Agora Debate Club London is a unique debate club, resident at the Tea House Theatre. Unlike other debate clubs, Agora Debate Club London does not assign you an opinion, after vigorous argument and impassioned talk, you have to form your own.

Votes will be taken before and after debates, and the side with the greatest swing in its favour, is declared the winner.

We adhere to the Chatham House rules, which means that it is strictly forbidden to name any speaker, whether a debater or anyone else, if you share any statements made during the debates outside of the meeting.

Formality and ceremony are central to our debates to engender respect for opponents and audience as well as to provide a framework for true passion.

We aim to meet six times a year for debates on current or philosophical issues.

The name "Agora" comes from the ancient Greek word for the marketplace and town square where debates were held. A debate is an expression of the marketplace of ideas, and as we believe in the free trade of ideas, the name Agora Debate Club London perfectly expresses what we are all about.

Agora’s logo has three pillars, each representing one of the basic values the club is based on: Reason, Logic and Free Speech.

Each pillar has two ends, six in all, representing the six gatherings we aim to have per year.

Join us and experience the thrill of rational Enlightenment discourse in the heart of legal London.

NEXT EVENT

This House Believes The Erosion of Trust in Institutions Will Lead to Civil Unrest in the UK

MONDAY 23RD NOVEMBER

The debate will mainly focus on the UK, but may also cover other countries where relevant. Are we seeing the first signs of a country that is going towards an ever greater breakdown of civil order. If people don't trust democracy to work, what might they try instead?

Ticket price includes a free drinks reception from 6pm onwards.

The Debaters:

Proposition:

Professor David Betz is a Canadian-born war studies scholar, author and academic based in London. He obtained his BA and MA at Carleton University, Ottawa, and completed his PhD at the University of Glasgow in 2002, joining the Department of War Studies at King's College London the same year. He is now Professor of War in the Modern World at King's, where he heads the Insurgency Research Group and has served as Academic Director of the War Studies Online MA. He is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and has advised the Ministry of Defence's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre and the British Army Land Warfare Centre. His research covers insurgency and counterinsurgency, information warfare and cyberwar, propaganda, civil-military relations, Russia and hybrid warfare, and the history and contemporary practice of fortification.

His latest book, The Guarded Age: Fortification in the Twenty-First Century, argues that rather than dismantling barriers, the modern world is living through an intense period of "wallification" — physical and digital fortification, and pervasive surveillance, becoming defining features of contemporary security and civic life.

He will be Proposing the motion.

Dr Ben Jones is Director of Case Management at the Free Speech Union, where he has spent five years helping members who have been penalised for lawful speech, and is a regular media commentator on free speech issues for the BBC, Sunday Morning Live, LBC, TalkTV, Talk Radio, GB News and Times Radio. He holds degrees in history and politics, and completed his PhD on the experiences of British ex-Muslims. His interest in free speech began during his time as President and Chairman of the University of Exeter Debating Society from 2010 to 2012.

His latest book, Island of Strangers: Diversity, Decline and Free Speech in Crisis, argues that mass migration, the decline of Christianity, and the state's management of multiculturalism have combined to produce a new and more insidious form of censorship in Britain, reaching from official policing into the private sector and everyday life.
He will be Proposing the motion.