Some of the most infamous free speech warriors today are those associated with Spiked Online and its predecessors, the Living Marxism network and the Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP and the Living Marxism network are currently in the news because a number of those involved with them are now involved in the Brexit Party. As Spiked Online has been leading the charge for many years against ‘no platform’ policies on campuses in Britain and elsewhere, this post looks at the pre-history of Spiked and how the RCP’s opposition to ‘no platform’ developed since the late 1970s. It is based on research that I am doing for a book on the history of ‘no platform’ and free speech at British universities since the 1950s.

With a concern over the growth of the BNP in the early 1990s and the BNP’s Derek Beackon winning a local council seat in East London in…