‘Cancellers are cowards – their beliefs are built on sand’

Nick Buckley was sacked for criticising Black Lives Matter. He tells spiked how he got his job back.

The resurgence of Black Lives Matter over the summer has been accompanied by an intensification in cancel culture. Accusations of racism are being used to justify the silencing of BLM’s critics. It is often cancelled celebrities whose stories get coverage in the media, but cancel culture is particularly dangerous for ordinary people.

One of its victims was Nick Buckley, who has worked as a social campaigner in Manchester for nearly 20 years. Earlier this year, Nick was sacked from the charity he founded. A petition called for his removal in response to a blog post he had written criticising BLM. But he fought back, and has now been reinstated. spiked caught up with him to discuss his story and what it tells us about cancel culture and identity politics today.

spiked: Tell us about your work and the events that led to your sacking.

Nick Buckley: I have been working across Greater Manchester for nearly two decades, mainly trying to stop young people getting involved in crime and anti-social behaviour. In 2011, I set up a charity. We have gone from just me in my one-bedroom flat to employing over 20 people, running community centres and projects on the streets.

This summer was the first time I had heard of Black Lives Matter. I looked into it and found its website. I was completely shocked by what I found there. I felt BLM’s objectives would damage the very people it said it was trying to help. I’m a big believer in personal responsibility – we don’t need to be treating people like victims and telling them society is set up to make them fail. That is simply the wrong message to send.

I felt obliged to let people know what BLM is really about. I wrote a 600-word blog about it and posted it on LinkedIn. Some people disagreed with me but did so politely. A week later, somebody put a link to the blog on Twitter. That’s when things hit the fan. Almost straight away, somebody set up a petition to have me sacked from the charity. There were some direct complaints to the charity’s board inferring that I was a racist and a Nazi, and then the board panicked and terminated my position – via email.

spiked: What provoked you to speak out about Black Lives Matter?

Buckley: The first thing was the call to defund the police. I have never heard such a crazy idea. When I worked for the council, I spoke to countless people about their priorities. At the top of everyone’s list was wanting more police in their areas. The people who want the most police are always the people who live in the poorest areas, because they are the ones who are more likely to be victims of crime and anti-social behaviour. The very people BLM says it wants to help are those who would suffer most from this proposal.

I also noticed BLM wants to disrupt the Western nuclear family. But if there’s something we need to improve in our country, in the areas where I work, it’s families. We need fathers to stay in households. Having fathers involved in families is what’s going to improve the lives of young people.

If this is really all about black lives, why are we talking so much about an American cop thousands of miles away operating under a different system? He did something horrendous – nobody’s defending what happened. But we don’t need to import problems from other countries. We need to deal with our own.

spiked: What did it take for you to be reinstated to your role at the charity?

Buckley: For the first week, I was a beaten man. I talked to a friend who asked why I wasn’t answering anybody who was attacking me on social media. The next day, I decided to fight back. I have spoken to thousands of people, and I always tell them that life’s not fair, but you don’t need to make yourself a victim. It was time to take my own advice.

A journalist from the Mail on Sunday knocked on my door. It was perfect timing. I did a great interview and everything changed on the day it hit the shelves. I received hundreds of personal messages on social media from people telling me not to let the critics get to me. That really helped me psychologically.

A former trustee of the charity set up a petition to have me reinstated, which got 18,000 signatures. Around then, I joined the Free Speech Union. It was fantastic. It got me a pro-bono solicitor, who said it was an open-and-shut case. The charity thought it could just sack me, but there are laws about these things. Trade unions pushed for those laws to protect workers from unfair dismissal. It’s a shame that some unions are not sticking by that principle and fighting for people in the face of this new persecution.

The solicitor wrote to the board. He explained all their mistakes and said I was going to sue them unless they resigned. They did. A new board was appointed, and reinstated me.

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Free speech group warns university after it allowed Black Lives Matter protest but banned other gatherings

A free speech advocacy group has sent two letters to East Carolina University after the public college banned gatherings of more than 50 students, but allowed a Black Lives Matter protest on campus.

Southeastern Legal Foundation sent a letter to the North Carolina public university on September 16 seeking information on its enforcement of its coronavirus policies. After receiving no response, the public interest law group sent a follow-up letter on September 24.

The September 16 letter warned the university that its coronavirus policies set a “dangerous, unconstitutional precedent” that “could be used to stifle free speech.”

Kimberly Hermann, the foundation’s counsel, told The College Fix via email it will “continue to monitor the situation.”

“We never rule out litigation, but as in cases across the nation, many universities have amended speech and privacy policies once constitutional concerns have been raised,” Hermann said.

The university had previously announced at the end of August restrictions on gatherings, including a ban on more than 50 people gathering outside. The school also banned inside gatherings of more than 25 people, following the guidelines set by the state. All classes are now online.

However, on August 31, “members of the campus community—including athletes, coaches, and administrators—protested in an outdoor area of campus” the foundation noted.

Students marched through campus and at least two coaches gave speeches unmasked and surrounded by activists, according to video footage from WITN

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