Drying off after this morning’s picket and flicking through a copy of the University’s Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech. I am now even more baffled as to why the university has banned strikers from picketing outside our workplace buildings #hellobrum #ucustrikesback

Apparently the university safeguards “the ability of its members freely to challenge prevailing orthodoxies, query the positions and views of others, and to put forward ideas that may sometimes be radical in their formulation” (1.3)

“So far as is reasonably practicable, no access to or use of land or buildings of the university shall be denied to any individual or body of persons on any grounds solely connected with” the beliefs or objectives of that body (2.5).

I mean really... it feels as though the university’s stance on trade unions and its stance on Prevent are about as bad as eachother

But honestly more than that, I can’t see how the decision (unprecedented in recent years) to pre-emptively ban strikers from campus is compliant with the university’s duties under the HRA98 (as @SeethingMead notes).

In order to justify that ban, the university should give some serious reason eg that we need to be kept away from our buildings because we post some health/safety/public order risk. But just last week it assured our students that pickets would be “lively” but “respectful”.

So which is it? The university benefits from my impact work in trashing bad anti-human-rights legal takes. I know them when I see them.