On 22 October, ‘Young Bob’ (real name: Thomas Moffit) graced UCL’s central London campus with his presence.
A self-described “Christian Pro-life Remigration activist” and representative of both Turning Point UK and Restore Britain, this Charlie Kirk-wannabe has been taking to campuses across the country this freshers in a campaign to subject as many university students to his bigoted, racist rhetoric as he can.
Young Bob brings signs reading “abortion is wrong” and “millions must be deported” along with him to campuses to act as provocation, knowing this will incite anger from passers-by.
Like all his fellow grifters, he then clips sections of the ensuing outrage, heckles, and debates to pad out his social media presence.
Inspired by the action of our comrades in Cardiff, the revolutionary communists at UCL mobilised to kick this reactionary off our campus.
The crowd that had gathered already when we arrived were noticeably hostile towards Young Bob – the majority being there to debate or just watch in disgust.
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And so some of us started by heckling Young Bob, asking the audience if anyone even wanted Young Bob to be there – a question to which the answer was a resounding ‘no’!
Others talked with the students who had gathered in more detail to get their thoughts. Most often, we ended up discussing how people like this are allowed to freely set up on campus and spread their bile – whilst pro-Palestine protestors are arrested for peacefully protesting a genocide the British state is wholly complicit in.
We were able to sell five copies of The Communist and get three people’s details, with one agreeing to set up subs and buy a ticket to the Revolution Festival.
But the situation requires more. To stop grifters like Young Bob from spreading their vile rhetoric at our universities, we need far more of us organised and ready to mobilise when they show their faces – and able to direct the growing class anger in society against the capitalist system itself.
York’s Restore Britain Society gets a red scare!
Alex Zucchelli-Redshaw, University of York
The revolutionary communists at the University of York are debating the Restore Britain society this November – or, at least, we were supposed to!
Earlier this year, both University of York and York St John University were crowned with the title of first universities to have ratified Restore Britain societies – and there has been a rightfully furious mood about their presence.
At this year’s freshers, all the students we spoke to made one thing clear straight away: they all detested the Restore society.
There is a similar mood across all university campuses here in Britain: anger and disgust towards the presence of these parties at our universities, and especially against their associated social media influencers like Young Bob, who visited York in September.
We have seen our comrades joining crowds of students in running these kinds of figures off campus after campus, which is undoubtedly the correct course of action. This mood was the impetus behind us agreeing to debate the Restore society.
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However, just a few weeks out from the event, the Restore society has changed their minds about facing us down – at a debate which they invited us to, may I add! They have cowardly backed out, vaguely stating it is no longer “something we are interested in entertaining.”
We all know why that is: their ideas and their programme offers nothing for young people in Britain. Students everywhere can see through their culture war rhetoric, and how it is covering up the fact they have no solutions.
In short, Restore knows as well as we do that their ideas are crap – and they know that, if they were faced with students trained in Marxist theory in a debate, they would be blown away like chaff.
Now more than ever, when students and young people are rising up all across Europe, we will continue declaring ourselves as the communists on campus in York – and putting forward real solutions to the issues facing young people to cut across all the rubbish of these right-wing demagogues.
