Portsmouth Student Union’s barring of Peter Hitchens is an attack on free speech – Bob Hind

In 1936 he was a pall bearer at the funeral of King George V bearing the King’s coffin on his right shoulder. Arthur served aboard HMS ‘Pepperpot’ Penelope.

Another brother, Norman, was just 19 when he was a helmsman of a landing craft that took the American GIs onto the Omaha landing beaches in the first hours of D-Day. ‘The bravest boys I ever saw’ he once told me.

My father was with Portsmouth Dockyard employees who served more than four years in Egypt, in Port Said and Alexandria, repairing ships that came in after being strafed and bombed.

Some of the sights he saw after opening up ships’ compartments remained with him for the rest of his life.

Why do I mention this, you might ask? My father always instilled in my brothers and I that what the family and thousands of others fought and died for was free speech.

He used to say: ‘If  you have an opinion on something then don’t be frightened to say it but then, do not, under any circumstances, disapprove when someone has a different opinion. It is their right as much as yours to give an opinion. That is what the war was all about.’

I then read that certain factions of the Students Union at the University of Portsmouth have banned Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens from speaking.

In my father’s Portsmouth. In the city that lost so many servicemen in two world wars and many civilians in the Second World War – whose lives gave them the right to have a union in the first place. Imagine if the Nazis had won the war?  

As Friends of Voltaire author Evelyn Hall wrote: ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’

It is a pity these so-called educated unionists do not follow Hall’s words.

As Peter so succinctly put it: ‘These people will be the MPs, lawyers, police officers even judges of the future.

‘Will they then try to ban everyone who thinks different to them?’

A police state indeed, and these people ought to think on.

n Next Thursday there will be a memorial service for those lost when the SS Mendi sunk in the  English Channel off the Isle of Wight on February 21, 1917, when heading for Le Havre.

The Mendi had sailed from Cape Town carrying 823 men of the South African Native Labour Corps to serve in France.

The Corps came from all of South Africa – Transvaal, Eastern Cape, Orange Free State and Basutoland to name just a few.

At 5am, and in thick fog about 10 miles off St Catherine’s Point, the Mendi was rammed by the RMS  Darro.

Thirty crew and 616 South Africans died.

Several are buried in Milton Cemetery and a memorial service is to be held next Thursday there beginning at 10.45am.

Afterwards, at Point, Old Portsmouth, commencing at midday there will be an unveiling of a memorial stone by the South African High Commissioner.

n It is good, I suppose, to be able to purchase soft fruits out of season from all over the world. But chilled – ugh!

Strawberries and raspberries are summer fruits because they are meant to be eaten at room temperature. That’s when they are at their sweetest. I shall wait a few months until best English fruit is available in the shops.

n In last week’s Looking Back the excellent pictures of Stephanie Crowe in a Spitfire should have been credited to Mark Rutley. 

And we would like to make clear that Stephanie’s father Gordon Hamilton Spencer died aged 68 in South Africa, not aged 86 in Hampshire, as was reported.