Remember my lyrical piece about Left student activism at Oxford back in the 1970s?

No, you don’t. So read it now. And marvel at the taxonomy of assorted 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?

Good question. Anyway, at University College London that revolutionary tradition continues:

The people who maintain the environment whose transformation is being robotically envisioned will be the masterplan’s first victims. UCL management proposes to outsource the university’s sixty-five cleaning staff. 93% of these staff members are from black and ethnic minority groups. This is by far the highest proportion of any division of staff—overall UCL’s staff is 76% white.

Outsourcing inevitably leads to a deterioration in terms and conditions: staff members will lose pension guarantees and their union rights will be jeopardised. There’s no guarantee that their UCL terms and conditions will be protected in the future.

The outsourcing proposal makes a mockery of the masterplan’s easy slogans about staff welfare. Given the black and ethnic minority proportion of those being targeted, what’s this really if not institutional racism? The UCL staff experience will be enhanced, the workplace made more enjoyable—so long as you aren’t a black cleaner.

So far so normal.

Anyway, today the supporters of the student protests against UCL outsourcing its cleaning services posted this Tweet, which someone whom I follow reTweeted:

UCLOccupation UCL Occupation

If you care about working conditions for those on Bloomsbury campuses follow @BloomsburyFight #ukuncut #solidarity

In a somewhat lightheaded contrarian mood as I was, trying to thwart public transport’s attempts to stop me getting to Sky TV News on time to talk about the Mladic Trial, I posted an admittedly somewhat disobliging glib reply:

CharlesCrawford Charles Crawford

Whom to follow if I don’t care? RT @UCLOccupation If you care about working conditions on Bloomsbury campuses

At the back of mind was the infamous St John’s College Oxford abortive student rent strike of 1975/76, when the Tony Blair tendency and I fleetingly joined forces to support ‘direct action’ against imperialist College oppression, then lamely gave up the whole idiotic business a term later.

Student protests? Sorry, but for me as an ex-student protester there’s always something elusively… phoney about them.

A bit like the passage in Rain Malan’s startling masterpiece about apartheid South Africa, My Traitor’s Heart. He describes the heroic bright young fair-skinned student Leftists in Johannesburg boldly daubing anti-apartheid slogans on walls, then watching glumly the next day as assorted Africans were rounded up wearily to wash them off.

Anyway, my insensitive temerity in not caring too much about the cleaning arrangements at UCL when instead I was caring about Balkan war crimes provoked an almost instantaneous micro-Twitterstorm, complete with my very own hashtag!

BloomsburyFight Bloomsbury Fightback

Who is this bilious toad of an ex-diplomat @CharlesCrawford and why is he eaten up with contempt? Info please @UCLOccupation

BloomsburyFight Bloomsbury Fightback

Where was @CharlesCrawford ambassador? Bahrain? Chile in the 1970s? #SneeringCharlesCrawford

Evidence of a certain intellectual energy and even ability to use vivid imagery – UCL’s English language department seems to be on form! But let’s try to take these people seriously. Let’s assume they do in fact care a bit about the cleaning staff”s lot at UCL and want to mobilise support for their cause. How best to set about it?

The first thing to do is identify possible allies. So some senior ex-diplomats might be in that category. You never know.

What if instead of an abusive trite Twitterised off-the-bat rant, they had said something to the effect of this, boiled down into Tweetspeak:

Dear Mr Ambassador, we were disappointed in your Tweet which seemed to mock our campaign. We believe there is an issue here about the effects of cuts on some very low-paid workers at UCL. Might we send you some information about our case, in the hope that you’ll be interested enough to write a letter of support or otherwise engage?

Polite. Adult. Engaging. Persuasive. Moderate.

Above all, positive. Everyone likes positive

Instead they emitted a fleeting barrage of trivial abuse. Outcome? Nothing achieved for the cause. Opportunity wasted.

This sort of thing is mainly what Diplomacy itself is all about. Working out how to get from A to B to C, and who might help. Plus realising that most people respond better to charm and persuasion than to a silly noise.

And that’s Twitter for you. A madcap forum for Instant Everything, whether it’s abuse, humour, #ghettospellingbee, indignation, sorrow or joy. But above all instant gracelessness, mine and theirs.