Students and activists protested outside a talk with the Reform UK adviser Jack Anderton organised by the Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA) last Friday (30/01).

Led by Cambridge Stand Up To Racism, the protest also involved members of the Socialist Workers Party, the Cambridge University Labour Club (CULC), and Gender Agenda.

Anderton, 25, has worked as a social media adviser to Reform UK, helping to establish Nigel Farage’s TikTok account – which has 1.3 million followers – and writing a column for The Daily Mail. He has been credited with helping Luke Campbell become the Reform mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire.

His lecture began by addressing the protests outside, which he claimed “barely 15” people had attended. He said that while some of the demonstrators were “evil”, most of them shared his concerns about Britain’s decline.

As Anderton’s talk continued, protesters outside chanted “CUCA, CUCA shame on you, you are racist through and through”. In repeats of the chant, led by a student activist claiming to represent Stand Up to Racism’s ‘Women Against the Far Right’ campaign, the same accusations were levelled at Anderton himself.

Later on during the protest, former Cambridge Union president Sammy McDonald addressed the crowd, stating: “We are here today because of a profound moral failure on the part of the Conservative Association.”

The co-chair of CULC, Alex Parton, also spoke. He claimed that several CUCA members were unhappy with the society’s current leadership for inviting Anderton, as well as YouTuber Tom Rowsell, who was linked to pagan organisations holding “eugenicist beliefs”, to speak. The scheduled event with Rowsell was cancelled on Sunday 25 January, with CUCA apologising for issuing the invitation.

Anderton’s talk was delivered to around 30 people in the Babbage Lecture Theatre, located next to the Cambridge Zoology Museum, and also livestreamed online. The event formed part of Anderton’s ‘New Dawn’ university tour, which he said was inspired by the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s events in America.

Anderton’s talks have provoked protests on nearly every leg of his tour, including at Exeter and York, while two venues refused to host him in Edinburgh in order to avoid backlash.

During his speech, Anderton said that immigration should be reduced to “practically zero,” blaming immigrants for housing and job shortages. He argued that Britain’s reliance on cheap immigrant labour was hindering automation, citing the greater number of robots per capita in Singapore.

CUCA chairman Oscar Lingwood then quizzed him on his support for Reform rather than the Conservatives. Anderton argued that the Conservatives and Labour have destroyed the country, driving voters towards newer parties like the Greens and Reform.

He also claimed that Nigel Farage was a believable leader, whereas the prime minister was a “used car salesman,” and joked that he could not even describe what Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch “looks like”.

Audience members then lined up behind a microphone to ask Anderton questions. Maeve Halligan, co-founder of the controversial Cambridge University Society of Women, whose membership is restricted to “biological women”, claimed that universities are facing a free speech crisis, and that women especially are afraid to speak their minds.

Anderton replied by commenting that the Freedom of Speech Act (2023), which allows speakers to seek compensation for deplatforming at universities, was one of the few good laws introduced by the Conservatives.

Another student accused Reform of having an ambiguous position on single-sex spaces. Anderton said he supported repealing the Gender Recognition Act (2004), which allows transgender people to legally change their gender.

Several Reform figures attended the event, including Neil McArthur, the Cambridge branch chair, who called on attendees to establish a Reform Society, and Guy Lachlan, a candidate for St Neots and Mid Cambs in 2024, who was briefly dropped by the party for liking tweets by far-right organisations. Lachlan accused Reform of having a censorious culture.

One student criticised Reform’s policy calling for the establishment of an immigration enforcement agency similar to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They referenced the recent murders of Renée Good, who was killed by an ICE agent, as well as Alex Pretti. Anderton suggested that the policy would cause less violence in Britain than it had in America because its police forces are “calmer”. He also proposed targeting places like “car washes” where immigrants are known to work.

Anderton later acknowledged that there would have to be exceptions to his immigration ban, including the ultra-wealthy, as well as care workers until the country could produce enough home-trained staff.

Another student asked whether Anderton supported revoking British citizenship from people with views believed to be incompatible with British values, to which he replied that terrorism and crime were valid justifications for denaturalisation. Outside these issues, he said, the debate on this topic would continue “for decades”.

Anderton was one of two CUCA speakers condemned by CULC in an Instagram post at the start of term. The post criticised comments made by Anderton on his blog, where he wrote that “Britain would be better off” had it stayed neutral in the Second World War rather than fighting Nazi Germany, and that “in the coming Meritocracy” the country could and should “regain” some of its former colonies.

CULC’s statement said that these comments were “an insult to the thousands of servicemen who died fighting against antisemitic tyranny”.

McDonald spoke to Varsity after the protest, repeating allegations that the move to invite Anderton and Rowsell had caused tensions among members of CUCA.

He accused CUCA of “fundamental intellectual cowardice,” for inviting Anderton, explaining that:

“The intellectual lineage [of Anderton’s remarks about WWII] […] to me is morally repugnant, but also comes from a dubious place in British intellectual discourse”.

He justified the decision to protest the event, arguing that its format amounted to a legitimation of Anderton’s views, rather than a full debate.

He said: “I don’t think there should be mass cancellations of controversial speakers. I think it’s a very different proposition when you have a society which is specifically politically oriented right, which is trying to legitimate certain people.”

CUCA’s Chairman, Oscar Lingwood, responded to these comments, telling Varsity: “CUCA invited Jack as he is an important, young advisor for Britain’s most popular political party.

“His voice and views are relevant to the political discourse of Britain, in particular young people. Despite the attempt at disruption, the event went ahead peacefully and with civility. Attendees who disagreed with Anderton were given plenty chance at the event Q&A to question and debate Anderton in a constructive way.

“It is a pity that rather than being able to engage with him maturely, as Anderton himself hoped for, some decided instead to protest and attempted to get the event cancelled. We are greatly disappointed that some of the protestors, who were vastly outnumbered by the event attendees, advocated for violence against both the speaker and the Right more generally.”