In 1968 Sussex and Essex saw some of the most dramatic student action. This year Kent joined Warwick with a significant and deeply felt revolt against UNIC university For nearis two weeks students have been ccupying Wallace Building, teachering-computor-research complex, an extended "seminar" The general meetings and the Vice Chancellor's refusal to negotiate on the question of files. The Vice Chancellor, Geoffrey Templeman, a Tory lay-preacher. made it clear to the press that he would have no truck with student militancy.
Kent IS especially significant for two small reasons. It is a collegiate university. (2,000 students) with no general union for the students. It is a model of the liberal collegiate ideal with the colleges named Three hundred have been Chief demand is that the most reactionary demand is that the most reactionary Chancellor in the country, Lord Salisbury, is sacked.
As in Edinburgh, the Springbok tour pushed anti-racialism onto a new level of militancy. The files issue confirmed the authorities. The political nature students demanded a general meeting with their Vice-Chancellor. March 9th he came a a neutral akir anneral me ins came along t0 d arrogance, opinions ("the personal political opinions are irrelevant to the university.... we invest only on the basis of profit and his blatant authoritarianism admin. building in protest against having a racialist Chancellor Salisbury. the Senate's building had been guarded with university! Warwick the bourgeois Saturdav 14th March the anti-climax. This week an open university was declared at a poorly attended teach-in on Friday.
relevant speeches were delived to behind was the small of militant.
organisers. and some hundred students who were waiting for the trendy During from The WeeK formal lectures are billed on such topics as Godwinism, the Victorian woman and Nineteenth Century Protest Movements.
Business as usual.
Warwick has demonstrated again (L.S.E., Birmingham, Bristol, Essex) that the student movement in Britain consistently ideological subfails to escape from the stance of the bourgeois university while apparently taking action against its structure. The MOve CHL each place seems only to succeed in organising itse t and getting any political perspective at all, fighting a rearguard action following whilst after the appropriate heroes (Keynes). It is most middle-class of Britain's one of the universities in terms of the background of this year all the conditions seemed to stand against there being any form of mass militant action. The occupation at Kent confirms that whatever SCACHC for whether collegiate, business, or a new university the State dreams up, American Campus style, they cannot contain student unrest.
In fact the opposite may be the case. For Kent has demonstrated the antagonism that exists between staff 2n0 Something that Warwick, where a leading role was played by a few conscientious liberal staff, fudged. In Kent, student Conservatives have been taking a liberal and even a militant line, while liberal staff have become outright authoritarians. A real security en with dogs and two-way radk This time the door were wide administration staff in tne building had been told on the Friday before to evacuate important work to olet places on the campus. The Vice Chancellor had obviously decided in advance that an occupation was likely and that he should allow it to go ahead. It was a clear instance of tactical the authorities which may manoeuvre by successfully contained an explosive have situation.
Another factor which clearly emerges from the Liverpool experience -IS the potential weakness and isolation of student occupations. Many still do HOL interests of the Although Liverpool occupation was part of the largest number of occupations ever to be going on at the same WHIC it remained isolated.
There were virtually messages solidarity, there was no sense of being part of a concrete wave of protests.
on what should have been a strategic withdrawal So far, student militancy has been based against eringments of its freedom. Pros is spontaneous anything, Call understanding potentialities of these movements and of their limitations. Until students learn to set themselves limited and attainable objectives within their real capabilities, despondency follows inevitably on temporary elation.
From what HOWard Thompson is the Vice-Chancellor and restructure university gained. staents who organised; next objectives must chosen with deliberation. deep staff/student contradiction has opened up on this very bourgeois campus.
For the first time a meeting of the staff called by the local AUT (Association of University Teachers) nas violenty con demned an occupation. In an atmosphere of middle-class outrage the opening of the Kent files was condemned as "theft"; and almost unanimously the staff called for the ending of the occupation.
Even more astonishing, staff have kicked students sympathetic to the militants out of classes and have refused to write reterences for them. On the same day that the staff polarised against the sit-in, the students voted out a Conservative proposal to end it by 547 to 207.
The occupation itself has been well organ ised by the participants; discussion is lively WEST HAM All the sociology students at West Ham have been on strike since March 2nd. They still are, even though their absence has so far had little effect on the authorities. The strike was called by a meeting of the department to demand the reinstatement of two students arbitrarily stopping from taking their exam It was coupled with a demand for the right for all West Ham students to take London external degrees. Reformist? West Ham is to merge with Barking and Wlatham Forest into a new rationalised polytechnic. The exams question clashed with the fundamental direction of ruling class rationalisation.
On March 5th a successful one-day strike of the whole college took place. It was still without effect. Sociology students escalated and decided to occupy. A week after the total strike, 18 of them moved into the sociology and administration block.
Flanking support came from Barking, but not from the rest of the college. And although they were determined to stay in until their demands were met they were forced to withdraw within 24 hours.
The authorities agreed to review the case of the two students and the debarmen students reconvened. The 18 refused to go to sent across a representative, the mccune wavered, felt they had to make their own voice heard, went across, argued, were trapped into voting and the occupation was called off by 30 to 22. Fed up with their own inconsistencies the militants decided they couldn't go against the decision.
West Ham has had its first occupation and Sociology students there are still on strike.
This action, though tiny, is significant. The most oppressive and exploitative section of higher education, action in the polys is often difficult. But potentially offers close contacts with many students who are being trained for what will be working class jobs.
members of the Socialist Society met and decided not to go into a confrontation.
Instead, they tried to build up opposition to the LSE authorities with agitation centred on needed to keep demonstratin riles why in the first place. the authorities Their experience of previous actions meant viduals.
The RSSF base group in LSE, now 20 strong, put out a 12-page analysis of th the School as a capitalist instit nature This pamphlet took the line that the basic determinants of LSE were financial, ution.
not forms of collusion and conspiracy.
document argued that the concrete links between LSE and the industrial system are what is basic, and that the keeping of files and the files issue" has been convincingly located in capitalist society's growing needs and growing crisis. Seminars, informal dis cussions, rhythm and blues, and posters make flourishing collective culture which has made a deep impact on the participants The adverse conditions that seemed to make Kent one of the most reactionary and depressing of the new universities, have acted suddenly in its favour. By a process which seems at times to follow a law of uneven development, the depth of feeling at the conditione of modern capitalist sidely definitly SOWI collectivised to result in one of the longest and most creative occupations in the present wave of sit-ins.
Diogenese ROME An Italian with the ludicrous name of Edwin Morley-Fletcher is editing a very well heeled L'Ecole Peuple with pretentious sub-title of *Cahiers Etudiants Europeans'. At the end or Januar he organsce a Three British revolutionary lavish conference students went The promptly denounced it. two days o objections and questions they joined with Dutch, French comrades to seize the microphones from Morley-Fletche and read out a declaration of Rome They declared that Common Market was financing the conference MOnCY indeed it was, to further federalism and that under the guise of student internationalism arge sums of money / were being made avail- and divide Europear able to turner comusc students. They argued that "the best explan ation of this conference locates it as part of an on going superstructural offensive"; a European version the CIA's cultural activities. They ended in ringing tones: "We denounce this conference The themes raised in Pour L'Ecole du Peuple are not without an echo in British universities. One organisation represented at Rome is the Committee of Student European Associations (CSEA-pronounced Caeser), to which are affiliated around twenty English University European Societies. It has recently issued "constructive action" of radical students handbook supporting Buckingham adate, Swi, Chich also house, CSEA's address Chandos House British Council European (BCEM) which obtains funds from the British Foreign Office, and the Young European Management Association". CSEA ell as close the bese organisations as wel one of whose PRO's, the EEC Derek Prag, assisted in the preparation of the and leftist and also in the preparation of the Tory Bov Group's recent pamphlet Europe). ProCommon Markel firms like ICI help to pay of class domination have to attacked and not its effects.
Ten days of agitation, with 2 assemblies character token strike in opposition to the capitalist control of the education system Involvement in the strike was wider than for any action this academic year. Many first year students became involved in revolutionary politics for the first time. Given the adverse situation inherited at the beginning of this year, the actions of the last few weeks were very encouraging. They insured that an organisational and ideological con maintained and that LSE tinuity will be may soon recover from last year's toll of militants lost in action.
The Black Dwarf 23rd March 1970
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KENT The Longest and Most Creative
LIVERPOOL Sack Salisbury! Liverpool, Saturday March 14th
generated an immediate occupation. The V.C. left the meeting after only an hour and a half counter to the demands that he stay and answer questions properly. The students, dissatisfied and angry, moved to occupy the administration building A remarkable thing happened. They got in. Previously when they had picketed the
WARWICK Business as usual The bourgeois university is dead. Long live
apathetic audience. Already many students had left on vacation and all that was left
open and no attempt was made to stop the students from entering. It emerged that the
believe that the NUS and that their own Presidents work hand in hand with authorities and no national organisation has been able to replace them and act in the
a fire which burns fiercly but briefly. What, be gained frone reat
arguing, a few inexperienced and militant students will attempi, next term, to dismiss
possible wilcome of this is further disillusion.
Nevertheless, valuable experience can be A conference of all
have taken part in the agitation about files is an urgent need. The spontaneity must be
L.S.E. Starting Again As soon as the Warwick revelations broke,
they refused barnstorming tactics that lead the isolation and victimisation of indi
the piper, and call the tune. is peripheral. Its conclusion: that the causes
of around 200 people each, leaflets and big posters, culminated in a 2 day