ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the continuation of ‘no platform’ at British universities in the 1990s and the 2000s. Originally used against the National Front in the 1970s, the policy of ‘no platform’ was used prominently against the British National Party, which had electoral successes in the early 1990s and then throughout the first decade of the 2000s. These successes saw the BNP leader Nick Griffin invited to speak at several universities, which garnered significant student protest, albeit with differing levels of success. But the BNP were not the only target of the ‘no platform’ policy at this time. Islamic fundamentalist groups, primarily Hizb ut-Tahrir, were also subject to ‘no platforming’. Individual student unions banned the group from several campuses in the 1990s, before the NUS instituted a general ban in 2004.
