unions on all the various campuses around the country. Most of the student unions are affiliated to the NUS but some aren't. The NUS is a kind of democratic body and oversees student policy, but individual student unions can opt in or opt out of whether they follow NUS guidelines. And I think what needs to be understood is that the NUS was a massive organization back in those days. You know, hundreds of thousands of people via the student unions become members of the NUS. And as David was saying, the political discourse is much bigger in the '60s and '70s through bodies like this as well as things like the trade union movement. The student movement has engaged hundreds of thousands of students across Britain about these policies much more than we see anything post the 1970s. David: If I could just add a sentence or two there, that's all right. I mean, really to get a good sense of scale of this, if you look at, obviously you have the big set piece annual conventions or conferences of the National Union of Students. Actually, it doesn't even just have one a year, it has two a year. Of these two conferences, if you just think about when the delegates are being elected to them how much discussion is taking place in local universities. If you go back to some local university meetings, it's sometimes very common that you see votes of 300 students going one way, 400 another, 700 going one way in some of the larger universities. So there's an absolute ferment of discussion around these ideas. Which means that when there are set piece motions to pass, they have a democratic credibility. And they've had thousands of people debating and discussing them. It's not just like someone going on to one conference or getting something through narrowly on a show of hands. There's a feeling that these debates are the culmination of what's been a series of debates in each local university. And we've got over 100 of them in Britain. Mike: Okay, how much is the student union's presence felt on campus by the average student? Evan: That'd be massive. David: Should I do this? Because I'm a bit older than Evan and I went to university in the UK. And it's a system which is slowly being dismantled but when I was student, which is like 30 years ago, this was still largely in place. In almost every university, the exceptions are Oxford and Cambridge, but in every other university in Britain, almost all social activity takes place on a single site on campus. And that single site invariably is owned by the student's union. So your students union has a bar, has halls, it's where– They're the plumb venues on campus if you want to have speakers or if you want to have– Again, say when punk happened a couple of years later, loads and loads of the famous punk performances were taking place in the student union hall in different universities. One of the things we're going to get onto quite soon is the whole question of No Platform and what it meant to students. What I want to convey is that for loads of students having this discussion, when they're saying who should be allowed on campus or who shouldn't be allowed on campus, what's the limits? They feel they've got a say because there are a relatively small number of places where people will speak. Those places are controlled by the students' union. They're owned and run by the students' union. It's literally their buildings, their halls, they feel they've got a right to set who is allowed, who's actually chosen, and who also shouldn't be invited. Mike: Okay, cool. Thank you. Thank you for that. That's a lot more than I knew about student unions. Okay. Evan, this is the bread and butter of your book. How did No Platform come about in the NUS? Evan: So, what part of the fascist movement is doing, the far-right movement, is that it is starting to stray on campus. I talked about the major focus of the National Front is about appealing to disaffected Tories in this stage, but they are interfering in student affairs; they're disrupting student protests; they're trying to intimidate student politics. And in 1973, the National Front tried to set up students' association on several campuses in Britain And there's a concern about the fascist presence on campus. So those three left-wing groups– the IMG, the IS and the Communist Party–agree at the student union level that student unions should not allow fascists and racists to use student buildings, student services, clubs that are affiliated to the student union. They shouldn't be allowed to access these. And that's where they say about No Platform is that the student union should deny a platform to fascists and racists. And in 1974 when they put this policy to a vote and it's successful, they add, "We're going to fight them by any means necessary," because they've taken that inspiration from the antifascism of the '30s and '40s. Mike: Okay. Now opinion was clearly divided within the NUS. No Platform did not pass unanimously. So Evan, what was opinion like within the NUS regarding No Platform? Evan: Well, it passed, but there was opposition. There was opposition from the Federation of Conservative Students, but there was also opposition from other student unions who felt that No Platform was anti-free speech, so much so that in April 1974 it becomes policy, but in June 1974, they have to have another debate about whether this policy should go ahead. It wins again, but this is the same time as it happens on the same day that the police crackdown on anti-fascist demonstration in Red Lion Square in London. There's an argument that fascism is being propped up by the police and is a very real threat, so that we can't give any quarter to fascism. We need to build this No Platform policy because it is what's standing in between society and the violence of fascism. Mike: Okay. I do want to get into this issue of free speech because the US has a First Amendment which guarantees free speech, but that doesn't exist in Britain. So what basis is there for free speech in the law? I think, David, you could probably answer this best because you're a lawyer. David: [laughs] Thank you. In short, none. The basic difference between the UK and the US– Legally, we're both common law countries. But the thing that really changes in the US is this is then overlaid with the Constitution, which takes priority. So once something has been in the Constitution, that's it. It's part of your fundamental law, and the limits to it are going to be narrow. Obviously, there's a process. It's one of the things I do try and talk about in my book that the Supreme Court has to discover, has to find free speech in the American Constitution. Because again, up until the Second World War, essentially America has this in the Constitution, but it's not particularly seen as something that's important or significant or a key part of the Constitution. The whole awe and  mysticism of the First Amendment as a First Amendment is definitely something that's happened really in the last 40-50 years. Again, I don't want to go into this because it's not quite what you're getting at. But certainly, in the '20s for example, you get many of the big American decisions on free speech which shaped American law today. What everyone forgets is in every single one of them, the Supreme Court goes on to find some reason why free speech doesn't apply. So then it becomes this doctrine which is tremendously important to be ushered out and for lip service be given to, just vast chunks of people, communists, people who are in favor of encouraging abortion, contraception, whatever, they're obviously outside free speech, and you have to come up with some sophisticated justifications for that. In Britain, we don't have a constitution. We don't have laws with that primary significance. We do kind of have a weak free speech tradition, and that's kind of important for some things like there's a European Convention on Human Rights that's largely drafted by British lawyers and that tries to create in Articles 10 and 11 a general support on free speech. So they think there are things in English legal tradition, in our common law tradition, which encourage free speech.  But if we've got it as a core principle of the UK law today, we've got it because of things like that like the European Convention on Human Rights. We haven't got it because at any point in the last 30, or 50, or 70 or 100 years, British judges or politicians thought this was a really essential principle of law. We're getting it these days but largely by importing it from the United States, and that means we're importing the worst ideological version of free speech rather than what free speech ought to be, which is actually protecting the rights of most people to speak. And if you've got some exceptions, some really worked out well thought exceptions for coherent and rational reasons. That's not what we've got now in Britain, and it's not what we've really ever had. Mike: Evan, you do a good job of documenting how No Platform was applied. The experience appears to be far from uniform. Let's talk about that a little bit. Evan: Yeah, so there's like a debate happening about who No Platform should be applied to because it states– The official policy is that No Platform for racists and fascists, and there's a debate of who is a racist enough to be denied a platform. There's agreement so a group like the National Front is definitely to be No Platform. Then there's a gray area about the Monday Club. The Monday Club is a hard right faction within the conservatives. But there's a transmission of people and ideas between National Front and the Monday Club. Then there's government ministers because the British immigration system is a racist system. The Home Office is seen as a racist institution. So there's a debate of whether government politicians should be allowed to have a platform because they uphold institutional racism. We see this at different stages is that a person from the Monday Club tries to speak at Oxford and is chased out of the building. Keith Joseph, who's one of the proto-Thatcherites in the Conservative Party, comes to speak at LSE in the 1977-78 and that there is a push to say that he can't be allowed to speak because of the Conservative Party's immigration policies and so forth like that. So throughout the '70s, there is a debate of the minimalist approach with a group like the International Socialists saying that no, outright fascists are the only ones to be No Platformed. Then IMG and other groups are saying, "Actually, what about the Monday Club? What about the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children? What about Conservative Ministers? Are these people, aren't they also sharing that kind of discriminatory agenda that shouldn't be allowed a platform?" Mike: Okay, and there were some objections within the National Union of Students to some applications of No Platform, right? Evan: Yeah, well, not so much in the '70s. But once you get into the '80s, there's a big push for it. But probably the biggest issue in the '70s is that the application of No Platform to pro-Israel groups and Jewish student groups. In 1975, there's a UN resolution that Zionism is a form of racism, and that several student groups say, "Well, pro-Israel groups are Zionists. If Zionism is a form of racism and No Platform should be applied to racists or fascists, shouldn't they the pro-Israel groups then be denied a platform? Should pro-Israel groups be disaffiliated from student unions, etc.?" Several student unions do this at the local level, but there's a backlash from the NUS at the national level so much so the NUS actually suspends No Platform for about six months. It is reintroduced with an explicit piece of it saying that if No Platform is reinstituted, it can't be applied to Zionists groups, to pro-Israel groups, to Jewish societies. But a reason that they can't, the NUS can't withhold No Platform as a policy in the late 1970s is because they've been playing catch up because by this time, the Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism are major mass movements of people because the National Front is seen as a major problem, and the NUS has to have some kind of anti-Fascist, anti-racist response. They can't sit on their hands because they're going dragged along by the Anti-Nazi League. Mike: One thing that you talked about in your book, David, is that simultaneous to No Platform was this movement for hate speech prohibitions. Talk about how these movements differed. David: Well, I think the best way to convey it is if we go back to the motion that was actually passed at the National Union of Students spring conference in May '74. If you don't mind, I'll just begin by reading it out. Conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance, financial or otherwise, to openly racist or fascist organizations or societies (e.g., Monday Club, National Front, Action Party, Union Movement, National Democratic Party) and to deny them a platform. What I want to try and convey is that when you think about how you got this coalition within the National Union of Students in support of that motion, there were like two or three different ideas being signaled in that one motion. And if you then apply them, particularly what's happening as we're talking 50 years later now, if you apply them through the subsequent 50 years of activism, they do point in quite different directions. To just start up, “conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance” dadadada. What's really been good at here, I'm sure some of the people who passed No Platform promotion just had this idea, right? What we are, we're a movement of students' unions. We're a movement of buildings which are run by students and are for students. People have said to themselves, all this motion is really committing us to do is to say that we won't give any assistance to racist or fascist organizations. So what that means in practice is in our buildings, in our halls, we won't invite them in. Now, it may be that, say, the university will invite a conservative minister or the university will allow some far-right person to have a platform in election time. But the key idea, one key idea that's going on with this, just those things won't happen in our students' unions. They're our buildings; they're our halls. To use a term that hasn't really been coined yet, but this is in people's heads, is the idea of a safe space. It's just, student unions are our safe space. We don't need to worry about who exactly these terrible people are. Whoever and whatever they are, we don't want them on our patch. That's idea number one. Idea number two is that this is really about stopping fascists. It's not about any other form of discrimination. I'll come on to idea three in a moment. With idea three, this is about fascist organizations. You can see in a sense the motion is talking to people, people coming on and saying like I might not even be particularly left wing, but I don't like fascists. Evan talked about say for example, Zionist organizations. Could a Zionist organization, which is militantly antifascist, could they vote this motion? Yes. And how they'd sell it to themselves is this is only about fascism. So you can see this in the phrase, this is about refusing systems to “openly racist or fascist organizations,” and then look at the organizations which are listed: the National Front, well yeah, they're fascists; the Union Movement, yeah, they're fascists; the National Democratic Party, they're another little fascist splinter group.And then the only one there that isn't necessarily exactly fascist is the Monday Club who are a bunch of Tories who've been in the press constantly in the last two years when this motion is written for their alliance with National Front holding demonstrations and meetings together. So some people, this is just about protecting their space. Some people, this is about excluding fascists and no one else. But then look again at the motion, you'll see another word in there. “Conference recognizes the need to refuse any assistance to openly racist or fascist organizations.” So right from the start, there's a debate, what does this word racist mean in the motion? Now, one way you could read the motion is like this. From today, we can all see that groups like the National Front are fascists. Their leaders can spend most of the rest of the decade appearing constantly in literature produced by anti-fascist groups, identifying them as fascist, naming them as fascist, then we have to have a mass movement against fascism and nazism. But the point is in 1974, that hadn't happened yet. In most people's heads, groups like the National Front was still, the best way to describe them that no one could disagree to at least say they were openly racist. That was how they described themselves. So you could ban the National Front without needing to have a theological discussion about whether they fitted exactly within your definition of fascism. But the point I really want to convey is that the motion succeeds because it blurs the difference between saying anything can be banned because it's fascist specifically or anything can be banned because it's racist or fascist. This isn't immediately apparent in 1974, but what becomes pretty apparent over time is for example as Evan's documented already, even before 1974, there have been non-fascists, there have been conservatives going around student unions speaking in pretty racist terms. All right, so can they be banned? If the answer is this goes to racists or fascists, then definitely they can be banned. But now wait a second. Is there anyone else in British politics who's racist? Well, at this point, both main political parties are standing for election on platforms of excluding people from Britain effectively on the basis of the color of their skin. All right, so you can ban all the main political parties in Britain. All right, well, how about the newspapers? Well, every single newspaper in Britain, even the pro-Labour ones, is running front page articles supporting the British government. All right, so you could ban all newspapers in Britain. Well, how about the television channel? Well, we've only got three, but the best-selling comedies on all of them are comedies which make fun of people because they're foreigners and because they're Black. You can list them all. There's dozens of these horrible programs, which for most people in Britain now are unwatchable. But they're all of national culture in Britain in the early '70s. Alright, so you say, all right, so students we could ban every television channel in Britain, every newspaper in Britain, and every political party in Britain, except maybe one or two on the far left. It's like, wait a second people, I've only been doing racism. Well, let's take seriously the notion, if we're against all forms of racism, how can we be against racism without also being against sexism? Without being against homophobia? So the thing about No Platform is there's really only two ways you can read it in the end, and certainly once you apply it outside the 1970s today. Number one, you can say this is a relatively tightly drawn motion, which is trying to pin the blame on fascists as something which is growing tremendously fast in early 1970s and trying to keep them out. Maybe it'd be good to keep other people out too, but it's not trying to keep everyone out. Or you've got, what we're confronting today which is essentially this is an attempt to prevent students from suffering the misery, the hatred, the fury of hate speech. This is an attempt to keep all hate speech off campus, but with no definition or limit on hate speech. Acceptance of hate speech 50 years later might be much more widely understood than it is in early '70s. So you've got warring in this one motion two completely different notions of who it's right politically to refuse platforms to. That's going to get tested out in real life, but it's not been resolved by the 1974 motion, which in a sense looks both ways. Either the people want to keep the ban narrow or the people want to keep it broad, either of them can look at that motion and say yeah, this is the motion which gives the basis to what we're trying to do. Mike: Okay. I do want to get back to the notion of the maximalist versus the precisionist view of No Platform. But first before that, I want to talk about the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism to just get more of a broader context than just the students in Britain in terms of antifascism. David, do you want to talk about that? David: Okay. Well, I guess because another of my books is about Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League, so I'll try and do this really short. I'll make two points. First is that these movements which currently ended in the 1970s are really very large. They're probably one of the two largest street movements in post-war British history. The only other one that's candidate for that is the anti-war movement, whether that's in the '80s or the early 2000s. But they're on that same scale as amongst the largest mass movements in British history. In terms of Rock Against Racism, the Anti-Nazi League, the total number of people involved in them is massive; it's around half a million to a million people. They're single most famous events, two huge three carnivals in London in 1977, which each have hundreds of thousands of people attending them and bring together the most exciting bands. They are the likes of The Clash, etc, etc. It's a movement which involves people graffitiing against Nazis, painting out far-right graffiti. It's a movement which is expressed in streets in terms of set piece confrontations, clashes with far-right, Lewisham in ‘76, Southall in ‘79. These are just huge movements which involve a whole generation of people very much associated with the emergence of punk music and when for a period in time in Britain are against that kind of visceral street racism, which National Front represents. I should say that they have slightly different attitudes, each of them towards the issue of free speech, but there's a massive interchange of personnel. They're very large. The same organizations involved in each, and they include an older version of the same activist who you've seen in student union politics in '74 as were they you could say they graduate into involvement in the mass movements like Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. Now, I want to say specifically about the Anti-Nazi League and free speech. The Anti-Nazi League takes from student politics this idea of No Platform and tries to base a whole mass movement around it. The idea is very simply, the National Front should not be allowed a platform to speak, to organize, to win converts anywhere. Probably with the Anti-Nazi League, the most important expressions of this is two things. Firstly, when the National Front tries to hold election meetings, which they do particularly in the run up to '79 election, and those are picketed, people demonstrated outside of them  A lot of them are the weekend in schools. One at Southall is in a town hall. These just lead to repeated clashes between the Anti-Nazi League and the National Front. The other thing which the Anti-Nazi League takes seriously is trying to organize workers into closing off opportunities for the National Front spread their propaganda. For example, their attempts to get postal workers to refuse to deliver election materials to the National Front. Or again, there's something which it's only possible to imagine in the '70s; you couldn't imagine it today. The National Front is entitled to election broadcasts because it's standing parliament. Then the technical workers at the main TV stations go on strike and refuse to let these broadcasts go out. So in all these ways, there's this idea around the Anti-Nazi League of No Platform. But No Platform is No Platform for fascists. It's the National Front should not get a chance to spread its election message. It's not yet that kind of broader notion of, in essence, anything which is hate speech is unacceptable. In a sense, it can't be. Because when you're talking about students' unions and their original No Platform motion and so forth, at the core of it is they're trying to control their own campuses. There's a notion of students' power. The Anti-Nazi League, it may be huge mass movement and may have hundreds of thousands people involved in it, but no one in Anti-Nazi League thinks that this organization represents such a large majority that they could literally control the content of every single TV station, the content of every single newspaper. You can try and drive the National Front out, but if people in that movement had said right, we actually want to literally carve out every expression of racism and every expression of sexism from society, that would have been a yet bigger task by another enormous degrees of scale. Mike: Okay, I do want to talk a little bit more about Rock Against Racism just particularly how it was founded, what led to its founding. I think it gives a good sense of where Britain was at, politically. David: Right. Rock Against Racism was founded in 1976. The two main events which are going on in the heads of the organizers when they launched it, number one, David Bowie's weird fascist turn, his interview with Playboy magazine in which he talks about Hitler being the first rock and roll superstar, the moment where he was photographed returning from tours in America and comes to Victoria Station and appears to give a Nazi salute. The reason why with Bowie it matters is because he's a hero. Bowie seems to represent the emergence of a new kind of masculinity, new kind of attitude with sexuality. If someone like that is so damaged that he's going around saying Hitler is the greatest, that's really terrifying to Bowie fans and for a wider set of people. The other person who leads directly to the launch of Rock Against Racism is Eric Clapton. He interrupts a gig in Birmingham in summer '76 to just start giving this big drunken rant about how some foreigner pinched his missus' bum and how Enoch Powell is the greatest ever. The reason why people find Eric Clapton so contemptible and why this leads to such a mass movement is weirdly it's the opposite of Bowie that no one amongst the young cool kids regards Clapton as a hero. But being this number one star and he's clearly spent his career stealing off Black music and now he's going to support that horror of Enoch Powell as well, it just all seems so absolutely ridiculous and outrageous that people launch an open letter to the press and that gets thousands of people involved. But since you've asked me about Rock Against Racism, I do want to say Rock Against Racism does have a weirdly and certainly different attitude towards free speech to the Anti-Nazi League. And this isn't necessarily something that was apparent at the time. It's only kind of apparent now when you look back at it. But one of the really interesting things about Rock Against Racism is that because it was a movement of young people who were trying to reclaim music and make cultural form that could overturn British politics and change the world, is that they didn't turn around and say, "We just want to cut off all the racists and treat them as bad and shoot them out into space," kind of as what the Anti-Nazi League's trying to do to fascists. Rock Against Racism grasped that if you're going to try and change this cultural milieu which is music, you actually had to have a bit of a discussion and debate and an argument with the racists, but they tried to have it on their own terms. So concretely, what people would do is Rock Against Racism courted one particular band called Sham 69, who were one of the most popular young skinhead bands, but also had a bunch of neo-nazis amongst their roadies and things like that. They actually put on gigs Sham 69, put them on student union halls, surrounded them with Black acts. Knew that these people were going to bring skinheads into the things, had them performing under Rock Against Racism banner, and almost forced the band to get into the state of practical warfare with their own fans to try and say to them, "We don't want you to be nazis anymore. We want you to stop this." That dynamic, it was incredibly brave, was incredibly bold. It was really destructive for some of the individuals involved like Jimmy Pursey, the lead singer of Sham 69. Effectively saying to them, "Right, we want you to put on a gig every week where you're going to get bottled by your own fans, and you're going to end up like punching them, just to get them to stop being racist." But we can't see any other way of shifting this milieu of young people who we see as our potential allies. There were lots of sort of local things like that with Rock Against Racism. It wasn't about creating a safe space in which bad ideas couldn't come in; it was about going onto the enemy's ideological trend and going, "Right, on this trend, we can have an argument. We can win this argument." So it is really quite an interesting cultural attempt to change the politics of the street. Mike: Okay, now you two have very different ideas of what No Platform is in its essence. Evan, you believe that No Platform was shifting in scope from its inception and it is properly directed at any institutional platform afforded to vociferous bigots. While David you believe that No Platform is only properly applied against fascists, and going beyond that is a dangerous form of mission creep. Now, I absolutely hate debates. [laughter] I think the format does more to close off discussion than to draw out information on the topic at hand. So, what I don't want to happen is have you two arguing with each other about your positions on No Platform (and maybe me, because I have yet a third position). David: Okay Mike, honestly, we've known each other for years. We've always been– Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah. David: –your listeners will pick up, there's loads we agree on, too. So I'm sure we can deal without that rubbish debate. [Evan laughs] Mike: All right. So what I'd like to do is ground this discussion as much as possible in history rather than abstract moral principles. So in that interest, can each of you talk a bit about the individuals and groups that have taken the position on No Platform that you have, and how they've defended their positions? David let's start with you. What groups were there insisting that No Platform was necessary but its necessity was limited to overt fascists? David: Well, I think in practice, that was the approach of Rock Against Racism. They took a very different attitude towards people who were tough ideological fascists, to the people who were around them who were definitely racist, but who were capable of being argued out of that. I mean, I've given the example of the policy of trying to have a debate with Sham 69 or use them as a mechanism to change their audience. What I want to convey is in every Rock Against Racism group around the country, they were often attempts to something very similar. People talk about Birmingham and Leeds, whether it be sort of local Rock Against Racism groups, they might put on– might get a big band from some other city once a month, but three weeks out of four, all they're doing is they're putting on a local some kind of music night, and they might get a hundred people there. But they'd go out of the way to invite people who they saw as wavering supporters of The National Front. But the point is this wasn't like– We all know how bad faith debates work. It's something like it's two big ego speakers who disagree with each other, giving them half an hour each to debate and know their audience is already persuaded that one of them's an asshole, one of them's great. This isn't what they were trying to do. They were trying to win over one by one wavering racists by putting them in an environment where they were surrounded by anti-racists. So it was about trying to create a climate where you could shift some people who had hateful ideas in their head, but were also capable of being pulled away from them. They didn't do set piece debates with fascists because they knew that the set piece debates with fascists, the fascists weren't going to listen to what they were going to say anyway. But what they did do is they did try to shift people in their local area to try and create a different atmosphere in their local area. And they had that attitude towards individual wavering racists, but they never had that attitude towards the fascist leaders. The fascist leaders as far as they're concerned, very, very simple, we got to close up the platform to them. We got to deprive them of a chance. Another example, Rock Against Racism, how it kind of made those sorts of distinctions. I always think with Rock Against Racism you know, they had a go at Clapton. They weren't at all surprised when he refused to apologize. But with Bowie, there was always a sense, "We want to create space for Bowie. We want to get Bowie back because Bowie's winnable." That's one of the things about that movement, is that the absolute uncrossable line was fascism. But if people could be pulled back away from that and away from the ideas associated with that, then they wanted to create the space to make that happen. Mike: Okay, and Evan, what groups took the Maximalist approach to No Platform and what was their reasoning? Evan: Yeah. So I think the discussion happens once the National Front goes away as the kind of the major threat. So the 1979 election, the National Front does dismally, and we can partially attribute that to the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism, kind of this popular antifascist movement. But there's also that Margaret Thatcher comes to power, and there's an argument that's made by historians is that she has pulled away the racist vote away from the National Front back to the conservatives. It's really kind of a realignment of leftwing politics under Thatcher because it's a much more confrontational conservative government, but there's also kind of these other issues which are kind of the new social movements and what we would now term as identity politics, they're forming in the sixties and seventies and are really big issues in the 1980s. So kind of like feminism, gay rights, andthat,  there's an argument among some of the students that if we have a No Platform for racism and fascism, why don't we have a No Platform for sexism? Why don't we have a No Platform for homophobia? And there are certain student unions who try to do this. So LSE in 1981, they endorse a No Platform for sexist as part of a wider fight against sexism, sexual harassment, sexual violence on campus is that misogynist speakers shouldn't be allowed to have a presence on campus. Several student unions kind of have this also for against homophobia, and as a part of this really divisive issue in the mid 1980s, the conservative government is quite homophobic. Section 28 clause 28 is coming in in the late eighties. It's a whole kind of homophobia of AIDS. There's instances where students object to local Tory politicians who were kind of outwardly, explicitly homophobic, that they should be not allowed to speak on stage. Then also bubbling along in the background is kind of the supporters of apartheid, so South African diplomats or kind of other people who support the South African regime including Conservative politicians, is that several times throughout the 1980s, they are invited to speak on campus, and there's kind of a massive backlash against this. Sometimes the No Platform policy is invoked. Sometimes it's just simple disruption or kind of pickets or vigils against them. But once fascism is kind of not the main issue, and all these different kind of politics is going on in the eighties, is that there's argument that No Platform for fascism and racism was important, but fascism and racism is only one form of hate speech; it's only one form of discrimination; it's only one form of kind of bodily violence; and we should take them all into consideration. Mike: Okay. Now there's been a fair bit of backlash against No Platform in kind of any of its forms from various sectors, so let's talk a bit about that. Let's start with the fascist themselves. So their response kind of changed somewhat over time in response to No Platform. David, you talk about this. David: Yeah. In the early ‘70s in Britain or I suppose in the late ‘70s too, what's extraordinary is how little use fascist make out of saying, "We are being attacked, free speech applies. We've got to have the right to be heard." I made the point earlier that Britain doesn't have a strong legal culture of free speech. We do have some culture of free speech. And again, it's not that the fascists never use these terms at all, they use them, but they use them very half-heartedly. Their dominant approach is to say, "We are being attacked by the left. The left don't understand we have better fighters than them. If they attack us on the streets, we'll fight back. In the end, we'll be the ones who win in a kind of battle of machismo, street fighting power." Now A, that doesn't happen because actually they lose some set piece confrontations, mostly at Lewisham in 1977. But it's interesting that they don't do the kind of thing which you'd expect the far right to do today, which is to say, like the British far right does today, they constantly say, "We're under attack. Free speech demands that we be heard. We're the only people who take free speech seriously." There's a continuous process in the British far right these days of endlessly going on social media every time anyone even disagrees with them a little bit, they immediately have their faces taped up and present themselves as the victim of this terrible conspiracy when in the mid-'70s when there really were people trying to put the far right out of business, that isn't what the far right did. I think, in essence, a whole bunch of things have to change. You have to get kind of a hardening of the free speech discourse in the United States; you have to have things like the attack on political correctness; the move by the American center-right from being kind of equivocal on free speech to being extremely pro-free speech; and you need to get the importation into Britain of essentially the same kind of free speech discourse as you have in States. Once we get all of that, the British far right eventually twigs that it's a far more effective way of presenting themselves and winning supporters by posing as the world's biggest defenders of free speech.  But in the ‘70s, they haven't learned that lesson yet, and their response is much more leaden and ineffective. In essence, they say, "No Platform's terrible because it's bullying us." But what they never have the gumption to say is, "Actually, we are the far right. We are a bunch of people putting bold and dangerous and exciting ideas, and if we are silenced, then all bold and dangerous and difficult ideas will be silenced too." That's something which a different generation of writers will get to and will give them all sorts of successes. But in the ‘70s, they haven't found it yet. Mike: Okay. Now fascists also had some uneasy allies as far as No Platform is concerned among Tories and libertarians. So let's talk about the Tories first, what was their opposition to No Platform about? Evan, you talk about this quite a bit in your book. Evan: Yeah. So the conservative opposition to No Platform is essentially saying that it's a stock standard thing that the left call everyone fascist. So they apply it to broadly and is that in the ‘80s, there's a bunch of conservative politicians to try to go onto campus, try to speak, and there's massive protests. They say that, "Look, this is part of an intolerant left, that they can't see the distinction between fascism and a Conservative MP. They don't want to allow anyone to have free speech beyond that kind of small narrow left wing bubble." In 1986, there is an attempt, after a kind of a wave of protest in '85, '86, there is an attempt by the government to implement some kind of protection for free speech on campus. This becomes part of the Education Act of 1986, that the university has certain obligations to ensure, where practical, free speech applies and no speech is denied. But then it's got all kind of it can't violate the Racial Discrimination Act, the Public Order Act, all those kind of things. Also, quite crucially for today, that 1986 act didn't explicitly apply to student unions. So student unions argued for the last 30 years that they are exempt from any legislation and that they were legally allowed to pursue their No Platform policy.

Hometown Radio 06/06/22 3p: Community Spotlight shines on The Monday Club

Live Recorded Set from VirtualDJ Radio ClubZone

THE TRUTH ABOUT SPARKING - ELECTRICIANS MONDAY CLUB PODCAST This week's guest is Jamie Blatant Electricians Monday club podcast is for electricians, apprentices and anyone associated with the electrical trade, every week we record a podcast to talk about important subjects that's electricians care about! But along the way you will find crazy stories lots of banter and hopefully come out the other side informed but amused…. Awesome Instagram apprentice Matthew Taylor https://www.instagram.com/xx_the_dj_dude_xx/?hl=en Our awesome sponsor litheaudio https://www.litheaudio.com/ become a registered installer for litheaudio and get a free tshirt and sticker pack litheaudio@cwagencies.london Electricians Monday Club Merch https://www.bayspokeprinting.co.uk/product-page/electricians-monday-club-t-shirt This episode hosts are: Fatsam - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm0b-RgisV23n5R2w3fHUaA A industrial and commercial electrician who worked in London on every major project for the last 10 years, expert in industrial relations between agency electricians and tier 1 contractors. Still on the tools managing projects for the NHS and private hospitals Mark Allison - https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkAllisonPowerSonic Mark Allison is also a time-served electrician and is still on the tools, as well as managing his company, Power Sonic Ltd. Mark has been working as an electrician for over 20 years. in 2020, Mark created the Apprentice 121 movement with an aim to link employers with apprentices and is now approaching 1000 apprentices employed via Apprentice 121. Jamie blatant - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCduaH-Au7koVBVwj_5f1OSA industrial electrical engineer - British army reserve electrical engineer -STEM ambassador - youtuber - and now electrical engineering trainer passionate about engineering, science and the built environment. easily excited by all manner of pipes and cables and the need to pass on skills and information to others. #electrician #electriciansmondayclub #evchargerinstallationuk #mondayclub #niceic #Electricalsolutions #Podcast #electricalPodcast #ElectriciansPodcast #Electricianstoolbag #Electriciansbelt #Electriciansworkwear #womeninthetrades #femaleelectrician #Electricialdiscussion #BS7671 #BANTER #PODCAST

Niamh Cullen speaks to me today about friendship, love and starting afresh. Niamh is a fitness instructor and started her business Monday Club in 2019. She speaks to me today about moving on from a past relationship and starting over. Niamh has been very open about struggling at times with her mental health and having up and down days. Today, she goes into detail about what those days look like and how with therapy, she found a way through. This is a gorgeous conversation and I'm so grateful to Niamh for coming onto The Good Glow to tell her story.  This podcast is brought to you with thanks to Ireland's Leading Pharmacy Chain, Lloyds Pharmacy. The Good Glow Wellness Programme is now available.