No Platform

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No Platform is a political position which actively opposes allowing fascists to politically organise.

The name was used by No Platform, a British anti-fascist group formed in the 2001 by anti-fascists willing to carry on the militant "physical force" tradition of anti-fascism begun by the 43 Group and carried on by the 62 Group, some elements of the original Anti-Nazi League and then Anti-Fascist Action until the latter's retirement from militant anti-fascism in the mid-1990s.

This group appears to be defunct, with some anarchist members helping to form a similar group, Antifa (from 'anti-fascist').[1]

[edit] No Platform order

A no-platform order is an instrument used by trade unions and students' unions to refuse a platform of any kind to certain groups or particular ideas. No-platform orders are most often used against ideas deemed to be racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, or fascist. Such an order means that certain groups or individuals are prevented from addressing trade- or student-union conferences or meetings.

In recent years the British National Union of Students has applied the no-platform policy to alleged Islamist extremists such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, the now-defunct Al-Muhajiroun, and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK.

[edit] Institutions battle with the no-platform policy

Leeds University Union's newspaper, Leeds Student, and TV station, LSTV have both come against the Union's No Platform Policy in action. An article published featuring a long interview with the BNP leader Nick Griffin was considered in breach of this policy, and as a result a following interview, as part of a news piece, with LSTV was intally not allowed to be aired. However subsequent protests, and referring to the 2002 Communication Act legal right for political parties to have a means of reply in the same outlet, meant that the article was later aired. In February 2007 a motion proposing to abolish Leeds University Union's 'No Platform' policy was defeated by the Union's Council before reaching the referendum stage.

In 2003, a controversial and occasionally bitter dispute broke out between Keele University Students' Union and the affiliated Keele University England Society after the union used their No Platform Policy to shut the society down during their Fresher's Fair launch only to reinstate the society a matter of days later when their activities were found to be non-extremist.