Student Demands - Left Out - Charles Crawford

Back in 1973 I was at Oxford University with the likes of notorious toxophilist Tony Blair and Benazir Bhutto.

It was a time of student so-called unrest, with a mass sit-in at the Schools Building in autumn 1973 to demand a Central Students Union.

Basically, see, the point was that the student masses were fragmented by the Oxford college system and needed to have (to be precise, to be given) a central building so that they could ‘organise’ to press their ‘demands’.

I don’t recall anyone suggesting that the 10,000 Oxford students each chip in some money to buy a suitable set of premises.

No – the University had to hand over a building it owned so that the students could be even more ungrateful and annoying. The merits of this wise policy were lost on a parsimonious University. Bastards.

It ended in a madcap attempt in the following term to occupy the Oriental Institute by a tiny vanguard, which led to the ringleaders being identified and sent down from Oxford in a show trial all the more revolting and fascistic for being conducted when the student revolutionary masses were languishing on their long summer break.

Moves to mobilise the masses in their defence when the masses returned to Oxford in autumn 1974 petered out, as the year driving all this forward (T Blair’s year) suddenly were confronted with the need to work for Finals and then join the Establishment. Which they duly did.

The fascinating tension then was between the different Lefts:

Labour Party members and moderates: weedy, hopeful, useful idiots
Broad Left: Labour Party members who sucked up to the Communists
Communists: small in number, secretive, seen as tough/methodical (Dave Aaronovitch?)
Socialist Workers Party: Trotskyist, intellectual, middle-class, brainy-sounding, theoretical
Workers Revolutionary Party: Trotskyist, pretending to be working-class (denim jackets, bovver boots), aggressive, practical
Anarchists: clever alcoholics; amusing but disorganised (by definition)
Christian Socialists: people defying formal political categorisation but who spouted revolutionary theology and joined any group which might lead them to free drinks
Cool Dudes: eloquent, prosperous-looking students who flirted with the Trotsyist end of the spectrum but never quite seemed to join any organisation; wore expensive second-hand fur coats and disappeared to London at weekends with languid girlfriends. See eg Tony Blair and Geoff Gallop.

These divisions came to the fore when the issue of ‘direct action’ appeared. It was all very well being clever and making passionate speeches with revolutionary demands. How to get real-life revolutionary results?

Most students seemed bafflingly unkeen to go to the Cowley motor factories to try to mobilise workers. So direct action meant attacking University targets instead. These bastions of reactionary class privilege were closer.

I vividly recall a mass meeting at the Oxford Union which I covered as a reporter for the Cherwell student paper. Should the masses spontaneously take to the streets immediately to occupy another University building?

It came to a vote by raising hands. But, horror, there appeared to be a majority … against!

A banshee revolutionary female voice shrieked out: “We don’t want all this bourgeois shit of counting votes!”

Who was it? Maybe we should ask Sue Lukes, now “an invited member of the Commission for Racial Equality Immigration Advisory Group” but at that time a prominent radical known for her immense charm.

Meanwhile the National Union of Students (NUS) was being led by one Charles Clarke. It seemed curiously uninterested in the feverish goings-on at Oxford – maybe it suspected that ultimately our hearts were not in Revolution?

Why do I mention all this?

Because an email has sneaked into my Inbox from the NUS:

NUS PROPOSES ALTERNATIVE TO TOP-UP FEES AS LOST GENERATION FACES SUMMER OF MISERY

The NUS alas is not what it was. See this revolutionary analysis.

But it is still trying to be true to its revolutionary roots, as the email shows (my emphasis):

The National Union of Students (NUS) today published radical proposals for an alternative means of funding universities in England….

NUS is pushing for MPs to address the issue of student debt urgently, with more than 300,000 graduates set to enter the workforce this summer. The first generation of graduates to pay top-up fees, these students will leave with thousands of pounds of debt. Meanwhile, half of all firms have admitted that they will not be offering them any jobs. Experts are warning that unemployment among 16-24 year olds will reach the one million mark by September.

Key elements of NUS’ proposals include: