Students at King’s College London protest an event held by KCL Conservative Association where the motion “This House Would Restore the British Empire” was set to be debated; Head of Governance at KCLSU Caroline Crawford refuses to acknowledge the British Empire was genocidal.

On Thursday 9th February 2023, the KCL Conservative Association (@kcltories on social media) attempted to hold an event on our university campus debating the motion “This House Would Restore the British Empire”, campaigning for the reintroduction of the genocidal colonial rule that perpetrated some of the grossest atrocities in global history; the British Empire. The KCL Conservative Association is ‘the largest student Conservative group in London, and indeed the largest in the United Kingdom’.

LiberateKCL (@liberatekcl on instagram) are proud to have mobilised an action and removed students prepared to spread racist & fascist ideology from our campuses. LiberateKCL is a grassroots group of students and staff fighting to decolonise, demarketise, democratise, and diversify education. We have attached our full report of events; please see the phone recording of Caroline Crawford (Head of Governance for the SU) refusing to acknowledge the Empire was genocidal; denying historical fact in this way is flagrantly racist. We are concerned that the KCL Conservative Association has moved beyond a legitimate political party on campus and can be considered a far-right group. As well as this recent event, they previously invited Jacob Reece Mogg to campus; he has well documented links to the far right. At this event on the 22nd November, members of LiberateKCL who were in attendance to protest the event were verbally harassed using racist and sexist language. We have also uncovered articles written by members of the society with extremist titles such as ‘Why Conversion Therapy Should Remain Legal’, ‘A Philosophical Rejection of Immigration’, ‘The Case for a Consensual Human Shooting Range’, and ‘Bettering Britons: Defending Eugenics.’ These articles were published on the Strand Review, which is linked on the KCL Conservative Association’s website.

LiberateKCL members after a long evening defending our campus from fascists trying to debate the restoration of the British Empire. This recent event fits within a much wider sordid history of institutional racism at KCL; the KCL Conservative Association are permitted to spread extremist right-wing hatred on our campus with impunity. In contrast, our university has a long history of politically and racially profiling left wing students.