There is no organised far-right student movement.
As the AfD in Germany, Le Pen’s National Rally in France, Chega in Portugal, and a range of other far right parties across Europe have peeled away young voters, there is no evidence that far-right parties have been able to mobilise British voters in the same way.
The closest there is, and this isn’t the place to debate whether Reform is a far-right party, but the party is more popular with 18-49 year old men than the Conservatives.
But this is different from saying that there are no far-right students. National Action, the proscribed terror group that plotted to murder MP Rosie Duffield, was founded by students who once studied at the University of Warwick and the University of Essex. Alex Davies, National Action’s founder, in an undercover interview with the Mirror said:
We’re targeting universities regularly. That’s something the BNP never had. We’ve built something in a few months the BNP didn’t have in 20 years.
In light of far-right mobilisation on the streets it made us wonder why the far-right lacks a presence on campus and whether this is inevitable.
Prevent
Prevent data shows that far-right extremism is a challenge institutions must grapple with but not a widespread phenomena. The data is fairly limited but what we do know is that there were 35 reports of extreme right-wing radicalisation in 2022-23 up from 30 reports in 2020-21 where a Prevent lead became involved.
Depending how one looks at these things in a population of two million students these numbers are reassuringly low. Someone like William Shawcross, in his controversial review of Prevent, may argue that the information provided on the far-right through the channel sometimes conflates right wing conservatism and the far-right. The likes of Hope not Hate, a campaigning group set up to combat right-wing extremism, as shown in its State of Hate reports, would argue that a normalisation of far right-wing views and rhetoric makes this form of extremism harder to spot.
The danger in looking at the UK’s campuses relative immunity to the far-right is that it could breed complacency. After all, formal tools like Prevent depend on the visibility of behaviours made harder in a world with more online teaching and the reporting of behaviours by peers and victims of hate.
Not all students are young people but it cannot be reasonable to assume the UK’s students are less attracted to the far-right than their European counterparts. More extreme right-wing populists are on the rise in Europe, for instance within both Germany and Austria student fraternity associations provide fertile ground for recruitment. So we don’t see the extreme left-right bifurcation by age that exists in the UK within European student politics.
Student unionism in Austria, for example, is much more overtly political than we would recognise in the UK student movement. Student leaders are elected on the basis of their party affiliation — usually youth wings of major national parties, something we just don’t see in the UK at the moment. Perhaps given the general decline in youth memberships to political parties, students who may hold more extreme right wing views are not seeking political bodies or membership as ways to express themselves.
In looking at the far-right mobilisation across the UK it is also comfortable to believe that these people are not like us. That they are somehow living amongst us but that they do not live with us, and that they are not really British because to be British is to not stand for what they do.
These people may not be our friends but they may be our neighbours, acquaintances, and they may be our students. One of the issues in assessing the far-right on campus is that research is limited and data is very poor. Perhaps the best indicator of activity we have is that the far-right itself has seen universities as grounds for recruitment.
National Front
The idea of recruiting or attempting to recruit students to the far-right is not new. The National Front (NF), an explicitly fascist far-right group, had a membership of 17,500 people in the year immediately before NUS no-platformed it in 1974. In the same period it was no-platformed, student Kevin Gately was tragically killed in an anti-NF rally.
The BNP, the ideological inheritors of the NF, has never had a particularly successful student wing but former University of Liverpool student and BNP member Jack Buckby has been part of a number of attempts to form far-right splinter groups in Britain. During his period at the university he attracted the attention of student newspapers for his attempts to flyer freshers fairs, his standing for various fringe far-right parties, and many years post university his comments to once student political activist Barbara Ntumy that “I hope you don’t get raped” in an exchange on refugees from Syria.
There has since been reports of rising anti-semitism and holocaust denial on campus between 2015 and 2017, the rise and fall of National Action founded by UK university students, and flash points of virulent and explicitly racism including stunts by Generation Identity, and various white t-shirt parties which saw students daubed in racist and otherwise offensive slogans.
And yet, despite these flashpoints, moments of the most vile and extreme kinds of hate, deliberate attempts to cultivate a far-right on campus, there is no successful and organised far-right student movement.
Universities and the country
The lack of support for the far-right in universities isn’t well understood or explored. Through analysing Belong data, academic Elizabeth Simon has demonstrated that graduates are more likely to be socially liberal than non-graduates while being slightly more economically conservative. Crucially, Simon’s research suggests that the difference is not because universities have a direct impact on students’ views but that people who lean left are disproportionately likely to enrol in higher education.
Therefore, one possible explanation for why the far-right has not taken hold is that their natural constituency largely does not exist within universities. This seems plausible up to a point but in the context that close to half of young people now go to university it seems unlikely this would be the only reason for the lack of success. It is even less plausible when considering the large number of older students who, by dint of being older, have more fixed political positions by the time they arrive at university.
It could potentially be that the splintered far-right has not found a single charismatic leader that appeals to students. Right wing groups like Turning Point UK that are aimed at younger people use modern media platforms but their political platform is pretty indistinguishable from any other right-wing group. Contrast this to France’s National Rally who chose 28 year old Jordan Bardella as their leader on a platform that combines slashing income tax for the under 30s with more traditional nationalist policies.
This does beg the question whether a far-right party could find success through adopting a pro-youth platform. In a recent Wonkhe webinar Founding Partner at Public First, Rachel Wolf, warned of a “parochialism in our own country” in assuming that the polarisation of the young, often young men, toward the populist right could not happen here. Wolf highlighted that the UK has had a deeply unpopular conservative government which fermented an anti-conservative electoral result. However, Wolf’s point that the current populist-right is occupied by “arch-libertarians” suggests there is, if not a far-right party waiting to emerge, a route to success for a populist right that combines extreme social conservatism with extreme economic interventionism.
Wolf’s point also questions whether the lack of the success of the far-right could be something to do with the wider UK body politic. Unlike many European contemporaries the UK has a political duopoly that in a first-past-the-post system discourages votes for smaller and fringe parties. Those on the far-left and the far-right can only have electoral success through joining the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. These broad-tent mass membership parties then act as a mediating force through developing agendas for government. Aside from the limited local electoral success of the BNP fringe parties in the UK do not do well.
Other reasons could include the historic commitment to no-platform policies by student leaders has prevented the far-right from getting a strong hold. The disorganisation of the far-right itself with splinters, and factions, and infighting, has prevented concerted action to recruit students. The relative success of left-wing groups and student associations on campus as a countervailing force to the far right. Or the relatively well organised reporting routes for extremist groups catches early radicalisation attempts.
Not here?
The far-right violence that exploited the murder of three young girls in Southport is very real, frightening, and immediate in its exposure to the wider public. The mass demonstrations, not the racism itself which has been present for many communities for many years, feels like a throwback to the 1970s.
The surprise for many is not that these views exist but that so many people felt able to bring them out into the open. The reason for this violence was not the incident in Southport but this was the excuse for groups of mostly white, most young to middle aged, mostly men to mobilise racism on the streets.
The emergence of the far-right is a politics of hate. This can be a hate of authority in the guise of the state, hate for others who you believe have taken something from you, or a deep a hate of yourself in the way that life has turned out.
Students are in ways different to the population but they are not immune to hatred. The scenes that felt impossible are now being explained away by part of the commentariat as an inevitable reaction to a liberal society.
And this means that the sector cannot afford to be complacent. Students are part of society and where parts of society feel emboldened to act in this way they will seek out fellow travellers. Where there is no organised far-right this means being even more vigilant for the signs and actions of the few individuals both within and around campuses.
Thank you for the read. Whilst there are some interesting points, I think it should be noted that the ‘Far Right’ embodies not just nationalism but also religious extremist beliefs, and there have certainly been issues over the years where extremism has reared its head on campuses. This most certainly needs to be closely monitored and managed, especially during the current global crises.
However, it seems that for this article, you are looking at only white people as being Far Right. This is myopic and prejudicial. But if we are to look at this thought process, then you should look at the data that exists around the most disadvantaged sector of UK society, which is poor, white working class men. (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-most-disadvantaged-group-in-britain-white-working-class-men/, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2018/01/06/when-white-working-class-men-feel-society-no-longer-values-them/)
Poor white males are statically more likely to struggle to succeed in education or employment, and to end up in prison. Where children have access to free school meals, BAME children are more likely to achieve higher grades that can provide them access to higher learning than white children. A lack of incentives and policies to address this from successive governments has left generation after generation of poor white families feeling maligned and disenfranchised. It is this sector of society who then turn to the more aggressive arguments of the Far Right. Because they are not able to achieve the level of education to get them into universities, there is understandably a lack of presence in the higher education student population.
Far Right politics is not just about hate. It is far more nuanced than that and to reduce your argument to such a simple conclusion again misses the crux of the issue. Far Right politics It is about a lack of hope, lack of support and lack of faith in a positive future. It is the exploitation of the uneducated to extremist views, which results in violent and hateful acts.
Previous working class generations had economic opportunity. They could work in factories and coal mines and take on work that did not require them to be overly educated, but provided them with purpose and stability to raise a family. With the closure of the mines and the automation of many factories, the economic opportunities have shrunk considerably, leaving them with few options. It is due to poverty and lack of opportunity that people then turn to crime or extremist political parties. The government needs to provide genuine opportunities for the less educated to find economic security through support programmes and jobs.
You fail to note that the response to the riots that was witnessed across the UK was swift justice and counter-protests that dwarfed those that came out in anger. The nation showed that they are on the side of inclusion and care for those who were attacked and that the majority do not support the violent thoughts or actions of the few. We know love conquers hate – and that also means showing love (or at least basic compassion) to those who have walked down the path of hate if you wish to elicit real change. None of the actions taken by rioters is justifiable or okay. But just calling them hate-filled extremists and arguing that HEIs must be vigilant to stop them from being able to share their views, without considering how to engage and dismantle those views is short-sighted. We should ask how can HEIs work with governments to create policies to support poor white working class males to move them away from Far Right rhetoric and towards a more convivial and civil society? And that means having difficult conversations and open dialogue.
If you want to stay vigilant about the growth of the Far Right and the disenfranchised, then you need to look at ways to engage and support them, to break the generational trauma of poverty and poor education and to make them feel included and worthy. To vilify them and call them hate-filled only fuels the fire.
“Where children have access to free school meals, BAME children are more likely to achieve higher grades that can provide them access to higher learning than white children.”
Is there a reason for this?