Topic: “Freedom lies in being bold” – Robert Frost

It was twenty-eight years ago when Muslims were burning copies of ‘The Satanic Verses’ in Bradford City Centre. The writer, Salman Rushdie, was forced to go into hiding like a fox fleeing its hunters. Respectable politicians (and I use that phrase loosely) remarked that this man, whose life was in danger, yes, should be protected, but probably did bring it on himself.

Now, let’s fast forward to two thousand and seventeen.

It’s not just hysterical Muslims, the favoured scapegoat for people of a certain persuasion, who are threatening our liberty. It’s your average noodle eating university student who claims to be on the hunt for freedom. Freedom to sleep with who they want, freedom to wear what they want, freedom to change whatever they want about their bodies. As Freddie Mercury sang, they want it all – just with the tiny exception of being exposed to ideas that they don’t agree with and, just for good measure, they don’t want the rest of us to be exposed to them either.

As Robert Frost so aptly put it, freedom does indeed lie in being bold. But being bold is not whining about micro aggressions and hate crime. Being bold is not moaning that somebody’s words have made you feel unsafe as if they held you to ransom. And being bold is certainly not threatening somebody who you just to happen to disagree with.

Despite our celebration of boldness, it doesn’t necessarily mean that any of us will be guaranteed freedom. Bret Weinstein, an anti-racism campaigner and professor at Evergreen State College, was unable to continue working as a result of the backlash following his rejection of a proposal that would see white teachers and students banned from campus for a day. Julie Bindel, who did more than anybody to make rape in marriage a legally punishable crime, is no-platformed by the self-aggrandised National Union of Students for a close-to-the-knuckle article she wrote about transgender people back in 2004. And the Catholic journalist Tim Stanley, who opposes access to abortion, is not allowed to debate the topic at the University of Oxford (you know, the one where the clever ones go, where our future leaders come from) because he (quote) “doesn’t have a uterus.” The words of Robert Frost, to be bold and be free, once again sound particularly relevant here, as do his thoughts that “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”

All of these people who stand up and say what they think, despite illiberal attempts to silence them, are bold and, because of this, they are free. They are free to hold opinions and to speak freely of them. They are free to disagree vehemently with an intellectual opponent and not let that taint their character. And they are free to sit and listen to others with content – just like we are doing today – knowing that they need not be threatened by somebody equally passionate.

Our culture, on the other hand, has forgotten what it means to be free.

Being free is about opening your mind, and then your mouth; saying what you think, and being prepared to disagree – the cornerstone of democracy itself. Freedom has been hard fought for, by Sophie Scholl and Mary Kenny; Camille Paglia, and Tony Benn, and all those countless others who stood up to, and continue to stand against, those who want to see our liberty eradicated. Freedom is too precious, too important, to be dismissed by cheap rhetoric.

In Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’, Celia remarks to Rosalind that “Now go we in content/To liberty, and not to banishment.” That was 1599, this is two thousand and seventeen, and yet our position seems startlingly similar. It’s about time we listened to Celia. It’s time to stand up and be bold and, once you do that, you will become the personification of freedom itself.

Topic: The voting age of young persons in the UK should be lowered to 16.

Teenager. What sort of words come into your head when I say ‘teenager’ to you? Young? Yeah. Adolescent? Maybe. Immature? Incompetent? Lazy?

None of these words have particularly positive connotations and the majority are inaccurate in describing young people aged between 13 and 19. Therefore, it’s patronising and presumptuous to assume that we’re all stereotypical 16-year olds, lying in bed all day, the only light we see coming from the screens of our mobile phones. 16. The age I think young people should be allowed to vote.

Being 17, I’ve seen first-hand that in todays’ world, young people are increasingly aware of the issues the world faces. Due to a rise in social media and technology, we’re more informed than ever and, like adults, have developed clear opinions about the state of the world, politically, socially and economically. In the United Kingdom, there are over 1.5 million 16 and 17-year olds. That’s 1.5 million opinions. 1.5 million opinions that aren’t heard in order to give a more equal and reliable view of the country that we live in.

By the time we turn 16, we are legally allowed to get married, leave school, be taxed, have sex, join the armed forces, change our name and even give consent for someone else to receive medical treatment. We have many of the same freedoms as adults, yet our voices aren’t heard.

I think you’ll agree with me when I say that last year was a bit of a rollercoaster ride for the world as we knew it. Not only did we welcome, perhaps through gritted teeth, the introduction of a new president, but Britain voted on our future. Britain voted on my future – something I wasn’t allowed to do. Brexit concerned 16 and 17-year olds most but we weren’t allowed to vote on something that we would feel the full effects of as we evolve into adults. One of the biggest decisions of our lives was not made by us. If there was ever a year to let young people into politics and possibly change the course of 2017, it was last year and we missed that opportunity. I don’t want to miss that opportunity again.

Throughout history, laws have changed and developed as society has changed and developed. In the same way that women gained the vote in 1918 because the law opened its eyes to equality in gender, the law now must open its eyes to equality in age. Young people have changed. We’re not the same as teenagers 50 or 60 years ago. Nowadays, we’re more interested than ever in what’s shaping our future in a world that’s seemingly becoming tougher and harsher on us. Standing back should never be an option, let alone a law. In Scotland, it’s legal to vote at the age of 16 and in 2015, 75% of 16 and 17-year olds voted in the general election. We’re shouting. Young people are shouting. We want to be heard.

Topic: A fact does not cease to exist if it is ignored

What is a ‘fact’? The dictionary definition of a fact is ‘a thing that is known or proved to be true’, but if we do not know that something exists does it mean that it doesn’t? Throughout history politicians, doctors, and religious leaders would argue using different facts in order to evidence a point of view or convince someone of the truth. Nowadays, we are more inclined to argue that either some facts do not exist or alternative facts, in the shape of ‘fake news’, replace reality.

On a daily basis, billions of humans ignore facts. It is simply human nature. I would like to pose a few questions to you today:

1. Firstly, how many of you have told a lie?
2. Who here has subverted the truth in order to prove a point?
3. Finally, how many of you here today have refused to believe the truth simply because you didn’t like it.

I can guarantee that almost everybody here has answered yes to at least one of those questions. The human race has been programmed to try and make things seem better than they really are, and this takes the form of diverting the conversation, which we do almost daily. I too am guilty of doing this in order to make myself look better in front of others or in order to avoid talking about a specific topic, however, by doing this we are simply bottling up the fear of someone uncovering the true facts about us and in reality, these facts never disappear.

I would argue that since the inception of social media, the way in which we communicate facts and interpret facts has revolutionised. Only 20 years ago, in schools, the main source of a fact was an encyclopaedia but that all changed on January 15th 2001. On this day Wikipedia was founded and from that day on Wikipedia has been used as a major source of facts. However, interestingly, my teachers tell me that in 2001 schools had banned Wikipedia as it could not be trusted to hold all the correct information. Even today, we have to be very cautious about the sources we use online.

In 2004, Facebook was founded and two years later Twitter was launched. These social media platforms launched us into the digital age and overloaded us with information. Many people now use these social media platforms as their only source of news, but these platforms are susceptible to targeted audiences and with 1.47 billion daily Facebook users and 335 million monthly Twitter users, opinions can very quickly be taken as fact.

In the past few years, Facebook has become more than just a ‘fun’ tool. Businesses now use it to advertise their products and political parties use it to win elections. Even here in the UK, the Conservative Party credit their 2015 General Election win to the targeted use of Facebook in marginal constituencies and as a result winning over a majority of voters by targeting them with personalised adverts.

Similarly, Twitter is another major source of political news and a way for politicians to win voters. In the past 2 years it has been most famously used, or abused, by Donald Trump, who loosely uses facts to damage other politician’s reputations or even more worryingly to conduct political affairs. Trump argues with other politicians over Twitter, most famously with Kim Jong-Un who argue over ‘who has the bigger red button’, but Trump takes advantage of this and overlooks the potential true facts. Another famous Trump on Twitter moment was when he fired over Twitter the FBI Director, Comey, who Trump claimed was failing in his role. Trump made all these accusations over Twitter without any hard evidence to back up his decision leading to speculative ideas that Trump could be part of a cover up with Russia.

In conclusion, it is clear that in this new Digital Cold War we must be much more careful about the sources we use as there is now an increased risk of the stories we read being manipulated for maximum reaction. With the truth being so easily manipulated we must look for stronger laws which combat these issues without threatening our right to free speech. There must be a line between opinions and false facts.

The winning speech

Topic: The law should not always be obeyed.

How many of you have broken the law? The speed limit for example? We all take such minor infringements for granted but our purpose today is to consider exactly how far the laws of the land should be respected, and how far an individual might be permitted to make a stand.

Often we find there is a conflict between personal belief, just laws and the laws of a country. Even in democratic countries laws will come into conflict with a justified moral code. Two recent laws in France have specifically targeted the Muslim community. In 2004 wearing a headscarf was banned in public schools; this heralded a national decision on ‘l’affaire du foulard’ or ‘the headscarf issue’. As a result Muslim girls have been forced to separate an external expression of their faith in an essential part of their lives, school. However the Government in France does state that there should not be outward expressions of faith in government owned institutions, including state schools. A further law though in 2010 however meant that headscarves have now been banned in all public spaces. Veiled women have been refused entry to university classes, banks, and doctors’ offices. The fact that this has become an issue in France, where the tradition of freedom of speech is very strong highlights the controversial nature of the relationship between laws and freedoms. Is it right to suppress a person’s ability to express their faith?

However, France is a secular society. You should obey the law of the country that you live in and you have accepted those rules by living there. This is not to say that if you do disagree with the law you cannot change it, in a democratic country your voice will be heard. The law should be changed not defied. The political philosopher John Rawls describes how we have “a natural duty to abide the rules of a just institution”. If you are benefiting from the stability of an established country you have the duty to abide by their rules. In theory, laws should ensure a stable society and is in place to prevent anarchy.

However let’s take the example of an undemocratic society, the communist regime in China. Liu Xiaobo spoke out through the power of his written work and in 1989 he was imprisoned for the first time. He then spent the rest of his life in a battle of fighting injustice and suffering at the hand of his country’s wrath.

During his fourth prison term he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”. It is not always the case the society you belong to will be just. Then, it may be morally permissible to break the law to right specific injustices. As Aquinas said “an unjust law is not worthy of obedience”.

Society functions on the assumption that laws laid down by the authorities will be followed. We have considered examples on both sides of this debate however it is perhaps worth bearing in mind the wise words of Sir Thomas More from Robert Bolt’s play ‘A Man for All Seasons’ when the young William Roper challenges Sir Thomas over his acceptance of the Devil’s law, Sir Thomas replies “This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down…do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!” Although we know there will always be instances where breaking law is permissible, as a general precedent, law is implemented to protect and not exploit individuals.