Read the original article at The Daily Express

When I say I believe in free speech I mean it. If someone wants to espouse atheism or communism, deny the Holocaust or say that Christ was not the Son of God then I will vigorously defend his right to do so however offended I feel.

Thus I do not believe it is right the Charities Commission should be investigating a talk given at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) by a speaker at its Palestine Society who described the creation of Israel in 1948 as a fascist and racist endeavour.

I feel furious at his ignorance but if you cannot debate such issues at university then that is a loss to the development of young minds.

However, if at any stage the speaker had incited violence towards Jews that would have been a matter for criminal law.

Let people espouse whatever barmy views they wish as long as we can all walk in freedom from fear of attack or discrimination at work or in the shops.

More worrying than the views of the SOAS speaker is the growing body of evidence that anti-Semitism is now rife at some universities; at Oxford a dossier has been compiled of incidents in which Jewish students have been harassed.

We live in an age where people feel harassed or unsafe at the drop of a hat. Supposedly intelligent students feel “unsafe” just at the prospect of walking past a particular statue. 

Therefore I do not necessarily think that all the complaints in the dossier will be justified but nor do I think that the rise in complaints of anti–Semitism is something to be lightly dismissed.

It affects the Labour Party as well as universities and needs to be rooted out. Freedom of speech and freedom to walk without fear make a truly free country.

We have already lost the first of those and it will be a sad day if we lose the second as well.