Running, jumping, climbing trees…

Students Protest Iraq War by Adobemac

Published in Fat Controller in late 2004

A snivelling leftie remembers his impact on student politics.

I am a graduate. I like saying it. I AM A GRADUATE.

The problem is goodness knows how? I remember a nervous morning at the beginning of October, some year back now, packing things into the boot of my father’s Mondeo. And I remember an event approximately two and a half years later when I had to wear a rabbit and shake an old man’s hand.

In between things get a little shaky.

So, it got me thinking. What did I actually achieve in my two and a half years at university? A period that saw the Twin Towers fall in New York, a lunatic from Texas and his cronies polarise the Eastern and Western world with an interesting new brand of ‘Cowboy’ politics and the British prime minister leed his people into an illegal war that they did not want, on the crest of a wave of untruths and half truths. What did I achieve during this period?

The answer is that I am not quite sure. Of the few genuine achievements of which I am sure, I distinctly remember feeling pride after rolling a cigarette whilst riding a bicycle. I also hitchhiked to Dublin dressed as Elvis. Apart from that of course, I went to a few lectures, sat a few exams, dressed up as a chicken on one occasion and then well… and then, I don’t really know.

Ok, so I got a degree. And not a particularly bad one. But what about the other things? The things that university is ‘all about’. The marches? The demonstrations? The sit ins at the library? In the time I spent at my university (Durham for the record), the biggest protest was when the IT Service increased the price of printer credits by half a pence. Did I go?

The curious thing here is that I consider myself interested in current affairs. When I arrived at university I knew my politics. I knew that conservatives were arrogant vicious people who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. I knew that they had opposed the introduction of the National Health Service, the Welfare State, the vote for women, the introduction of trade unions, shorter working hours, a decent basic wage and the abolition of the slave trade. I had even read Das Kapital… well the dedication to Wilhelm Wolff at the beginning, and I liked it.

In short I was primed for the stereotypical student left wing life. My parents must have expected to see me on the Ten O’ Clock news within a month – with Trevor McDonald frowning in disapproval, as I pelted McDonald’s with eggs, Britain must have been thinking: look out! You will not have seen such insubordination since Lennon invented bagism.

But what happened? Well amongst the university restructuring, residency fees, foreign wars and lying prime ministers – I did not manage one demonstration. Not one. It was a far cry from the student movements in the 1960s, which spread from the US to Europe and got the governments of the day hopping from foot to foot. If someone had told me in the manner of Martin Luther King that they had ‘had a dream of something better…’ I would have concluded that they had been drinking too much.

It is not just me. Students have changed. As much as I love the idea of the rebel student, they are a dying breed. On the 27th January 1969 students went on the rampage at the LSE claiming they were unsatisfied and that they wanted to set up their own ‘LSE in Exile’. Such a notion in the twenty first century would just appear ludicrous, you can just imagine it: ‘David and Nick have barricaded themselves in the media studies department. They’re demanding more lecturers.’ – ‘Well tell them that it’s curry night at Wetherspoon’s and Budweiser is two for one.’