Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland 3319582402, 9783319582405

Citation preview

students iN

twentieth-century

britain and ireland

edited by JODI BURKETT

Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland

Jodi Burkett Editor

Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland

Editor Jodi Burkett School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies University of Portsmouth Portsmouth, UK

ISBN 978-3-319-58240-5 ISBN 978-3-319-58241-2  (eBook) https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940374 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018, corrected publication 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © ClassicStock/Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The original version of the book was revised: For detailed information please see Erratum. The erratum to the book is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_14

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Contents

1

Introduction: Universities and Students in TwentiethCentury Britain and Ireland 1 Jodi Burkett

Part I  Student Experiences and Day-to-Day Life 2

On Going Out and the Experience of Students 15 Matthew Cheeseman

3

Prisoner Students: Building Bridges, Breaching Walls 45 Daniel Weinbren

4

‘Education not Fornication?’ Sexual Morality Among Students in Scotland, 1955–1975 77 Jane O’Neill

Part II  Student Organisations and Unions 5

‘Forgotten Voices’: The Debating Societies of Durham and Liverpool, 1900–1939 101 Bertie Dockerill vii

viii  Contents

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The National Union of Students and Devolution 129 Mike Day

7

Investigating the Relationship Between Students and NUS Wales 155 Jeremy Harvey

Part III  Student Networks and the Wider Community 8

Sound, Gown and Town: Students in the Economy and Culture of UK Popular Music 177 Paul Long and Lauren Thompson

9

The National Union of Students and the Policy of ‘No Platform’ in the 1970s and 1980s 203 Evan Smith

10 ‘Don’t Bank on Apartheid’: The National Union of Students and the Boycott Barclays Campaign 225 Jodi Burkett Part IV  Student Activism: Practice and Theory 11 Rebels and Rustici: Students and the Formation of the Irish State 249 Steven Conlon 12 ‘Women Are Far Too Sweet for This Kind of Game’: Women, Feminism and Student Politics in Scotland, c.1968–c.1979 277 Sarah Browne 13 Altbach’s Theory of Student Activism in the Twentieth Century: Ten Propositions that Matter 297 Thierry M. Luescher

Contents

Erratum to: S  tudents in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland Jodi Burkett

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E1

Index 319

Editors and Contributors

About the Editor Jodi Burkett is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth. She received her Ph.D. from York University, Toronto, Canada in 2009 and has been living and working in the UK since 2006. Her first book, Constructing Post-Imperial Britain: Britishness, ‘Race’ and the Radical Left in the 1960s, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. Her research interests revolve around themes of anti-racist activism, solidarity and post-imperial British national identity.

Contributors Sarah Browne  Dundee, UK Jodi Burkett  University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK Matthew Cheeseman  University of Derby, Derby, UK Steven Conlon  Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland Mike Day  NUS Scotland, Edinburgh, UK Bertie Dockerill  University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Jeremy Harvey  Swansea, UK Paul Long  Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK xi

xii  Editors and Contributors

Thierry M. Luescher Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Education and Skills Development, Cape Town, South Africa; University of the Free State, Mangaung, South Africa Jane O’Neill  University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Evan Smith  Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia Lauren Thompson  University of Warwick, Leamington Spa, UK Daniel Weinbren  The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Universities and Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland Jodi Burkett

Universities and Their Literatures Over the course of the twentieth century, students in Britain and Ireland underwent extensive changes in character and experience. Not only did the numbers of students in each country grow substantially, but the make-up of the student body changed dramatically. At the beginning of the twentieth century, those attending institutions of further and higher education were almost exclusively male and represented the top 10% of the population. There was, of course, a clear distinction between those who attended institutions of further education and those attending universities; the latter are predominantly the subject of this volume. The number and character of universities in Britain and Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century was quite different from the situation 100 years later. At the turn of the twentieth century there were three degree-awarding universities in Ireland and twelve in the UK, of which five were in England. By the end of the century these numbers

J. Burkett (*)  School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK PO1 3AS © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_1

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had blossomed to four in Ireland (made up of seven institutions) and 115 in England.1 This growth in the number of institutions was matched by a growth in the number of students. In the first half of the twentieth century, growth in student numbers was accommodated within existing institutions, while the number of institutions, particularly in England, expanded rapidly after the Second World War. The war itself had seriously disrupted the provision of higher education across Britain. In the wake of the war, as life began to return to normal, there was an initial surge in the number of students at universities. In the early 1960s there were 130,000 students enrolled in higher education institutions in England. These numbers rose dramatically to around 900,000 in 1981 and over 2.1 million in 2000.2 These increased numbers, of both institutions and students, resulted from, and created, important changes in the character of institutions of higher and further education, and their relationships with government and wider society. The nature and role of universities, and the students who attend them, has also shifted dramatically throughout the twentieth century. From the beginning of the century up to the 1970s the elite nature of higher education meant that there was a relatively clear path from university studies to positions of leadership and influence within business, politics and society. As the numbers of students and the relative percentage of young people who were students increased steadily, this path was made increasingly unclear. The role of universities to educate future leaders has, therefore, also been brought into question. The nature and role of universities, and all institutions of higher learning, have been the subject of extensive scholarly and public debate. These debates are based on a particular understanding of the changing nature of these institutions as they have grown. It is widely agreed that universities at the beginning of the twentieth century were elite institutions with participation rates of 15% or less. When participation rates grew beyond this threshold, universities became ‘mass’ institutions. However, when participation rates went up to include more than 40% of young people born in a particular year, higher education was no longer ‘mass’ but ‘universal’.3 This understanding of the nature of higher education and its institutions has developed into three main areas of concern about the health of the future of the sector which can be summarised by the following questions: Who pays? Who benefits? And who is included? The financial implications of a move from mass to universal higher education has been a key area of concern to scholars, governments and

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the public. There is extensive literature which shows that the move to mass higher education from the 1960s resulted in decreasing funding per student across the rest of the century. It has been estimated that between 1979 and 2004 the funding put into the higher education system per student decreased by somewhere between 66% and 75%.4 The British government’s response to this over the past 5 years has been to radically transform and increase the tuition fees paid by students. In response to the Browne report published in 2010, the British government increased the cap on tuition fees to £9000 per student per year at English institutions.5 This decision was not replicated in the Republic of Ireland where tuition continued to be free for most students, with students paying a ‘student contribution’ capped at €3000 per year. In the first year of higher tuition fees in the UK the number of British students applying to Irish universities increased significantly.6 This significant increase in UK tuition fees was underpinned by a particular notion of the beneficiary of higher education. Whereas it was clear within the Robbins report, published in 1963, that the main beneficiary of higher education was society at large, by the early twenty-first century it was students themselves who were seen to benefit most from higher education.7 This fundamental change in the nature and beneficiaries of higher education results in shifting notions about the role of higher education. Thus it is no longer the job of universities to educate, but to prepare students for the job market.8 Of course, this notion is not new. It was laid out in the Robbins report in 1963 that the purpose of investing in students was to improve and modernise the British economy. Since the Dearing report in 1997 there has been a key focus on the ‘skills’ that students are taught at university.9 What can be seen as new is the idea that the higher education system itself should be seen, and treated, as part of the economy; that universities are a ‘market’ and should be managed as any other big business.10 The British government have regularly made changes to higher education since 2012 to encourage its marketlike function but the roots of the ‘marketisation’ of higher education are much deeper than this.11 All of these changes to the higher education sector across the twentieth century have had profound impacts on students. These impacts can be seen both in who can, and does, attend these institutions, but also in what kind of education and experience they have. While higher education has moved from an elite to a mass and, finally a universal, endeavour and the participation rates for young people have dramatically increased, there

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has been concern throughout the century about the extent to which the student population was, in fact, becoming more ‘diverse’. There is no doubt that universities before the Second World War were dominated by white men of upper or middle-class backgrounds. Throughout the twentieth century we do see an increasing number of women attending universities but this increase is slow into the 1960s.12 One of the aims of the Robbins report was to open up higher education to a wider cross-section of students. He was particularly concerned about increasing the number of students from working-class backgrounds, but the growth in higher education from this period did allow for the widening of student participation along both class and gender lines. The access to higher education for ‘non-traditional’ students, anyone who is not male, white and from a middle or upper class home, as well as their performance, have been the subject of extensive scholarly concern. While financial concerns have worked against students from less affluent backgrounds, governments have increasingly become concerned with ‘widening participation’ and have tasked universities themselves with addressing the gap between ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ students in enrolment, achievement and progression. Since 2008 the UK Department for Education has produced yearly statistics on widening participation which use the benchmark of free school meals as a measure of disadvantage.13 While the percentage of disadvantaged students entering university has increased over the past 8 years, a gap has remained. Gender has largely dropped out of widening participation concerns over the past 10–15 years as women’s participation has increased with applications from women now represent more than half of all university applications. The concern about increasing participation for students from less affluent backgrounds has had some successes. However, ‘race’ and ethnicity, which are included in the ‘widening participation’ agenda, have, so far, remained largely unaddressed by the activities of either government or universities.

The View of Students in Existing Literatures Within this extensive literature about the history, nature, role and impact of higher education there has remained a significant gap. That is the students themselves. While many of these studies discuss students, they almost always do so in an abstract way—as those people who fuel the system, who the system is designed to ‘help’ or even as those people the system is failing. But students themselves, as people, as historical actors,

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as active participants with agency in their own right, are largely missing. There are, of course, some notable exceptions to this, many of which you will see cited by the contributors of this book. Carol Dyhouse’s work on women in higher education broke important ground and laid the foundation for a number of important studies including, most recently, those by Brewis, Hoefferle, Kelly and others.14 Internationally, there is also significant interest in student organisations and students’ unions (SUs). The work of Philip Altbach is foundational here, and elsewhere, and the final chapter of this volume is dedicated to his work. Across Europe and internationally, significant work has taken place to map the role and importance of student organisations in creating political change.15 There is, however, very little work published on student organisations and SUs in Britain and Ireland. The key texts in this field are by one of the contributors to this volume, Mike Day.16 The work in this volume will help to fill this gap and, hopefully, encourage further research in this area. The bulk of scholarly work about students has focused on one thing: student activism. This focus on activism has largely revolved around the 1960s. Within the extensive international literature about student activism in and around 1968, students in Britain are often dismissed and those in Ireland largely ignored.17 As in other historical literature, Ireland is seen as a ‘place apart’ and the significant linkages between the student movement in Great Britain and that in Ireland, north and south, have been overlooked by academics.18 Not only were universities within Northern Ireland part of the National Union of Students (NUS), which meant that there were long and sometimes heated debates between students from across the UK at NUS conferences regarding the situation in Northern Ireland, there was extensive mingling or ‘networking’ between students throughout the UK and Ireland. The contribution of Mike Day in this volume goes some way to explore the ‘four nations’ character of the NUS in the late twentieth century. In numerous volumes the activities and activism of British students have received one paragraph or sentence at best.19 There have been some chapters and articles, and most recently books, about British students, if few and far between.20 However, this obsession with the 1960s, and 1968 in particular, is founded on some assumptions about the nature of students in Britain and Ireland that are false. The first assumption is that the chronologies of student activism from around the world can be easily and simply mapped onto British and Irish students.21 This is simply not the case. While there was extensive student activity across Britain and

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Ireland during the 1960s which has often been overlooked, the 1960s were not the ‘height’ of student activism in these two countries. As archival records and individual accounts of people who were students in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s show, activism was a significant part of their student experience. Sarah Webster has recently shown the extensive nature of student protest and demonstration at Manchester University and the London School of Economics after the 1960s in her doctoral work.22 Much more work is required to develop a picture of this activity across the UK and Ireland. It may be that while 1968 was the pinnacle of student activism in Paris, for the UK and Ireland alternative chronologies are required.23 Another assumption about student activism in the UK and Ireland which was dominant in the 1960s, and has persisted, is that students were simply copying what they saw taking place internationally. Underpinning this idea is that students in the UK and Ireland ‘had it pretty good’—they did not really have any grievances or concerns of their own and that it was only a small minority of politically active students who were involved.24 These arguments are used both to dismiss student activism of the 1960s and undermine the actions and activities of subsequent students who are consistently depicted as a small minority amid a sea of apathetic and unengaged contemporaries. This attitude, it is argued, is partly the result of the wider changes in the higher education system discussed above. As universities become increasing ‘marketised’, students become isolated, calculating, consumer-oriented and ambivalent about both the education they are receiving and their own social lives.25 Presumably, this would also stretch to include ambivalence to wider political issues which had sparked activism and demonstrations in the past. Students are routinely depicted as self-interested, only concerned about the job that they can get after university, and as ‘consumers’ of the product of higher education.26 This volume seeks not only to address the existing gap within the literature about students—student experiences, student organisations, student’s connections to the wider community and aspects of student activism—but to change the tone and tenor that exists in the literature about students. The overwhelming tone of the existing literature is one of regret, pessimism or nostalgia. It is underpinned by a persistent refrain that students, or young people more widely, are not what they used to be. The purpose is not to valorise students and student activities, but to reposition students as legitimate historical, and current, actors, as people,

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not a homogenous group, who make clear and informed choices about their activities and who are part of the world in which they inhabit, not just the institution where they study.

Outline of This Volume This book is a first step in a wider project to re-evaluate the role and place of students within British and Irish society by exploring the experiences, activities and attitudes of students throughout the twentieth century. It is divided into four main sections, each of which has students and student experiences at their core. The first section focuses specifically on the lived experience of being a student in specific institutions at particular moments. In the first chapter, Matthew Cheeseman explores the fundamental place of ‘going out’ in the creation of student identity at the University of Sheffield at the end of the twentieth century. He discusses the development of higher education from elite, to mass and ‘universal’, and argues that through this process student culture has become increasingly homogenous. He shows how the patterns of student activity outside of the classroom have been shaped by wider social changes and how the relationship between the university and the city, or students and non-students, have been pivotal in changing the experience of student life. The second chapter explores the experiences of prisoners studying for a degree at the Open University (OU) in the 1970s. In this chapter Dan Weinbren argues that studying with the OU gave these prisoners the opportunity to become part of a student cohort and to leave prison with a better ability to contribute to wider society. In the final chapter of this section, Jane O’Neill discusses the nature and extent of the sexual revolution in Scotland and the place of students within it. She shows that while students did tend to be at the forefront of changing mores and patterns of sexual behaviour, there were important variations according to class, region, religion, financial capacity and gender. The second section explores students within their own organisations and unions. The first chapter in this section examines the role of student debating societies in shaping public opinion in the early twentieth century. Bertie Dockerill’s chapter allows for a detailed understanding of the range of issues discussed by students and how these relate to wider political issues, arguing that students and student organisations had an important and influential place in British society and shaped public opinion.

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The second chapter in this section provides the wider organisational context of these debates by outlining the structure and organisation of the NUS. In particular, Mike Day’s chapter explores the successes and difficulties of the NUS in representing students across the four nations of the UK. The final chapter of this section, by Jeremy Harvey, brings the issue of representation within SUs up to date. In exploring the relation of NUS Wales to students within Welsh universities Harvey argues that student engagement with NUS Wales was remarkably limited and offers potential solutions for engaging students further in their own representation. The third part of this book focuses on interactions between students and the wider community. In the first chapter Paul Long and Lauren Thompson explore student interactions with popular culture, particularly the local music scene. Long and Thompson explore the role of SU sites in popular music throughout the UK, showing how important students and the location of SUs have been in the growth and development of the British music industry. The second chapter in this part, by Evan Smith, examines the NUS’s ‘No Platform’ policy, exploring how this policy was developed in the mid-1970s specifically aimed at targeting the National Front. He argues that in subsequent uses of the policy against a variety of people and groups, the specific historical context of the tactic has been blurred, which raises questions about its ongoing usefulness as a tactic to end discrimination on university campuses. The final chapter in this section examines the nature of student international work on the issue of apartheid, focusing on one particular issue: the Boycott Barclays campaign. This chapter argues that students were much more of an important factor within British anti-apartheid work than has previously been acknowledged. Student activity around this issue was a central feature of NUS and local SU activity and spread widely across campuses of further and higher education in the 1970s and 1980s. In the final part of this book the focus turns to student activism. As discussed above, the majority of work about students focuses on activism particularly around the period 1968. This part seeks to redress this imbalance in giving two important examples of student activism—one before the 1960s and one after. In the first chapter, Steven Conlon explores the first student movement in Ireland in the early twentieth century. He argues that students were an intrinsic part of the Irish nationalist movement of this period but that their contributions to this effort were not rewarded by the newly independent Irish state. The second chapter in this section examines the importance of feminist activism on university campuses in changing the nature of student politics. Sarah Browne argues that the emergence and

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development of the Women’s Liberation Movement was in part the result of a contradiction between the rhetoric used to describe social changes on campuses and the reality of how women were treated on these same campuses. While rooted in changes taking place in the 1960s, Browne’s chapter questions the traditional chronology of student activism as culminating in 1968 and instead shows this year as the beginning of more prolonged and deep-rooted changes. The final chapter explores student activism at a more theoretical level. Looking in detail at the work of Philip Altbach, an instrumental theorist of student activism, Thierry M. Luescher-Mamashela outlines ten propositions from Altbach’s work that allow both for a better understanding of Altbach and his contribution, and a method for better understanding student activism in Britain, Ireland and internationally. While this book covers extensive ground and addresses numerous gaps within the existing literature, it is not, and is not designed to be, exhaustive of all of the possibilities in exploring the importance of students or their significance for a wider understanding of twentieth-century British and Irish social history. It is an opening salvo and, it is hoped, will spur researchers on to explore a variety of other avenues and areas where student experiences, student organisations, student networks and student activism have been, and continue to be, significant across British, Irish and international histories.

Notes



1.  John Taylor, ‘Institutional Diversity in UK Higher Education: Policy and Outcomes Since the End of the Binary Divide’, Higher Education Quarterly (2003), 57, no. 3, 266–293: 266. 2.  Martin Trow, ‘Reflections on the Transition from Elite to Mass to Universal Access: Forms and Phases of Higher Education in Modern Societies since WWII’ in Philip Altbach and Kluwer (eds), International Handbook of Higher Education was edited by James J.F. Forest and Philip G. Altbach. Published by Springer Netherlands in 2007. http://www. springer.com/gb/book/9781402040115 (2005), p. 4. 3. Trow, ‘Reflections on the Transition’. 4. Trow, ‘Reflections on the Transition’, p. 41 5. Lord Browne, ‘Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance’, Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, 12 October 2010, https:// www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-browne-report-higher-education-funding-and-student-finance (accessed 27 January 2017). This increase

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did not apply to universities in Scotland where students from those nations continued to be able to study for free or with minimal fees. Welsh students are also in receipt of large grants if they study at Welsh institutions. 6. ‘Rise in UK applications to Irish universities’, BBC News, 23 May 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18175060 (accessed 27 January 2017). 7. Lionel Robbins, ‘Report of the Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the Chairmanship of Lord Robbins’ (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1963). 8. Lee Harvey, ‘New Realities: The Relationship between Higher Education and Employment’, Tertiary Education and Management (2000), 6, pp. 3–17. 9.  The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, ‘Higher Education in the Learning Society’ (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1997), http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/dearing1997/dearing1997.html (accessed 30 January 2017). 10. For a discussion of universities as subsumed by ‘management culture’ see: Celia Whitchurch, ‘Administrators or Managers? The Shifting Roles and Identities of Professional Administrators and Managers in UK Higher Education’ in I. McNay (ed.), Beyond Mass Higher Education: Building on Experience (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), 199–208. 11. See: Roger Brown, ‘The Marketisation of Higher Education: Issues and Ironies’, New Vistas 1, no. 7 (2015). 12. Carol Dyhouse, Students: A Gendered History (New York: Routledge, 2006). 13. See yearly statistics produced by the Department for Business and information available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/widening-participation-in-higher-education (accessed 27 January 2017). 14. Dyhouse, Students. Georgina Brewis, A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond, 1880–1980 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Laura Kelly, Irish Medical Education and Student Culture, c.1850–1950 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017). 15. For a recent interjection in this literature see the special edition ‘Student Representation in Western Europe’, European Journal of Higher Education, ed. Manja Klemenčič, 12, no. 1 (2012). 16. Mike Day, ‘Dubious Causes of no Interest to Students? The Development of National Union of Students in the United Kingdom’ European Journal of Higher Education 2, no. 1 (2012); Mike Day, National Union of Students: 1922–2012 (London: Regal Press, 2015). 17. Discussions of Irish students in the 1960s have largely revolved around the civil rights movement and the beginning of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland: Paul Arthur, The People’s Democracy, 1968–1973

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(Belfast: Blackstaff Press Ltd, 1974); Simon Prince, Northern Ireland’s ‘68: Civil Rights, Global Revolt and the Origins of the Troubles (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007). 18. Mike Day’s chapter in this volume discusses these important linkages. 19. See, for example: Ronald Fraser, 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt (London: Chatto and Windus, 1988); Mark Kurlansky, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004). 20. Sylvia Ellis, ‘“A Demonstration of British Good Sense?” British Student Protest During the Vietnam War’, in Gerard J. DeGroot (ed.), Student Protest: The Sixties and After (London: Longman, 1998); Nicholas Thomas, ‘The British Student Movement 1965–1972’ (PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 1996); Nick Thomas, ‘Challenging Myths of the 1960s: The Case of Student Protest in Britain’, Twentieth Century British History 13, no. 3 (2002); Caroline M. Hoefferle, British Student Activism in the Long Sixties (New York: Routledge, 2013). 21. Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c.1958–1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 22. Sarah Webster, ‘Protest Activity in the British Student Movement, 1945– 2011’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2015). 23. For a discussion of 1968 in Paris see: Michael Seidman, The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004). 24. For examples of this view see: Nick Thomas, ‘Protests Against the Vietnam War in 1960s Britain: The Relationship between Protestors and the Press’, Contemporary British History 22, no. 3 (2008). Ellis, ‘“A Demonstration of British Good Sense?”’. 25. Teresa Dale, ‘The Contemporary Student Experience and the Transformation of University Life’ (PhD Thesis, University of Portsmouth, 2006). 26.  For some examples of the debates about students as ‘customers’ see: Mike Baker, ‘Students: customers or learners?’ BBC News, 21 June 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7466279.stm (accessed 30 January 2017); Cat Evans, ‘Universities treat students like customers, so why aren’t we always right?’ The Independent, 11 December 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/universitiestreat-students-like-customers-so-why-arent-we-always-right-8405724. html (accessed 30 January 2017); Patrick McGhee, ‘Let students be students—not customers’, Guardian, 31 March, 2015, https://www. theguardian.com/education/2015/mar/31/students-not-customers (accessed 30 January 2017).

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Author Biography Jodi Burkett is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth. She received her PhD from York University, Toronto, Canada in 2009 and has been living and working in the UK since 2006. Her first book, Constructing Post-Imperial Britain: Britishness, ‘Race’ and the Radical Left in the 1960s, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. Her research interests revolve around themes of anti-racist activism, solidarity and post-imperial British national identity.

PART I

Student Experiences and Day-to-Day Life

CHAPTER 2

On Going Out and the Experience of Students Matthew Cheeseman

Introduction This chapter discusses student life in the UK, drawing its conclusions from work carried out at the University of Sheffield, where I attempted, via ethnographic and archival research, to understand what it meant to be a student outside of the official university apparatus of learning and teaching. Rather than construct ‘the student experience’ from the intersection of the student with the institution, I considered a wider and deeper concept of ‘student experience’ centred on the day-to-day lived experience of student life. The contemporary context of student life is detailed in another publication.1 Briefly, this identifies student mobility (whether an undergraduate stays at home with parents or lives with other students in student accommodation) as the key factor in determining student experience. It also emphasises the centrality of friendship to the student experience of higher education (HE) in the UK and explores the ways by which friendship was performed between two sites: (a) accommodation (parent’s

M. Cheeseman (*)  College of Arts, Humanities and Education, University of Derby, Kedleston Road, Derby DE22 1GB, UK © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_2

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home/university/private residence); and (b) the night-time economy. It introduces the term ‘family’ as a metaphor for those friends at the centre of a student’s social network, shaped by residence and repeated journeys into the night-time economy. It then suggests that such journeys, with their exchanges of social and economic capital in the night-time economy, are obligatory for students wishing to engage with student culture and think of themselves as ‘typical students’. It also found that since ‘going out’ and engaging in the night-time economy is so widespread, the identity of being a ‘typical’ student is something that many students can relate to, and temporarily inhabit, no matter their specific circumstances. In this chapter I describe the development of this situation over three stages, from a pre- and post-war higher education institution (HEI)centred culture, through a 1960–1990 heterogeneous period, to the contemporary homogenous period of student culture. The changes between each period occur as a consequence of HE expansion, societal changes and the general neoliberalisation of society. In brief, the first period can be characterised as a local elite culture that lasted until the establishment of a youth-orientated culture in the 1960s. I suggest that the third period, dating from the 1990s, saw the institutions of the University2 reform themselves around student desire as a response to the marketisation of HE. In terms of evolution, the period saw student culture develop in a heterogeneous, hybrid manner from the first to the second stage, and in a homogeneous, instrumental manner from the second to the third. In terms of culture and tradition, my thesis holds that student life at the University was polyphonic in the first and second stages, and monophonic in the third, which saw its aesthetic forms become consolidated into one: going out.

Background In sociological terms, this chapter attempts to describe the development of the student habitus in Sheffield. Reference to sociology is important because research into UK undergraduate students largely stems from sociology and derives a theoretical orientation from Pierre Bourdieu, who has provided the conceptual means to describe student culture. Bourdieu’s approach has previously been used to refer to a ‘master/ mainstreamed’ culture defined by residence and location and focused on socialising.3 In 2005, when I began my research investigating the

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‘mainstream’ student culture at the University of Sheffield (2011)4, the literature on what the ‘mainstream’ habitus was, or who traditional students were, was as scarce as it had been in the late 1990s.5 My ethnographic work focused on non-international undergraduate students aged between 17 and 20 at the time of their first year of study, living away from parents or family in full-time education at the University of Sheffield, a member of the elite Russell Group.6 My data emphasised the importance of masculine behaviours in the construction of the ‘typical student’. These behaviours were engaged in by both men and women (often critically), and my discussion of them is not a valorisation but an evocation of the performances and idealisations of being a ‘typical’ student, as seen by students, many of whom only engaged in such behaviours occasionally, and often only in their first year of study. I performed ethnography between October 2005 and July 2010, in a variety of situations and locations in Sheffield.7 I was attempting to describe ‘studentland’, the temporal and spatial territory of the mobile student experience.8 Both Chatterton and Holdsworth identify the ‘residential tradition’ of HE in England and Wales as the framework for developing the physical spaces that support the habitus of student life.9 Chatterton, whose work on the ‘exclusive geographies’ of University of Bristol undergraduate students informed his later thinking on the nighttime economy, suggests that student venues and houses weave ‘distinctive time-space patterns through certain areas of the city’, patterns that are embedded and subsumed in the night-time economy and the student housing market.10 Experiencing the infrastructure that supports this often means following a particular spatial and temporal trajectory from, on a typical night out, home to pub to students’ union (SU) to nightclub to fast-food outlet to home. This chapter discusses the historical development of studentland in Sheffield, which sees not only the physical development of the student night-time economy but also the rising importance of going out as the obligatory signifier of student identity. This conclusion was reached via research in the University of Sheffield Archives, in particular the personal memories solicited by Helen Mathers for her histories of the University and SU, as well as archived files from the SU, the Rag office, the office of the vice-chancellor (VC) and the registrar’s office.11 Interviews were conducted with Peter and Alison Slater, who provided memories of Tapton Hall of Residence in the early 1970s, which were supported and expanded by their extensive papers. Longstanding members of University

18  M. Cheeseman

of Sheffield staff were also interviewed, in particular the porters, some of whom had worked with students in the University’s residences from the early 1980s. The student press, in its fortnightly documentation of student life from the late 1940s to the present day, provided a key resource. Indeed, the three periods I outlined above are easily identified by reading the papers, issue by issue, and seeing the rise of youth culture in the late 1950s, its establishment in the 1960s, its political consequences in the 1970s, its turn towards the night-time economy in the 1980s and the ‘going out’ culture that has dominated from the 1990s on. If one thing is clear from the press, it is that student culture developed at pace from the 1960s on. While the concerns of the late 1940s and 1950s are consistent, those of the early 1970s are not those of the midor late 1970s and are utterly out of place by the 1980s. This is explained by the accelerating influence of youth consumer capitalism, which heightens Cowley and Waller’s suggestion that ‘traditions age rapidly in the student world’ as a result of the ‘telescoping of social processes’ brought on by mobility and the annual action of matriculation and graduation.12 This sense of temporality effects behavioural norms which are transmitted from 1 year to the next: ‘control through indoctrination’.13 Thus the temporal structure of the student group is both dynamic (in that its composition changes by a significant proportion with matriculation and graduation at the beginning and end of every academic year) and conservative in its hierarchical organisation, with years preceding years. For first-year students, the past, or the oral past at least, never extended beyond contact with older students. This made those who had the authority to appeal to ‘tradition’ powerful, as there were no voices to counter them. When second years presented hall of residence culture to incoming first years, they were always mindful to emphasise the duty not to follow but to uphold tradition. Therefore, leadership, hierarchy and structures that bridge the inherent dynamism of telescoping are essential in encouraging not just tradition but cultural continuity. Student culture is dependent on structures to bridge the rapid passing of the years, such as the Junior Common Room (JCR) or SU, and is thus easily influenced by individuals in hierarchies. Consequently, traditions change easily: rivalries between halls swap over as the decades pass by. In Tapton, the JCR did not know where many of their traditions came from; while the Hall Ball and occasional formal dinners were inherited from the inception of the hall (and involved staff and the

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Senior Common Room (SCR)), soft traditions such as the ‘Grinder Run’ had a less certain provenance. This occurred in formal meals when the JCR President would shout ‘Grinder Run!’ and the JCR and anyone who wished to accompany them would run off to the local pub (the Grindstone), down a drink and each ‘steal’ a trophy to return with (which, 1 year, memorably included a Jack Russell). It was timeless to the students, and this only cemented their sense of belonging. According to the JCR President, the ‘Grinder Run’ only went as far back as ‘2001 or 2002 when the President introduced it. But only I know that.’ If structures that bridge the years are lost or diminished, which, as a consequence of expansion, they were, then the importance of extrastudent sources of authority are emphasised in transmitting culture and even ‘traditional behaviour’. The media can be interpreted as an example of this, as are the institutions of the University, especially in the third phase of my model, when they become self-interested actors in an internal market formed around satisfying the desires, and thus accessing the capital, of students. In Sheffield, for example, the SU is no longer shaped by students but has become a body run by permanent staff (‘Commercial Services’) that seeks to shape student culture by acting ‘in its best interests’. Before the advent of these new hierarchies and structures, student culture developed in a Lamarckian fashion, ‘whereby the positive attributes engendered by adaptation to new environments [were] reproduced and multiplied voluntarily’.14 Year after year, students would move up residential, SU and activity/society hierarchies and voluntarily reproduce, or indeed change, the culture of the year before. The involvement of paid professionals changed the temporal nature of these cultures and increased their efficiency in terms of attracting and directing capital. This is the mechanism by which expansion can best be understood as encouraging the monophonic third stage. As the student body expanded in the monetised 1990s, it was seen as a large market with perceived desires, which were met by centralised hierarchies that developed outside of student temporality. Thus ‘going out’ expanded to dominate the landscape. This movement is demonstrated in detail in the sections below. In terms of pleasure, politics and resistance, the difference between the first transition of student culture (from the HEI-centred to the heterogeneous in the 1960s) and the second (from the heterogeneous to the homogenous in the 1990s) is worth discussing. The first transition is an analogue of Fiske’s ‘productive pleasures’ in that the search for bodily

20  M. Cheeseman

pleasure led to the resistant pleasures of the counter-culture.15 This is clearly demonstrated by the student press, which began the 1960s revelling in beatniks and beer, and the 1970s in rent strikes and sit-ins. The second transition, however, is a typical Gramscian hegemonic incorporation of these very same bodily pleasures via a manipulation of student tradition. The brilliance of this incorporation of pleasure lies in its maintenance of the first transition’s representational strategies for its entitlement in the face of restriction.16 Claiming pleasure was seen as an act of self-determination, of choosing life, of making memories, a carnivalesque celebration of the potential of the body, both social and physical. Some, including Winlow and Hall, argue that this was politically misguided even in the 1960s. I only emphasise that by the 1990s its political dimension had long been subsumed to capital.17 However, focusing on the similarities and differences when comparing the 1960s and 1990s obscures an older connection between students, pleasure and the carnivalesque. In the first elite HEI period, elements of the student calendar were organised according to the structure of the carnivalesque, as described by Bakhtin: reversals, hierarchical protests and utopian familiarity.18 Within the yearly student calendar, carnivalesque behaviour was licensed by both the University and the citizens of Sheffield, and largely occurred during the annual ‘Rag’ celebrations, but also at Graduation and during other festivals. In some way, it was this annual licence to engage in pleasure that was interpreted as a perennial entitlement to pleasure in the transition to the second period, and, in turn, was configured into a complete ‘service culture of pleasure’ by the transition to the third. The story of the carnivalesque as it passes through these three stages is, to some extent, that of student culture in Sheffield, for it results in the consolidation of ‘going out’ that now dominates the contemporary university. As a narrative of consolidation, the story can be told in many different ways with reference to many different subjects: singing, chanting, fancy dress and clothing, drinking, dancing, pranking, speaking and sexual intercourse, even through politics and sports. All are traditional student activities at Sheffield, and all are documented extensively in the student histories and archives. Their consolidation into going out was never an inevitable conclusion, although it has occurred in the wider context of youth culture and the growth of the night-time economy, and is thus part of a much broader social development. Nevertheless, the following three sections are an attempt to understand student culture at Sheffield

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in terms of this narrative, an interpretation composed of many historical dialogues taking place now and taking place then.

‘We be Sheffield Hokey Pokey!’ The HEI-centred culture is marked by the small size of its social network. Between 1926 and 1940, there were 830–887 students a year, and the University ‘was so small that the office staff of Western Bank could greet each student by name’, while the SU President knew 85% of the students.19 The 1935/1936 SU diary printed the home address of the VC and important faculty members, should a student urgently need to get in touch. Such a small network facilitated a hierarchy of subjects, where engineering and medical students ‘formed a sort of student aristocracy’ along with the rugby club, all of which exhibited a high level of participation in the ‘unofficial’ student culture of drinking, dancing, pranking, theatre and the cinema.20 There are many stories from this period surrounding convocations and degree ceremonies of dunking in fountains, shouting, singing and playing ‘The animals went in two by two’ as academic staff processed. This annual ritual behaviour disappeared after the graduation ceremony moved to City Hall in 1947.21 The University grew in size during the 1950s, and, although a bar opened in the SU in 1949, many students still gathered in local pubs. Drinking is certainly a traditional student activity, where mobility has helped mitigate what Measham and Brain have termed the ‘traditional norms and values which might have served to limit excessive consumption’ long before these ‘traditional norms’ vanished elsewhere.22 Despite this, student drinking was limited to licensed public houses and, largely, to men. While the UK student culture may have ‘ritualized drinking to excess’, it was certainly limited to ‘upper-class young men’.23 Disorder was the exception, witnessed by the extensive, involved and very infrequent coverage it receives in the student press. Dancing, certainly in pre-1960s Sheffield, was not always associated with alcohol, doubtless because excessive consumption would not make a male student an attractive partner for a woman. Alcohol was only infrequently allowed at University dances, which were timetabled in agreement with faculty until just before the second world war. Women, always in the minority at the University until the latter part of the twentieth century, speak of having their dance cards ‘full’, as they would be booked

22  M. Cheeseman

for dances in Firth Hall and at Saturday night informal ‘hops’ in Mappin Hall. In Sheffield student culture, it became culturally unacceptable to hold a popular dance without alcohol in the mid- to late 1960s, a development that paralleled the rise of pop music, and dancing on one’s own or in a group, rather than by holding someone else.24 Indeed, it is worth bearing in mind that dancing did not become an activity a student could engage in on their own until youth culture heightened distinctions of taste in the late 1950s/1960s as a consequence of the stratifications developed in dialogue with the music industry. The ‘slow dance’, which encouraged sexually orientated touching, retained a place in student discos until the 1990s. Fascinatingly, there are many mentions of the Varsity ‘yell’ in connection with dances and University events. This was doubtless connected to sports, but was also led by the SU President at dances.25 It was still being given in the early 1960s, when dances would end with the singing of the University song and, finally, the yell. I found it recorded in the SU diary for 1935/1936 as: VARSITY YELL! Ikamelayo!—————————Gee! Ikamelayo!—————————Gee! Ikamelayo!—————————Gee! Ah—————————————— Disce Doce; Disce Doce! Ushta Ushta Oy! We be Sheffield Hokey Pokey! Hip Hip Hip Hooray! Sheffield, Sheffield, S-h-e-f-f-i-e-l-d-, SHEFFIELD!!!

This yell has a purely integrative function, doubtless because the student body was small enough to imagine itself as the totality of the student experience, S-h-e-f-f-i-e-l-d itself. Despite the connection to sport and

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masculinity (this is the Varsity yell), I found no reference to the yell in the 1970s and 1980s. Performances that integrated the institution with the city of Sheffield characterised the first stage of elite HEI student culture. While there has never been regular fraternisation among locals and students, the University and, by association, students had a close relationship with the city, one which grew out of the significant support, financially and publically, that the local population had contributed towards its foundation. As early as 1921, the University attempted to introduce what it termed the ‘University Week’, to ‘establish and promote a University Public Spirit’ and to ‘promote University Publicity’ among the citizens of Sheffield making ‘THE WEEK a leading event of the city life’.26 This venture would soon become a failure, however, and it was the student’s Rag, which began a year earlier in 1920, that would be enthusiastically taken up by the local population. This would see the city develop a carnivalesque relationship with students, granting them a festival licence to misbehave, prank and indulge in public pleasure in return for providing citizens with spectacle, entertainment and a donation to local charity. Such a Rag model was adopted across university towns throughout the 1920s, with all developing their own local traditions.27 It is redolent of not only an elite HEI-orientated student life but also an elite-orientated civic life. Student Rags were criticised by socialists as unfair, with students ‘being allowed to have liberty to do things that ordinary people would be told they were hooligans if they did’.28 As a 1930s Sheffield student remembered, We got on & off the trams collecting & almost had the freedom of the city. The fellows always seemed to head for Swizz (or Snigg) Hill. There was a Brewery at the bottom where free beer was dished out. They enjoyed the day! For the girls free Bovril at the Tec. in Leopold St.

As a public event, the Sheffield Rag was an official celebration that underlined an ideal social order. Its carnivalesque elements were ordained by both the University and the city, the VC inspecting the Parade and the Lord Mayor ceremoniously buying the first copy of Twikker, the Sheffield ‘Rag Mag’, which contained advertising from local businesses. A regional celebration, with collections taking place as far afield as Doncaster and Derby, Rag Day itself was a grand affair:

24  M. Cheeseman 6–8 am 10 am 11.15 am 2.30 pm 3 pm 10 pm

Early morning collections through the city Great Rag Procession from Western Bank into city Tour of districts by decorated lorries Boat race on Don Students through city, Balloon race, Fireworks etc. Grand Torch-lit Procession from Western Bank to Barker’s Pool29

The year before this Rag Day, 1948, in Twikker, the Lord Mayor wrote a letter addressed to the people of Sheffield: It is now within our tradition that the University students of Sheffield shall make an annual effort, by means of their Rag day, for the aid of some great human service. May their altruism continue to receive the support of our citizens.

The references to breaking the law, sex, drinking and offending magistrates in Twikker were rarely censored by the University and were only banned one year, 1949. Evident in surviving letters and many of the solicited memories of the Sheffield Rag, going back to the 1920s and 1930s and appearing throughout, are references to ‘letting rip’ and ‘letting go’. The disposition of the Rag may have been free, but it was also performative in that the students worked for their donations by making fools of themselves, or others in the process.30 It is clear this annual carnivalesque performance had as much to do with the students’ own view of themselves as the city’s view of the University. As Kugelmass comments, ‘the license is as much a chance to misbehave as it is to display oneself or one’s vision of the world, to occupy public attention … the most precious of human goods’.31 Students had yet to frighten authority with their potential power, as they would in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, one student remembers letting off ‘a bag of flour backed up by a firework … stuffed up the scaffolding pipe’ at a mounted policeman, with ‘good humoured’ consequences. Although there was some participation from non-students, especially as Mischief Night often fell in Rag Week, the SU and, specifically, the Rag Committee usually took responsibility and liability for all events across the town.32 Because Rag occurred three to five weeks into the autumn term, there was also a sense of initiation for first-year students. The range and depth of pranks veered from organised stunts to opportunistic acts of vandalism. For 1 year, 1958, across late October and early November, the following stunts are recorded in the Archives:

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• Ten taxis were ordered for the warden at Crewe Hall.33 • Four signs were removed from streets and roads. • A bench was placed on top of a bus shelter. • 475 plants were destroyed in the beds behind the Medicine Faculty. • Garden and cellar gates were removed on Ecclesall Road. • A student climbed up the bus ‘Information Board’. • Sections of two university halls of residence were whitewashed. • A tower on the main university building was painted by Manchester Rag. • The Queen Victoria monument in Endcliffe Park was painted green. • The boats around the lake in Crookes Valley Park were found moored on the central island, apart from one left in the university quadrangle. • In London, Sheffield students placed red dye in the fountain at Piccadilly Circus and a fake ticking bomb in the toilets of Selfridges. • On the road to Baslow, a group of dental students staged a murder. This last incident was taken seriously, provoked a police hunt and made the front page of the local paper, the Sheffield Star. Once the hoax was revealed, a condemnation of sorts was printed, but the article finished by commenting on two Guy Fawkes found swinging from the flagpoles of the newspaper’s offices: ‘If the Rag Committee would like them back they can have them—provided they pay a ransom into their own fund.’ This tolerant, almost affectionate, remark is revealing of the extent and depth of the licence, even in 1958, when the London events indicate that a national student consciousness was growing. A belief in the validity of the Rag performance remained. Indeed, it is informative that the majority of the archived letters of complaint about student behaviour are concerned with ‘beer drinking races’—essentially timed, individual pub crawls with limited entrants. With hindsight, it is easy to see the approaching culture change. On 5 May 1957 the students organised a ‘mourning party’ following the last 194 tram from Crookes past the University to the terminus, singing the National Anthem and a song entitled ‘Death to the internal combustion engine’. The next year a drug reference appeared in Twikker, and in October 1959 more than 2,000 students took part in the Sheffield Rag. There were balls at Cutler’s Hall, in Rotherham, in Barnsley and in Doncaster; a Jazz Carnival at City Hall; and a Midnight Film Matinee. At this last event, seats were broken

26  M. Cheeseman and even torn out, the proscenium damaged, things thrown at the screen and the whole place littered with filth of every description—flour, peas, potatoes, toilet rolls, beer bottles and so on.

This letter, in the University archives, explained that the cinema was ‘accustomed to the usual sort of Rag merrymaking’ but had not encountered anything like this before, and had to call in the police. On 26 September 1960, for the first time, the student newspaper, Darts, published a special ‘Welcome to Sheffield!’ edition for the new arrivals. The first freshers of the 1960s had much to look forward to, especially the Beatnik Ball that was held on 6 October, as part of the first ever Intro Week, held before the Rag celebrations. The splendid objectifications of youth culture had arrived in Sheffield, and with them the dissolute pleasures of smashing them up. When, on 26 October 1961, the Rag convened a ‘Dawn Patrol’ to collect donations wearing pyjamas, its organisers had no idea what they had started.

Wherever the Beat is Heard The 1960s began in grey flannelled trousers, sports jackets, shirts and ties, all wrapped up with an ‘essential’ university scarf.34 By the end of the decade (after two women were ejected from a physics lecture for wearing trousers in 1965), jeans, Afghan coats, flowery shirts, beads and long hair were ‘normal’. Shirts and ties were ‘weird’ but not forgotten, on the margins where they remained, past the end of the next decade, hiding behind the leather, studs and hair gel, through the 1980s and on into the 1990s, where they were reborn in a mediated irony that owed everything and nothing to what had gone before. In terms of cultural evolution, I suggest this movement, from the 1960s to the 1990s, was representative of a period of heterogeneity that student culture experienced in its transition from a traditional, HEI-orientated culture to a youth-orientated culture. It was not a displacement but rather an ‘annual development’ that grew with every influx of students and the influences borne from the full width of student mobility. The following extract from Darts is an excellent demonstration of what I mean by a heterogeneous student culture. It describes the attractions of the ‘beat scene’ yet does so with an elite sensibility, in that it considers youth behaviour in an attempt to address what is ‘good for society’:

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At the clubs where the latest groups appear, there is an atmosphere of complete enjoyment. The groups and the audience are free from the stigma of being called immature—they are immature and they enjoy it. Wherever the beat is heard there is a sense of community, a rapport between the groups and the audience, between the stage and floor, which there is not at more traditional concerts. Some observers regard this as unhealthy, they talk in terms of the mass hysteria which greeted Hitler, suggesting that enthusiasm is bad per se. This is yet another example of the intellectual stating basic fact and giving it a significance it does not have. Mass hysteria has been the cause of revolutions in Russia and in France, it has made a football club famous and given madmen power. It is foolish to moralise about something which is so much an inherent characteristic of humanity. It is far better that the Beatles, say, should be the centre of such enthusiasm than that no such enthusiasm should exist. As long as Sir Alex Douglas Hume never becomes the object of mass hysteria there is nothing to worry about.35

Of course, ironically, politics would become the focus of student ‘hysteria’ over the next two decades, as the group consciousness demonstrated by this piece became aware of its entitlements and collective power. This political awakening placed inordinate importance on the individual’s rights; it stressed the self and made the personal political. Desire had been unleashed, and would be marshalled by the progressive liberalisation of the night-time economy. The Rag was a casualty of this as the behaviours it licensed annually in the name of charity were taken over by the weekend rhythms preferred by commerce. The article that the above extract was taken from, for example, was written with the help of two brothers who ran nightclubs in Sheffield, Peter and Geoff Stringfellow. The elder would go on to ‘make his name’ in the fleshy pleasures of the night-time economy. Everything made possible by the student Rag, from going wild in costume to public drunkenness, would gradually be taken over by business, often businesses run by students or with student involvement (the SU being the classic example). To paraphrase the extract, the beat slowly spread throughout the week, until, by the 1990s, it was heard every night. This economy grew up with students, the ideal consumers of its product owing to the structural peculiarities of mobility which provided the freedom from censure that was legally conferred by the change in students’ legal status. This change was first recommended in 1967; by the

28  M. Cheeseman

early 1970s, halls of residence in Sheffield were run without restricting a student’s right to have consensual sex or partake in pleasure. The papers of Peter and Alison Slater clearly depict a hybrid culture, a hierarchical hall, with a warden, JCR, SCR and various staff, an active press, many committees and ‘characters’. While the hall bar was certainly used, alcohol was not consumed outside of it and was, indeed, still difficult to get hold of. Not always sold at the ‘nightclubs’ in town, drink was restricted to public houses. The hall was very much thought of as a self-contained home, a society in miniature, to be managed as such. Corporate life, although not named as such, was still evident. As a concept, ‘leisure’ was situated outside the hall, largely at the SU, and ‘doing culture’ was viewed as ‘being part of a wider culture’ rather than a ‘personal experience’. LPs, for example, were regularly feted in Tapton News alongside extensive reviews which contextualise them as cultural documents. There is little discussion of how the album made the listener feel or move their body, as later witnessed in the student music press. In the 1960s and 1970s the self remained tethered to cultural forms and social institutions, although it is obvious that the axis of participation was levelling from the hierarchical orientation of the traditional HEI-centred culture (where students knew their place in a pecking order of subjects) to a personal, horizontal engagement with society. In the second, heterogeneous phase of student culture, this orientation was falling. The self was not yet atomised at the centre of experience, although youth culture was proselytising its new position. The very personal poetry that pervades Tapton News is a good example of its ascendance. Now these poems read like documents from an alien civilisation: I could not imagine a contemporary student openly publishing verse depicting their feelings to their neighbours. Indeed, when one contemporary Tapton resident drunkenly wrote a blog post on ‘feelings’, it was swiftly deleted, but not before a friend of his copied and pasted it all over Facebook in an attempt at cut-and-paste ridicule. Other elements of contemporary student life are, of course, recognisable in the youth-centred culture evident from the 1960s on. While the papers of Peter and Alison Slater demonstrate the heterogeneity of Sheffield students, student culture was a culture engrossed in claiming its entitlement to pleasure. On 17 October 1970, Darts began to show a topless student ‘dolly bird’ every week, an unusual decision when juxtaposed with the political causes that filled up the remainder of its pages. By 1973, drugs were part of the Intro Week information; the ‘uptight war generation’

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had been replaced by ‘a cooler more hedonistic one’.36 Deference to staff decreased, and the University willingly accommodated students and the ‘student viewpoint’ in fear of aggravating the SU.37 Drinking ‘was a daily event for many’, and cannabis and LSD were ‘easily attainable’ if so desired.38 However, there were still many aspects of the pre-1960s HEIcentred culture present. Hall staff, for example, discussed the relative lack of problems they had, cleaners remembered ‘putting a little bleach in the cannabis pot on the windowsill every week’ and porters had fond memories of running a monthly ‘pub crawl’ to show students different areas of Sheffield. Most importantly, the SU had not yet built its nightclubs. One could write a thesis on the many narratives that describe the transition from this world to the contemporary university, but none are as succinct or as demonstrative as the changing fortunes of the Rag, which also chart the relationship between students and the city of Sheffield. Essentially, as the 1960s passed into the 1970s and 1980s, the Rag declined in importance, and its column inches shrank in the student press, dwarfed by the rising importance of Intro Week. In 1967, Darts displayed the attractions of both, covering Rag over a double-page spread (‘Nobody wears ordinary clothes so go mad for once and have a laugh’), followed by a double-page review of the Freshers’ Ball entitled ‘Psychedelia hits Union’ which proclaimed: ‘If as Marshall McLuhan says, “the medium is the message” groups like Arthur Brown and Zoot Money represent a new level of communication with their audiovisual acts’.39 The size of the Rag Parade essentially shrank, year after year, as its profile diminished in the multicoloured light of a national and international youth culture that was hallucinatory in its appeal and scope. By 1969, Darts’ coverage of the Rag Parade was much smaller, and by 1975 it was only covered once.40 The local Sheffield Telegraph reported ‘stunningly unforgettable’ floats in 1981, and by 1984 there were complaints about the lack of interest shown in it by Darts, which provoked the headline ‘Poor Old Rag’.41 Hall porters reported a complete lack of enthusiasm: ‘It became just people sitting on a lorry, in the late 80s … 90s, don’t know why it changed. Society has changed.’ Indeed, Mathers quotes Paul Blomfield, who joined the SU as a member of staff in 1978, suggesting that the Rag petered out as a result of the change in the age of majority, which made the Rag culture of ‘being a bit naughty’ seem immature.42 While such an interpretation may be valid, it neglects the impact of expansion and forgets that the Rag is a performance, and as a performance it needs an audience.

30  M. Cheeseman

Effectively, the city of Sheffield withdrew from this role and, as the student body grew and expanded through the 1960s, and into the 1970s and 1980s, it ceased to believe in the validity of the Rag performance, withdrawing the students’ carnivalesque licence. To some extent, this was because of the pranks (or, as they were termed, ‘stunts’), which were already extreme by the end of the 1950s. This can be understood in terms of escalation, of each year attempting to outdo the last, yet must also be interpreted in line with a growing youth culture, and the beginnings of a national ‘student culture’, encouraged by participation in the Rag. Thus, as HE expanded and youth culture began to gain its own voice, stunts began to occur in other cities, especially London. It is clear from the 1960s letters of complaint kept by the offices of the Registrar and the VC that the carnivalesque behaviour of students was wearing thin with the public of Sheffield. In 1965 the Rag was referred to as ‘nothing but an excuse for vandalism’ by ‘so-called educated students’. Another letter complained that ‘these students seem to think that once they became part of the “Rag”, they receive a licence to annoy and harm ordinary people, all in the name of charity’.43 By the 1980s, one participant in the Rag commented: ‘we met with opposition and hostility then and I shudder to think what would happen now. You’d all be given ASBOs probably.’ For a time, in the heterogeneous 1960s and 1970s, both public licence and sufficient levels of student enthusiasm remained, resulting in some truly spectacular and cunning stunts that spoke not just to Sheffield but to the growing national student consciousness. This escalation is reminiscent of what Turner terms ‘liminoid phenomena’: Competition emerges in the later liminoid domain; individuals and schools compete for the recognition of a ‘public’ and are regarded as ludic offerings placed for sale on a free market—at least in nascent capitalistic and democratic-liberal societies. Liminoid phenomena, unlike liminal, do not so much invert as subvert quotidian and prestigious structures and symbols.44

In October 1967, for example, Sheffield students painted a giant zebra crossing on the M1, the day before it was due to be opened by Barbara Castle. That same year they daubed ‘HMS Twikker’ in whitewash on the bows of the QEII, and the following year Concorde received similar treatment, before it had even been unveiled. The remnants of a national

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licence can be detected in the letter written to the Chancellor, from H.T. Fream, Secretary of British Aircraft Corporation Limited, Filton Division: ‘While we may privately join in applauding the spirit of adventure which prompted this incident, we consider, for reasons we have given, that the plan was misguided.’45 Over the next decade the public stopped applauding such stunts, which corresponded to, and informed, declining student interest, which was intimately related to the expanding student body. The literature on pranks holds that the size of the folk group is related to the size of the prank, with more elaborate pranks occurring in a smaller communities, where, conversely, more could get involved in the production and dissemination of such activities.46 In 1980 the M1 stunt was repeated, before being staged again in 1982 on Chapel Walk, like a fading echo. At the same time the cultural emphasis on the self and personal experience, first discussed in relation to the Sheffield beat scene, was accelerating. This eventually displaced the need for a public performance. When, in October 1966, the VC, Hugh Robson, wrote that the Rag took the form of a carnival ‘to offer some entertainment, a distraction to relieve the pain of extracting money’,47 he was partly mistaken, for, even at that point, the collecting tins were absent from the Pyjama Jump. This evolved out of the dawn raids, officially beginning in 1965, as an event to which students were encouraged to wear their nightclothes to the nightclub. Cross-dressing was evident from as early as 1967.48 The Pyjama Jump would come to dominate the Rag, so that by the 1970s it was ‘compulsory’ and featured in many of the accounts solicited for the centenary history, many of which discuss casual sex and drinking. While the traditional Rag’s fortunes declined, the Pyjama Jump’s soared. Indeed, it was presented in the student press as an event in itself, unconnected to the Rag, and increasingly mediated by photo spreads.49 In 1990, at the nadir of the Rag, the Sheffield Telegraph declared the Pyjama Jump the largest ticket-only annual event in the world.50 A Channel 4 documentary was made, written and presented by Jon Ronson.51 The Pyjama Jump, of course, had sprung from the performative carnivalesque student tradition of ‘letting oneself go’, but it depended on, and was in some part organised by, the night-time economy. Essentially, students would buy a ticket that would permit entry to all participating nightclubs. The money from ticket sales went towards Rag fundraising, while the nightclubs would recoup their lost door fees from alcohol sales: everyone won, apart from the city of Sheffield, which was removed from

32  M. Cheeseman

the equation. The Pyjama Jump was effectively a private, ticketed festival held in the auspices of the night-time economy. The audience was no longer the public, donating to charity in return for student performance, but just the students, indulging in the pleasures of the carnivalesque, revelling in their entitlement (not licence) to ‘let rip’. By the mid-1990s the Pyjama Jump grew to be so popular it became a victim of its own success, judged unsustainable in the eyes of the missing part of its equation: the city of Sheffield. This was not helped by the press, which began to print photographs and stories of the inevitable disorder. By 1996, young people were coming to attend from all over the country, ticket sales had reached 20,000 and the Supertram was stopped for safety reasons. In 1997 the constabulary refused to police the event unless the SU paid for it. There was an outcry in the student press as the SU refused, and ‘single ticket’ campaigners ran in elections seeking to bring it back. The last Rag Parade took place in 1997, and was not held again owing to lack of interest from both students and the city. The Rag Committee survived as a ‘A hardcore of about ten dedicated drinkers’ until 2006/2007, when it was ‘rebranded’ by the SU with the involvement of faith groups and without its carnivalesque emphasis.52 The Rag thus lives a contemporary afterlife, which sees students ‘get involved to improve their CVs’ and participate in ‘a niche market of challenge events that meets student demand’.53

The Subject–Object Loop is Birthed The film that Jon Ronson made of the Pyjama Jump is a valuable and important document in the history of student culture at the University of Sheffield. It captures the end of its heterogeneous period, as the SU was transforming into a nightclub provider and the night-time economy was solidifying the performance of going out. The featured students reference a system of fees that would soon be out of date (‘all those taxpayers, right, who pay our grants, this is what we do with your grant money’), as well as discussing their behaviour in terms of a charitable licence (‘Well it’s for charity … you’re actually paying for the night’).54 Yet the film also features all of the performances of carnivalesque ‘going out’ that I observed in my fieldwork. While there is no chanting, there is the singing of lewd marching songs, banter-like roaring and messiness everywhere, fancy dress and dancing in nightclubs. Above all, the students speak of the Pyjama Jump as a stage, or a ‘night’, the ‘best night

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of the year in Sheffield’ that serves to cement friends together, ‘It was Pyjama Jump that brought it out of everybody … it can bring out the best in people who are normally very shy’. When the interviewer asks the students if they are not concerned about being filmed, one ironically comments: ‘Love it, absolutely love it, we want to be able to share our inner feelings.’ As with the article on the beat scene, this film defines a transitional stage of student culture. Suitably, for what will be a hypermediated, internet age, it is a film and not a written text, and although it documents a remnant of the heterogeneous middle period, it demonstrates the homogeneity of the coming years, where the night-time economy will establish itself as the only recognised means of exchanging social capital. A student in the film comments: ‘You come back in September, term starts in September, and all everyone talks about in September is Pyjama Jump.’ When this annual festival was lost, its importance was soaked up by the intensification of the weekly nightclub calendar, initiated by the SU in the early 1990s and in place, both structurally and socially, by the year 2000.55 While the Pyjama Jump demonstrates a number of student pleasures coming together in one activity, it does not trace the development of these activities and their gradual slurring into the monophonic, neoliberal pleasure performance that is ‘going out’. The stage management of this slurring began in the early 1980s, and it is celebrated as a matter of survival in the SU’s official history, when SU officers fought cuts by becoming more commercial.56 The Octagon indicated the scope of the SU’s ambitions. Built in 1983 and co-owned with the University, the multipurpose venue is ‘daunting in its size and potential’.57 In 1987 the SU bought the Fox & Duck pub as an investment, and in the early 1990s it held a ‘Strategic Review’, which decided to fight falling grants and rising debt by becoming ‘more luxurious than ever before … to ensure students spent their money there and not elsewhere’.58 Debt, not thrift, would become the cornerstone of its approach to ‘giving student’s what they want’. That is not to say that cheap alcohol was not available, of course. In 1990 the SU ran its first brand-sponsored event, an ‘Irish Night’ where Guinness was sold for 70p a pint. This was held near, but not quite on, St. Patrick’s Day, which would be developed over the 1990s by the night-time economy into an important night in the drinking calendar. By 1991/1992 the SU employed over 300 staff and was treating its students as customers. In 1992 it appointed a marketing manager,

34  M. Cheeseman

a key event in the development of the 1990s monophonic student culture, which was overseen by permanent staff in the SU dedicated to ‘Commercial Services’ and the re-conceptualisation of ‘Ents’ as a profitgenerating business. This allowed the SU to plan and even control its future operations, effectively acting as a structural bridge from heterogeneity to homogeneity. A major refurbishment and expansion was subsequently undertaken in the mid-1990s, as the numbers of students attending Sheffield rose by 50% in the first half of the decade. These changes were also a reaction to the development of the larger Sheffield night-time economy, which also saw student-orientated establishments such as The Cavendish opening on West Street, an area which had been redeveloped, along with Devonshire Street, as a scripted pleasure zone. In the 1990s, nightclubs began running free buses from the halls to the clubs, and back again. Seeing itself in competition with these establishments, the SU invested heavily. In 1994 the profile of club nights began to rise in the student press, with the size and quality of the advertisements increasing, while pictures of students drinking began to dominate the feature articles. By 2000 the SU was running six club nights a week and had transformed its non-drinking provision into ‘Give It A Go’ events. To accompany this intensification, fancy dress began to appear regularly in relation to the weekly round of clubs, untethered from annual events such as Halloween, Christmas or Rag. This is at first evident in the photographs concerned with the SU’s LGBT night, Climax, and then on other nights, such as Pop Tarts, first advertised as a ‘70s night’.59 On 5 May 2000, issue 30 of the Steel Press carried a ‘School Disco’ listing, complete with instructions on what to do (‘Get down the Oxfam shop and get kitted out in a nice grey outfit’). By issue 35 on 10 November, students going out in school uniform were present in a feature on chat-up lines.60 As national pub chains began to target the student market, and I began my fieldwork, the SU intensified its nighttime provision further, commenting in its 2006 Annual Report that ‘We are increasingly dependent on our entertainments programme to drive footfall.’61 Those elements of student culture that could not be monetised have fallen from prominence. Drugs certainly play a much smaller role in the SU than they did in the past, where they feature in many memories of the 1970s and even 1980s.62 The biggest absence, however, is politics. SU general meetings ended in 1991/1992, while the SU’s annual

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general meeting (AGM) was eventually abandoned in 2006/2007 owing, essentially, to a lack of interest.63 Party politics were dropped from University elections and candidates won on the basis of having a ‘clever slogan’.64 The official history of the SU comments that it became ‘increasingly difficult to get students with limited time to attend demonstrations’, while neglecting to question the efforts the SU took to get those very same students onto its own dance floors.65 This certainly illustrates the movement of ‘symbolic significance’ from the ‘world of work, politics and community to the world of leisure’.66 Of course, demonstrations still occurred and were still reported in the press. Some were poorly attended while others used the tactics of occupation to achieve disproportionate impact, such as the 2009 protest against the University’s involvement in Palestine, which inspired a backlash: ‘the student-as-consumer theory in action: they had paid for the lecture, and they were not going to let anyone rob them of it’.67 A student wrote into Darts complaining that the ‘consumerist outlooks, engendered by the advent of tuition fees, render us ideologically incapable of dealing with bigger issues’.68 Even when a consumer issue presented itself, however, such as university food prices, there were isolated complaints but no communal action. Contemporary students possess little social capital or civic engagement, which relies on hierarchies to maintain the tradition of participation.69 Residential hierarchies such as hall JCRs have been dismantled by the University and SU. A commentator in the student press even suggested that students should not protest at all, ‘because we’re students’ and protesting would be ‘entirely predictable’.70 Of the protests that did occur, all were undertaken by a ‘scene’ comprising the ‘usual faces’.71 When I attended SU hustings in 2008, I counted approximately 200 students in the audience. The football match in the SU bar certainly had a much bigger, more involved crowd. One of the candidates for President introduced himself by saying, ‘I’m not talking about my policies’, while a candidate for Financial Officer commented, ‘I’m not just doing this for my CV, honestly.’ When I voted I received a 50p ‘thanks for voting’ voucher off beer in the bar. The student of the homogenous period is a creation of historical processes, a habitus formed from the interface of the traditional, carnivalesque Rag persona and the night-time economy. Unlike the second heterogeneous phase of student culture, this homogenous, monophonic culture was birthed by institutions. It is youth culture grown up, HEIs

36  M. Cheeseman

equating student desire for pleasure with their ‘business need’. The traditional element, the carnivalesque thread, justifies the transformations the SU has made: if we don’t do it, then someone else will. That’s the message of the SU’s official history: by giving students ‘what they want’ they are saving them from exploitation in the free market. Indeed, of all the sections of the University, the SU was the first to reform itself around student desire, a trend that has reshaped the whole University, from academic departments through libraries (especially the Information Commons (IC)) to the construction of the residential student villages. The third stage of student culture is thus characterised by parities between institutions and desire. This is a functional transformation in that it does not ask what students need but provides for what students want by appealing to their desires. In the official history of the SU, the ex-General Manager, Paul Blomfield, attempts to sidestep this issue by downplaying the SU’s role in creating the contemporary culture: ‘as the number of students grew, so a distinctive student culture disappeared and their interests became indistinguishable from those of other young people’.72 To comment that this was an inevitable result of expansion is to propose that the ‘logic of the market’ is undeniable and incontrovertible. In 2010, Blomfield left the SU and was elected Labour MP for Sheffield Central. Aside from the friction resulting from studentification, there has been very little opposition or resistance to this evolution. I suggest that this is because students created and assented to it. Because of the traditional, carnivalesque freedoms of mobility discussed and the cultural impact of youth culture, the evolution from a heterogeneous to a homogenous culture felt organic and honest, a natural ‘revelation’ of youthful desire. Lad culture banter is very close to the spirit of the Rag, defined as ‘something a group of you might do, usually discomfiting someone else, or a group of others. It would be somewhat at their expense, but not vindictively so’.73 This is the traditional thread that runs through student culture in Sheffield, which explains the disappearance of the Rag by finding its spirit performed everywhere: Last year, on Rag Day … Evil-hearted students, with Babylonian abandon, danced naked in the streets, there were chariots, fantastically adorned, women in mad garb, and the men madder than ever. Wild laughter rang through the streets, wine flowed like water, and the pagan revelry was carried on into the night.74

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No longer annual, but weekly, this is the messy style propagated by the night-time economy, a connection which silences criticism, masking it with tradition as ‘a constructed canon, projected into the past in order to legitimize the present’.75 Everyone knows ‘what goes on’ at university; parents and society accept the carnivalesque: ‘enjoy your student days, have fun, you’re only young once!’ Mobile students breed mobile students, mistaking the heterogeneous pleasures of their own past for the homogeneous prison of their children’s present. One of the portering staff recounted a story from Sorby that illustrates this. Using a digital camera, he documented pictures of the damage (‘the sheer vandalism’) that students had created over one term. When parents arrived to help their children move home, he displayed these pictures, hoping to gather support in disciplining their offspring. Instead, the parents asked him whether they could keep specific photos of their own child’s damage as souvenirs. This act of sympathy casts parents as tourists taking pictures of their imaginary youth. It recognises students as the other, but also suggests that the other can be understood, just as the Calvinist missionary assumes that the unconverted native has a soul.76 Following De Zengotita, this is reminiscent of a general relativist attitude to youth: we’ve been there, we recognise ourselves and we know you’re only performing.77 In 1966, Darts solicited the views of Professor Bernard Crick on the Sheffield students he taught.78 In a long essay he commented, ‘You are all in the grip of a cult of youth’, expressing his belief that students do not understand ‘the long view’: that there will be time, later in life, to both do and experience. He insisted that older people are just as culturally relevant as younger people. It is these card-carrying members of the 1960s cult of youth who now take souvenirs of their own carnivalesque projections home with them. Many do not realise that the heterogeneous culture they once knew has disappeared. The night-time economy thus justifies itself (literally in the SU’s official history) through the carnivalesque Rag tradition. Giddens suggests that ‘justified tradition is tradition in sham clothing and receives its identity only from the reflexivity of the modern’.79 However, there is no reflexivity in student engagement with the night-time economy: it is now compulsory, ‘life itself’. When the rules of university are unlearnt, they are done so reflexively, but this amounts to consideration of how a student engages with the night-time economy, not whether they engage with it at all. Giddens seems to believe that modernity is capable of

38  M. Cheeseman

exalting choice over habit, and yet this subsumption of social relations to capital has, to paraphrase, created ‘choice in sham clothing that receives its identity only from the reflexivity of money’. There is no choice, there is only monophony, the beat of the black market. Student culture has been subsumed. This is a classic hegemonic incorporation of pleasure, with going out at its heart. In the Darts commentary of the same Pyjama Jump that was filmed by Channel 4, a student writes that it was ‘a perfect opportunity to claim back that rebellious student territory’ from ‘our thrusting capitalist society’.80 This comment demonstrates a belief that I have rarely, if ever, recorded in my fieldwork. It is a remnant of the carnivalesque relationship of students to the city of Sheffield, and exalts the Pyjama Jump as a festival subverting the wider culture. It claims that sexual freedoms, nudity and excess are evasive pleasure in Fiske’s sense in that they lead to rebellious, productive pleasure.81 This interpretation is largely absent from contemporary students. The 1960s had introduced the self and the importance of personal experience. This is at the core of the shift from an elite HEI culture to youth culture. To return to my favourite quotation from Darts, The groups and the audience are free from the stigma of being called immature—they are immature and they enjoy it. Wherever the beat is heard there is a sense of community, a rapport between the groups and the audience, between the stage and floor, which there is not at more traditional concerts.82

Going out takes this movement further, removing the rapport ‘between stage and floor’; it closes the gap between subject and object so that the performer becomes the audience. The axis of participation in society has fallen from the hierarchy of the HEI-centred student culture to the self-enveloped world, where the consumer’s desire for experience is the product. This is the kernel, the essential core of the homogenous student culture that dominated from the 1990s on, and the principle upon which the SU reorganised itself as, primarily, a nightclub complex. It is both a definition of what going out means and a concrete example of the subsumption of social relations to capital. Making friends is making places is going out, where the consumer is friendship group, performer and audience. One needs only to glance at the listing page of the student press to see countless references to this subsumption. To take the example of one in the Steel Press,

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Funky 70s disco fever all on a fabulous lighted floor that you have to fight to get on to … Dig out your flares and get on that stage baby … Still the best night in Sheffield … nice big stages to make a fool of yourself on.83

The Pyjama Jump may have been a solipsistic festival, one that, in its exclusion of the city of Sheffield, prefigured this subject–object loop, yet it still held a mirror to the students of Sheffield as a group. As an annual event it possessed a ritual function not matched by the necessity of Intro Week or the routine of ‘Christmas Day at the Union’. With the removal of the Pyjama Jump, contemporary student culture became, as a consequence, a homogenous blur of nights mediated by alcohol, week after week. In this, going out performs a sleight of hand in terms of group identity. Essentially, it creates the illusion of a mass festival, where participants are engaged en masse, when they are in fact competing in small groups. This is the subjunctive potential of the night, the nightclub as dreamscape, with its strobes, anthems and smoke hypnotising a large group into believing in its own existence. It is the perfect complement to the persistent individuation of HE, and it explains youth culture’s emphasis on going out. There is a sense of hope in the subjunctive buzz of the dance floor, a unity through pleasure, that is achieved, and indeed delivered, by the state of messy intoxication. Thus drunkenness once again becomes a shorthand for ‘student’, as it was back in the days of the Rag, before the evasive pleasures of the joint gained a brief handhold in the heterogeneous 1970s, which increasingly look like halcyon days. The history of student culture at Sheffield teaches us that the larger the group, the smaller the stage. This means that the wider community only exists in the imagination of students performing on the dance floor. It doesn’t exist elsewhere. A theme that emerged from the interviews I held with the portering staff was the change in ‘the attitude’ of students in hall from the 1990s on: When I came here I was respected for the help I gave, now there is none. It’s changed in last ten years. Society has changed. I was once looked on as a fatherly figure—the University would always hire older, more mature men. That respect has gone now. You know they think ‘Who are you to tell me that?’ We’ve allowed society to get like that. It’s how we live. We always had some problems. But I always got on with students. They still ask you for favours and you help them out but then they walk past me the next day and say nothing. I used to go on pub crawls with them and take them for walks in the Peak District. Kids seem shyer of me’cos I’m a lot older than them. Is it because I’m older? I had a better relationship with

40  M. Cheeseman them in the past… It changed in the late 90s. One lad spent six or seven years in Uni, six of them in Sorby. He came up and stayed at my house not that long ago. Came to my wedding. It was a laugh and a joke before, not with this lot. It’s got worse [When?] In the last ten to fifteen years. [Why do you think that’s so?] I don’t know why. Society has changed.

When I interviewed contemporary students concerning damage and disorder, there was no mention of the porters, or anyone who would have dealt with their consequences. This is an example of the community shrunk to the size of the family, to the group subsumed in the business of drinking and playing together. Nothing else matters because nothing else can match the intensity of friendships forged by performing to the beat of the drum.

Notes





1. Matthew Cheeseman, ‘Staying In and Going Out (or how to win at being a student)’ in Richard Waller, Nicola Ingram and Michael R. M. Ward (eds), Higher Education and Social Inequalities: University Admissions, Experiences and Outcomes (London: BSA and Routledge, 2017). 2.  I use ‘University’, with a majuscule ‘U’ to refer to the University of Sheffield and ‘university’, with a minuscule ‘u’, to refer to universities in general. 3. C.I. Lusk, The Social Construction of the Mature Student Experience (PhD Dissertation, University of St Andrews, 2008), 109. 4. Cheeseman, M. The Pleasures of Being a Student at the University of Sheffield (PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2011). 5.  H. Silver and P. Silver, Students: Changing Roles, Changing Lives (Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, 1997). 6. R. Naidoo and I. Jamieson, ‘Empowering Participants or Corroding Learning? Towards a Research Agenda on the Impact of Student Consumerism in Higher Education,’ Journal of Education Policy 20, no. 3 (2005), 267–281. 7. See Cheeseman, ‘Staying In and Going Out’ for more details. 8.  P. Chatterton and R. Hollands, Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power (London: Routledge, 2003). 9. See P. Chatterton, ‘University Students and City Centres—the Formation of Exclusive Geographies: The Case of Bristol, UK’, Geoforum 30, no. 2 (1999); C. Holdsworth, ‘Don’t You Think You’re Missing out, Living at Home? Student Experiences and Residential Transitions’, The Sociological

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Review 54, no. 3 (2006); and C. Holdsworth, ‘“Going Away to Uni”: Mobility, Modernity, and Independence of English Higher Education Students’, Environment and Planning A 41, no. 8 (2009). 10. Chatterton, ‘University Students and City Centres’, 129. 11.  See Helen Mathers, Steel City Scholars: The Centenary History of the University of Sheffield (London: James & James, 2005) and Helen Mathers, Standing up for Students: One Hundred Years of the University of Sheffield Union of Students (Sheffield: University of Sheffield Union of Students, 2007). 12. W. H. Cowley and Willard Waller, ‘A Study of Student Life: The Appraisal of Student Traditions as a Field of Research’, The Journal of Higher Education 6, no. 3 (1935), 133. 13. Cowley and Waller, ‘A Study of Student Life, 136. 14. B. Stross, ‘The Hybrid Metaphor: From Biology to Culture’, Journal of American Folklore 112, no. 445 (1999), 264–265. 15. J. Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 16. See, for example, S. Winlow and S. Hall, Violent Night: Urban Leisure and Contemporary Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2006) and I. Szmigin, C. Griffin, W. Mistral, A. Bengry-Howell, L. Weale and C. Hackley, ‘Re-Framing “‘Binge Drinking’” as Calculated Hedonism: Empirical Evidence from the UK’, International Journal of Drug Policy 19, no. 5 (2008). 17. Winlow and Hall, Violent Night. 18. M.M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968). 19. Mathers, Steel City Scholars, 126. 20. T.E. Gumpent, Recollected in Tranquillity: Reminiscences of a Sheffield Physician (Dronfield, Sheffield: Walker & Cawson, 1978), 49. 21. Mathers, Steel City Scholars. 22. On the issue of student mobility, see B. McEwan, ‘Student Culture and Binge Drinking: An Investigation of the Relationship between Student Culture and Binge Drinking Behaviour within the University of Waikato Halls of Residence Student Population’ (PhD Thesis, University of Waikato, 2009). F. Measham and K. Brain, ‘“Binge” Drinking, British Alcohol Policy and the New Culture of Intoxication’, Crime Media Culture 1, no. 3 (2005), 275. 23. Griffin, C., Bengry-Howell, A., Hackley, C., Mistral, W. and Szmigin, I. ‘“Every Time I Do It I Absolutely Annihilate Myself”: Loss of (Self-) Conciousness and Loss of Memory in Young People’s Drinking Narratives’, Sociology, 43 (2009): 457–476. 24. Popular dances were designed to appeal to all, while dances such as jazz, salsa or ballroom appealed to enthusiasts.

42  M. Cheeseman 25. See, for example, Darts, no. 35, 17 October 1947, 2. 26. From the Archives, US/SUN/3/149 (17/01/1921). 27. ‘[F]or many years after the First World War a rag was held on “Poppy Day”, the Saturday nearest to Armistice Day, to collect money for Earl Haig’s Fund.’ F. A. Reeve, Varsity Rags and Hoaxes (Cambridge: Oleander Press, 1977), 43–44. 28. R.H. Saltzman, ‘Folklore as Politics in Great Britain: Working-Class Critiques of Upper-Class Strike Breakers in the 1926 General Strike’, Anthropological Quarterly 67, no. 3 (1994), 106. 29.  Rag News, 29 October 1949. 30. See, for example, Darts, no. 37, 14 November 1947, letters page. 31.  J. Kugelmass, ‘Wishes Come True: Designing the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade’ in Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life, ed. J. Santino (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 197. 32. Mischief Night was an annual pranking festival in South Yorkshire, typically celebrated on 4 November. 33. The Registrar’s notes read: ‘The last order (taken by Mr. Marshall at depot) was ordered by a WOMAN who was obviously with other women + seemed to be putting her hand over mouthpiece at intervals.’ 34. Mathers, Steel City Scholars, 234. 35. Anonymous, ‘Darts presents the Sheffield beat scene’, Darts, no. 231, 28 November 1963, 5. 36.  D. Pountain and D. Robins, Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude (London: Reaktion, 2000), 76. 37. Mathers, Standing up for Students. 38. Mathers, Steel City Scholars, 256. 39.  Darts, no. 289, 17 October 1967, 4–7. 40.  Darts, no. 393, 30 October 1975, 8–9. 41. Mathers, Steel City Scholars, 304. See also Darts, no. 521, 1 November 1984, 7. 42. Quoted in Mathers, Steel City Scholars, 304. 43. Both quotations taken from US/REG/3/U/3—RAG—“Registrars file”. 44.  V.W. Turner, ‘Frame, Flow and Reflection: Ritual Drama as Public Liminality’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 6, no. 4 (1979), 489. 45. Dated 22 October 1968 and kept in the University of Sheffield Archives. 46. M. Moffatt, Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989). S. Siporin, ‘Halloween Pranks’ and M. Taft, ‘Adult Halloween Celebrations on the Canadian Priaries’ in Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life, ed. J. Santino (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1994). 47. Letter to Roger Lenon, US/REG/3/U/3—RAG—“Registrars file”. 48.  Darts, no. 289, 17 October 1967, 1.

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49.  Darts, no. 377, 3 October 1974, 17. See also Darts, no. 407, 27 October 1976, 6–7 and Darts, no. 520, 18 October 1984. 50. Mathers, Steel City Scholars. 51. R. Schofield, Pyjama Jump. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114209/. 52. Quotation from an interview with Rag committee members, 2006. 53.  Kate Horton, ‘Your Notes and News’, in Your University (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 2007), 18–19. 54. The voiceover later ridicules the film’s participants for not knowing which charity they are drinking for. 55. Mathers, Standing up for Students. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid., 64. 58. Ibid., 86. 59. See, for example, Steel Press, no. 27, 25 February 2000. 60. The night-time economy developed the concept of a school disco ‘for adults’ in London in late 1999. For a discussion, see J. Stuart, ‘Bobby Sanchez: Back to Skool’, The Independent, 25 June 2002. 61. University of Sheffield Union of Students, 2006, 101. 62. Mathers, Standing up for Students. 63. In 1995, in order to ensure the AGM was quorate, the President got her friends to dress up as chickens and herd students into the Octagon. Mathers, Standing up for Students. 64. Ibid., 104. 65. Ibid., 106. 66. Winlow and Hall, Violent Night, 7. 67. For a discussion of poor attendance, see C. Jones, ‘Hurst Leads Protest as ACS Rebut Report’, Forge Press, no. 6, 5 December 2008, 1, 4–5. On the backlash against protest of the University’s involvement in Palestine, see D. Robinson, ‘The Protest Did Nothing but Prove the Occupiers Were Widely Unpopular’, Forge Press, no. 10, 2 April 2010, 13. 68. S. Browse, ‘We Need More Than Just a Consumerist Attitude’, Forge Press, no. 21 (2010), 9. 69. For a discussion of ‘social capital’, see R. D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (London: Simon & Schuster, 2000). 70. D. Robinson, ‘Making a Point?’, Sheffield Steel Press 120 (2008), 10. 71. K. Christie, ‘Nice Protest, but Will It Really Be Successful?’, Forge Press, no. 6, 5 December 2008, 6. 72. Mathers, Standing up for Students, 87. 73. Rachelle H. Saltzman, ‘Folklore as Politics in Great Britain: Working-Class Critiques of Upper-Class Strike Breakers in the 1926 General Strike’, Anthropological Quarterly 67, no. 3 (1994), 118.

44  M. Cheeseman 74.  Twikker, no. 40 (1940), University of Sheffield Archives. 75. D. Ben Amos, ‘The Seven Strands of Tradition: Varieties in Its Meaning in American Folklore Studies’, Journal of Folklore Research 21, no. 2 (1984), 115. 76. W. Keane, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (London: University of California Press, 2007). 77. T. De Zengotita, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World (London: Bloomsbury, 2005). 78. Darts, no. 270, 5 October 1966, 10. 79. A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), 38. 80. N. Bishop, ‘TVs on the TV’, Darts, no. 667, 30 November 1995, 17. The same sentiment is expressed from an elite perspective in the minutes of the Disciplinary Committee held on 25 October 1949 when ‘A view was expressed that Rag Day was a useful escape valve for the high spirits of student members of the University.’ 81. J. Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 82. Anonymous, ‘Darts presents the Sheffield beat scene’, Darts, no. 231, 28 November 1963, 5. 83. The quotation amalgamates three separate listings from Steel Press, no. 30, 19 May 2000, 9.

Author Biography Matthew Cheeseman  is Senior Lecturer in Professional and Creative Writing at University of Derby. He runs Spirit Duplicator, a small press. @eine on Twitter.

CHAPTER 3

Prisoner Students: Building Bridges, Breaching Walls Daniel Weinbren

Introduction When The Open University (OU) first opened to students in 1971, it immediately facilitated the learning of a range of people who would not otherwise have been able to study at undergraduate level. These included people who were house-bound, had disabilities, needed to study parttime while maintaining a job, were in the Services or had no prior qualifications. In addition, 22 prisoners were admitted for study in 1971, of whom 16 were in Wakefield prison and 6 in Albany prison, and in 1972 an OU/Home Office scheme was initiated in four prisons. For many of its adult learners, studying through the OU was not part of an apparently seamless, individual intellectual journey from school to degree. They did not arrive at the OU assuming that a university education was a birthright determined by their class position, previous educational qualifications or age. Their narratives about their accomplishment, collected from a variety of sources including postings they wrote and interview material, often refer to new-found confidence, the benefits for their careers

D. Weinbren (*)  FASS, Briggs Building, The Open University, MK7 6AA Milton Keynes, UK © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_3

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and their sense of achievement at having overcome a variety of obstacles. Studies indicate that across the university sector the most common reasons for participating in higher education are interest in the subject, expectations for personal growth, and aspirations for career progression or development. However, more than at any other university, personal development has been the most salient gain for those who studied with the OU.1 Nevertheless, beyond a sense of individual redemption, their learning has had wider familial and social impacts. For many successful OU students, studying involved collective support and commitment from family, tutors, colleagues and friends. By focusing on prisoners who have studied through the OU, the broader impact of OU’s students upon their communities is illuminated. OU students in prisons had to overcome intellectual difficulties, as many initially lacked self-assurance, and logistical difficulties, as prisons were not geared towards support for university students. Permission to study is not automatic for prisoners. Although sometimes these students are treated differently to other students, once legitimised as students, prisoners were supported by the pedagogic scaffolding developed by the OU. This encouraged them to form alliances and to gain the trust of tutors and other learners. Tutors assisted prisoner students to see themselves, as tutor Vincent Worth noted, as part of a ‘larger body of similar-minded adults’.2 Many students developed structures for learning through reciprocity and peer engagement, becoming members of a student body and creating new spaces of discourse which was formed and reformed as educational texts circulated. This enabled the students to render the unfamiliar—university life—familiar, while also recontextualising and rendering as novel the habitus of prison life. Courses, modules, required immersion in the subject matter and studying became a way to assert control and mentally escape. As a prisoner in Ireland noted, ‘You really don’t feel like you’re in prison, it’s just everything disappears in the background. … when I have the story sort of set up and lined up in the direction I want to go … I’m in with my characters in the story and just the prison’s not there.3 In the section ‘The framework’ there is consideration of one of the important sources for this chapter, the personal testimony of students, both within and outside. There is also an outline of the relevant pedagogy and structures of the OU and of the development of education within prisons. ‘The impact of studying’ is an analysis of the attributing of the changes in students’ own lives to their studying. Individual and

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social impacts of study were experienced by many students. Prisoners’ educational attainment has been linked to a reduction in the rate of recidivism. It is likely that far fewer ex-prisoners returned to prison than might otherwise have been the case.4 Attention in ‘Learning together’ is on collaborative learning and its impact on the wider society. In particular, the focus is on Northern Ireland, where there were many OU students in prison in the period between the 1970s and the 1990s often known as the ‘Troubles’. Members of the student prisoner community gained not only knowledge but also the social and intellectual equipment which enabled them to cope better with, and sometimes take active roles in shaping, the communities from which they came and the wider society.

The Framework In 1971 the OU’s first dedicated television programmes were broadcast and its first correspondence materials dispatched. The OU offered degree-level part-time education to adult learners in the UK regardless of their prior qualifications. This was to be done principally through correspondence but also through group tutorials held in study centres located across Britain and Northern Ireland. In addition, for some modules students could attend residential weeks held on the sites of other universities during the vacations of those universities. Central OU staff prepared the teaching materials, which initially were mainly in the form of books, television programmes and radio broadcasts. There were also experiment kits and records. Subsequently cassettes, videos and the internet were used to support learners. Part-time tutors, who were resident all over the country, taught and assessed the scattered students using the teaching materials provided by central staff. Students submitted their assignments to these tutors, who taught through their written responses, in face-toface group tutorials and in some cases via telephone tutorials. In 2011, Universities UK, the members of which are the executive heads (that is vice-chancellors and principals) of UK university institutions, noted that, ‘a number of those involved in violent terrorism in recent years have been university graduates’.5 Nevertheless, universities have long been seen as institutions which enable social mobility. Prisons have long been seen as places which contribute to further lawbreaking being, to use a term attributed to Kropotkin, ‘universities of crime’.6 The OU sought to overcome this dichotomy and support socially beneficial learning within prisons. There were precedents

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for some educational provision. A legislative framework, established in 1815 and 1823, permitted education in British prisons. Although there was subsequent intermittent disenchantment with the notion of educating prisoners, the idea retained a foothold within the system.7 In 1885 the Chair of the Prisons Commission called Reading Gaol ‘a criminal university’ because of its record of support for the education of prisoners.8 The idea of studying while in prison was employed by the British elsewhere in the world. In 1944 members of a paramilitary group, the Irgun Tz’vai L’Umi (‘The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel’) attacked British offices, military installations and police stations in British Mandate Palestine. Hundreds of those caught by the British, the administrators of Palestine between 1920 and 1948, were sent to detention camps in Kenya, Eritrea and Sudan. While in Africa, some studied at British universities by correspondence. Following Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948 many of those who had been imprisoned became political and governmental leaders there.9 Meir Shamgar studied law in Eritrea and went on to become President of the Israeli Supreme Court, 1983–1995, and Shmuel Tamir studied law by correspondence while in Kenya and became a lawyer and Minister of Justice, 1977–1980. In Britain, after the Second World War, Durham Local Education Authority ran classes for prisoners and, following legislation, others authorities followed.10 By 1948 there were 700 weekly classes and by 1961 there were 3000.11 However, studying for a degree while in prison was a novelty. By 1985 only 150 prisoners in 31 establishments were registered as OU students. Since 1989, while there has been other provision, the OU has been the main provider of university-level study to prisoners.12 By 2012 there was a prisons team based in each of the OU’s regional and national centres, and there were around 1800 OU students in more than 150 prisons across the UK and Ireland studying over 200 courses.13 Personal evidence can supplement evidence from written sources which were not produced for historians, can place the individual experience at the centre, rescue the individual from the crowd, and call new witnesses to the stand. However, the tendency for informants to fabricate through retrospective editing or to employ aesthetic expressiveness or to reconstruct memories rather than recover them needs to be recognised. In the case of those convicted of crimes, the relationship between informant and the interviewer may involve both parties in efforts to shape the course of the conversation. Prisoners may wish to convey ideas not only to the interviewer but may also be using the interview

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to indirectly address others, notably the prison authorities or the parole board. Sometimes interviews have been conducted to obtain information to prevent further crime, a suggestion first made in a report to the government in 1839.14 Henry Mayhew’s interview with a pickpocket, which first appeared in the Morning Chronicle on 29 January 1850, was used to support his theory, which linked crime to lack of parental supervision.15 Lombroso’s L’uomo delinquinte (1876) popularised the idea that the first-hand accounts of the thoughts and actions of criminals were of interest as criminality was inherited and could be detected in individuals. If there is critical engagement then it need not be a deterrent to its employment that personal testimony has often been framed in terms of events which have occurred since those being described. Alessandro Portelli recognised that testimony can be employed to serve social or other purposes but went on to suggest that such material could be psychologically true for the informant and could help to unravel the meanings of experiences. Interviewees, he suggested: tell us not just what people did, but what they wanted to do, what they believed they were doing, what they now think they did … Subjectivity is as much the business of history as the more visible ‘facts’. What the informant believes is indeed a historical fact (that is, the fact that he or she believes it) just as much as what ‘really’ happened.16

Samuel echoed this with his view of memory as a fluctuating, creative construction, ‘an active shaping force that is dynamic’.17 The construction of myths might be one way to survive imprisonment. Alistair Thomson proposed that: We compose our memories to make sense of our past and present lives. ‘Composure’ is an aptly ambiguous term to describe the process of memory making. In one sense we compose or construct our memories using the public languages and meanings of our culture. In another sense we compose memories that help us to feel relatively comfortable with our lives and identities, that give us a feeling of composure.18

The comments of prisoners collated in this chapter are derived from a range of sources. While they all offer to help us to broaden our understandings and to gain fresh dimensions for our judgements, the reasons for recording, the motives of both interviewees and interviewers, vary

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considerably. The material quoted has been selected and placed in a new context in order to illuminate the debate about the impact of university studies.

The Impact of Studying Based on their prior experiences of schooling, many OU students start their OU studies with a sense of trepidation and alienation from formal education. The OU accepts students with few or no prior formal qualifications. Some of these students have low self-esteem and have to overcome ridicule, opposition from workmates and family members, and their own lack of confidence. One student recalled her husband’s reaction when he discovered that she was studying with the OU by finding her books: He threw them all down the rubbish chute (we live on the 7th floor). I get on well with Ted the caretaker so next morning when my husband had gone to work I went to see him and said I had to go through the bins … there I was with big rubber gloves picking my way through everything but I got it all back and cleaned up. I can leave it at my pal’s flat.19

The sense of isolation was expressed by this OU student when recalling her first attendance at an OU Day School. They all looked a bit posh, some had briefcases … it was OK until this man at the front asked a question. I hadn’t a clue what he was asking me and I wet myself there and then and had to leave.20 Although a study by Langenbach and Parsons of the motivation of 350 prisoners who participated in educational programmes in four prisons in the USA concluded that ‘inmates, with some exceptions, have the same orientations towards participating in educational activities as the general public’, a sense of isolation and lack of self-respect has been particularly noted among OU students in prison.21 Writing in the 1990s Kevin Warner, the co-ordinator of prison education in Ireland, concluded a great proportion of those in prison were disorganised, unskilled, undisciplined ‘victims of severe social and psychological neglect’ with low expectations of success.22 Emma Hughes considered the testimony of 47 student prisoners. ‘Bruce’—to maintain anonymity, some of the students in prison are identified only by their first name—felt that his OU textbooks (he was a lifer studying mathematics) created a barrier

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between him and other prisoners.23 An OU student from a middle-class background felt that his studies while in prison were: An expression of an alienation I already felt. I applied so that for just a few hours a week I could get away from the obscenities, the prison gossip, the scheming. A lot of us are alienated before we start this sort of thing.24

Prisoners often have constraints on their time and many are vulnerable to problems associated with being away from their families, such as marital difficulties and financial problems. As one noted, ‘we are worrying about the predicament we are in and the problems that have arisen meantime at home’.25 Prisoners also noted that prison officers sometimes questioned the need of prisoners to gain degrees and resented or envied their studies. One prisoner said ‘They [prison officers] don’t like you doing OU. Some of these officers are Sun newspaper readers. Do you know what I mean?’26 Anne Pike, who taught OU students in prison, provided anonymity for those she interviewed as part of a larger study of student prisoners. One of these interviewees, Student 4, said that the prison officers ‘are very resentful’. He was studying mathematics and claimed that when he was spotted writing algebra, ‘they wanted to know why I was writing in code’. In the Republic of Ireland until 1985 it was only prisoners, not prison officers, who could study with the OU.27 Student 36 offered an explanation as to the behaviour of some officers, ‘they work hard—horrible hours and they see you on a laptop getting a degree’.28 In her ethnographic study of undergraduate prisoners in Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Full Sutton, Anne Reuss noted that the prison officers felt threatened by the prisoners.29 Emma Hughes gave an example. Clive was training to be a physiotherapist. He was also on an offending behaviour course which would improve his chances of an early release. He said that he was told by his counsellor to ‘quit this Open Uni course or leave’.30 John McVicar, another prisoner student, noted that some prisoners and officers felt threatened by his studies.31 While there is common ground between all students at the OU, many prisoners studying with the OU faced obstacles that other students did not have to negotiate. Permission to study OU modules while in prison has always been at the discretion of the Governor. The OU has to act in accordance with HM Prison guidelines regarding the number of hours which can be devoted to study. Prisoners could not attend residential schools (although excusal packs for prisoners were produced for

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some modules with residential schools) or group tutorials outside prisons (though tutors did visit prisoners). Chemicals and other items which were sent to students to allow them to perform experiments at home were not sent to prisons. The Home Office, or an appropriate Whitehall Department, took responsibility for the fees of student prisoners and had the responsibility to provide the necessary equipment in terms of set books, projectors, tape cassettes and films, but there have been omissions.32 There was no standardised provision of learning programmes or access to technology. Prisoners were often not permitted to study modules with residential schools. Some prisoners noted that access to CDs, or the use of personal computers (PCs) was not always permitted. One prisoner who was studying an OU course in environmental studies noted that ‘prison has stupid rules: you’re not allowed a scientific calculator in the cells’.33 Even if materials were permitted there could be problems. A tutor, Sally Jordan, pointed out that, ‘it is difficult for a Category A prisoner to set up an outdoor rain gauge and check the water level each day when he has to be handcuffed to a prison officer’.34 In order to find ways to improve the learning experience of prisoners, Anne Pike reviewed the processes and carried out in-depth, semi-structured interviews with OU prison students in 15 prisons. She found that while the experience was thought to be life-changing as people gained confidence and a sense of empowerment and hope, the access to technology varied widely. Most students wrote their assignments by hand and then typed them up during the brief periods of computer access. There was a paucity of books. Very few prisoners were permitted to access the internet, although there were examples of tutors who downloaded online conference messages for prisoners. One tutor brought in appropriate pictures for a student studying astronomy.35 At HMP Maghaberry, County Antrim, prisoners studying with the OU were allowed 3 days per week study time but this was not the case elsewhere.36 In Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’ most political prisoners were from Northern Ireland and were less likely than prisoners in England to be moved to other gaols. Elsewhere the transfer of prisoners between prisons disrupted education as sometimes records were lost in the moving process. One prisoner noted that he moved between eight different prisons while he studied an openings course, a foundation in social sciences, DD101, and a second level course, Welfare, crime and society.37 Ofsted concluded ‘the lack of a national, coherent management information system for reporting offenders’ progress is problematic’.38 Government plans for

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prisoners to engage in a large amount of menial work undermined learning.39 An Ofsted report of 2009 concluded that the strict operational priorities of the prison regime could place practical limitations on learning because ‘prison activities are often arranged at times which clash with offenders’ learning schedules so that they miss sessions without prior notice to tutors’.40 Only those serving long sentences had the time to complete degrees and not all courses were publicly funded. One study, albeit based on people in prison in the USA, concluded that while prisoners had equal ability to those outside the prisons, the former were more motivated and put in more effort than campus-based students.41 The transformative impact of education was central to the narratives of many students. In 1984 The Times reported on the gains in confidence and self-esteem reported by women who had studied at the OU.42 In 2012, as part of a wider project about the history of the OU, students were asked to post about their OU experiences to a public website. Many used similar terms.43 In 2008 a survey prepared for the Higher Education Careers Service Unit by Birkbeck College, University of London, found that 88% of part-time graduates, most of them from the OU, said that their studies helped them to develop as a person, 78% claimed an increase in self-confidence and 55% in their overall happiness, and employers also valued the improved productivity and efficiency of part-time students.44 Students in British prisons who succeeded in their studies often mentioned the resultant sense of empowerment. In one of a series of interviews conducted for a conference which the OU hosted and which was about prison education, ‘Johnny’, who studied for his first degree and his PhD through the OU while in prison, said: I got hooked on education with the Open University. And I study now for knowledge, for knowledge’s sake, and I love it … The single most important thing that education in prison has given me is a sense of self-worth.45

‘Barry’, another prisoner, also emphasised the change in his confidence, the importance of his tutor and how he had come to realise that ‘you make your own light at the end of the tunnel’.46 Linda’ of HMP Morton Hall said: ‘At first I thought I would not meet the requirements … my results give me joy and hope’.47 ‘Robert’ recalled that his success with assignments ‘boosted my self-belief in my capabilities, which prior to that were a little bit low’.48 ‘John’ also mentioned the development of a sense of self-worth, Trevor felt that ‘the OU has built my self-esteem

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up’, while ‘James’ also stressed the lack of confidence and how education could help prisoners to ‘pay something back to society’.49 Another prisoner, Michael Irwin, felt that his ‘self-confidence and general well-being have been achieved through realisation of potential and a sanctuary of sorts within education departments of most of the prisons’.50 John L. wrote that having spent much of the period since the age of 15 in prison, he had low self-esteem. However, he met a helpful tutor, studied Astronomy and Mechanics of the Universe through the OU and, having previously been classified as a danger to the prison population and to the community, began work as a peer tutor, helping people to read and write.51 ‘Tony’, who was in HMP Wymott, said that ‘OU study has completely changed me as a person. As well as being more knowledgeable about social issues, I am much more confident and optimistic about the future’; ‘Ben’, HMP The Wolds, felt that ‘learning has widened my outlook and interests’, while ‘Nigel’, HMP Frankland, found his studies to be a ‘practical, life-affirming endeavour’. ‘Edwin’, HMP Chelmsford, felt that he gained ‘a new perspective on my life’,52 while ‘Trevor’ commented, ‘education has rehabilitated me’ and ‘Conor’ said, ‘It keeps me sane.53 When Jason Warr went to prison he had a few low-grade GCSEs. On release, 12 years later, he had enough credits from Open University philosophy courses to get an unconditional offer for a degree place in the subject at the London School of Economics, University of London.54 In 2011, after serving 9 years of a sentence that the judge recommended should be a minimum of 20 years, Daniel Whyte wrote: I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that the OU has saved my life. The change in me has come from a change in my mindset, not just my actions. The more I learned, the more I realised there was more to life.55

He mentioned the skills he had acquired in order to study with the OU including ‘self-motivation, discipline, determination and steadfastness’.56 In 1989 Patrick Magee had been in gaol for 4 years. He began to study undergraduate and later postgraduate courses. He said that ‘partly I began to study in order to push the walls back, to gain a semblance of self-determination in what was an extremely controlled environment’.57 He felt that ‘there was an element of personal development in education in jail. You worked to be able to articulate better your political perspective and I saw education as a means to an end’.58 He went on to work closely with Jo Berry, the daughter of one of the people killed by the

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bomb he planted in Brighton.59 Individual accounts of change were echoed and reinforced by those who worked at the OU. An OU Dean of Arts recalled: One of the more moving letters I have received came from a tutor in the Isle of Wight to say what a therapeutic effect the Socrates units had had on long-time prisoners in Parkhurst gaol.60

The 2014–2015 edition of the OU’s ‘Guide for Learners in Prison’ referred to the value of ‘constructive and worthwhile’ activities, how some people ‘gain confidence and belief in their own abilities’ and noted that some prisoners have gained ‘opportunities for a new start after release’.61 The employment of similar discursive frameworks by prisoners from other Open Universities indicates the pervasive nature of such narratives of liberation. The OU played an important role in the creation of the Open University of Israel, which was established in 1973.62 Subsequently the OU’s Centre for International Cooperation and Services developed contacts with external agencies, institutions and individuals concerned with distance education, and provided policy and technical assistance to Israel. Shmuel Choskin, who was serving a sentence of 6 years in Israel, said: ‘I arrived here a stutterer and a diagnosed dyslexic—not knowing how to read or write. That hurt me throughout my life. I was ashamed of it. I didn’t take tests in high school’. He felt that the Open University of Israel provided him with some ‘very important insights regarding my life’.63 While imprisoned for life, the anti-apartheid activist Isithwalandwe Andrew Mokete Mlangeni studied with the Open University of South Africa. He said that life imprisonment, ‘gave me the opportunity to study and therefore prepared me for life outside prison and to be able to face the world with confidence’.64 Surveys of OU graduates conducted by the OU and presented to the Department of Education and Science indicate that between 1975 and 1989 over 70% felt that they derived ‘great’ or ‘enormous’ benefit from their time as students, that over 80% felt that it had had a good impact on them ‘as learners’ and ‘as a person’, and that more than 50% noted the beneficial effect on their careers and on them as ‘members of society’.65 Those who studied while in prison often focused on their own sense of achievement. Bobby Cummines, gaoled for bank robbery, on his release set up a charity, sat on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act

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Review Management Advisory Group and worked with Ministers and civil servants on matters related to prison. He said that ‘what changed my life was the OU’.66 In 2011 he was awarded the OBE in recognition of his services to reformed offenders. Another former OU student prisoner, John Hirst was, as he put it, ‘transformed from a law breaker into a law-maker’.67 In 2010 he took the British government to the European Court of Human Rights over voting rights for prisoners and won.68 Erwin James Monahan went to prison with, in his own words, ‘massive failings to overcome’. By 2012 he had written a long-running newspaper column while still a prisoner and completed an OU degree. On his release he published a number of books and became a full-time freelance writer.69 After conducting interviews and assessing the views of 153 adult prisoners and young offenders in 12 prisons in 2003, Julia Braggins and Jenny Talbot noted that ‘The Open University degree courses were much prized’ and concluded that the same opinion kept coming up, across all the prisoner-learner groups: using the time to better yourself and to improve your future employment prospects was the main motivation for study.70

These tales of the redemptive powers of the OU reflect a dominant narrative about the institution which frames the experience of studying in terms which adult learners often adopt, of individual improvement and opportunities to gain in self-confidence and self-belief.71 This perception of the OU has been reinforced by Educating Rita, Willy Russell’s play about the relationship between a 26-year-old female OU student, Rita, and her tutor, Frank.72 First performed in 1980, with a film version (which featured genuine OU materials) released in 1983, it follows a student from the time she overcomes the difficulty of entry to higher education—she is literally impeded as she cannot open the door at the start of the play—to her final entrance and scene, when she is calm and confident about her ability to succeed within the conventional academy. In Educating Rita there is little collaborative, peer learning. Rita only meets fellow students offstage. Russell was the recipient of advice from OU staff.73 However, Gill Kirkup, who lectured at the OU, noted if the play was ‘indicative of common beliefs’ about the OU then the OU’s teaching system ‘seems to be widely misunderstood’.74 The play’s emphasis on personal liberation through learning positioned the OU as part of

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a long tradition of such tales, including Pinocchio, Frankenstein (Frank refers to himself as Mary Shelley) and Pygmalion (filmed as My Fair Lady). On the Arts Foundation course residential school the staff would perform an Educating Liza sketch which, through the title, connected Rita to Pygmalion.75 These texts are about creations who, through their own transformations, transform others. Rita presents knowledge as a permanent and cumulative commodity which could be mass-produced and then placed within individual minds by a tutor. She argues that her mind was ‘full of junk’, that a ‘good clearing out’ was required and that Frank ‘feeds me inside’. She admits that she nearly wrote ‘Frank knows all the answers’ across her exam paper. In addition, she dismisses as ‘crap’ Howards End, a novel which involves some co-operative learning between practical people and intellectuals, and she is dismissive of school teachers who listen to the conversations between pupils and then ‘turn it into a lesson’. In 1983 the play was deployed as a metonym by the OU which produced a flyer, ‘You could be a Rita too!’, to accompany a professional performance.76 To celebrate 40 years of the OU, The Open University in the South East and Pitchy Breath Theatre toured a version of the play. Director and Actor David Heley said of a performance in HMP Swaleside that the audience there was ‘totally engaged’ and that ‘many of the prisoners said how they recognised themselves within the play’s action and meaning’.77

Learning Together A focus on individual change, on learning to escape as exemplified by Educating Rita, can marginalise the wider impacts of learning. The importance of support for collaboration and sharing is illuminated by employing a framework, based on ideas derived from Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Michael Warner. In 1967 Barthes argued that a text did not release ‘a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the Author-God) but is a space of many dimensions’.78 By extension the learner could read a text differently to the way that the teacher, or author, understood it. The implication was that, for students at the OU, control need no longer be in the hands of those who created the texts. It could lie with the OU students. Even when physically isolated from the wider society, OU students, engaged in studying, could employ the centrally produced teaching texts which were dispatched to students and, by drawing on life experiences rather than formal educational conventions,

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could read them in many ways. Their learning could be deeper than passive reception, it could involve helping one other and sharing information. By 1985 Ray Woolfe argued that the OU has had a major impact in challenging the view of tutors as employed to fill ‘empty vessels or disembodied brains … full of facts or to impart a body of knowledge’.79 This was the case for students in prisons as well as other students. Anne Reuss, having taught higher education in prison and studied its effects, noted that individual prisoners are not ‘isolated learners’. Social conditions prevail within a prison classroom [which] contains other adults, enlarging the interactive processes … The students will be learning from each other and with each other … a group of students collectively shape the context of learning in a prison classroom.80

There is considerable evidence of how OU prisoner students learnt from one another. During the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s numerous members of the different groups which engaged in, or claimed responsibility for, acts of political violence in Northern Ireland (there were about 50 such groups in the province) were imprisoned.81 There they were segregated according to their political allegiances. Approximately 25,000 of them were housed in the Maze/Long Kesh, which had formerly been a RAF base and an internment camp.82 In the prison the groups had their own command structure, prepared their own food and organised their own entertainment. There was ‘a large degree of autonomy on the wings’.83 Groups of prisoners also elected their own Education Officers.84 These Officers interviewed prisoners who wished to engage with formal learning and recommendations were made as to appropriate courses.85 In 1973 six political prisoners in the Maze/Long Kesh began their studies with the OU.86 During the early 1980s one OU tutor took an anti-sexist book for one prisoner to the prison in Northern Ireland where female political prisoners were held, Armagh. She soon found that the book was being lent around the prison.87 However, learners shared more than texts. They also worked together. At first students were isolated from one another in the Maze/Long Kesh, but in time most of the students were moved together.88 Tutor Diana Purcell explained: nearly all of them, but particularly the IRA, they set up the system. If they arranged to do an OU course then they had to give a talk about what they

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were studying each week to the rest of the guys in that section … encouraged each other too.89

Those sentenced to the Maze/Long Kesh after 1 May 1976 were not granted Special Category status. In response, there was a ‘dirty protest’ and a hunger strike by prisoners. Those who protested were not permitted to sit together or hold classes, so they shared information by shouting. The effect was to level distinctions between teachers and taught. Even after the protests were concluded, debates and classes were arranged so as to encourage discussion and active learning. Richard English’s study of these prisoners during this period concluded that they were keen ‘to move away from the hierarchical notions of knowing teacher and passive students’. While Patrick Rocks concluded that in the Maze/Long Kesh in 1985 ‘most inmates choose not to become involved in any educational activity’, the prisoners themselves told a different story.90 The Ulster Defence Association claimed that 20% of those of its members who were imprisoned gained an educational qualification, the Ulster Volunteer Force claimed that 60–70% of its members and a Republican claimed that ‘something like 95% of prisoners in Long Kesh participated in formal or informal education’.91 Approximately 5% of the long-term prisoners, 40 or 50 a year, officially studied with the OU.92 It is difficult to say how many people accessed OU teaching materials because they were shared. The notion of learning through collaboration also arose among prisoners in other parts of the country. Some prisoners shared with their families. In the early 1980s two modules based on the OU course The pre-school child were developed for use by prisoners.93 An OU student in gaol in Barlinnie felt that his relationship with his wife and children had dramatically improved, saying, ‘They get more out of me and I get more out of them’.94 OU student James Crosby explained that ‘studying in prison for me is a collective effort, whether it be my family’s lengthy searches of the internet or the prison librarian leaving no stone unturned in finding a specific text for me’.95 There may even have been some sense of community across time and space. One student framed his account in terms of the story of John McVicar, who was sentenced to 26 years for robbery in 1970 and took a degree in sociology while in prison before being paroled in 1978. Graham Godden claimed to have been influenced to engage in crime having seen the 1980 film about the life of McVicar. After Godden was imprisoned he studied criminology and social sciences

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through the OU.96 Another student said that he sometimes questioned his own abilities ‘but then I hear of ones who have done it, who had the same doubts yet managed it’.97 In 1969 Foucault helped to found the Group d’Information sur les Prisons (Prison Information Group) and within a few years he had conceptualised (in ‘Of other spaces’) prison as a heterotopia, that is a ‘place which lies outside all places and yet is localisable’. Such a place could juxtapose ‘in a single real space, several spaces, several sites which are themselves incompatible’. Heterotopias were not utopias, but ‘other places’ in which existing arrangements were ‘represented, contested and inverted’, where individuals could be apart from the larger social group.98 These locations were both isolated and penetrable, their focus and meaning unfixed. When an OU student, an Irish Republican prisoner called Dominic Adams, referred to the classroom in a prison run by the British by its name in Gaelic, seomra rang, he was naming it not as a utopia (literally meaning ‘no place’) but an OU-topia which could be almost any place in which the social order could be re-evaluated.99 Many of those who studied with the OU while in prison were able to create a space for themselves which was beyond their day-to-day reality and within which there was a strong sense of the collective. This tendency was so marked that one interviewer noted, ‘a very strong and understandable tendency to tell stories from the collective perspective since this reflects the solidarity of the political organisation … Sentences would sometimes begin “we” not “I”’.100 This concept of the heterotopia can be used to illuminate the similarities between OU students inside prisons and those outside. Both categories of students could rearrange the conventional, a living room or a cell, in order to create a laboratory, or lecture theatre. To develop these spaces, to produce and disseminate knowledge which was not only external and expert-driven, students drew on the Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire, who was awarded an honorary doctorate at the OUs first Degree ceremony in 1973. He proposed that much education reinforced existing social relations by encouraging the teacher to ‘fill students with the content of his [sic] narration’. Students, he said, were being treated as ‘receiving objects’, presented with packaged sets of pre-prepared sets of materials, marketed as desirable learning outcomes and delivered by part-time academic labour. Freire described such teaching as ‘educational banking’ because a teacher narrated, that is made a ‘deposit’ which filled the listener’s head, irrespective of the relevance of this activity.101 ‘Banking’ impeded the development of a student’s critical

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consciousness, as it required students to be passive and to resist dialogue. He sought to develop critical consciousness and dialogue, arguing that, ‘through learning [people] can make and remake themselves’.102 Although the impact was questioned, in that the OU continued to offer centralised control of content and automated assessment, it also developed pedagogic theories which emphasised the importance of collaborative learning using disaggregated networks.103 Warner argued that a new ‘space of discourse’ can be formed when texts, circulated among strangers, enable those people, through those texts, to organise together and to have experiences in common.104 In the home experiment kits mailed to the first OU students in 1971 were over 8000 tiny (5in × 3in × 1in), cheap (£15 each) lightweight microscopes. Scientists need not be conceptualised as white-coated men but could be students able to create a laboratory in a living room and encouraged to collate and compare the results of their experiments. Through being able to improve their skills and confidence and to strengthen their identities as learners, students were able to develop, both within prison and without, their own ‘publics’ (to use Warner’s term). Some students formed self-help groups and these were soon encouraged by the OU. By 1974 there were over 1000 self-help groups.105 This concept of ‘publics’, when meshed with the notions of heterotopia and of texts being open to many readings, illuminates how the impact of the OU can be understood not only in terms of the individual achievement but also in terms of a wider notion of mutual support and community. A number of political developments have been associated with students’ learning through the OU. A Home Office report in 1977 concluded that OU studies ‘must have contributed to stability in their establishments’.106 By 1986, 17 former OU students who had been released from the Maze/Long Kesh were in full-time university education and there had been half-a-dozen OU degrees awarded. The following year a further five students graduated. Many of the OU graduates went on to hold positions of authority in a variety of community organisations.107 In 2012 five Sinn Féin Members of the Legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland (MLA), a Member of the European Parliament and others in a number of civic roles were OU graduates.108 David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson were both elected to Belfast City Council in 1997 and to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998 and were former Long Kesh Compound prisoners who had completed OU degrees.109 Both felt that their degrees gave them political confidence and an understanding

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of methods other than violence.110 Martin O’Hagan, who was interned in the 1970s and later gaoled, studied sociology through the OU.111 He became a journalist.112 Sinn Féin MLA Raymond McCartney was gaoled for life in the 1970s for murder and later cleared on appeal. Kenny McClinton of the Ulster Freedom Fighters became a Master of Theology.113 Martin Snoddon, who called himself a Unionist ‘hardliner’, met a member of the IRA in the Maze/Long Kesh when they were both studying through the OU. They became friends and remained in contact after their release. Snoddon, when released, took on reconciliation work and helped to form a group which aimed to reintegrate former political prisoners from both sides into the wider society.114 The effect of studying through the OU on those people who became active and useful citizens was reported in 2000 by The Times Higher Supplement: The extraordinary role of Open University degrees in furthering the peace process in Northern Ireland is acknowledged throughout the Republican sector as well as by the smaller Loyalist political parties whose support for the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and for the 1999 Northern Ireland Executive is vital.115

Many in the Maze/Long Kesh felt that ‘reading and studying in jail involved self-improvement overlaid with political commitment’.116 Republican hunger striker Laurence McKeown suggested that ‘republican prisoners became increasingly engaged in a cultural, literary and dramatic struggle—the struggle through education’ while from their analysis Jacqueline Dana and Seán McMonagle concluded that a strategy was developed ‘to combat the pervasiveness of the English worldview. Education, in fact, became a focal point in the battles against Britain that would be staged within prison walls’.117 Prisoner Jackie McMullan felt ‘exhilarated’ by the notion of education as a revolutionary force.118 The OU’s Changing Experience of Women module, an OU module offered between 1983 and 1991, drew on Freire’s ideas. The formation of self-help groups was encouraged, as was the view of staff as resources rather than as pedagogues. The material was designed to be tested against learners’ experiences so that (as one of authors of the material said) students ‘value each other’s experience and examine it supportively’.119 Tutor Diana Purcell recalled that she had been struck, on first entering the men-only Maze/Long Kesh in the early 1970s, by ‘the maleness of it all’.120 However, in the Maze/Long Kesh ‘over 200

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men took part in the women’s studies class over a 2-year period’. They were supported by an OU tutor who recalled that there was both collaborative learning and that students contributed to the development of the pedagogy.121 Laurence McKeown, a Republican who spent 16 years in a prison in Northern Ireland, felt that ‘what came out of the course in general was that men became aware of the power they held. Power they held over their female relatives and loved ones [and] over women in general’.122 Gordon MacIntyre, the tutor who assessed Laurence McKeown’s double assignment, recalled that it was ‘an essay full of feminist insights’.123 McKeown felt Freire’s notions of non-hierarchical, dialogue-based education were ‘absolutely brilliant’. Material written by Republican prisoners and smuggled out of the Maze/Long Kesh for publication in the 1980s linked the conflict to other struggles, notably those against apartheid and for Palestine. It promoted feminism in that it argued that words like ‘chick’ and ‘bird’ contributed to the oppression of women.124 It has been recognised that the idea that learning in prison, being a social as well as a cognitive process, can support the development of citizenship.125 While in prison Nelson Mandela obtained a Bachelor of Law degree by studying through the University of London external degree programme. He passed the London Intermediate exams in 1963, but was prevented from completing his degree until a decade later. He became a central figure within the ‘Robben Island University’, that was the arrangement by prisoners on the island, many of whom went on to hold important political posts, to teach one another. After 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela played a leading role in the introduction of universal suffrage and democratic elections to South Africa. In 1993 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace and in 1994 he became the first black president of the country. The Open University of Israel educated people imprisoned in Israel on charges of terrorism.126 In common with many Irish Republicans, some of these prisoners refused to recognise the legitimacy of the state which had imprisoned them, were separated according to their organizational affiliation and elected officers from among the prisoners. Professor Mark Hamm suggested that those he termed ‘security prisoners’ had, by studying through the Open University of Israel, ‘turned Israeli prisons into de facto universities of Palestinian nationalism’.127 Professor Leslie Fishbein concluded that ‘you have prisoners who remain committed to the Palestinian cause and terrorism, and the prison system seems to foster that’.128 Nevertheless, there are examples

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of prisoners who studied for degrees while in prison and came to work for peaceful solutions. A study of 18 high-profile Palestinian leaders imprisoned for their activities on behalf of Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, concluded that education provided a route to disengagement and rehabilitation.129 ‘None of the prisoners leave their organizations’, the researcher, Sagit Tehoshua noted in her study carried out in 2014. However, she added that ‘they just become much more pragmatic, believing that the way of terror and violence is less viable and effective’. A member of Hamas sentenced to six life terms in an Israeli prison said: Since I entered prison I think before I decide, I count to ten and only then act – it was not like that before I entered prison. In prison we learn a lot from the Jews and also from the Open University – it changed me.130

Prisoners were restricted to studying in Hebrew so that the learning material could be monitored. The Commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service 2000–2003, Orit Adato, noted that one impact of this was that prisoners became fluent in Hebrew and familiar with Israeli society, which helped facilitate peace negotiations. After his release, Palestinian prisoner Abu Muhsin said that his education in prison had helped change his perspective: Conflicts could be resolved not only by military force. We fought for decades, and now we should think of other ways to liberate our land.131

Israeli teachers at the Open University of Israel who work with Palestinian prisoners have come to regard education as a catalyst for change and development towards non-violent conflict resolution.132 The Director of the Palestinian Prisoners Society’s Ramallah branch, Abd Ala’al Al’anani, argued that studying for a degree often prepared a prisoner for post-prison life.133

Conclusion Through their studies with the OU, prisoners and other learners became better equipped to deal with issues of power and politics. This activity enabled them to hold a mirror up to the mainstream and recognise the ways in which the social order could be made and remade. The OU’s Charter committed it to ‘the educational well-being of the

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community’.134 It presented its work as ‘a key part of its mission to widen participation in higher education especially by those groups who are traditionally excluded’, while in 2012 the Prison Service conceptualised OU study as ‘a vital part of resettlement and a route to reducing re-offending’.135 In 1991 the Home Office emphasised that the opportunity for education was ‘essential’ to prisons, and in 2014 the Ministry of Justice again stressed the importance of ‘putting education at the heart of detention’.136 In the case of Northern Ireland, the ‘exemplary practices developed throughout those turbulent times’ did more than support individuals; they helped transform ‘angry, men ruthless in their conviction that military action was the only way forward into astute political thinkers, responsible for the leadership and strategy of some of Northern Ireland’s leading political parties and community organisations’.137 Many student prisoners and their tutors found that the nucleus for development lay in the cells, that the processes of acquiring new knowledge and learning led to personal growth and development. By learning to think differently and to reconstruct their identities they were then able to shape their wider communities.

Notes



1.  Alan Woodley, ‘Graduation and Beyond’, Open Learning 3, no. 1 (February 1988), 16; Alan Woodley and Jane Wilson, ‘British Higher Education and its Older Clients’, Higher Education 44, 3–4 (October– December 2002), 329–47; Claire Callender and Rayah Feldman, Part-time Undergraduates in Higher Education: A Literature Review. Prepared for HECSU to Inform Futuretrack: Part Time Students, http:// www.hecsu.ac.uk/assets/assets/documents/research_reports/part_ time_undergraduates_in_he_0509.pdf (accessed 3 November 2013). 2.  Vincent Worth, ‘Supporting Learners in Prison’, in Roger Mills and Alan Tait (eds), Supporting the Learner in Open and Distance Learning (London: Pitman, 1996), 181. 3. ‘John’, HMP Maghaberry, interviewed by Kirsten Dwight for a conference on Offender Learning hosted by The Open University in 2010. See https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source= web&cd=2&ved=0ahUKEwjfw5XcvLXUAhUKPFAKHZCNAZQQFg gqMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.open.ac.uk%2Fabout%2Foffenderle arning%2Fsites%2Fwww.open.ac.uk.about.offenderlearning%2Ffiles%2Ffi les%2Ft2.doc&usg=AFQjCNFD9ZNbMd2moXJ7n3iChJ5VC0C8Fw& sig2=2m_7Goqx21p9IC79h9MolQ (accessed 12 March 2012).

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4.  Michelle Moeller, Scott L. Day and Beverly D. Rivera, ‘How is Education Perceived on the Inside? A Preliminary Study of Adult Males in a Correctional Setting, The Journal of Correctional Education 55, no. 1 (March 2004), 40–59; Annette Johnson, A Select Bibliography on PostSecondary Education and Reduction in Recidivism (New York: Balancing Justice Task Force on Correctional Education, 2001); Charles B.A. Ubah and Robert L. Robinson Jr. ‘A Grounded Look at the Debate over Prison-based Education: Optimistic Theory versus Pessimistic Worldview’, The Prison Journal 83, no. 2 (June 2003), 115–29. 5. Universities UK, Freedom of Speech on Campus: Rights and Responsibilities in UK Universities (London: Universities UK, 2011), 2; ‘40 UK universities are now breeding grounds for terror as hardline groups peddle hate on campus’, Daily Mail, 6 June 2011, presented universities as locations for criminal activity. 6. Ian M. Cuthbertson, ‘Prisons and the Education of Terrorists’, World Policy Journal 21, no. 3 (Fall 2004), 16, refers to ‘the use of prisons as terrorist universities’. ‘Inside story of the Maze, a jail like no other’, the Daily Telegraph, 28 July 2000, suggested that the Maze Prison was known as ‘the university of terror’. 7. Rosalind Crone, ‘The Great “Reading”’ Experiment: An Examination of the Role of Education in the Nineteenth-century Gaol’, Crime, histoire & sociétés /Crime, history & societies 16, no. 1 (2012), 47–74. 8. Edward F. Du Cane, The Punishment and Prevention of Crime (London: Macmillan, 1885), 57. 9.  http://www.etzel.org.il/english/ac15.htm (accessed 30 September 2014). 10. Students at the University of Durham joined prisoners in HMP Durham on a joint course run inside the prison, ‘Durham to run criminology classes in prisons’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 24 October 2014. 11.  David Ben Rees, Preparation for Crisis: Adult Education 1945–80 (Ormskirk and Northridge: G. W. & A. Hesketh, 1982), 8. 12.  A distance-learning degree in law was available through Nottingham Trent University and Birkbeck College, University of London. An undergraduate workplace foundation degree in offender management was run by Staffordshire University and Stafford College at Dovegate prison. It was for prison officers and was not available to prisoners. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/25/prisoners-lawdegrees; http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/29/firstworkplace-degree-dovegate-prison (accessed 17 August 2012). 13. The Open University, Offender learning at the Open University, 2012, http://www8.open.ac.uk/about/offender-learning/ (accessed 30 September 2014).

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14.  First Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire as to the Best Means of Establishing an Efficient Constabulary Force in the Counties of England and Wales (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1839), 48, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044050974526;view =1up;seq=63 (accessed 5 June 2015). 15. James Bennett, Oral History and Delinquency. The Rhetoric of Criminology (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 53. 16. Alessandro Portelli, ‘The Peculiarities of Oral History’, History Workshop Journal 12 (1981), 99–100. 17. Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory (London and New York: Verso, 1994), x. 18. Alistair Thomson, Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 8. 19. Students’ learning journals quoted in Pat Atkins and Jo Beard, Learning with Practitioners. Rationale: Frameworks: Learning (Milton Keynes: The Open University, 2010), 26. 20. Students’ learning journals quoted in Atkins and Beard, Learning with Practitioners, 26. 21.  Michael Parsons and Michael Langenbach, ‘The Reasons Inmates Indicate they Participate in Prison Education Programs: Another Look at Boshier’s PEPS’, Journal of Correctional Education 44, no. 1 (March 1993), 40. 22.  Kevin Warner, ‘The “Prisoners Are People” Perspective—and the Problems of Promoting Learning where this Outlook is Rejected’, Journal of Correctional Education 49, no. 3 (September 1998), 118–32. 23. Emma Hughes, ‘Thinking Inside the Box: Prisoner Education, Learning Identities, and the Possibilities of Change’, in Johnna Christian, Bonita M. Veysey and Damian J. Martinez (eds), How Offenders Transform their Lives (London: Taylor & Francis, 2009), 97. 24. William Forster, The Higher Education of prisoners (Leicester: Department of Adult Education, University of Leicester, 1976), cited in Rees, Preparation, 8. 25. Worth, ‘Supporting Learners’, 179. 26. Anne Adams and Anne Pike, ‘Security Issues within Prison and Health ODL Programmes’, 5th Pan Commonwealth Forum, London, 13–17 July 2008, available at http://oro.open.ac.uk/21048/, 4 (accessed 14 May 2011). 27. Diana Purcell interview, The Times, 18 May 1985. 28. Anne Pike, COLMSCT CETL Final Report, Building bridges across the digital divide for HE students in prison, April 2010, 17. 29.  Anne Reuss, ‘Higher Education and Personal Change in Prisoner Undergraduates’ (PhD Dissertation, University of Leeds, 1997), 196.

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30. Emma Hughes, Education in Prison: Studying through Distance Learning (London: Routledge, 2016), 126. 31.  John McVicar, ‘Life as an OU Student’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 22 September 1978. 32. Walter Perry, Open University: A Personal Account by the First ViceChancellor (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1976), 173. 33.  Julia Braggins and Jenny Talbot, Time to Learn: Prisoners’ Views on Prison Education (London: Prison Reform Trust, 2003), 32. 34. Sally Jordan, ‘An unusual degree ceremony’, http://www.open.ac.uk/ science/main/about-the-faculty/unusual-degree-ceremony (accessed 1 November 2010). 35. This is supported by quotations from Student 34, Student 6, Student 4 in Pike, COLMSCT CETL Final Report, 11. 36.  http://www.insidetime.org/info-regimes2.asp?nameofprison=HMP_ MAGHABERRY (accessed 14 May 2011). 37. Insidetime, the national newspaper for prisoners and detainees, December 2010, http://www.insidetime.co.uk/mailbag.asp?a=302&c=open_university_and_the_internet (accessed 8 May 2017). 38. Ofsted, The Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills 2008/2009 (2009), 54. 39. Anne Pike and Anne Adams, ‘Digital Exclusion or Learning Exclusion? An Ethnographic Study of Adult Male Distance Learners in English Prisons’, Research in Learning Technology 20, no. 4 (2012), 363–76. 40.  Offenders and Ex-Offenders, National Skills Forum, quoted in Lara Natale, ‘Education in Prisons’, CIVITAS, 2010, available http:// www.equalityanddiversity.net/docs/factsheet-education-in-prisons.pdf (accessed 11 June 2017). 41.  Tina L. Edwards-Willey and Nadia Chivers, ‘Perceptions of InmateStudents’ Ability to Succeed’, The Journal of Correctional Education 56, no. 1 (March 2005), 65–86. 42. Caroline Moorehead, ‘The “little women” who graduated to a new freedom’, The Times, 26 October 1984. 43.  See the testimony of Christine Smith, Ann Pollard, Gwen Rowan, Lorelei Henley, Judy Sims, Priscilla Hogan, Pat Elliott, Susan O’Donnell and Russel Mohan at http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/historyofou/story/students (accessed 2 February 2012). 44. Callender and Feldman, Part-time Undergraduates. 45.  ‘Johnny’ of HMP Maghaberry was interviewed in 2010. See Daniel Weinbren, The Open University. A history (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 263. 46. ‘Barry’ of HMP Maghaberry was interviewed in 2010. See Weinbren, The Open University. A history, 263.

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47. Quoted in The Open University, Studying with The Open University. A guide for learners in prison, http://www.open.ac.uk/about/offenderlearning/sites/www.open.ac.uk.about.offender-learning/files/files/ Offender-Learning-Prospectus-2014-15-web.pdf (accessed 22 May 2015). 48. For the source of this material see following note. 49. ‘John’ and ‘Trevor’ of HMP Maghaberry and ‘James’ of HMP Shotts were interviewed in 2010. See Weinbren, The Open University. A history, 263. 50.  Insidetime, the national newspaper for prisoners and detainees, December 2010, http://www.insidetime.co.uk/mailbag.asp?a=302&c=open_university_and_the_internet (accessed 8 May 2017). 51. http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/historyofou/memories/howi-got-here-today (accessed 9 June 2017). 52. Quoted in The Open University, Studying with The Open University. A guide for learners in prison 2010/2011, The Open University, 2012, 1. 53. ‘Trevor’ was interviewed in 2010. See Weinbren, The Open University. A history, 263. 54. Guardian, 30 January 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/30/prison-education-failures?newsfeed=true (accessed 29 February 2012). He also worked for a rehabilitation charity. 55.  http://www.mkcollege.ac.uk/news/2012/01/the-mike-batty-award-2011; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1387497/Rolex-robbers-begin-lifesentences.html (accessed 29 July 2014). 56. h ttp://www.mkcollege.ac.uk/news/2012/01/the-mike-battyaward-2011 (accessed 29 July 2014). 57. Richard English, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 228. 58. English, Armed Struggle, 230–1. 59. There was a further connection between Patrick Magee and the OU. He went on to meet Jo Berry, a daughter of Sir Anthony Berry MP who was killed by one of Magee’s bombs. An Open University linguistic study analysed their early conversations. See Guardian, 10 October 2009. Both now work for the charity Building Bridges for Peace and there is a play about their relationship by Julie Everton and Josie Melia, The Bombing of the Grand Hotel, see ‘Friendship between IRA bomber and victim’s daughter put on stage’, Guardian, 21 April 2015, http:// www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/apr/21/friendship-ira-bomberdaughter-victim-on-stage (accessed 5 June 2015). 60. John Ferguson, ‘Classics in the Open University’, Greece & Rome 21, no. 1 (April 1974), 5.

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61.  The Open University, Studying with The Open University. A guide for learners in prison, 2, http://www.open.ac.uk/about/offenderlearning/sites/www.open.ac.uk.about.offender-learning/files/files/ Offender-Learning-Prospectus-2014-15-web.pdf (accessed 8 May 2017). 62. The university admitted its first students, 2267 of them, in 1976. It expanded to enrol 8525 in 1981 and 23,791 in 1995. See Sarah GuriRosenblit, ‘Trends in Access to Israeli Higher Education 1981–1996: From a privilege to a right’, European Journal of Education 31, no. 3 (1996), 331–2. 63.  ‘An open education, behind bars’, Haaretz, 12 November 2010, http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/an-open-educationbehind-bars-1.324320 (accessed 29 July 2014). 64. http://www.unisa.ac.za/news/index.php/2014/05/robben-islandprison-graduate-urges-lifelong-learning/ (accessed 1 November 2013). 65.  Review of the Open University, conducted by the Department of Education and Science and the Open University (Milton Keynes: The Open University, 1991). 66.  The Open University. The first 40 years. A celebration of four decades of growth and innovation, 17. 67.  http://prisonersvoice.blogspot.com/search?q=Open+ (accessed 1 November 2011). 68. ‘Killer’s “champagne and spliff” vote celebration’, Daily Telegraph, 2 November 2010. 69.  http://erwinjames.co.uk/biog.html (accessed 24 August 2012). 70. Braggins and Talbot, Time to Learn, 8, 32, 47. 71. Mpine Makoe, John T. E. Richardson and Linda Price, ‘Conceptions of Learning in Adult Students Embarking on Distance Education’, Higher Education 55 (2008), 317. 72. Russell’s introduction to the 1983 edition, in Albert-Reiner Glaap (ed. annotator), Willy Russell, Educating Rita (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg GmbH & Co, 1984), 5–6, made it clear that ‘I write my plays to be played, not studied… I hope you will find Educating Rita understandable without lengthy analysis’. Nevertheless, engagement with the play illuminates the image of the OU. 73. Mike Bullivant, quoted in Tim Dalgleish (ed.), Lifting it Off the Page: An Oral Portrait of OU People (Milton Keynes: Open University, 1995), 35. 74. Gill Kirkup, ‘Women’s Studies “At a Distance”: The New Open University Course’, Women’s Studies International Forum 6, no. 3 (1983), 273. 75. Email from Paula James to author, 15 July 2010, 19:33. 76. Open University advertisement in the Educating Rita programme at the Derby Playhouse, 7 September–8 October 1983.

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77. Quoted in Weinbren, The Open University. A history, 139. 78. Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, Aspen, 5–6, Fall/Winter 1967, available at http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/index. html (accessed 30 September 2014). 79. Ray Woolfe, ‘Learning in Groups’, Teaching at a Distance 26, Autumn 1985, 65. 80. Anne Reuss, ‘Prison(er) Education’, The Howard Journal 38, no. 2, May 1999, 119, 125. 81. Adrian Guelke, ‘Political Violence and the Paramilitaries’ in P. Mitchell and R. Wilford (eds.) Politics in Northern Ireland (London: Westview, 1999), 36. 82. Kieran McEvoy, ‘Prisoner Release and Conflict Resolution: International Lessons for Northern Ireland’, International Criminal Justice Review 8, no. 1 (1998), 40; Patrick D. Rocks, ‘Attitudes to Participation in Education of Adult Prisoners in HMP Maze (Compounds) and HMP Belfast’, International Journal of Lifelong Education 4, no. 1 (1985), 69. 83. Brian Gormally, Kieran McEvoy and David Wall, ‘Criminal Justice in a Divided Society: Northern Ireland Prisons’, Crime and Justice 17 (1993), 54. 84. Marion Green, The Prison Experience—A Loyalist Perspective, EPIC Research Document Number. 1, Ex-Prisoners’ Interpretative Centre, Belfast, 1998, 12, http://www.epic.msi-it.co.uk/images/custom/uploads/129/files/PrisonHistory.pdf (accessed 2 October 2012). 85. Laurence McKeown, Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners, Long Kesh 1972–2000 (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 1999), 138, 139. 86.  ‘Prison sentences proved no bar to degrees for loyalists’, Belfast Telegraph, 18 January 2011. 87.  http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/armagh-stories/ (accessed 8 May 2017). On these women see Gina Sigillito, The Daughters of Maeve: 50 Irish Women Who Changed World (New York: Kensington Publishing, 2007), p. 293 and obituary of Marie Wright, 25 December 2004, http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu:81/am1401056g.html (accessed 8 May 2017). 88. Jane Nelson, ‘One Day in the Life of Jane Nelson’, Sesame, May 1972, 12. Jane was a senior counsellor at the OU who taught some of those imprisoned in Long Kesh. 89. Diana Purcell, interviewed 1 May 2009 by Hilary Young for the OU Oral History Project, recording available via the OU Archive. Diana Purcell joined the Open University in Northern Ireland in 1971 as a part-time Counsellor while working full-time as a lecturer at the Ulster Polytechnic. She became a Senior Counsellor in the 1980s and was responsible for initiating and organising much of the OU’s prison teaching.

72  D. Weinbren









90. Rocks, ‘Attitudes to Participation’, 69. 91. Jonathan Stevenson, ‘We Wrecked the Place’: Contemplating an end to the Northern Ireland Troubles (New York: Free Press, 1996), 135; Fern Lane, ‘The out of prison experience. Groundbreaking Tar Anall study on former republican prisoners’, An Phoblacht/Republican News 20 September 2000, 6. 92. Allyson Collins and Haywood Burns, Prison Conditions in the United Kingdom (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992), 46; The Times Higher Educational Supplement, 7 January 2000, http://www. timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=149558§ioncod e=26 (accessed 1 November 2010). 93. Only prisoners whose offences do not relate to children are allowed to study on courses which include any material on children. 94. Moira MacLean, ‘Open Learning in Closed Conditions’, Open Learning 2, no. 3 (November 1987), 46. 95.  Inside News. The Open University Newsletter for Secure Environments, March 2009, 6, 2. 96.  The Observer, 22 January 2012. 97. Worth, ‘Supporting Learners’, 184. 98. Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986), 22–27. 99. Laura McAtackney, ‘The Negotiation of Identity at Shared Sites: Long Kesh/Maze Prison site, Northern Ireland’, Paper Presented at the Forum UNESCO University and Heritage 10th International Seminar ‘Cultural Landscapes in the 21st Century’, Newcastle upon Tyne, April 2005. Revised: July 2006, 3, available at http://www.academia. edu/459520/The_Negotiation_of_Identity_at_Shared_Sites_Long_ Kesh_Maze_Prison_Site_Northern_Ireland (accessed 9 June 2017). 100. Cahal McLaughlin, ‘Inside Stories, Memories from the Maze and Long Kesh Prison’, Journal of Media Practice 7, no. 2 (2006), 126. 101. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New Revised 20th-Anniversay ed. (New York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1998), 54. 102. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Indignation (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004), 15. 103.  David Harris, ‘On Marxist Bias’, Journal of Further and Higher Education 2, no. 2 (1978), 68–71. See also David Harris, ‘Educational Technology at the Open University: A short history of achievement and cancellation’, British Journal of Educational Technology 1, no. 7 (1976), 46, 48. 104.  Michael Warner, ‘Publics and Counterpublics’, Quarterly Journal of Speech 88, no. 4 (November 2002), 413–25. 105. David Sewart, ‘Some Observations on the Formation of Study Group’, Teaching at a Distance 2 (February 1975), 2–6. 106. Worth, ‘Supporting Learners’, 183.

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107. Diana Purcell, Internal report, January 1979, OU Archives. 108.  Gordon MacIntyre taught Raymond McCartney, a Provisional Irish Republican Army hunger striker who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1977. From 1989 to 1991 McCartney was Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in the H Blocks. He was released in 1994, worked with former prisoners and became a Sinn Féin MLA for Foyle. See also http://www.irlnet.com/saoirse/maghella.html (accessed 14 March 2012). See the website of An Ciste Infheistíochta Gaeilge, http:// www.ciste.ie/?page=BOARDOFDIRECTORS (accessed 30 September 2014). 109.  Belfast Telegraph, 8 January 2007, http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ breakingnews/breakingnews_ukandireland/breakingnews_ukandireland_politics/progressive-unionist-leader-ervine-dies-28414284.html (accessed 22 June 2013). 110.  h ttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/jan/08/obituaries. northernireland (accessed 9 June 2017); ‘Terrorist study cells’‚ Times Higher Education Supplement‚ 7 January‚ 2000 available at https:// www.timeshighereducation.com/features/terrorist-study-cells/149558. article (accessed 9 June 2017). 111. ‘Dead men tell no tales: Martin O’Hagan and The Sunday World’, Ulster News, 31 May 2013, https://ulsternews.wordpress.com/tag/open-university/ (accessed 1 December 2013). 112.  ‘While in prison, O’Hagan took an Open University degree course and by the time he was released, half-way through his jail term, he had determined to renounce his violent past and become a journalist’, Obituary, Daily Telegraph, 1 October 2001, http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/obituaries/1358068/Martin-OHagan.html (accessed 1 December 2011). 113. Derry Journal, 3 April 2012, https://saoirse32.wordpress.com/tag/ raymond-mccartney (accessed 1 December 2011); Martin Dillon, God and the Gun: The Church and Irish terrorism (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), p. 39; Carolyn Gallaher, After the Peace: Loyalist Paramilitaries in Post-accord Northern Ireland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 43. 114. Peace Direct (ed.) Unarmed Heroes: The Courage to go Beyond Violence: Personal Testimonies and Essays on the Peaceful Resolution of Conflict (Forest Row, East Sussex: Clairview, 2004), 34–35; Gallaher, After the Peace, 14, 44–45; Daniel Wehrenfennig, ‘Dialogue Makes a Difference: Learning from Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland’, http://citation. allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/5/4/2/5/ pages254258/p254258-1.php; http://theforgivenessproject.com/stories/martin-snodden-northern-ireland/ (accessed 1 December 2011).

74  D. Weinbren 115.  ‘Terrorist study cells’‚ The Times Higher Educational Supplement, 7 January 2000. 116. English, Armed Struggle, 231. 117. McKeown, Out of Time, 191; Jacqueline Dana and Seán McMonagle, ‘Deconstructing “Criminalisation”: The Politics of Collective Education in the H-blocks’, Journal of Prisoners on Prisons 8, nos 1&2 (1997), 1. 118. English, Armed Struggle, 230–1. 119. Kirkup, ‘Women’s Studies “At A Distance”’, 279. 120. Diana Purcell interview. 121.  http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/education/ (accessed 30 September 2014). 122.  Simona Sharoni, ‘Gendering Resistance within an Irish Republican Prisoner Community: A Conversation with Laurence McKeown’, International Feminist Journal of Politics 1, no. 2 (Spring 2000), 104–23. 123. Gordon MacIntyre, ‘My 20 years as Regional Director’, OU Archives. 124.  Brian Hanley and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party (Dublin: Penguin, 2009). 125. J. Fleming and E. Keenan, ‘Youth on the Margins in Northern Ireland, England, and Ukraine’, European Journal of Social Work 3, no. 2 (2000) 165–77; Kieran McEvoy, ‘Prisoners, the Agreement, and the Political Character of the Northern Ireland Conflict’, Fordham International Law Journal 22, no. 4 (1998), 1539–1576; Colin Crawford, Defenders or Criminals?: Loyalist Prisoners and Criminalisation (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1999. 126. The right of prisoners convicted of terrorism to access the Israeli OU was withdrawn in 2011. See ‘Court: End of Free College for Terrorists’, Israel National News, 25 December 2012, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163549#.UR3ccKWIOzp (accessed 29 July 2014). 127. Mark S. Hamm, Locking up Terrorists: Three Models for Controlling Prisoner Radicalization. Indiana, IN: Indiana State University, 2011, 13. The phrase ‘de facto universities of Palestinian nationalism’ has been attributed to a Fatah leader‚ see Debra Rubin‚ ‘Documentary Offers Window on Israeli Prisons’‚ New Jersey Jewish News, 17 February 2009, 2, http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/021909/sxDocumentaryOffersWindow.html (accessed 5 June 2014). 128. Quoted in Rubin, ‘Documentary Offers Window’, 2. 129.  Times of Israel, 23 October 2012, http://www.timesofisrael.com/terrorist-leaders-can-change-if-only-we-let-them-says-israeli-researcher/ (accessed 29 July 2014). 130. Sagit Tehoshua, ‘The Israeli Experience of Terrorist Leaders in Prison: Issues in Radicalisation and De-radicalisation’ in Andrew Silke (ed.),

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Prison, Terrorism and Extremism: Critical Issues in Management, Radicalisation and Reform (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 148, 150. 131.  ‘Jailed terrorists secretly earn university degrees while serving time in Israeli prisons’, Israel News, 29 January 2014, http://www.ynetnews. com/articles/0,7340,L-4482302,00.html (accessed 30 September 2014). 132.  Dalia Ben-Tsur, ‘Political Conflict Confronted through Prison Education: A Case Study of Israeli Teachers Working with Palestinian Prisoners’, The Journal of Correctional Education 58, no. 2 (June 2007), 108–28. 133. ‘PA terrorist murdered two Israelis, completes Master’s in jail’, Israel National News, 8 April 2015, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/ News/News.aspx/193836#.VXIYvGfbLVI (accessed 1 June 2015). 134. Royal Charter (RC 000391) establishing the Open University, 30 May 1969, iv, v. Online at http://www.open.ac.uk/about/documents/ about-university-charter.pdf (accessed 1 June 2015). 135. Evidence to the Select Committee on Education and Skills in December 2006, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmeduski/170/170we15.htm (accessed 17 July 2013). 136. Home Office, Prison Education: The Government reply to the second report from the Education, Science and Arts Committee Session 1990–1991 HC 311, Cm 1683, HMSO, London, 1991; http://www.theguardian. com/politics/2014/oct/16/chris-grayling-force-super-child-jail-teenage-inmates (accessed 18 October 2014). 137. Tracy Irwin, ‘Prison Education in Northern Ireland: learning from our paramilitary past’, Howard Journal 42, no. 5 (December 2003), 471, 473.

Author Biography Daniel Weinbren Daniel Weinbren’s publications include The Open University. A History, 11 other books and a range of other materials in several media. Forthcoming in 2018 will be Now the War is Over: Britain 1919–1920, as well as a book about Freemasonry and fraternal organisations. He works for The Open University, UK.

CHAPTER 4

‘Education not Fornication?’ Sexual Morality Among Students in Scotland, 1955–1975 Jane O’Neill

Introduction At a debate at the University of Edinburgh in November 1966, the President of the University Union, David Jenkins, asked why the university’s health authorities ‘refused point blank to prescribe oral contraceptives to any unmarried female students’.1 Dr Verney, Director of the Student Health Centre, replied starkly that to do so ‘would be contrary to the dictates of his conscience and to the welfare of the community’. He continued in a manner which reportedly silenced and alarmed the large audience of students, as recorded by the journal of the Edinburgh Medical School: He felt it was the duty of women to maintain moral standards in sexual matters and deplored the current mores of the university. It is necessary to the male students to prove their manhood by the experience of sex. Earlier they found this sexual outlet outside the university but now found

J. O’Neill (*)  University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH1 1RW, UK © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_4

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78  J. O’Neill it within the university, with an associated rise in illegitimacy and venereal disease in the student population. This Dr Verney attributed to a decline of moral principles among the women—in his day young women came to university for education, not for fornication.2

This episode crystallises a number of popular perceptions of university students in the later 1960s. Students of the period were often assumed to be at the forefront of liberalisation in sexual behaviour. Their sexual proclivity was alleged to be increasing across the ‘Swinging Sixties’ and into the 1970s, with rates of abortion and sexually transmitted diseases rising most significantly among the student population.3 Concerns regarding the sexual morality of students were raised across many countries, including Scotland. As made clear by the statements of Dr Verney, these were often focused on young women, for whom the problem was supposedly new, and particularly worrying and transgressive. Though on one hand his statements indicate that sexual morality among students was now very different from earlier periods, and hence that there had been tangible change in behaviours by the later 1960s, they also point to palpable continuities in terms of the moral judgements attached to premarital sexual behaviour. These judgements were heavily inflected by both gender and class. This chapter examines how far the rhetoric of increasing ‘permissiveness’ relates to what we can find out about the actual experiences of students in Scotland between 1955 and 1975. The evidence of personal testimony, including oral history and memoirs, is used alongside data from contemporary surveys of sexual behaviour, contraceptive use and abortion, in order to explore the degree of liberality in heterosexual student relationships in practice. The 1960s have often been presented as a key watershed in social and cultural movements that extended beyond the chronological decade; Marwick notably presented the case for the years 1958–1974, and other broader chronologies have been suggested in a recent volume exploring concepts of ‘the Sixties’.4 Students are often seen to have been at the vanguard of these movements, and this chapter focuses on the issue of sexual relationships and morality specifically, considering how these shifts were experienced by attendees of various universities and colleges across Scotland. Uncovering the meanings attached to sexual behaviours is key to assessing how far traditional conceptions of sexual morality were being challenged between the

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mid-1950s and the mid-1970s, and whether students in Scotland were indeed revolutionary in this respect. In reality, of course, the student population was not a cohesive group. In a practical sense, students were subject to varying degrees of freedom and supervision, in part according to whether they stayed in halls, rented accommodation or lived at home. Those who lived at home, and those who combined work and study, might be more embedded in the world of their home community and perhaps less likely to encounter new social groups and ideas among their student peers. The degree to which the behaviours and attitudes of the student population differed from those of young people as a whole must be considered, alongside the question of how far ‘permissiveness’ spread across the UK, since Scotland has often been considered a particularly religious and morally conservative country.5 Although changes in patterns of sexual behaviour are clearly evident, so too are continuities in attitudes, not least in the specific classed and gendered notions of sexual morality which remained remarkably resilient throughout this period and beyond.

Behaviours and Attitudes Although sexual behaviour is notoriously difficult to quantify, there is some survey data available for the period. In a further indication that this was considered a new and transgressive trend, surveys of sexual behaviour in Scotland focused almost exclusively on the behaviours of women. These indicate that increasing numbers of young women were having sex outside marriage; retrospective data from the 1982 Family Planning in Scotland survey indicates that the percentage of unmarried girls aged 15–19 with sexual experience increased from a stable 2–3% across the 1950s, to 7% in 1964 and over 20% by 1981.6 These trends reflect the young female population as a whole, but the rates appear to have been significantly higher among university students. For instance, a 1971 study of unmarried female undergraduates at the University of Aberdeen found that 44% of this slightly older age group were sexually experienced, with the proportion rising from 35% of first years to 58% of fourth years.7 The apparent increased likelihood of students engaging in sexual behaviour was widely recognised across Britain. Organisations involved in sex education such as the National Marriage Guidance Council produced pamphlets specifically for students, which

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were typically more explicit than the rest of their material (whilst retaining the same moral messages and warnings that no contraceptive method was infallible).8 Students were also more likely to be users of contraception; the first unmarried pill takers were typically ‘more-educated, nonmanual-class young women’, and it was reported in 1972 that clients of Brook Advisory Centres were most likely to be students.9 Davidson and Davis note that the ‘rapid expansion’ of the female student population was seen to provide encouragement to the growth in family planning provision, since this group were perceived to be proponents of a ‘permissive’ youth culture, more sexually active, and more determined to gain access to the pill.10 Indeed, there is evidence of such attitudes and behaviours among female students across several Scottish universities and university towns. In the face of continuing calls for the contraceptive pill to be made available to students, the University of Edinburgh Rector Malcolm Muggeridge used a sermon at St Giles’ Cathedral to resign his post in January 1968, in a high-profile protest against student ‘immorality’.11 Unsurprisingly, in view of the difficulty in providing contraception within the university health service, the first Brook Clinic in Scotland opened in Edinburgh in February 1968, followed by another in the university city of Glasgow later that year.12 In Aberdeen, students constituted the largest increase in abortion referrals among single women of any occupational group across the 1960s, increasing fivefold between 1963–1965 and 1966–1968, and this significantly inflated the region’s abortion figures since only a quarter of Aberdeen’s students were local to the area.13 Davidson believes that the ‘significant representation’ of female students in Aberdeen’s sexually transmitted disease (STD) case-load by the early 1970s may have been indicative of a more general trend in university cities.14 However, not all the evidence points in this direction, and it should not be assumed that students overwhelmingly subscribed to liberal attitudes to sexual relationships. A 1965 study of Glasgow University students found that 44% of men and 59% of women of this ‘mature and sophisticated age group’ considered premarital intercourse ‘socially undesirable’.15 For a significant proportion of students, then, sex before marriage was not necessarily condoned. Some, particularly those entering higher education in the earlier part of this period, did not find that they were entering a more sexually liberal environment. For Pat, attending ‘the Tech’ (forerunner of the University of Strathclyde) between 1955 and 1958, this was ‘quite like an extension of school’, and she felt that

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it was ‘a very safe time’ to be a student.16 There was change evident in the 1960s, though as the authors of the oral history of the University of Strathclyde conclude, ‘relations between male and female students were not made promiscuous overnight’.17 Roger, another respondent of their study who was a student in the mid-1960s, referred to the prevalence of ‘caution about sexual relationships’, noting that from his perspective the students at Strathclyde ‘were much more I suppose strait-laced … certainly we were aware that in the south of England it was a den of iniquity by comparison to here’.18 Roger did, however, recognise that this summation did not include everyone, observing that ‘there were girls who were pregnant in our class and there were people living and sleeping together, so it wasn’t absent’.19 Though this pattern of behaviour did not reflect the experiences of all students, it was becoming more common across the period, and was often seen to be connected to broader cultural movements of ‘free love’ and ‘flower power’ in which students were key participants. Trish, a student at the University of Aberdeen at the beginning of the 1970s, though somewhat cautious about putting her own sexual behaviour in context, did feel that there was a definite difference between the attitudes of university students in Aberdeen and the population there more generally, emphasising that ‘it depends on the social circles’: ‘I mean, in university obviously people weren’t bothered. In fact they probably thought it was great … we were all excited with kind of flower power and you know, being just very laid back about things.’20 Anne, a student at Strathclyde in the early 1970s and a Christian committed to saving sex for marriage, at first described her attitudes as ‘countercultural at the time’ and unusual in a university context. She reassessed this, however, in light of the fact that her Christian friends tended to share her beliefs, acknowledging that since the rest of the students did not broadcast their sexual behaviour, she did not actually know whether her sexual choices were uncommon.21 Though general patterns of sexual behaviour and attitudes were not always clear, it appears that for many, the question of whether premarital sex was condoned depended on the particular circumstances. Opinion surveys indicate that even at the end of the period under consideration here young people did not support the idea of ‘promiscuity’ or casual sex, but considered sex between steady or, at the least, engaged couples to be acceptable.22 There is evidence that this also informed behaviour in practice. For instance, whilst the authors of the 1971 Aberdeen survey of

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female undergraduates concluded that ‘sexual intercourse is a common practice in this group of girls’, it should also be noted that the sexual partners of those who had engaged in intercourse in the previous six weeks were named as ‘fiancé’ or ‘steady partner’ in 86% of cases.23 This cautions against assumptions that increasing levels of sexual experience were a sign of widespread ‘casual sex’ across universities. The researchers found that ‘much of the sexual activity was confined to established relationships, at least in the eyes of the girls’, concluding that ‘promiscuity’, which they defined as ‘relationships with more than one person over a short period’, was rare; just 19 of the 1552 women surveyed fitted this category.24 It is important to recognise the differences between an increase in general sexual activity outside marriage, which was seen to be a new development, and the practice of sex with someone assumed to be a future marriage partner, which was part of a longer-term trend and received far less censure.25 The fact that the length and seriousness of the relationship in question was considered important in justifying premarital sex indicates that understanding the meanings attached to these behaviours is key to determining how far sexual morality was liberalised during this period. Libby’s testimony is one of many that supports this, stating of her time at the University of Aberdeen in the mid-1960s that although ‘things like one night stands’ were not considered acceptable, ‘if you’d been in a relationship for a long time’ this made a significant difference.26 Those attempting to bypass these criteria might have difficulty finding a similarly minded partner. Bill, a student in Aberdeen and Dundee in the 1970s, reported that his attempts to move relationships further physically from the outset were unsuccessful: You just kept trying you know, and hoped that they would say, ‘Aye, alright’. But they never seemed to … a lot of girls, I mean there was one girlfriend I went out with for about, ten months? Best part of a year? And you know we got on well, and I was always trying to have sex with her, but she never, never did.27

Bill thought his experiences might indicate that there was a gender difference in the likelihood of participating in more casual sexual liaisons, and perhaps in considering premarital sex desirable or appropriate at all.28 Libby also broke up with her boyfriend at university over conflicting ideas regarding the meaning and seriousness of sex. Whilst she ‘didn’t feel right

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about it at the time’, her boyfriend felt almost that ‘it wasn’t appropriate not to’.29 This gender difference is difficult to quantify in light of the lack of statistical data on male sexual behaviour, but it is abundantly clear that the gendered double standard was thriving, with women much more likely to be deemed responsible for policing sexual boundaries, and to face judgement for any perceived sexual transgression.30 Some groups of women were more at risk of judgement and pressure than others, and here class, educational experience and perceived respectability were significant in determining how young women might be treated. Mary worked in a hotel bar while a student teacher in the 1970s. She was surprised to find that being a ‘barmaid’ was perceived to hold a certain sexualised connotation, and noticed a marked change in the behaviour she was subjected to by the clientele once they realised that working in the bar was not her full-time job. Whereas initially there would be ‘a lot of sexual connotations, a lot of unpleasantness, and you were expected to laugh along’, if the men realised that she was a student teacher, ‘there was a definite change. And they would have a conversation with you, rather than talking at you.’31 These were typically older, professional men, who had a completely different manner with her based on the assumptions that they attached to her occupation. This stark difference is revealing of class-based assumptions and feelings of entitlement to certain groups of women. As Smout has noted, ‘the attitude that middle-class men might have a go at working-class girls to gain experience but should leave their own kind alone’ continued into the later twentieth century.32 We can see this in Dr Verney’s statements quoted at the beginning of this chapter. Verney saw it as a particular problem that female university students, by implication women of a higher social class, were now engaging in premarital sex, whereas the sexual behaviour of male students was normalised so long as it involved only women outside of the university sphere. In his eyes, sex before marriage was a ‘necessary’ and masculine act for men, but a disturbing feature among apparently respectable women.33 This indicates that people might have very different expectations of women based on these perceived differences in class and educational experience. The experiences of students were also potentially distinctive from the general youth population in Scotland in a number of practical ways. One potential reason for the apparently greater levels of sexual experience among the student population is that they tended to have more opportunities for unsupervised courting and sexual activity than young people

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who lived at home. Trish, who started at the University of Aberdeen in 1969, stated that ‘it was a lot easier’ to begin a sexual relationship at this stage because there was ‘more opportunity’ since her boyfriend could stay over the weekend.34 University halls had varying degrees of supervision, with many devising rules designed to stop movement between male and female accommodation, at least after a certain time. Trish laughed that these attempts did not necessarily work, noting that if need be someone could come in through the window, if she or a sympathetic friend had a room on the ground floor.35 Mary, on the other hand, remembered the halls in Dundee where she stayed for the first 2 years while training as a teacher being ‘extremely strict—it was known as the virgin’s retreat!’36 Men could only enter the lounge, and even when her brother came to see her he had to stay in the ‘guest wing’, from which there was no route into the halls. Many students lived outside the university, usually in ‘digs’ with a landlord. In general, socialising in the property was not encouraged, and Stuart’s experience in early 1960s Edinburgh while studying at the Royal Dick Veterinary College appears fairly typical. He would never have considered having his partner stay over and did not think that either his own or his partner’s landlords ‘would have countenanced that at all’.37 Margaret felt that young women faced closer scrutiny from landladies than young men did, and also thought that this varied according to social class: It was a culture. I would imagine the more up in the class structure you went there’d be more leeway. In the posher flats and the more expensive flats, I would think there would be an awful lot more leeway than there was. It was these lower-class ethics about don’t step out of line, everything in the world’s dirty and bad.38

Certainly having the means to rent a whole property, rather than a room, made a great difference in terms of freedom from supervision. Denise’s testimony reveals that even in the 1970s landlords might place restrictive rules on their tenants; a number of her friends at college in Kirkcaldy were not allowed to have opposite sex visitors overnight.39 However, she and her partner were able to rent a property together with a third tenant, where they were not monitored or put under any restrictions. Mary too reported that moving into the flat she shared with a friend in her third year of study allowed her the ‘freedom’ to ‘experiment a bit more’ for the first time.40

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Those who had the option of moving away from home, and in particular to a city, also had vastly increased leisure and courtship options, and the freedom to pursue these. The wealth of societies, unions, debates, and lively activities and dances organised at universities offered students the opportunity to engage in new experiences and meet a greater variety of people their own age. Many spoke of these experiences explicitly in terms of freedom. Judy Steel, who attended the University of Edinburgh in the late 1950s and early 1960s, spoke of those like herself who had had an all-girl education ‘breaking loose’ by going to university.41 Sine, who combined work and study preparing to be a librarian in Edinburgh in the same period, spoke in a similar vein of the different people and experiences that she was introduced to as her ‘first step into freedom’.42 Her new friends, ‘from different parts of town, with different ways of thinking’, introduced her to alternative leisure choices such as going to university dances rather than those at the church hall, which she had attended previously.43 Sine still lived at home, but living in a large city with many accessible leisure options at hand nonetheless enabled her to mix with a new social group. On the other hand, those students who lived at home and at some distance from their place of study were not able to participate in its social life to the same degree. Marion, who grew up in Kilmarnock, recalled that most of the locals who attended university went to Glasgow, and lived at home and travelled in each day. This could hinder the formation of new relationships since ‘you always had to think of the last bus home or the train home’.44 The ability to enjoy these greater freedoms was therefore also linked to region, class and financial capability.

Contraception and Abortion As previously mentioned, it was frequently suggested that students were among those most likely to gain access to contraception and abortion. Certainly it appears that these topics were more likely to be discussed among university students, although region was again an important factor. Sally Macintyre’s 1970s study of single and pregnant women in Scotland found that women from rural areas, especially those who had only recently moved to the city, tended to have more limited knowledge of contraceptive options and abortion. According to her research, such topics were frequently discussed in colleges, with abortion ‘a particularly common topic among the students’, yet those from the countryside

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‘tended to be insulated from this sort of conversation’, particularly if their friendship network also consisted of people from ‘“less sophisticated” rural circles’.45 The most important sources of information for those interviewed were mass media, peer group discussion, and the personal experiences of themselves and their peers.46 Therefore the peer network young people were exposed to could be crucial in determining their knowledge and awareness of contraceptive options. Students might also hear more about these topics through university debates.47 Browne has noted that topical debates were taking place on student campuses across Britain in the late 1960s and, for example, that subjects such as abortion were well represented in the University of St Andrews’ student newspaper.48 Of course, knowledge of methods might be partial and theoretical, and it did not necessarily follow that contraceptives were easy to obtain. For much of the period, contraception was not available to unmarried women. By the late 1950s some ‘about to be married’ girls might be seen in family planning clinics, though very strict rules were in place.49 This was at the discretion of individual doctors who might choose to interpret the guidelines flexibly, and obviously left the majority of unmarried women unprotected, not least because the availability of clinics varied greatly by region.50 The 1968 Health Services and Public Health Act enabled (but did not require) Scottish local health authorities to provide contraceptive advice regardless of marital status or medical or social need, yet this was suspended until late 1970 due to apparent financial constraints, and even then it was emphasised that it was ‘not the aim to encourage the provision of contraception to the unmarried’.51 Oral testimonies of the period suggest that many who visited their doctors at this time either were, or might feel that they had to pretend to be, engaged. Mo recalled the prevalence of people in family planning clinics with engagement rings (whether ‘real or fake, or borrowed’), and even in the early 1970s, a teenage Denise remembered claiming to her GP that she had marriage plans.52 Also in the early 1970s, Trish attended Aberdeen’s family planning clinic, and found that although they did supply contraceptives to the unmarried, they asked probing questions regarding her sexual history, and whether she was engaged, which she ‘bitterly resented’.53 Although young men reported significant embarrassment in buying condoms over the counter, increasingly these were available in machines in pub toilets in urban areas, which Bill found to his relief when he

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moved into Aberdeen for university in the early 1970s.54 Obtaining contraception was particularly difficult for young women, since ‘female’ methods necessitated negotiation with the medical profession. This could be uncomfortable, particularly if they knew their doctor well. In this respect, students living away from home might have an advantage, but the experience could be bruising nonetheless. The 1971 survey of female undergraduates at the University of Aberdeen revealed the barriers that these young women faced in obtaining contraception. Many felt they had ‘suffered a moral interrogation when they had sought contraceptives’, and many more did not obtain any because they did not know how, or worried their doctor would disapprove.55 In terms of obtaining information, it was noted that there was ‘no entry in the local telephone directory under family planning, contraception, or birth control’, making it difficult to find out exactly what services were available and where.56 The fragmented knowledge evident in a relatively sexually active group caused those conducting the survey to legitimately wonder: ‘If so much ignorance exists about contraceptives, and if they are used so ineffectively among university undergraduates, how much more are they a closed book to less privileged young women?’57 A lack of knowledge and awareness is unsurprising given the restrictions placed on disseminating this material to young people; even in the 1970s the Scottish Health Education Unit was under pressure to limit any mention of the unmarried in their publicity campaigns, and young people were not specifically targeted until the later 1970s, when advertisements started to appear in the student press.58 As Weeks has noted, doctors were ‘far from being neutral servants of their patients’, and young unmarried women even in the privileged sphere of the university might be unable to access contraceptives because of the varying attitudes of individual doctors.59 Mo, who attended teacher training college in Hamilton in the late 1960s, recalled friends at college being sent ‘away with a flea in their ear’ when they asked for the pill, although some had more success with their own GPs when they went home for the holidays.60 Even in the 1970s young women might be refused the pill; an 18-year-old student interviewed by Macintyre was told by a doctor in her university town to wait and visit her own GP at home, whom she had previously consulted and found unsympathetic. This resulted in pregnancy, having had sex with her partner at ‘the most dangerous time’, with a contraceptive jelly that neither thought was reliable.61 This illustrates clearly that difficulties obtaining contraception

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might not necessarily stop young people from having sex, but it did stop them from being protected against pregnancy. The first occasion of intercourse appears to be the one on which contraception was least likely to have been used, and the probability of having unprotected first sex was actually rising until the later 1970s.62 This reveals something of the way first sexual intercourse was approached, implying a lack of preparation and possibly expectation. The difficulty accessing the pill, and its continuing association with ‘steady’ or engaged relationships, did not facilitate pre-emptive planning. A number of contemporary sources referred to the incidence of single, unplanned sexual encounters, often fuelled by alcohol.63 One of Dr Verney’s stated reasons for refusing to prescribe the pill to students was that he thought ‘most’ illegitimate pregnancies occurred as a ‘result of alcoholically influenced impulses’, and he felt that it was not socially or medically appropriate to ‘put a young girl on continuous medication … to protect her against the consequences of having too much innocuous-looking punch at a student party’.64 This indicates that unmarried sex and pregnancy were not uncommon, but also that this did not necessarily signify that premarital sex was a routine pattern of behaviour.65 Again, this cautions against assumptions that sexually experienced students were inevitably an empowered and liberated group, abandoning standards of sexual morality and spearheading the sexual revolution. As Mo explained, their experiences in practice might be more tentative and complex: We were very afraid of sex in some ways, as a generation. You know people think of the Sixties as being very liberal, and in some ways it was, but it wasn’t really the sexual revolution it was described to be because … contraception wasn’t that readily available.66

If the circumstances of an unmarried pregnancy did arise, students were typically in receipt of medical terminations at higher rates than the general population. After 1967 the decision to grant an abortion lay in the hands of two doctors, and again this process of negotiation could be fraught, with the attitudes of the doctors consulted potentially paramount. The likelihood of receiving an abortion varied not only between individual doctors, but also by region, which was influenced by the religious characteristics of the area in question and by the views of key individuals; for instance, due to its large Roman Catholic minority and the

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anti-abortion views of several of the leading obstetricians in the region, Glasgow had the lowest rate of any Scottish city.67 Young women had to convince the doctors in question that they were a valid case, in a process that has been likened to an ‘Obstacle Race’.68 Embarrassment and fear of judgement were particularly evident among women who were registered with family GPs, who might choose to visit someone else if possible. Of the young women interviewed by Macintyre, four chose to visit a particular doctor over their own GP, because they ‘knew by hearsay from the student grapevine that he would see women not on his list for such consultations’, and felt encouraged that he would not be judgemental.69 Such networks of knowledge were significant, and might be used to increase one’s chances of obtaining an abortion. There is significant evidence indicating that one’s educational and career prospects were an important factor in determining access to a termination. In her memoir, Janice Galloway described her experience of attempting to obtain an abortion in early 1970s Ayrshire. The eventual success of her negotiation hinged in large part on her educational aptitude: the expectation, confirmed by her doctor through contact with the school, that she would pass her exams well and might attend university.70 Educated young women with career prospects tended to elicit the most sympathy and were more likely to be considered ‘respectable’ and deserving of help; in 1971, 71.6% of nurses, professionals and students referred for abortion were accepted by gynaecologists, compared to 57.5% of semi-skilled and unskilled workers.71 Aitken-Swan’s Aberdeen research indicated that women in these latter groups were also much less likely to be referred in the first place, and she speculated as to whether they were less inclined to ask their GPs for an abortion, more likely to be put off by their negative attitudes, or whether their parents and social environment might have been more accepting of unmarried pregnancy.72 It is nonetheless clear from these studies that one’s perceived social status, according to educational and career prospects, could have a definitive impact on the outcome of an unmarried pregnancy. This greater access to methods of fertility control from the later 1960s onwards, though imperfect as we have seen, nonetheless allowed young female students more freedom than they had ever had to engage in sex, while managing the potential consequences. Whether this led to more relaxed sexual relationships and easier decision-making is less certain. Though the practical availability of these options was expanding, the

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standards of sexual morality that people had grown up with were not simply disregarded overnight. Mary described the potential difficulties and tensions of trying to work out how to act in this changing context: I think this was contraception, and the freedom that it gave, and people were coming to terms with it, and trying to work out what the rules were, what the rules of engagement were. Whereas before if you had sex you took a risk. But now you can have sex and nobody need know … so what are the boundaries for that.73

The apparent ambiguity of this new situation could actually introduce new pressures and considerations to negotiate, with some concerns expressed that this might remove a woman’s established reason to say no.74 Women had greater risks to face than men in managing their sexual reputations, with the ongoing gendered double standard still preventing women from taking full advantage of the new freedoms that were emerging.

Continuity and Change Historians of Scotland have pointed to a potential gulf between conventional depictions of sexual liberation in the 1960s, and the way this period was perceived by those who lived through it; Brown, McIvor and Rafeek are among those who have stated that ‘Scotland’s 1960s were really in the 1970s’.75 Those interviewed for their study of students at Strathclyde did not give the social and cultural changes of the period, including sexual liberation, a central role in their narratives, seeing their own experiences as separate from the new behaviours that were being discussed in the media. The authors note that ‘when it touches on these matters at all’, their testimony suggested that such ‘experiences were somewhere to the side of their own … of the immediately-following generation, or they were going on around them, but that they were not of immediate and central significance’ to their own experiences.76 The question of how far the experiences and perspectives of Scottish students were similar to or different from other areas of Britain is difficult to answer. Margaret Gilmore, co-founder of the Edinburgh Brook Clinic, described Scotland as being in the grip of ‘an anti-sexual Puritanism, shot through with overweening spiritual sadism’.77 Brown has referred to the ‘puritanical regime of old Scots religion’, citing a 1978 Scotsman

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report which lamented that ‘the majority of Scots, the non-church-goers … have, with the connivance of the state, a close-mouthed, eighteenthcentury Presbyterianism so heavily imposed upon them’.78 We have seen also that religious considerations could play a significant role in the differential provision of family planning by region. The stark variations between certain regions of Scotland also perhaps complicate an assessment of potential Scottish distinctiveness. In her analysis of couple relationships across twentieth-century Scotland, Jamieson writes that ‘it is possible to infer both a degree of distinctiveness and considerable similarity’ to England and also to other economically comparable societies of the ‘global north’, indicating that causes of change ‘were much wider than national borders’.79 It is clear that ideas of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ and a ‘permissive’ youth did not resonate with all of Scottish society equally, and nor were they likely to have done so in other areas of Britain. Hall suggests that the question of whether such phenomena were widespread outside ‘certain areas of and groups within London’ is ‘dubious’.80 Mills has recently argued that the 1960s marked a period of ‘conflict between new and old in both values and practices’ in Britain, particularly for young women.81 Rates of sexual experience among young women as a whole were significantly higher in England and Wales than Scotland across this period,82 though the indicative rates for students appear to be closer, indicating that students may have had a more homogenous experience across Britain. Supporting this contention, Lewis asserted in her British study that ‘greater variety in premarital sexual experience was in all probability confined to a relatively small urban and largely college-educated group’.83 In summary, students did typically experience greater freedoms than young people as a whole, including in terms of sexual behaviour. In particular, those who were middle-class and from more secular and urban environments were subject to less supervision and were more likely to be in contact with liberal and well-informed networks of peers. Within this general pattern, therefore, there was great variation according to class, region, religion, financial capacity and gender. The figures indicating rising rates of sexual experience among female students are not enough to conclude that sexual morality was now being overhauled, and that women were spearheading a permissive revolution. There was still significant evidence of traditional beliefs and scepticism regarding casual sex. Not all forms of sexual behaviour were considered acceptable, particularly for women; for many, a steady relationship remained an important

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context to justify sexual behaviour and safeguard one’s reputation. Though the numbers engaging in premarital sex were increasing, contraception was still not straightforward to obtain. The pill was not available to unmarried women for the majority of this period, and access was not guaranteed since the attitudes of doctors could vary significantly according to region and religion. Despite the ongoing difficulties female students faced, they were undoubtedly in a privileged position compared to their non-student peers with respect to accessing contraception and abortion. There are several potential reasons for this difference. Students were typically based in urban areas, which had greater access to family planning clinics and a variety of doctors to consult, and the ‘student grapevine’ made it more likely that they would know others who had been in this position, which might provide crucial support and encouragement to those seeking a termination. Having access to such knowledge networks was a form of privilege that was not available to all young people. Another crucial factor is the different perceptions of students and their needs in this regard. The case for unmarried students to control their fertility was considered particularly pressing; whilst those who left school early to enter paid employment tended to start sexual relationships earlier and were more likely to marry in the case of pregnancy, students were more likely to delay marriage until their studies were completed, and could not choose continued pregnancy and marriage without giving up their plans.84 In short, students and those with particular educational and career prospects were deemed to have more at stake and, for some, to be more deserving of help.85 Their reasons for seeking termination were perceived to be more critical than those of young people who had never been in a financial position to consider further study and who also had a crucial economic incentive to avoid unmarried pregnancy. Working-class women might not only face greater sexual pressure than many of their student peers, they were also more likely to bear any consequences that arose. The process and experience of sexual liberalisation was not even across the period or the population, and might be more helpfully termed evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. It does appear, however, that changes in sexual morality and behaviour were accelerating and affecting more people by the mid-1970s. The relationship between sex and marriage was breaking down as more people engaged in sexual relationships with partners whom they were not intending to marry, though this did not mean that sex was necessarily ‘casual’. From the mid-1970s, a

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broader social spectrum of women were using the pill, increasingly prior to beginning intercourse, and cohabitation was becoming more practised and accepted.86 However, for much of the period under discussion here, students appeared to be in a time of flux in sexual attitudes, where traditional norms were being challenged and yet still retained considerable influence. Ultimately, the subjective evidence of personal testimonies can provide a useful counterpoint to discursive constructions of students synonymous with the ‘Swinging Sixties’, permissiveness, and sexual revolution. Lived experience is always more complex and varied, and the individual meanings and motivations attached to sexual behaviours are crucial to understanding how processes of social and sexual change are experienced in practice. Whilst there is more research to be done on the sexual experiences and perspectives of male students in particular, it is clear that behaviours were changing across this period, and that these changes held different meanings for different people. The growing population of female students were at the core of this process, but this transitional period could be difficult to negotiate, as there appeared to be no set view of what the new standards of sexual morality might be. Though commentators such as Verney were most concerned with the apparently permissive sexual practices of young female students, in actuality these women still faced many restrictions; as his quotation illustrates, their sexual behaviour was yet to be normalised and placed on the same footing as men.

Notes





1. France Mary Marr, ‘A Synapse Report on: Abortion’, Synapse 17 no. 2 (Spring 1967), 11. 2. Ibid. 3. Roger Davidson, Dangerous Liaisons: A Social History of Venereal Disease in Twentieth-Century Scotland (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 239–45, 249–50; Jean Aitken-Swan, ‘Some Social Characteristics of Women Seeking Abortion’, Journal of Biosocial Science 3 (1971), 98. 4. Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c.1958–c.1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); T. Harris and M. O’Brien Castro (eds), Preserving the Sixties: Britain and the ‘Decade of Protest’ (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 5.  For indications that there may have been a ‘distinctive sexual culture in Scotland, heavily influenced by Calvinist values’ in this period, see

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Roger Davidson and Gayle Davis, The Sexual State: Sexuality and Scottish Governance, 1950–80 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 295. 6. Margaret Bone, ‘Trends in Single Women’s Sexual Behaviour in Scotland’, Population Trends 43 (1986), 7. 7. C. McCance and D.J. Hall, ‘Sexual Behaviour and Contraceptive Practice of Unmarried Female Undergraduates at Aberdeen University’, British Medical Journal (1972), 694–5; Also showing an increase in levels of sexual experience across the year groups at university, a 1970 study of Durham University students found that 93% of the young women interviewed had been virgins when they arrived, but that the proportion had dropped to 49% by the third year. Arthur Marwick, British Society since 1945 (London and New York: Penguin, 2003), 139. 8. See, for example, National Marriage Guidance Council, Students Away from Home (London, 1970). 9. Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800 (London: Longman, 1989), 260; Hera Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex, and Contraception, 1800–1975 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 288, 331; Audrey Leathard, The Fight for Family Planning: The Development of Family Planning Services in Britain, 1921–74 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1980), 145–6. 10. Davidson and Davis, Sexual State, 132. 11. Angela Bartie, The Edinburgh Festivals: Culture and Society in Post-war Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 209. 12. Co-founder June Bedford particularly highlighted the difficulties faced by unmarried students in her explanation of the origins of the Edinburgh clinic. June Bedford, ‘The Origin of the Brook Clinic’, August 1982. Unpublished report. 13.  Most came from other areas of Scotland, the remaining quarter hailed from the rest of the UK or abroad. Aitken-Swan, ‘Some Social Characteristics’, 98. Note that prior to the 1967 Abortion Act Scottish abortion law was more flexible than in England and Wales, and some terminations might be conducted as a matter of medical discretion, though this provision was not widely known or practised outside the North-East. See Davidson and Davis, Sexual State, 98–100. 14. Davidson, Dangerous Liaisons, 243. 15.  Unpublished study ‘Glasgow University Undergraduate Attitudes to Marriage’, cited in Pearl Jephcott, Time of One’s Own: Leisure and Young People (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1967), 86. 16. Transcript of interview with Elizabeth McCudden and Pat Fraser, interviewed by Hilary Young December 2002, University Experience OH Project, Scottish Oral History Centre Archive project no. 059.

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17.  Callum G. Brown, Arthur McIvor and Neil Rafeek, The University Experience 1945–75: An Oral History of the University of Strathclyde (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 173. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Trish Mackenzie, interview with author, November 2014. 21. ‘I was very involved with church things and people tended not to do it. Actually, I don’t know if people really talked about it, actually. I don’t know if they talked that much about it. So I don’t actually, probably, know. [laughs] People kept it quiet.’ Anne Pitcher, interview with author, October 2014. 22. A 1976 Opinion Research Centre survey of 16- to 20-year-olds across Scotland found that 73% approved of sex between formally engaged couples, whilst only 16% considered promiscuity or ‘casual sex’ acceptable. Almost a quarter of respondents (22%) thought sex only permissible after marriage. Scotsman, 28 April 1976: 1, 12. 23. McCance and Hall, ‘Sexual Behaviour and Contraceptive Practice’, 695, 699–700. 24. Ibid. 25. For more on this distinction, see Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution, 321, 324–5; Margaret Bone, Family Planning in Scotland in 1982: A survey carried out on behalf on the Scottish Home and Health Department (London: HMSO, 1985), 52. 26. Libby Lamb, interview with author, December 2014. 27. Bill Black, interview with author, December 2014. 28. ‘I think she was just of that opinion: not until she was married. There was no way kind of thing, you know … I don’t know if a lot of girls were like that, or just the ones I met were like that.’ Ibid. 29. Libby interview. 30. Contemporary studies of England and Wales found that young men were much more likely to be sexually experienced, see Michael Schofield, Sexual Behaviour of Young People (London: Longmans, 1965) and Christine Farrell, My Mother Said: The Way Young People Learned About Sex and Birth Control (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978). Many scholars have pointed to evidence of the gendered double standard in this period, see for example: Jane Lewis, Women in Britain since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 59–60; Lesley Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since 1880 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 183; T.C. Smout and Sydney Wood, Scottish Voices, 1745–1960 (London: Collins, 1990), 139; Lynn Jamieson, ‘Changing Intimacy: Seeking and Forming Couple Relationships’, in Lynn Abrams and Callum G. Brown (eds),

96  J. O’Neill A History of Everyday Life in Twentieth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 95. 31. ‘Mary’, interview with author, December 2014. 32. T.C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People, 1830–1950 (London: Fontana Press, 1987), 165. 33. ‘A Synapse Report on: Abortion’, 11. 34. Trish interview. 35. Ibid. 36. ‘Mary’ interview. 37. Stuart Imray, interview with author, December 2014. 38. ‘Margaret’, interview with author, November 2014. 39. ‘Denise’, written testimony. 40. ‘Mary’ interview. 41. Judy Steel, Tales from the Tap End (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2010), 57. 42. Sine MacDonald, interview with author, February 2015. 43. Ibid. 44.  Marion Gray, interview with author, January 2015; See also Brown, McIvor and Rafeek, University Experience, 102. 45. Sally Macintyre, Single and Pregnant (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 95. 46. Ibid. 47. The discussion of contraception cited in the opening of this chapter came from a debate following a symposium on abortion organised by the University of Edinburgh, which a large number of students attended. ‘A Synapse Report on: Abortion’, 7. 48. Sarah Browne, ‘“A Veritable Hotbed of Feminism”: Women’s Liberation in St Andrews, Scotland, c.1968–c.1979’, Twentieth Century British History 23, no. 1 (2012), 107, 112. 49. Marriage often had to be proven by either production of the marriage bans or a printed wedding certificate, and contraceptives would only be provided four to six weeks prior to the date of the wedding. Bedford, ‘The Origin of the Brook Clinic’. 50. Davidson and Davis, Sexual State, 134–5. 51. Ibid., 138. 52. Mo Davidson, interview with author, February 2014; ‘Denise’, interview with author, February 2015. 53. Trish interview. 54. Bill interview. 55. McCance and Hall, ‘Sexual Behaviour and Contraceptive Practice’, 697–8. 56. Ibid., 699. 57. Ibid. 58. Davidson and Davis, Sexual State, 141–2, 146. 59. Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 260.

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60. The doctor at their family planning clinic was the college doctor, who did not approve. Mo interview. 61. Macintyre, Single and Pregnant, 54–5. 62. Bone, Family Planning, 49; McCance and Hall, ‘Sexual Behaviour and Contraceptive Practice’, 694, 696. 63. Macintyre, Single and Pregnant, 81. 64. ‘A Synapse Report on: Abortion’, 11. 65. For instance, Stuart presented the practice of sex between young unmarried people in the 1950s–60s as unlikely and unplanned: ‘by and large—if they did anything it was a one off’. Stuart interview. 66. Mo interview. 67. Gayle Davis, ‘The Great Divide: The Policy and Practice of Abortion in 1960s Scotland’, online publication, Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 2005 , (accessed July 2016). Davidson and Davis, Sexual State, 106, 112–3. 68. I.M. Ingram, ‘Abortion Games: An Inquiry into the Working of the Act’, Lancet (October 1971): 969–70. 69. Macintyre, Single and Pregnant, 67–9. 70. Janice Galloway, All Made Up (London: Granta, 2012), 262–4. 71. Davidson and Davis, Sexual State, 114; Macintyre, Single and Pregnant, 22. 72. Aitken-Swan, ‘Some Social Characteristics’, 99–100. 73. ‘Mary’ interview. 74. Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change, 183; Lewis, Women in Britain, 60. 75. Brown, McIvor and Rafeek, University Experience, 169. 76. Ibid., p. 233. 77. Davidson and Davis, Sexual State, 134. 78. Callum G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 2. 79. Jamieson, ‘Changing Intimacy’, 77. 80. Hall, Sex, Gender and Social Change, p. 173. 81.  Helena Mills, ‘Using the Personal to Critique the Popular: Women’s Memories of 1960s Youth’, Contemporary British History (2016), 4 (accessed September 2016), DOI:10.1080/13619462.2016.1206822. 82. Bone, Family Planning, 52. 83. Lewis, Women in Britain, 48. 84. This was reported by both students and partners of students interviewed. See, for example, Bill: ‘Most people waited till they were through further education. But anybody who wasn’t doing further education, people I’d been at school with … a lot of them were married, had kids and that in their early twenties’; ‘Margaret’: ‘Those who were aspiring to further education had more to lose so they didn’t. Well, they tried not to.’

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85. Ingram, ‘Abortion Games’, 970. 86. Jamieson, ‘Changing Intimacy’, 81.

Author Biography Jane O’Neill  is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Edinburgh. This chapter draws on research conducted for her ESRC-funded PhD, completed at the University of Edinburgh in 2016, which examined aspects of sexuality and courtship among young people in Scotland between 1945 and 1980. She is currently working on an AHRC-funded project researching the ‘biography’ of the 1967 Abortion Act across its 50-year life-span.

PART II

Student Organisations and Unions

CHAPTER 5

‘Forgotten Voices’: The Debating Societies of Durham and Liverpool, 1900–1939 Bertie Dockerill

Introduction This chapter focuses upon the universities of Durham and Liverpool, the third and sixth oldest in England, and the debating societies therein.1 While there have been some encouraging developments in recent years, such as the work of Anderson, Dyhouse, Jones, Rothblatt and Whyte, it remains the case that debate at neither Durham nor Liverpool has received the attention devoted to Oxbridge by most historians. In addition, whereas civic ‘redbrick’ foundations such as the universities of Liverpool, Leeds, and Manchester have all been the subject of substantial academic histories written relatively recently, that for Durham dates from 1932.2 Addressing the issue of student debating, this chapter examines not only the structure and development of the Liverpool Debating Society (LDS) and the Durham Union Society (DUS) but also the extent to which differences in the universities were reflected in the formal debates held by the undergraduates of the two societies. This chapter

B. Dockerill (*)  Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_5

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first provides a brief vignette as to the nineteenth-century foundations and place of the two universities in the history of English higher education. It then moves on to explore the decisions and opinions reached in the debates held and compares the resolutions across institutions and the local environments in which the two universities are sited. Though it is tempting not to do so, it is important to remember that student debating was, and remains, a minor extracurricular activity. Accordingly, the opinions voiced and the decisions reached should not necessarily be viewed as representative of the views of their student bodies as a whole. Despite these limitations, these debates do provide an important insight into student concerns and student relations with their wider community at this time. Noting how changes in topic affected participation, the chapter focuses predominantly on three recurring themes of debate: the role and purpose of education; international relations and militarism; and UK politics. Conscious of the cyclical nature of undergraduate debaters’ concerns, these themes are addressed within three distinct time periods: prior to the First World War; the interwar years; and the prelude to the Second World War. Finally, it is hoped that the chapter serves to validate the words of E.K.T. Coles, President of the Durham Union Society in the Easter Term of 1951, that, in an age when university education tends to become more and more technical and specialist, the value of weekly debates increases, for what should be the outcome of education if it is not to … cultivate our minds, to listen to opposing views, to sum up a situation, and to express our own thoughts logically and with sincerity.3

The Universities The collegiate University of Durham (1832) was an Anglican foundation that, though ‘modelled on Oxford’,4 also incorporated into its structure aspects of the Scottish professorial tradition.5 Established, in part, ‘as a way of using the surplus revenues of the wealthy bishopric of Durham’,6 its conception ensured that the Church of England’s money was not ‘seized for secular purposes … [but] used for higher education undivorced from religion’.7 Where Durham attempted curricular innovation, it was—certainly during the nineteenth century—largely unsuccessful. For example, though it established the country’s first course in Civil Engineering in 1837, it was too expensive, employers refused to

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recognise it, and new admissions were refused from 1851 onwards.8 Similarly, its 1886 offering of ‘evening lectures for young men engaged in offices, shops etc., during the day’ upon such varied subjects as ‘St Luke’s Gospel, the Alcestic, The Ænid, Euclid, and Arithmetic’ failed to attract sufficient students and ‘the scheme speedily collapsed’.9 Accordingly, despite being close to the industrialised cities of the North East, Durham remained ‘small and parochial’ as a result of its ‘clerical connections, non-urban location, [and] traditional curriculum’.10 It was, in the opinion of Sheldon Rothblatt, ‘wrongly conceived for the north of England’, whereas its affiliated colleges at Newcastle provided an alternative location in which science and mining subjects flourished.11 Until substantial reform to both its curriculum and governance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Durham stagnated.12 As Rothblatt notes, ‘after Durham, no statesman, industrialist, university reformer, professional or significant intellectual figure believed that Oxford and Cambridge ought to be emulated’.13 Indeed, all of the successful nineteenth-century university foundations established were located in substantial urban centres, with curricula attuned to ‘the changing nature of the middle class’ and the steady professionalisation of society.14 Accordingly, while each offered instruction in the traditional liberal arts, they also offered ‘subjects not available in the fossilised Oxbridge curricula’,15 and showed ‘no reluctance to teach applied science or to cater for local specialities like mining (Newcastle), brewing (Birmingham), metallurgy and glass technology (Sheffield), or textiles (Leeds)’.16 In addition, by providing a local, non-residential university experience, it safeguarded against the social phenomenon whereby, having attended Oxbridge, ‘young men came back … [and] looked down upon the occupation of their fathers’.17 The civic redbricks were, as William Whyte summarises, ‘a new sort of British university’, for which England’s oldest universities ‘could offer no useful example, much less a model to be imitated’.18 In contrast to the ecclesiastically inspired and castle-dwelling University of Durham, Liverpool University, first established as the secular University College of Liverpool in 1881, was ‘founded in a disused lunatic asylum, with laboratories converted out of old padded cells and a dining room that had begun life as a mortuary’.19 Despite such inauspicious surroundings, Liverpool not only combined a liberal arts education with modern subjects tailored to commercial needs,20 but also offered degree programmes that were available on a part-time basis as

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well as evening classes. With a predominantly local clientele of students, the cost of education was also substantially cheaper than that available in the older universities.21 Indeed, it actively encouraged the attendance of poorer students, with an array of financial rewards. As Ramsay Muir observed in his 1907 survey of the university, the result was that a ‘large majority [of students] were comparatively poor men and women, who would not have been able to meet the cost of a university education but for the foundation of the University of Liverpool’.22 Men and women were also admitted on equal terms at Liverpool, a state of equality that did not arise in the universities of Durham, Oxford, and Cambridge until 1895, 1920, and 1948 respectively, and even later within their union societies. It follows that, whereas the debates held by the LDS studied in this chapter reflect the views of both male and female students, those of the DUS convey solely male opinion. Extending the patriarchal hegemony of the communities that a majority of its members had experienced at public school, the DUS, as with the Oxford Union Society (OUS) and the Cambridge Union Society (CUS), remained exclusively a society of men until 1963, when women were finally given parity of membership and speaking rights.23

The Historiography, Foundation, and Structure of Student Debating That the histories of the LDS and the DUS have not previously garnered greater attention is regrettable. Notwithstanding the existence of a full set of minutes for every debate the DUS has held since at least 1885, supplemented by a range of contemporaneous reports for the period 1876–1931 in the Durham University Journal (DUJ), there has been only a three-page history of the Union written in 1912, along with the briefest of mentions in the University’s centennial history and other commemorative-style publications.24 The debates of the LDS have fared even worse. Beyond extempore comments on debating as an activity, no history or analysis of its deliberations has ever been published, despite substantial reportage of the debates from 1893 onwards in the university’s student newspaper of the time, The Sphinx, and, from 1915, an almost complete set of minutes. While each of the late Victorian and early Edwardian university foundations in England and Wales benefitted from vibrant debating societies,

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their cumulative contribution to promulgating the ideals of democracy throughout the country has been largely overlooked by successive generations of historians. While Carol Dyhouse mentions the DUS, her comments are focused almost wholly upon issues of membership and ‘male ideals of fellowship’, rather than offering a sustained analysis of actual topics debated, and the LDS is not discussed at all.25 Nevertheless, Dyhouse does reflect upon a number of debating societies within the UK, and especially those at Edinburgh, University College London, and Leeds. Her approach, therefore, provides a welcome foil to the usual prominence given to the deliberations of the union societies of Oxford and Cambridge. This is an imbalance that this chapter also partially redresses, for it is not just the hallowed chambers of the OUS and CUS that provide a ‘prelude for future greatness’ for their members.26 Celebrating what it nominated as its seventieth anniversary at a gala debate held within the Great Hall of University College Durham on 16 March 1912, 16 speakers were invited by the President of the DUS from four of the other historic university debating unions of the British Isles.27 Such was the occasion that the president of each formed part of their respective society’s speaking contingent, and over 400 Durham students (just over half of the total number in statu pupillari) listened to them debate the motion that, ‘In the opinion of the House, the granting of home rule to Ireland would be beneficial.’ At 11.25 pm, after a ‘good many people had already gone home’, the motion was put to the House; 385 votes were recorded and the motion was lost by a majority of 43.28 Neither the subject of debate nor the dominant opinion of the House was remarkable. From the 1880s onwards, there had been, as the minute books of Cambridge, Oxford, and Durham unions testify, an increasing preoccupation with matters pertaining to Ireland and a consistency of belief among the three English unions that those who advocated home rule demonstrated ‘the concentrated essence of infantile feebleness’.29 One aspect of the evening is, however, worthy of further comment, for it highlights the social composition of these debating unions and serves to illustrate how Durham students perceived themselves in relation to those at other universities. In welcoming the principal mover of the motion, J.K. Griffiths (President, OUS), and the principal opposition speaker, H. Grose-Hodge (President, CUS), Durham’s President, J.E.T. Phillipps, was not only addressing his Oxbridge counterparts but two former classmates from Marlborough College.30 Though this is the only time that all three presidents have been quite so intimately linked,

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a shared alma mater remains a relatively frequent occurrence among officers of the three unions and illustrates the extent to which Durham had attained a position of respectability. This placed it solidly within the sphere of the ‘older universities’ in a manner that distinguished it, at least in the minds of its students, from the later nineteenth-century university foundations such as Liverpool. As David Jones notes, at the turn of the century Oxbridge remained primarily as a seat of learning ‘for the Anglican gentry (including clergy) and increasingly the upper middle professional (though not business) classes and whatever sprigs of the nobility [that] might wish to roister or indulge scholarly tastes’.31 In February 1913, less than a year after Durham’s ‘anniversary’ debate, the committee of the Union concluded, following the return of its delegates from the Birmingham Guild of Students inter-varsity competition, that the ‘visit to a modern university had been most original and an instructive experience’.32 It therefore resolved there was ‘little benefit to be gained from such visits and that in future there would be a restricted interchange of visits only to those Unions with whom we exchange the privileges of life membership’: namely Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, and Edinburgh.33 The Durham Union Society traces its origin to 1842 and was the last student debating union within the UK to be formed along the lines of those that had been established in Cambridge in 1815 and Oxford in 1822. Both a ‘club and debating society’, they provided their members with such additional comforts as reading rooms, libraries, billiards rooms, and dining facilities.34 In the future, debating societies were formed merely as single-purpose societies—with their raison d’être being purely that implied by their name. Rejecting the Oxbridge model, in 1893 Liverpool became the first university college in England in which all social activities for students were established on an equal footing and incorporated into a body that also possessed a wider representative function. Initially comprising a Student Representative Council for each gender, these were reorganised into a single ‘Guild of Students’ and enshrined in Liverpool University’s 1903 Charter of Incorporation.35 This combination of student-run societies within an umbrella organisation that also possessed a democratic function to represent the views of the student body was the template from which students’ unions thereafter developed. In contrast, in Durham, Cambridge, and Oxford, the anomaly still exists whereby each of the three universities has both a union society and a students’ union. The former may replicate some of

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the social and sporting opportunities offered by the latter (but not as distinctive and separate societies), while the latter features no debating society but does debate to present the views of the student body to its university. While the Union Societies of Oxford and Cambridge flourished in this independent model, that at Durham did not, for it enjoyed neither the wealth nor the influence of the alumni of its southern counterparts. Accordingly, whereas public subscription at the OUS and CUS facilitated the completion of, respectively, a new chamber in 1882 and new premises in 1886, such was the parlous state of the Durham Union Society’s facilities that, by Easter 1896, no debates could be held.36 In that year, the University offered the Union a financial lifeline, whereby the latter would have been reconstituted into a centrally funded students’ union in the manner of those being established in Liverpool and elsewhere. Members instead decided that the Union should continue to follow the Cambridge model in what proved to be a crucial decision regarding their financial and structural direction. In rejecting the integrated framework favoured by the University’s central authorities, it set out on a precarious path of independence that has often seen it marginalised within the wider priorities of the University of Durham. Rebuffed, the University not only pressed ahead with the formation of a separate Student Representative Council, but also ignored all calls for the Union to be allowed to ‘escape from such a cave to a Union hall benefitting Durham’s dignity’.37 Despite the fact that ‘the walls … were weeping tears of paint and the seats that skirt the room were not worthy of caressing even threadbare trousers’, it was not until 1936 that the DUS was endowed with any additional facilities by the University.38 Ever since, their continued use has remained dependent upon the University believing that they were necessary, a system of landlordism that has not served the DUS well. The Union has been forcibly removed from its original home upon the library side of Palace Green that it had been gifted by the Warden of the University in 1873 (it now houses a lavatory complex), had its artwork appropriated, its coffee shop and dining room confiscated, and enjoys neither a library nor sole usage of its debating chamber, the latter commandeered daily by the University for lectures. The relative poverty of the DUS, in terms of the amenities that it offered compared to those in Oxford and Cambridge, was even starker when compared to the financial security and access to more extensive facilities from which debaters within the integrated guilds benefitted.

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The debaters in the guilds of the civic universities—located as they were in industrial and commercial centres—increasingly profited, albeit indirectly, from substantial philanthropic support.39 In Liverpool, this took the form of the Gilmour Hall, which was constructed at a cost of £18,000 in 1913, specifically as a venue in which debates would be held, as well as the deliberations of the Guild Council.40 Financed through public subscription, this was the most lavish debating hall created in any of the redbrick universities and, in terms of its architectural richness (double-heighted, adorned with balconies, Doric pillars, and marble floors), was second only to that of the Oxford Union. The Hall was also designed to link the separate men’s and women’s wings of the Guild, and thus symbolic of the greater integration of women into university life in Liverpool. Having discussed the foundation of the societies, their place within their respective universities, and how they fit into the history of English university debating, this chapter moves to a consideration of their primary business: the sport of argument upon moral, political, and religious issues of the day; philosophical positions; and whimsy.

The Decisions of the ‘House’: 1900–1914 In the closing years of the nineteenth century, the DUS was, beyond debates referring to Ireland, predominantly concerned with ecclesiastical matters. This reflected not only its student intake but was also a consequence of the University’s traditional curriculum and the effective stranglehold that the Dean and Chapter of Durham exercised over the university.41 In contrast, the turn of the century saw an increasing prevalence of political debates. In addition to motions supporting the ‘responsible stance of jingoism’, for example, the DUS debated the merits of an Imperial Parliament, with arguments centring upon whether the creation of such a body would ‘keep the colonies involved’ or instead lead ‘to a professional class of politicians’.42 On 21 June 1901, the chamber debated the extent to which the Conservative government of the day enjoyed ‘the confidence’ of the House. The alternative, a Liberal government with a ‘programme of internal reforms of welfare, housing, and improving the condition of the poor’, rather than the Conservative position that emphasised ‘the need to increase spending on the army, navy, and protection of the Empire’, was so repugnant a prospect to members

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that Salisbury’s third administration attained a vote of confidence in excess of 90%.43 The cyclical nature of undergraduate debate within Durham was evident with regard to issues of Empire, and a lack of confidence in the Liberals, whose policies were roundly rejected by majorities in excess of 70% at each of three debates in 1905, 1907, and 1911.44 The question of immigration also vexed the minds of Durham’s undergraduate debaters; on 25 February 1903, the House concluded that ‘alien migration is antagonistic to the welfare of the nation’.45 Thus, members ‘widely applauded’ the views of the theologian (and subsequent vicar), D. E. Davis of Hatfield Hall, that immigrants were predominantly ‘disease-ridden criminals’ who would ‘have to be supported by public money’, concurring with his further assertion that ‘Jews … in large numbers should not be encouraged [for they] interfered greatly with the observance of Christian Sundays.’46 Such opinions, redolent of those in today’s news, with all Romanians characterised as gypsies and criminals living off benefits, and Muslims joining Jews as objects of racism were—at least within the Union—transient.47 Illustrating the pendulum of student debaters’ opinion, a more measured tone was in the ascendancy the following term, when the Union overwhelmingly rejected the proposition that ‘the introduction of yellow and black races into western lands removes white man’s comforts’ by a ratio of approximately five to one.48 Though there were some overlaps in content, the debates held at Liverpool during the first four years of the new century were generally of a far lighter mood than those in Durham. Instead of focusing on politics, Liverpool’s debaters were concerned with whether ‘The fool does more harm than the knave’; the extent to which ‘Humour, like salt, should be in every dish’; and the ‘largely flippant’ debate, ‘The arts student is less of a barbarian than the science student.’49 The result of this more frivolous approach was a decline of interest in the LDS. Average attendances by 1903 were regularly no greater than the mid-30s, where hitherto they had regularly exceeded 60 or 70. This was a situation that was not resolved until the spring of 1905 when, in the cycle of motions advanced for debate, ‘meatier’ topics once more took precedence. Where Liverpool suffered, Durham prospered, and from 1900 onwards the number of attendees at the Union rose steadily. While the DUJ reported at the start of the academic year 1900–1901 that ‘it [was] a pleasant sight to see a goodly number at the Union Debates … [with] about 100 at the last meeting’, the attitude and ability of the University’s

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freshers was a cause of much editorial concern.50 Indeed, upon listening to ‘an unfortunate fresher making an exhibition of himself’, the DUJ feared ‘that the intellectual capacity of such men does not seem great’.51 Liverpool’s Sphinx echoed Durham’s concern that the new intake of student speakers could never match the prowess of the seasoned orator, ‘with his well-known ways—lightly philosophical with just a flavour of a Hyde Park tail-board’.52 Protesting against the ‘lamentable lack of logical speeches’ and suggesting that they were ‘a little too much like essays to be good at raising a discussion’, these were sentiments repeated with almost calendric circularity.53 Concerns as to the well-being of university education were not limited, however, to the educational prospects of freshmen. On 5 March 1903, the DUS debated the motion, ‘That the increase in the number of universities is in the interests of education.’ It concluded, in rejecting the motion by a threefold majority, that institutions such as Liverpool and Birmingham ‘offered no environment, no residence, no tradition, and no University atmosphere [for] large towns were utterly unsuited as positions for universities, and what these places needed were technical schools’.54 Moreover, such institutions should not, in the opinion of the speakers, ‘be puffed up with sham degrees … granted to people acquainted with only 20 books’.55 Returning to the subject for a third time in five years, on 27 February 1908 the DUS reaffirmed its belief that the older universities offered a different educational experience to that of the ‘new civics’.56 The debaters at Liverpool concurred that theirs was a different type of higher education, proclaiming in March 1910 that it was more progressive and relevant, geared towards the ‘more urgent and modern demands of the professions, commerce, civic pride and trade’.57 It is notable that, during the period studied, the number of Durham graduates who entered business and industry never rose above 5%, where that of Liverpool was constantly in excess of 52%.58 Such debates should not be interpreted solely as evidence of collegiate sparring and introverted institutional pride. Rather, they reflected the differences in the socio-economic circumstances of the universities’ student bodies from which the debaters were drawn and their perceptions as to the function of a university education. These factors also contributed to a clear distinction in the tenor of debates pertaining to industrial relations and party political sympathies. Thus, for instance, while members of the DUS remained solidly conformist until after the end of the First World War, student debaters within the LDS appear—through an

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analysis of the motions discussed and carried—to have been more receptive to more progressive political ideas, as were debaters from universities in other great commercial centres, such as Birmingham and Manchester. Accordingly, on 14 October 1901, the LDS concluded, in diametric opposition to the opinion voiced by their North East counterparts, that ‘There exists in the Liberal Party sufficient cohesion to form a capable alternative government.’59 This was a decision that was also in keeping with that made by the Liverpool student body as a whole in the preceding year when, in the Guild’s mock general election of 1900, the students returned the female candidate, Miss E.L. Shallcross, as their Liberal ‘MP’.60 The pro-liberal leaning of the both the Guild and its students debaters was reaffirmed in November 1901 when, at the last joint debate between the three colleges of the federal Victoria University, LDS delegates successfully proposed a vote of no confidence in Salisbury’s government.61 This rejection of Conservative politics by the student debaters of Liverpool, Leeds, and Manchester persisted up to the start of the Second World War. The disconnection in the opinions voiced by students in the large urban centres versus those in the semi-rural enclaves of Durham and Cambridge was echoed in the disparities in political beliefs between ‘town and gown’. For example, although Durham City had not experienced Conservative representation for thirty years, in March 1903 the DUS vehemently rejected the motion ‘That the movement known as socialism is to be welcomed’, and held this position until February 1924, when it concluded that it did not ‘view with apprehension the accession of the Labour Government to power’.62 Voting, like the CUS, in a manner ‘as steady as Mr Walpole himself could have desired in favour of church and glorious constitution’,63 the DUS was unflinching in its condemnation of the principle of nationalisation until after the end of the First World War, and steadfastly opposed any provision of unemployment payments.64 That the DUS also rejected the motion that ‘Collective strikes are for the ultimate good of the industrial community’ against a local backdrop in which a substantial majority of Durham coalminers supported the first ever national miners’ strike, further underlines the degree of separation that existed between those who studied at the University and local opinion.65 The absolute division in opinion between ‘town and gown’ evident within Durham was not as clear-cut at Liverpool. While the electorate of Liverpool continued to return a majority of Conservative MPs in the first

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half of the twentieth century, there was a steady rise in the seats gained by Labour candidates at Westminster and the city council from 1905 onwards.66 With its urban location, more diverse range of students, and a majority of students residing either at home or lodging in rooms, the debaters of LDS demonstrated a far greater preparedness to stand up for human rights than their more socially and politically conservative counterparts in Durham.67 Thus, in its debate of October 1911, the LDS condemned, by a majority in excess of two thirds, the use of military force by the government against dock strikers within the city.68 Similarly, three months later, on 29 January 1912, the LDS rejected the motion that ‘Militant tactics are detrimental to the best interest of the [women’s] suffrage cause’,69 while the following October one of their number ‘set a pillar box on fire, bungle[d] it, burnt her hand, was caught, and spent the Christmas vacation and part of the next term in Walton Gaol’.70 More generally, members of the LDS repeatedly advocated, from October 1907 onwards, the adoption of socialism as a practical policy,71 and called for the nationalisation of the railways by a majority of 39 votes to 16 on 23 October 1907, and 32 votes to 23 on 3 November 1909.72 That members of the Guild established the country’s third student Fabian Society in 1909 is further evidence that Liverpool evinced increasingly progressive political ideals; it was not until 1936 that the DUS elected an avowedly socialist President, T. F. Peart.73 The period immediately prior to the British declaration of war in August 1914, however, saw both Liverpool and Durham debaters expressing some reservations regarding rising militarism. Nonetheless, the issue was not one of overt concern, and neither society expressed any suggestion that major conflict was imminent. In the DUS, though the House expressed ‘no confidence in the foreign policy of His Majesty’s [Liberal] Government’, there was no mention of any specific threat to peace. On 19 January 1914, members of the LDS were closely split on the motion, ‘This House believes that military power is socially and economically futile.’74 There was similarly little urgency expressed among members of either society with regard to the need for Officer Training Corps (OTCs) to be established. Though the LDS motion of November 1912, ‘That an OTC be formed connected with the University’ was carried,75 no such corps was realised until 1919, while in the DUS the motion ‘That military training should be a compulsory part of university education’ was defeated by some 24 votes.76 Even in Cambridge, where the CUS debated the motion ‘This House is of the opinion

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that the Kaiser is a menace to the peace of Europe’, it did so, according to the contemporaneous notes of the then President W. N. Birkett, ‘rather light-heartedly, for the days were past when the opinions of one man could affect the peace of Europe’.77 Thus, as the summer vacation of 1914 beckoned, there remained among the debaters of England’s universities little explicit concern that war was imminent or that there existed a distinct ‘German menace’.

The Advent of War With the outbreak of the First World War, ‘everything was focused on the war effort’, and as a result the importance students previously attached to debating, as with other social pursuits, fell in both Durham and Liverpool.78 Within Durham, the first meeting of the 1914 academic year saw the President, O. A. Mottram of Hatfield Hall, absent: on active service. His resignation from the post followed a fortnight later, on 6 November, and was accompanied by that of the Secretary, A. H. Watson, who had also been called upon to serve. Neither returned to the Union, with Captain Mottram of the King’s (Liverpool Regiment) killed in action at Guillemont on 9 August 1916, aged 24.79 Reduced to an effective rump, the Union held just a dozen debates throughout the entire period of conflict. The early optimism of war—evident in both street and chamber alike—was short-lived within the DUS. The exuberance and hopefulness of youth seen in the motion of 18 February 1915, ‘That the advantages of war outweigh its disadvantages’ (carried 41 votes to 17), gave way to attendances that rarely rose above a handful of members and was frequently fewer than ten.80 A similar situation prevailed in Liverpool. Of the few debates that the LDS held, those of 30 November 1914 and 26 February 1915 were the most prophetic. The former overwhelmingly defeated the motion proposed by F.S. Fowweather that ‘This war will end war’ by a majority of 44 votes to 12, while the latter rejected the contention that ‘A balance of power is the best guarantee of peace’ by a majority of 115 votes to 53.81 The Sphinx also provides a useful overview of the concerns voiced by other universities’ debaters in the midst of the war. In its article, ‘What the northern universities are thinking’, it noted that Leeds had formed the opinion that ‘Post-war, socialism is the only way to bring about disarmament’; at Birmingham the motion that ‘Self-preservation is the first duty of nations’ had been rejected; and in Sheffield, ‘Business as usual

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was not justified.’82 This was an opinion shared by both the Cambridge and Oxford Unions. The CUS resolved on 8 May 1916 not to hold any further debates for the duration of the war, while in Oxford, debates were suspended at the end of the Trinity Term of 1914, with the chamber used for OTC lectures and the majority of the rest of the Union’s premises turned over to an Officers’ Mess.

The Interwar Years As war had brought either substantial decline or complete cessation to student debating, peace brought renewed interest and rapidly increasing numbers of undergraduates who brought with them certain peculiarities. Whereas the majority of undergraduates had hitherto ‘come up’ directly from school, they were now joined by a substantial number of both returning and new students who had but months before been facing death in the trenches. With greater maturity and perhaps a more jaded world view, the initial post-war debates at both Liverpool and Durham were characterised by high-minded idealism, altered political priorities, spirited enthusiasm, and record attendances; for example, in excess of 300 students attended the LDS on 7 February 1919 to debate the motion that ‘England is on the brink of a revolution’ (defeated 93 votes to 232).83 Within the DUS, the previously vehement opposition of members to the rights of workers and the principles of socialism mellowed. On 30 October 1919, the Union concurred with the General Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, J. H. Thomas, that ‘the short issue is that the long made promise of a better world for railwaymen which was made in the time of the nation’s crisis, and accepted by the railwaymen as an offer that would ultimately bear fruit, has not materialised’, voting, by a majority of 46 to 17, for the railwaymen to receive a ‘living wage’.84 The DUS also welcomed change within the university on 18 November 1919 by rejecting the motion proposed by the returned soldier, B.T. Greenwood, that ‘This House views with apprehension the presence of so many married undergrads in the University.’85 In so doing, members dismissed the proposition claim that such students were ‘too demanding; a distraction’ and that a ‘semi-monastic life is needed for study’, agreeing instead with the first opposition speaker, B.G. Beale, who ultimately became Honorary Chaplain to King George VI, that such a view was ‘unpatriotic post-war’.86 The following year, on 19 December 1920, the

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DUS approved of the demands of local strikers that the price of domestic coal should be reduced and further resolved that the country’s mines should be nationalised.87 These changes in the dominant opinions voiced within the Union suggest that the cloistered world of traditional academia was, albeit slowly, adjusting to society’s ‘rising expectations’ after the war.88 Reflecting the social mores of their contemporaries, as immortalised, for instance, by Evelyn Waugh in Brideshead Revisited, the first half of the 1920s was characterised by debates that were light in tone.89 The DUS debated such pressing matters as whether ‘the grumbler does more good for society than the contented man’ and the extent to which it is ‘better to be a hypocrite than a liar’,90 while the millinery accoutrements of pachyderms were a cause of much concern in the LDS. Alas, the decision of those assembled upon the motion ‘Elephants should wear straw hats’ is not recorded; one is also left to wonder if the House did decide that ‘The door is ajar’, and ‘Whether browning or gravy (if either) has done more for the world.’91 Even if such frivolity were part of a reaction against the ‘privations and strains of wartime’, it was not wholly welcomed either by more seasoned orators or university authorities.92 Returning from the Sheffield inter-varsity of 1926, B.P. Sandbach, the President of the LDS, reported that the occasion had been ‘a hopeless failure… [for] most of the members present were there with only the intention of ragging’; those responsible were subsequently called upon by the Senate of Sheffield University to explain themselves.93 In contrast to these halcyon times, the realities of the General Strike in May 1926, and the Great Depression (1929–1932) resulted in serious political issues once more taking centre stage at both debating societies. The previously noted softening of the DUS on the issues of nationalisation and the rights of workers was dramatically realigned at the end of November 1926, when members overwhelmingly ‘approved of the way the Government has handled the coal strike’.94 This was a decision that once more placed the views of Durham’s debaters in opposition to local opinion and those aired within the LDS. Just months later, and having had troops and warships stationed in Liverpool during the General Strike, on 24 October 1927 the LDS reaffirmed its solidarity with the growth of workers’ unionism in the city by ‘deploring the principles underlying the TU Bill [of 1927]’.95 Indeed, the principal proposers of the motion derided the Bill as being ‘an attempt to check Labour, which was gaining at every election’, and suggested that its provisions

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were motivated by ‘Tory fear and a desire to demean the efforts of the working class’.96 In his floor speech, R. M. A. Wood neatly surmised the prevailing view of those in the Gilmour Hall: his opinion that the ‘main point against the Bill was that the Daily Mail was for it’, is a line of debating scorn still readily used in undergraduate debating circles today.97 Solidarity with the concerns of workers was matched within the LDS by a range of debates that favoured greater state involvement in the provision of health care. For example, the LDS resolved, at its debate of 4 December 1930, that ‘A State medical service [was] preferable to private practice.’98 Though the views of individual debaters at Liverpool are not recorded in The Sphinx, the minutes note that the debate was informed by commentary from a substantial number of the university’s medical students, whose arguments centred not only on the inability of the less fortunate to pay for medical services but also the extent to which the commercial life of the city depended upon a healthy workforce. Contrary to this meshing of informed medical opinion with commercial realities, the simultaneous debate at the Durham Union Society that, ‘In the opinion of the House, the medical profession ought to be nationalised’, took place in a vacuum of political ideology and was devoid of comparable expert opinion. Asserting that ‘socialism was not friendly to the highest individual achievement’ and ‘nationalisation would breed a lack of skills, and any residual skill would degenerate’, members rejected the motion by a substantial majority of 23 votes to 11.99

Prelude to War From the beginning of the Michaelmas Term 1932, debaters’ preoccupation with domestic affairs gave way to a sustained period of motions predominantly focused on international relations. As could be expected for a generation of students born on the eve of the First World War, the causes and impacts of war were extensively considered. In Durham, the motion, ‘This House approves of Germany’s action in withdrawing from the League of Nations’, was carried on 9 November 1932, with members concurring with the opinion voiced by C. D. Woods of St Chad’s College that ‘the position in Europe regarding rearmament was ridiculous in Germany’s eye; England might amass armaments, yet Germany was powerless. Into such a position of humiliation has sprung a German saviour, Adolf Hitler.’100 Just four months later, in March 1933, LDS

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members, joined by delegates from the universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, and Sheffield, overwhelmingly concluded that ‘Great Britain will be engaged in a major war within five years.’101 Between these two debates, the infamous debate at the Oxford Union declared, by a majority of 275–153, ‘That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country’, precipitating an impassioned national discussion of pacifism.102 Taken together, such motions show a conspicuous change in debaters’ willingness to question the political status quo and reject established pillars of British foreign policy. At both the DUS and LDS, therefore, various speakers warned that, while the ‘will of nations was against war’ and Germany ‘did not intend war’,103 the effects of the policies pursued by the victorious powers post-1918 were such that ‘military spirit is rampant’.104 The rebalancing of attitudes towards Germany was matched by a belief that Britain and her allies had negated their responsibility to foster peace through failing to disarm and the adoption of policies that weakened the League of Nations. While the LDS rejected the contention that ‘The League of Nations should be abandoned’ by a clear majority of 153–63 on 11 May 1933, speakers nevertheless drew attention to the extent to which the League was undermined by the independent foreign policies of the Great Powers. The result, they suggested, was that there was a substantial rift between ‘that which [the League] should be, and that which it was’.105 Returning to the issue two years later, LDS members determined in October 1935 that the League of Nations was, in the words of Messrs Greaves and Tickle, ‘a thieves’ kitchen, in which too many cooks were spoiling the broth’.106 A fortnight later, on 7 November 1935, the DUS debated the motion that ‘This House deplores the attitudes of His Majesty’s Government in the Italo-Abyssinian dispute.’107 Passed 32 votes to 26, the House agreed with the President-elect, T. F. Peart, that ‘Britain had only paid lip service to the Covenant of the League owing to her greater concerns for her own African policy … and had failed to give a lead of honesty to the world.’108 Preoccupied by the problems that besieged the League, in February 1936 the Union further resolved that ‘The policy of the imperialistic government has entirely wrecked the power of the League of Nations.’109 The academic year concluded as it had begun, with debaters expressing concern that the great hopes for the League of Nations were being squandered; on 26 June 1936, the DUS found that ‘Britain’s

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contribution to world peace is negated by the existence of her Empire’ by a majority of 108 votes to 65.110 Even when the work of the League was supported, such voting was more a reflection of the unpalatable nature of the alternatives presented than a vote of confidence in the League itself. Thus, on 28 October 1937, when the DUS voted down the motion that ‘This House looks no longer to the League of Nations for the protection of world peace, justice, and confidence, but to the dominating influence of an alliance between the British Commonwealth of Nations and the United States of America’, it represented a rejection of Anglo-American foreign policy rather than an unqualified endorsement of the League.111 As E. W. R. Little of Hatfield College surmised in his successful opposition to the motion, ‘the League was a failure … world peace had been driven away by the war in Spain and by the aggression of Japan, and justice had been buried by the Treaty of Versailles’.112 Condemnation of Britain’s foreign policy was repeated a year later on 27 October 1938, when the noted anti-appeaser and Independent MP for the Combined English Universities constituency, Miss Eleanor Rathbone, delivered an address to the Durham Union Society. In her speech, The Rise of Peace, Rathbone focused on the Munich Agreement that had been signed a month earlier on 30 September 1938 and derided Chamberlain’s visit to Germany as little more than ‘a magnificent gesture’.113 Keen to record the opinion of the House on Chamberlain’s negotiations, Rathbone persuaded the DUS President, J. T. Gleave of Hatfield College, to depart from Standing Orders so that members could vote upon her speech at the close of proceedings.114 The decision of the House was unequivocal: Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement was denounced, 57 votes to 19.115 As the first recorded defeat of the policies espoused by a Conservative Prime Minister in the 96-year history of the Union, this is worthy of note not just because of its rarity but also as a consequence of the margin of the rejection. Moreover, when that decision is combined with the previously noted prediction of the LDS that Britain would be engaged in a major war by March 1938, it highlights the extent to which the outlook of debaters at Durham and Liverpool had changed within a single generation. No longer as blind to the realities of international diplomacy as their predecessors had been in the summer of 1914, these were young men (and in the case of Liverpool, women) who were acutely attuned to the fragility of peace.

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Conclusion Reflecting the ebb and flow of personal and societal priorities, both the Liverpool Debating Society and the Durham Union Society severely reduced their activities during the six years of conflict that followed. As before, the standard of debate fell: the LDS noted in 1941 that ‘attendance has been appallingly low’,116 while ten years later, in 1951, P.D.A. Campbell observed of Durham ‘that there is little positive to be reported concerning the Society’s activities’.117 Thereafter, as in 1919, peace brought an upsurge in interest and belief in a better tomorrow; this time, however, debates upon progressive politics corresponded with the policy promises of an incumbent Labour administration. Thomas Kelly, in his history of the University of Liverpool, maintains that ‘generally speaking, students in the 1920s were preoccupied with their own problems … Life in the thirties was superficially much the same.’118 Nevertheless, this chapter has demonstrated that the debaters of Durham and Liverpool were substantially engaged with an array of home and global affairs between the turn of the century and the Second World War. For instance, whereas the LDS was certainly conscious of the ineluctable disintegration of international relations, the editorial team of Liverpool’s Guild Gazette in the last pre-war issue, 27 June 1939, nonchalantly wished readers ‘all the best for Commem. and the Vac’, for ‘nothing can interfere with our serenity’.119 While there remained differences in both the focus and tone of the motions debated in the two universities, there was a growing assimilation of opinion between the two societies during the period covered in this chapter. The initial divergence was, in part, a corollary of the nature of the foundations of Durham and Liverpool, as well as reflective of the socio-economic characteristics of their students and how they perceived themselves and others. As the recruitment base of higher education widened, these marked differences softened. The essence of a debating society is thus not its structural form—however grand or dilapidated it may be—but rather its function as a forum for the expression and testing of ideas. Contrasting ‘motions of pandemonium’ with those of ‘high politics’, the debaters of Liverpool and Durham present a curious mix of adolescence, sophistication, and worldly wisdom, accompanied by a belief that, through their deliberations, they were discovering something anew.120 It has also shown that, for many individuals, their early forays into public

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speaking and the opinions that they espoused were subsequently mirrored within their professional lives. The recorded opinions of the LDS and DUS provide an invaluable resource from which to explore the views and changing priorities of a distinctive group of students often overlooked in the institutional histories of universities. Where caution remains needed is in the analysis of debate, as the opinion of the House may be more readily attributable to the effects of an attractive turn of phrase, ‘rounded off with a thundering substantive’, than evidence of a fundamental shift in core principles or beliefs.121 This is a dynamic process of interaction between principal speakers and those ‘from the floor’ that continues to this day: in Liverpool on Tuesday afternoons, and within the chamber of the Durham Union Society each Friday evening.

Notes





1. This chapter adopts the accepted practice of using the date of receipt of an incorporating Act of Parliament or Royal Charter as the founding date of the given institution. Following Durham in 1832, the federal University of London received its Royal Charter in 1836. University College, Liverpool, the Yorkshire College of Science, Leeds, and Owens College, Manchester, became the three constituent parts of the federal Victoria University between 1880 and 1887. Birmingham University received its Charter in 1900 and is England’s fifth oldest university. The Liverpool and Leeds colleges of the federal Victoria University were awarded individual charters of incorporation in 1903 and 1904 respectively. The reconstituted and renamed Victoria University of Manchester was merged with Owens College by an Act of Parliament in 1904. See Durham Cathedral: Enabling the Dean and Chapter to Appropriate Church Property for the Establishment of a University 1832 (2 & 3 Gul. IV, c.19); Leeds University Act 1904 (4 Edw. VII, c.12); Liverpool University Act 1903 (4 Edw. VII, c.11); Victoria University of Manchester Act 1904 (4 Edw. VII, c.13). 2. C.E. Whiting, The University of Durham 1832–1932 (London: Sheldon Press, 1932). See also N. Watson, The Durham Difference: The Story of Durham University (London: James & James, 2007); E. M. Bettenson, The University of Newcastle upon Tyne: A Historical Introduction 1834– 1871 (Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 1971). 3. E.K.T. Coles, Presidential Address: The Way Ahead (Easter Term, 1951), 8, University of Durham Special Collections. Coles’ view is particularly

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pertinent here given that he devoted his life to adult education and literacy. 4. S. Rothblatt, The Modern University and its Discontents: The Fate of Newman’s Legacies in Britain and America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 244. 5. M. Sanderson (ed.), The Universities in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1975), 32. See also Letter from Archdeacon Thorp, 1st Warden of Durham University to Bishop Van Mildert, 10 December 1831, University of Oxford, Balliol College Special Collections. 6. R.D. Anderson, British Universities: Past and Present (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 28. 7. Whiting, The University of Durham, 31. 8. Watson, The Durham Difference, 19. 9.  Canon J.T. Fowler, College Histories, Durham University: Earliest Foundations and Present Colleges (London: Robinson and Co, 1904), 60. 10. D.R. Jones, The Origins of Civic Universities: Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool (London: Routledge, 1988), 11–12; M. Sanderson, The Universities and British Industry, 1850–1970 (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1972), 3. 11. Rothblatt, The Modern University and its Discontents, 21. 12. Sanderson, The Universities in the Nineteenth Century, 4, 32, 107–108. 13. Rothblatt, The Modern University and its Discontents, 244. 14. W. Whyte, Redbrick: A Social and Architectural History of Britain’s Civic Universities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 111. 15. R.D. Anderson, Universities and Elites in Britain since 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 5. 16. Anderson, British Universities, 78. See also Jones, The Origins of Civic Universities, 66–72. 17. Yorkshire College, Annual Report, Inauguration Ceremony Special Edition, 6 October 1875, 6, University of Leeds Special Collections, LUA/PUP/009/1. 18. Whyte, Redbrick, 130. 19. Ibid., 159. Durham holds the distinction of being the only UK university to inhabit a castle. 20. For a brief overview of changing attitudes as to the benefit of a ‘liberal arts’ education in the nineteenth century, see Sanderson, The Universities in the Nineteenth Century, 1–9. 21. See T. Kelly, For the Advancement of Learning: The University of Liverpool, 1881–1981 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1981), 92, 136.

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22. Cited Kelly, For the Advancement of Learning, 136. Ramsay Muir was Professor of History at Liverpool between 1906 and 1913; after leaving academia in 1921, he focused on the political reform of education. 23. For further, see C. Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities, 1870–1939 (London: UCL Press, 1995), 198–201; C. Dyhouse, Students: A Gendered History (London: Routledge, 2006), 132–133. 24. The Durham University Journal (DUJ) was at that stage still ‘an organ of self-expression of the University’ rather than the academic journal it would become. For further, see J.M.J. Rogister, ‘The Durham University Journal, 1876–1976’, DUJ LXIX, no. 1 (1976), 1–2, University of Durham Special Collections. For the centennial history, see Whiting, The University of Durham. See also P.D.A. Campbell, Presidential Address: A Short History of the Durham Union Society (Epiphany Term, 1951), University of Durham Special Collections. 25. Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex?, 200–202, 206–211. 26.  P. Craddock, ‘The Nineteenth Century’, in P. Craddock (ed.), Recollections of the Cambridge Union: 1815–1939 (Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1953), 78. 27.  The union societies invited were those of Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh, along with the College Historical Society of Trinity College Dublin. 28. Campbell, Presidential Address, 10. 29.  F.N. Hardwick, opposing the motion ‘This House believes that the concession of Home Rule to Ireland was not calculated to promote the disintegration of Empire’, 20 May 1886; the debate was lost by 12 votes. DUJ VII, no. 5, May (1886), 52, University of Durham Special Collections. 30. Founded in 1843, Marlborough is one of England’s great public schools along with Charterhouse, Eton, and Harrow, among others. Renowned ‘Old Marlburians’ include Anthony Blunt, the art historian and communist spy; the poets John Betjeman and Siegfried Sassoon; the artist William Morris; and HRH The Duchess of Cambridge. 31. Jones, The Origins of Civic Universities, 12. 32.  Durham Union Society (DUS), Minute Book, February 1913, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2. 33.  DUJ XXI, no. 2, March (1913), 29, University of Durham Special Collections. 34.  H.W. Harris, ‘The End of the Old World: I’, in P. Craddock (ed.), Recollections of the Cambridge Union: 1815–1939 (Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1953), 83. H. W. Harris was President of the CUS, Michaelmas Term 1905.

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35. Liverpool University Charter of Incorporation, 15 July 1903, clause 14. Reproduced in the University of Liverpool Calendar, 1937–1938, 25, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. 36. Canon J.T. Fowler, ‘A Brief History of the Durham Union Society’, DUJ XX, no. 10 (1912), 205, University of Durham Special Collections. 37.  DUJ XVII, no. 17 (December 1907), 203, University of Durham Special Collections. 38. Ibid. 39. The construction of a student union with a dedicated debating chamber was made possible at Sheffield through a donation by the philanthropist, J.G. Graves, and at Newcastle through a gift of £40,000 in 1925 from the coal magnate, Sir Cecil Cochrane. For further, see M. Stevenson (ed.), Your University, 2006/2007 (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 2006), 1; Bettenson, The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 42–44. 40. The primary benefactor was the Birkenhead industrialist, Captain George Gilmour, who donated £6,500. See: Kelly, For the Advancement of Learning, 167. 41. See Bettenson, The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 30–34; Jones, The Origins of Civic Universities, 11–12. 42. DUS, Minute Book, 15 November 1900, 21 February 1901, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2. 43. Ibid., 21 June 1901. 44. Ibid., with regard to Empire, 19 November 1903, 17 November 1904, 9 November 1905, and 22 June 1907. With regard to Liberal policies, 9 February 1905, 14 March 1907, and 4 March 1911. 45. Ibid., 25 February 1903. 46. Ibid. 47. See A. Hough, ‘Gypsy gang jailed for “sophisticated” £800k benefit fraud’, Daily Telegraph, 18 May 2011; M. Townsend, ‘Labour plans “blacklist” to curb rising hate crime in UK’, Guardian, 7 February 2015. 48.  DUS, Minute Book, 18 June 1903, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2. 49. Respectively, the debates were: carried 21 votes to 19, 2 December 1901, Sphinx IX, no. 3 (December 1901), 108–109; a draw with 18 votes cast for either side, 8 December 1902, Sphinx X, no. 4 (January 1903), 67; lost by a majority of 15 votes to 27, 8 February 1904, Sphinx XI, no. 5 (March 1904), 111–112. All, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives.

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50.  DUJ XVI, no. 8, November (1900), 129, University of Durham Special Collections. 51. Ibid. 52.  Sphinx XIII, no. 3, February (1906), 116, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives (commenting upon the speeches of a Mr Butterworth). 53. Ibid., IX, no. 2, November (1901), 60, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. 54.  DUS, Minute Book, 5 March 1903, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2; Mr Smith, Hatfield Hall, primary speaker in opposition to the motion. Hatfield Hall became Hatfield College in 1919. 55. Ibid., Mr Jordan, University College, second speaker in opposition to the motion. 56. Ibid., 27 February 1908. 57. Sphinx XVII, no. 10, March (1910), 182, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives; ‘This House believes that it is better to be a member of a modern than of an ancient university.’ While it is noted that the LDS motion was overwhelmingly carried, the actual vote was not recorded. 58. Sanderson, The Universities and British Industry, 279. 59.  Sphinx IX, no. 2, November (1901), 60, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. 60. Ibid., VIII, no. 2, November (1900), 90. 61. Ibid., IX, no. 2, November (1901), 50–52. 62. DUS, Minute Book, 10 March 1903 (motion defeated by 5 votes to 19); 14 February 1924 (motion lost 19 votes to 43); University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2. Durham City has not returned a Conservative MP since 1874. 63. J.R. Tanner, ‘The Centenary of the Cambridge Union Society, 1815– 1915’, Cambridge Review, 3 March 1915, 7. 64. DUS, Minute Book. 11 March 1908; 15 February 1912; University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2. 65. Ibid., 30 November 1912, University of Durham Special Collections. For more on the role of Durham’s miners in the National Miners’ Strike of February 1912, see S. Webb, The Story of the Durham Miners (London: Fabian Society, 1921). 66. S. Davies, Liverpool Labour: Social and Political Influences of the Development of the Labour Party in Liverpool, 1900–1939 (Keele: Keele University Press, 1996), 58–62, 88–89. 67. Kelly, For the Advancement of Learning, 298.

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68.  Sphinx XIX, no. 2, November (1911), 18–19, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. The motion, ‘That the interference of the military during the recent strikes was justifiable’, was defeated 99 votes to 30; a precise date for the debate in the October is not given. See also Kelly, For the Advancement of Learning, 132–133. 69.  Sphinx XIV, no. 4, March (1912), 113–114, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. 70. Kelly, For the Advancement of Learning, 169, quoting from an interview with Mrs Winifred Jones, a student who entered the University of Liverpool in 1911. 71.  Sphinx XV, no. 2, 7 November (1907), 73, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. With regard to the steady growth of working-class left-wing opinion in Liverpool, see Davies, Liverpool Labour, 58–62, 88–89. 72. Sphinx XV, no. 2, 7 November (1907), 73; XVII, no. 2, November (1909), 65; University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. 73. A.M. McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 169. Peart (Bede College) was elected as the Labour MP for Workington 1945–1976. Created a Life Peer in 1976, he served as the Shadow Leader of the House of Lords from 1979 to 1982. 74. LDS, Minute Book, 19 January 1914, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/72. The vote was 39 in favour to 40 against. 75. Ibid., 18 November 1912. 76. DUS, Minute Book, 12 February 1914, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2. 77.  N. Birkett, ‘The End of the Old World: III’, in P. Craddock (ed.), Recollections of the Cambridge Union, 1815–1939 (Cambridge: Bowes and Bowes, 1953), 95–96. Norman Birkett, President CUS, Michaelmas Term 1910. Ironically, Sir Norman Birkett was subsequently one of the British judges at the Nuremberg Trials. 78. Kelly, For the Advancement of Learning, 172. 79. DUS, Minute Book, 23 October 1914; 6 November 1914; University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2; University of Durham, Roll of Service, 1914–1919, 70, University of Durham Special Collections. 80. DUS Minute Book, 18 February 1915, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB2. 81.  Sphinx XXII, no. 2, March (1915), 44–45; XXII, no. 3, May (1915), 76–77; University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. Frank Scott Fowweather subsequently became Professor of Chemical

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Pathology at Leeds University and is still cited today for his contributions to bacteriology. 82. Ibid., XXIII, no. 4, June (1915), 96, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. 83. LDS, Minute Book, 7 February 1919, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/72. 84. DUS, Minute Book, 13 October 1919, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB3. J.H. Thomas, National Negotiations Circular, National Union of Railwaymen, 23 September 1919, 1, University of Warwick Special Collections, 379/G/4/4/3. 85. DUS, Minute Book, 18 November 1919, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB3. 86. Ibid., Proposer: B.T. Greenwood, First Opposition Speaker: B.G. Beale, both of University College. 87. Ibid., 19 December 1920. 88. M. Pugh, We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain between the Wars (London: Bodley Head, 2008). See also A. Marwick, ‘The Effect of the First World War on British Society’, Journal of Contemporary History, 3, no. 1 (1968), 61–63. 89. E. Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (London: Chapman & Hall, 1945). The characterisation and commentary by Waugh is particularly pertinent given his dabbling in the OUS; D. Walter, The Oxford Union, Playground of Power (London: MacDonald, 1984), 49–55. See also Pugh, We Danced All Night, 216–220. 90. DUS, Minute Book, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/ GE1/AB3. The House found ‘the grumbler’ wanting (15 votes to 20) on 15 March 1923, and concluded that it was better to be a liar than a hypocrite by a majority of 14 on 6 December 1923. 91. LDS, Minute Book, 1926, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/73. Though the debate titles are noted, no further details are recorded. 92. Pugh, We Danced All Night, 217. 93. LDS, Minute Book, 1926, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/73. No further details are recorded. 94. DUS, Minute Book, 18 November 1926, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB3. For a discussion of student involvement in the General Strike, see G. Brewis, A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and beyond, 1880–1980 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014), 74–79. 95. LDS, Minute Book, 24 October 1927, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/73. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 (17 &18 George V, c.22) was introduced as a direct

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response to the General Strike and made unlawful ‘any secondary action or strike that sought to coerce the government of the day directly or indirectly’. 96. LDS, Minute Book, 24 October 1927, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/73. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid., 4 December 1930. 99. DUS, Minute Book, 4 December 1930, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB3. 100. Ibid., 9 November 1932. 101.  LDS, Minute Book, March 1933, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/73; no date is given for this debate. 102. For further, see M. Ceadel, ‘The “King and Country” Debate, 1933: Student Politics, Pacifism and the Dictators’, The Historical Journal 22, no. 2 (1979), 397–422. This chapter does not address the ‘King and Country’ debate in greater detail as it has been comprehensively discussed by many commentators over the last eight decades, and cannot be summarised within these few pages. See also B. Simon, ‘The Student Movement in England and Wales during the 1930s’, History of Education 16, no. 3 (1987), 189–203; S. Levsen, ‘Constructing Elite Identities: University Students, Military Masculinity and the Consequences of the Great War in Britain and Germany’, Past and Present 198, no. 1 (2008), 147–183. 103.  LDS, Minute Book, March 1933, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/73. 104. DUS, Minute Book, 9 November 1932, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB3; J.F. Topping, Hatfield College. 105.  LDS, Minute Book, 11 May 1933, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/73. 106. Ibid., 24 October 1935. 107. DUS, Minute Book, 7 November 1935, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB3. 108. Ibid. 109.  Ibid., 13 February 1936, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB4. 110. Ibid., 26 June 1936. 111. Ibid., 28 October 1937. 112. Ibid. 113. Ibid., 27 October 1938. 114. J.T. Gleave subsequently served as a major in the Second World War and was a Director of Education in Uganda and Professor in Education at the University of Leeds.

128  B. Dockerill 115. DUS, Minute Book, 27 October 1938, University of Durham Special Collections, UND/GE1/AB4. 116. LDS Termly Report of the Debates Committee to the Council of the Guild, 1941, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, A.32/75. 117. Campbell, Presidential Address, 15. 118. Kelly, For the Advancement of Learning, 269. 119. ‘Commem’ referred to the Students’ Commemoration Ball, held the evening before graduation. Guild Gazette, 2, 27 June (1939), University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. 120.  Sphinx XVII:11, May (1910), 230, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives. 121. W.E. Shaw, ‘Editorial’, The Blue Pigeon: The Magazine of the Halls of Residence for Men: The University of Liverpool, VIII, June (1937), 3, University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives.

Author Biography Bertie Dockerill is a Research Associate within the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Liverpool. His primary research interests are focused on nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban history, especially issues of civic improvement, the development of municipal social housing and the historic development of town planning. In addition to being the editor of the peerreviewed journal, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, and the editorial assistant for Town Planning Review, he is an elected Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts and the Royal Geographical Society.

CHAPTER 6

The National Union of Students and Devolution Mike Day

Introduction On 14 September 2014, the people of Scotland cast their votes in a referendum which posed the question ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ The ‘Better Together’ campaign, making the case for a no vote, won by a margin of 10%, not as close as many had feared before polling, but closer than the significant 21% lead unionists enjoyed at the start of the campaign 2 years earlier.1 It became clear that ‘Yes’ supporters did not, as the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) Alex Salmond had said, view the referendum as settled ‘for a generation’; rather, it was felt that ‘unionist’ parties had cheated by offering greater levels of devolution at the last minute following a poll published on 6 September 2014 in the Sunday Times which suggested a ‘Yes’ majority.2 The aftermath of the referendum saw a surge in support for the SNP, reflected in the General Election results on 7 May 2015, with Labour reduced to one seat. Labour’s ‘meltdown’ continued with the loss of 13 seats in the Scottish Parliamentary elections in 2016, coming third

M. Day (*)  NUS Scotland, Edinburgh EH7 4QL, UK © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_6

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behind the SNP. The outcome of both these elections and the EU Referendum, in which 62% of those voting in Scotland voted to remain, was seen by those seeking to leave the UK as another occasion when Scotland had been ignored, fuelling demands for another referendum; ‘Scotland has spoken and spoke decisively’ said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.3 The offer made by ‘unionist’ parties of more devolved powers known as ‘The Vow’,4 forms a relevant backdrop to an analysis of how the National Union of Students (NUS) developed devolved structures significantly in advance of the country as a whole and how that tradition may have to undergo further change if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive more powers and similar levels of devolution are granted to England.5 There are three devolved nations within NUSUK, NUS Scotland, NUS Wales and NUS-USI (a partnership initiative between NUSUK and the Union of Students in Ireland). The decision to devolve political governance was taken in 1971 for Scotland, 1973 for Wales and 1972–1975 for Northern Ireland. These decisions were made primarily because it was felt to be right, but also because the move anticipated potential devolution within the UK. The decisions to devolve NUS structures were made in spite of the legislative landscape and, as it transpired, it was to be over 20 years before devolved government became a reality. The NUSUK Articles of Association empower NUS Scotland, NUS Wales and NUS-USI to represent NUS members on all devolved matters. Each holds an annual conference that holds elected officers to account, agrees policy, and plans for the year. They also elect an executive committee for the year ahead. Each nation has an elected president who is a full-time sabbatical officer; Scotland has a full-time vice-president responsible for education; whilst Wales has a full-time deputy president.6 They are supported in their work by volunteer officers who make up the executive committee. The remaining members of the committees are elected at autonomous liberation conferences consisting of black, Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Trans Plus (LGBT+), disabled and women students. In Wales and Scotland the women’s officer is a sabbatical position; Wales also have an officer elected at an autonomous Welsh Language conference. The number and structures of these committees continues to evolve over time, however, the overriding principle is that all three nations are politically autonomous parts of NUSUK and each of them can agree policy positions that could be contradictory to positions taken by NUSUK. Student officers representing the ‘nations’ participate

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in the annual conference of NUSUK; they are permitted to vote on all policies that will form the collective position of the organisation as a whole, elect national officers, endorse the budget and hold all officers to account. National Conference establishes the UK-wide policy position; however, decisions taken at the nation’s conferences will be the position presented to Members of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh or Northern Irish Assembly. It is, in effect, the student movement equivalent of the ‘West Lothian’ question and it has not yet been resolved. Nations officers are supported by small staff teams who, at the time of writing, form part of the Directorate of Devolved Nations and Internationalism which itself sits within the UK Student Voice and Influence Directorate, one of NUS’ four key Directorates. There are offices in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast; the office facilities, equipment and the overall employment of staff are the responsibility of the NUSUK Trustee Board who act as employers which means that staffing and other administrative functions are not devolved. If any of the devolved executive teams wish to restructure staff support they have to make the case to the NUSUK Trustee Board and any relevant sub committees. The next section will examine the circumstances in which devolved structures emerged within NUS.

The Evolution of Devolution in NUS The impetus to create NUS came from students who had attended the inaugural conference of the Confederation International des Etudiants (CIE) in Strasbourg in 1919. An initiative of the French Union Nationale des Etudiants Français (UNEF), the CIE sought to bring together student leaders from across Europe and beyond, the rationale being that the student leaders of the day would be future national leaders. Bringing them together to debate and get to know each other would, it was felt, create a spirit of comradeship and understanding that could help avoid the horrors of war. Membership of the CIE was based on national unions of students, and whilst there was already a national body in Scotland there was no such organisation covering England and Wales. Delegates from England and Wales returned from Strasbourg determined to establish a suitable organisation. NUS was formally established in 1922 at the University of London Club, Gower Street; 27 universities and colleges were represented from England and Wales.7 Despite there being no representatives from Scotland or Ireland, the meeting agreed the overall objectives of the new organisation would

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be ‘To represent past and present students from a national and international point of view and to render possible the co-operation of the body of students in ENGLAND, WALES, SCOTLAND and IRELAND with students of other lands.’8 There was an initial hope that NUS might represent the whole of Britain and Ireland as well as play a role in co-ordinating work with graduates. The Irish Free State agreed a constitution in December 1922, thereby removing Ireland from the UK, and early discussions of the new executive agreed that contacting graduates was too large a task and it was confirmed that NUS would only speak for English and Welsh undergraduates.9 The Scottish Committee of Student Representative Councils (SCSRC) established in 1889 represented Scottish interests. Scotland had led the way in creating the principle of student representation throughout the UK following the foundation of Edinburgh University Student Representative Council (SRC) in 1884, a concept that was further embedded through the ‘Act for the Better Administration and Endowment of the Universities of Scotland’ (1889) which stated that there should be an SRC in each university with the right to make representations to the University Court.10 The SCSRC met annually until 1935, when membership was expanded beyond the university sector and it evolved into the Scottish Union of Students (SUS) founded on similar principles to NUS.11 NUS initially focused on what were termed ‘practical activities’: travel and student exchanges, the circulation of information to students’ unions (SUs) and the organisation of conferences about student issues. Less emphasis was placed at this stage on acting as a national voice, although the representative nature of NUS was implied through the delegations that were sent to the CIE. The organisation was a confederal one; SUs were the affiliated members and their student members were to automatically receive the benefits of membership from both parties. Each SU sent delegates, on the basis of one per thousand students, to an Annual Council meeting. The NUS Executive Committee (NEC) met once a term and consisted of the President of each affiliated SU and three members elected from Council. It was this body that elected the NUS President and other officials.12 The NEC had the power to call meetings of NUS Congress to discuss issues of general concern to students, an advisory rather than a policy-making forum. By 1924 every SU that was eligible to affiliate had done so; in this early period no effort was made to recruit non-university higher education institutions.13 At this stage NUS could reasonably engage with all of its members in a

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direct way, however the 1930s saw an extension of membership prompting a name change in 1940 from ‘The National Union of Students of the Universities and University Colleges and Schools and Colleges of a Similar Status’ to the ‘National Union of Students of the Universities and Colleges of England and Wales’.14 The acceptance into membership of Queen’s University, Belfast in 1946 prompted a further change; NUS now became the ‘National Union of Students of the Universities and Colleges of England, Wales and Northern Ireland’ (NUSEWNI). The relationship between NUSEWNI and SUS was one of friendly rivalry; they co-operated on the international front. Both were instrumental in the establishment of the International Union of Students (IUS) in 1945/1946. Post war hopes about the promotion of mutual understanding through global student co-operation were dashed when it became clear that the IUS was merely a tool of Soviet foreign policy. Both national unions adopted a policy of changing IUS from within, but when that proved fruitless, they put their efforts behind the creation of the International Students Conference (ISC).15 Membership expansion saw a desire by the NEC to increase the activities and services of NUS. There were debates about how NUS operated, how it related to its members, what services they received and how they, in turn, could influence the delivery of those services. A separate Welsh Representative Council was created in January 1948, with their own vice-president; its stated purpose was the promotion of the educational, social, cultural and general interests of students in Wales.16 Welsh universities had provided three Presidents of NUS in its early years.17 The fourth, Stanley Jenkins of Cardiff Technical College (1949–1951), also served as the second Welsh vice-president and was the first paid president of NUS. At this stage there do not appear to have been any policy differences between England and Wales. NUS Council 1950 was held in Cardiff where proposals were made to establish a commission to examine ideas about revitalising NUS structures. The motion was prompted by suggestions from Leicester University SU which argued that regionalising NUS might make it more responsive to member needs given the size of the organisation. The Commission’s membership was drawn in equal parts from university, training and technological colleges. It was accepted that NUS would have to adapt its structures to accommodate increased membership as well as meeting the expectations of that membership. The Commission examined suggestions that six Regional Councils replace the January

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and July meetings of the National Council, and that only one Council be held, in November. It was concluded the move would fragment the student movement, leading to contradictory motions being agreed. Despite this conclusion, a number of SUs did form local committees, SUs in Northern Ireland and Wales met together from time to time and by 1958 had achieved the status of official regions of NUS.18 In 1967 an NUS commission recommended creating a regional structure; like the nations the regions held annual conferences which agreed policies and elected members of advisory sectoral panels as well as a regional chairperson and executive. Attendance at these meetings was low and identification with them limited. Eventually it was recognised that Regional Chairs fulfilled no real function either as a co-ordinating body or local leadership and they were abolished.19 It was area organisations, based around urban conurbations or counties, that brought students together for campaigning and mutual support in the way the commission had envisaged. They focused on co-ordinating campaigns, local authority representation and supporting union development in the further education (FE) sector. They worked effectively until the mid-1990s, when the abolition of the binary divide and pressure on resources removed both raison d’être and sustenance. Regions were revived in the late 1990s; again they failed to engage SUs and they were abolished in a governance review in 2009.20

The Impact of Student Unrest in Northern Ireland The student unrest of the 1960s within the UK did not reach the intensity of protests in America, France, Mexico and Japan except in one respect: student involvement in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland and the student movements’ response to the sectarian divide proved truly pioneering.21 Universities and colleges in Northern Ireland had been able to join NUS since 1947, and for a while some institutions in the Republic took up associate membership, before the establishment of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) in 1959.22 Queen’s University, Belfast also produced two NUS National Presidents.23 Students supported the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and were instrumental in establishing the People’s Democracy (PD) movement whose demonstrations faced strong opposition by the police and Ulster Unionists.24 The demands of PD supporters were basic human rights and an end to sectarianism. Some students stood on the PD

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platform for the elections to the Stormont Government in February 1969, and a noted success was the election of student, Bernadette Devlin, to the Westminster Parliament in 1969 as MP for Mid Ulster.25 Over the next few years the PD evolved into a socialist group and its student base was slowly eroded, the PD focus was on the civil rights of the community in Northern Ireland rather than issues related to academic representation which were such a feature in the rest of the UK.26 Students were not immune from the growing violence. On 27 June 1966 loyalists threw petrol bombs into the grounds of St. Mary’s College of Education on the Falls Road, Belfast during an annual conference of Catholic organisations. This was the first of many ‘campus incidents’.27 Events surrounding the ‘student revolt’ in Ireland had far more impact on the real politics of the situation than anything that had happened in England and Wales and can be said to have driven events forward.28 NUS found that attempts to discuss the situation in Northern Ireland drew constant criticism from the press, despite making considerable efforts to maintain a non-sectarian line amongst the students in the six counties.29 In 1968 and 1969 attempts to obtain resolutions in support of the Republican movement were defeated. The main focus was practical work on student finance and housing, but even this approach was complicated by debate about whether it was appropriate for NUS or USI to be talking to Ministers.30 As students found themselves subject to internment from 1971, NUS called for the repeal of the legislation, joined the Anti-Internment League and fully involved itself in civil rights issues in the aftermath of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in January 1972. For a brief period in 1972 conference delegates had voted for a motion calling for support for the IRA a position that was reversed in the same year but one that opponents of NUS would continue to highlight well into the 1990s.31 It was clear to both NUS and USI that a more creative strategy towards the sectarian divide needed to be developed. Some SUs in Northern Ireland clearly affiliated along sectarian lines, Protestants to NUS and Catholics to USI. In 1972 a bilateral agreement was proposed between NUSUK and USI in which it was agreed that colleges in the North would be members of both organisations and that to leave one was to leave both. A joint NUS-USI office was established in Belfast in the same year; however, the agreement took a number of years to embed. NUS-USI were anxious to avoid sectarian divisions, but in the first years there was a good deal of tension.32 Opponents of the

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agreement toured Northern colleges urging them to reject the NUS proposals; those in favour toured as well under the slogan ‘End Sectarianism Build the Student Movement’. The formal Bilateral Agreement was, according to tradition, finally signed in a hotel in Galway.33 It was formally adopted by NUS Conference in April 1975 and presented to conference delegates by Steve Parry, NUS National Secretary, and Brendan Glynn, the Deputy President of USI.34 The objectives of the new regional structure were to act as a channel of communication between both national unions and their members, to provide a forum for discussion and to develop a range of services to develop work in SUs. A full-time officer was employed to take this work forward.35 They worked alongside an elected committee, accountable to a regional conference that, like Scotland and Wales, could pass their own policy provided it did not contradict NUS or USI policy. One of the most significant successes in the early years was the establishment of the Students’ Housing Association Co-operative in 1978. Alistair Stewart, NUS Deputy President, represented NUS on a National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL) delegation that visited Northern Ireland in February 1975. They met with the Official and Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the Green Cross Association, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, the Alliance Party and the Communist Party of Northern Ireland, along with a number of influential community leaders. The final report condemned internment without trial.36 Students from Northern Ireland often found themselves subject to harassment and detention when travelling to NUS Conference.37 In 1979 an emergency resolution condemned continued harassment, the same Conference called for a campaign against the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The NUS position proved too much for Stranmillis SRC who disaffiliated and were in consequence expelled from USI.38 There was a brief dispute over staff appointments in the late 1970s, but by 1983 consensus was reached on a Research and Development Officer for the NUS-USI office.39 He and his successors worked alongside the elected NUS-USI Convener to raise the profile of student issues in Northern Ireland, although the suspension of the ‘Parliament of Northern Ireland’ in 1972 and its abolition the following year meant that influencing work focused around the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and their department. Whilst there were various unsuccessful attempts to re-establish some form of Assembly, the British and Irish governments co-operated through the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.

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Despite some periodic tensions with USI, particularly over the strength of response to internment and conditions in the H blocks, there was a level of policy alignment between NUS-USI and NUSUK policy.40

Creating NUSUK NUSUK and the SUS worked together when negotiating with or responding to consultations from the Department of Education and Science (DES), and by the early 1960s the leaderships of both organisations were politically aligned. Like NUS, the SUS leadership were keen to retain their own ‘no politics’ clause which restricted debate to issues related to the situation of ‘students as such’. This clause led to tensions with the left, who saw it as an over-accommodating approach to government. The SUS leadership made a statement during the 1968 grants campaign to the effect they would ‘not oppose the 50% (grant) cut in the belief that students are prepared to make their contributions to easing the present economic crisis.’41 Not all students, particularly the left, were prepared to go along with this approach. The leadership of both organisations spoke against the radical tone adopted by many SUs, believing it would ruin their credibility and ability to effectively represent students. It had taken a long time and hard work to get round the negotiating table. SUS representatives served alongside NUS on government consultations, but it was not an equal relationship. The SUS team had to rely on NUS research and endorse the NUS position. Whilst there were concerns about what might happen should the national unions adopt different policies, the reality was that the NUS view usually prevailed.42 Given this reality, ‘Many Scots concluded that they would be far better off inside NUS, helping to evolve policy, rather than watching from the sidelines.’43 SUS was also in debt, the Scottish Executive had been forced to sell shares in their own travel company (SUSTA) in 1972, and it soon became clear that the organisation had been overly reliant on their travel income and, as a consequence, was forced to raise subscription fees. This decline in income led to a decline in activity. In 1969 a number of Scottish universities students’ association leaders approached NUS to examine the potential for affiliation. As things stood this was impossible because the NUS constitution restricted membership to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In response a joint NUS/SUS commission was established to investigate the potential for

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merger and draft terms were agreed in 1971.44 There was opposition from the Federation of Scottish Nationalists (FSN) and the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) who, from different perspectives, disliked the political direction of NUS. The main opposition came from smaller non-university institutions who felt their influence would be diluted within a larger organisation. These concerns were voiced by the last SUS President, Martin O’Neill, who sought assurances that the specific needs of Scotland would not be ignored. O’Neill made sure that any newly merged Scottish office would have its own sabbatical officer and that an autonomous conference would retain the right to formulate policy on Scottish matters.45 A timetable for merger was drawn up with completion scheduled to take place at the NUS Conference in Lancaster in April 1971.46 Progress was far from smooth. Student officers from Paisley College served an interim interdict on the SUS Conference scheduled to discuss the merger on the grounds that notice of the conference was sent out later than required by the constitution. The move forced the SUS Executive to reconvene the conference in May 1971 at Jordanhill College of Education. A second attempted interdict by Paisley was ruled out in the courts and the meeting went ahead. However, whilst the majority of the delegates were in favour, the motion did not achieve the requisite two-thirds margin to dissolve the organisation. The equivalent debate at NUS Conference resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour. With the constitutional barrier removed to joining NUS, some students’ associations voted with their feet by leaving SUS and joining NUS. NUS Conference in March 1971 accepted the majority of Scottish SUs into membership (except Glasgow, six technical colleges and four colleges of education). A steering committee was established to organise the first Scottish regional conference of NUS, on 19 June 1971 at Dundee, at which Doug Henderson from Strathclyde University was elected as the first Chairperson of the Scottish Region.47 SUS was faced with little choice but to freeze its assets, put its files and office equipment into storage and make its staff redundant, unable to take action because of its inability to achieve a quorum required to make any decisions.48 Most Scottish student leaders rationalised that because key decisions affecting education were made in London, joining NUS made sense as they were now able to formally influence policy. So it was that on 31 March 1971 NUS changed its name to the National Union of Students of the United Kingdom (NUSUK). An office was established in Edinburgh

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and officially opened by NUSUK President Digby Jacks in September 1971. As agreed, the Scottish Chairperson was a full-time member of the NEC elected by a conference of Scottish students, supported by a Scottish executive and a small team of staff. Four area organisations were established centred on Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. From the outset the principle of devolution was enshrined in the constitution, with the Scottish region able to pass policy on matters affecting constituent organisations in Scotland.49 Policy work in NUS mirrored that of NUSUK whilst at the same time making sure that relationships were developed with Scottish decision makers, the Scottish Education Department (SED) in particular. The first full conference of the Scottish Region of NUS was held on 5–6 February 1972; it mandated the new Scottish Executive Committee (SEC) to tackle cuts to teacher education provision, issues around academic freedom and union development for further education college SUs.50 The new region gave support to the Upper Clyde ship workers, and led a delegation of 200 students on a demonstration against unemployment in Glasgow.51 Issues discussed mirrored those taking place at a UK level, and made sure that the voice of Scottish students contributed to wider campaigns.

The Collapse of NUS Travel and  Battles of (Dis)Affiliation Since its foundation NUS had offered affordable travel services to student members, and apart from a hiatus during World War II, had managed to maintain a high market presence amongst students. The overall crisis in the travel industry in the mid-1970s led to the collapse of NUS Travel. All NUS’ commercial activities were linked, which put their entire commercial operation in jeopardy, leading members to question continued membership, as travel was seen as a key service valued by student members. During 1976 there were 30 affiliation battles in Scotland; St Andrews voted to leave and a threat to the long-term unity of NUS seemed very real.52 There were suggestions that some business interests and rivals to NUS Travel were helping to finance disaffiliation campaigns, and opponents used the commercial collapse to accuse NUS of incompetence, arguing that there were no longer any direct membership benefits for students.53 NUS Scotland won all but four of the affiliation battles. Those unions that seceded from NUS began to talk about reviving the

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SUS and Strathclyde University Students’ Association agreed to provide the accommodation after voting to disaffiliate.54 The proposed revival was criticised for being too university-focused. The new Scottish union was to be called SUS 1977 to avoid liability for debts incurred when the old SUS was wound up. The selling point was that the organisation would be cheaper than NUS and delegates would not have to pay as much to go to conferences.55 On 16 May 1977 a letter was sent from St Andrews SRC to all students’ associations in Scotland, noting that as half the higher education (HE) unions were no longer in membership, it was time to look at a new organisation because, they argued, NUS refused to implement reforms such as the direct election of the NUS President.56 The question over whether to stay in NUS, join SUS 1977, or neither organisation, was the subject of an intense referendum campaign within Edinburgh University Students’ Association. The arguments against NUS centred on costs, failure to keep the grant in line with inflation, trips abroad, the no platform policy and the dominance of Marxist politics. With echoes of Martin Luther, a list of ‘95 theses’ was produced by NUS opponents, each one a reason to leave NUS. NUS fought back by arguing that issues of concern to Edinburgh students were no different from other universities and colleges.57 Edinburgh voted to stay out of NUS, but there were not enough unions outside NUS to make another organisation feasible. Strathclyde re-affiliated in November 1978, Heriot-Watt left in 1981 only to return some years later, Dundee left in 1980, re-affiliated in the mid-1980s and then left again. In 1980 there was another attempt to re-establish SUS led by St Andrew’s Students’ Association; the anti-NUS campaign materials attempted to undermine NUS, with perceived and actual policies on Northern Ireland being given some prominence.58 The disconnection felt by some Scottish students’ associations led to a debate on the relationship between the Scottish Region and NUSUK. The Scottish Chairperson argued successfully for an increase in the Scottish staff team to include a designated education and welfare officer, and in 1979 for the appointment of a Field Officer to support union development initiatives. Discussions on autonomy continued as NUS felt its way into a devolved way of operating. Should the NUS Scotland Chairperson remain on the NEC? Were their loyalties divided? What was the relationship between national and regional conferences? Were there too many meetings? A working party was established in December 1976 to address these questions and look at the relationship between

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structures in Scotland and how they related to NUSUK, chaired by John Reid from Stirling University.59 The debate took place within the context of government proposals on devolution.60 The working party concluded that it was essential the Scottish Chairperson was on the NEC, the number of council meetings be reduced to one, and the arrangement whereby affiliation fees were collected centrally and then given back to NUS Scotland in the form of a block grant, be maintained. Issues around autonomy were not fully resolved. One option aired was that each of the ‘nations’ should hold autonomous conferences and then elect representatives to an NUSUK congress that would reconcile any differences in policy and tactics and agree a national approach. The proposal did not gain support, opponents suggested that it would concentrate too much power in the hands of a few Congress members rather than directly elected delegates from SUs.61 The working party report was rejected, the issue of autonomy unresolved. To address this an Extraordinary Conference was held in April 1977 which clarified the Scottish region could agree policy even if contradictory with NUSUK, but also that policy agreed on matters relating purely to Scottish students should automatically be binding upon NUSUK.62 A separate and devolved autonomy for NUS Scotland was finally agreed in 1978.

NUS Wales and National Identity The Welsh Region of NUS developed a stronger identity during the early 1970s, and enjoyed the same status as other regions of England. With the creation of the Scottish Region, student leaders in Wales felt that a Welsh equivalent organised on the same lines would be a positive development. Changing the status of the Welsh Region within the NUS constitution was easy enough, but there was another Welsh representative body to consider. The University Colleges in Wales were part of the Central Students’ Representative Council of the federal University of Wales, they supplied student representatives for federal committees including University Court. After negotiations, the University of Wales agreed to recognise the Universities Committee of the new NUS Wales, Undeb Cenedlaethol Myfyrwyr Cymru (UCMC); it was stipulated that the committee had to remain representative of all students of the University of Wales, clearly a problem if one were to disaffiliate. Activists in Wales and Scotland worked closely together to bring about devolved structures within NUS. Neil Caldwell, who served as

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UCMC President (1975–1977), recalls that meetings between activists from both countries took place in York, because it was the most southerly point reached by the Scottish Army in 1745.63 In 1972 it was proposed that UCMC be reorganised with a Chairperson (later to be made full time) elected by a conference of Welsh SUs, supported by an executive and a team of staff, which included a Field Officer. Whilst the constitutional requirements were being developed, an interim committee set about appointing staff and finding office facilities, which, after some temporary arrangements, was established in Swansea in 1975.64 The increased size and remit of the Welsh office had an immediate impact with a rise in the number of FE colleges in membership. The first autonomous NUS Wales Conference was held at Aberystwyth on 3–4 November 1973, under the title ‘National Welsh Colleges Conference’.65 It was a mixture of briefings, workshops and policy discussion. The conference agreed to draft a new constitution, establish a working party on area sabbaticals (one Swansea based, the other around Cardiff), reorganise the structure of the Welsh College Entertainments Circuit and secure regional representation on the Welsh Friends of Chile Committee. The new constitution was presented to NUSUK Conference in 1974 by the first Chairman of NUS Wales, Sion Pyrs. He also led calls to support an All Wales Student/Trade Union demonstration in January 1974 and the joint demonstration, held in Cardiff, proved to be the largest student demonstration yet held in Wales, with an estimated turnout of 10,000. The themes discussed by the inaugural conference remained priority areas for the next decade, the most crucial being the Welsh language. There was widespread concern amongst activists about the decline in usage and the limited opportunities for teaching in the Welsh medium, as English had been prescribed as the official teaching medium since 1870. A motion submitted to the NUS Conference in Margate 1974 noted; ‘with horror the shameful and rapid decline of Welsh speakers over the last 10 years, that this is a form of cultural castration a tool of all imperialist regimes’.66 The Welsh Language Act (1967) had, in theory, given an equal status to both languages, but little was seen in the way of concrete action.67 During the 1960s the Welsh Language Society (Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg) galvanized a mass campaign amongst Welsh speakers promoting peaceful civil disobedience; however, there were a smaller number who favoured a more militant approach, especially in the wake of the flooding of the Clywedog and Treweryn valleys

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to create reservoirs to supply water for Birmingham and Liverpool.68 This led to the creation of the Free Wales Army which, after a brief and tragic bombing campaign, was destroyed by the arrest and imprisonment of its leadership.69 Activists wanted to see an increase in courses taught in Welsh and its use in all sectors of public life. NUS Wales’ work on language was coordinated by the Welsh Language Action Group, who, in turn, liaised with the Welsh Language Society. Until 1994 it was a requirement that the UCMC Chair (later called President) either had to speak Welsh or take lessons. It was agreed that UCMC publications would be produced bilingually, a move that proved to be a source of tension between UCMC and NUSUK. In 1973, for example, there was a dispute between the NUSUK Treasurer and the President about whether the NUS Card should be bilingual, the latter took the view that to refuse the request would result in greater demands for autonomy.70 NUS became the first UK organisation to actively promote Welsh, and the subsequent campaign to create ‘Coleg Cymraeg’, a body that would co-ordinate Welsh medium teaching across the University of Wales, resulted in a board for Welsh Medium Teaching being created to do this in 1979.71 Students taking direct action to promote Welsh in other areas of public life received full support from NUS Wales, and that commitment was reinforced by participation in the National Eisteddfod and supporting the Inter-College Eisteddfod.72 UCMC continued to face tensions over bilingual materials with NUSUK, and at times found it difficult to find translators at the last minute who could respond to the fast pace of member expectations. There were also concerns that the expansion of student numbers would anglicise universities. Both Bangor and Aberystwyth funded separate Welsh unions who were seen as a threat to NUS Wales because they could potentially fracture the student movement and dilute UCMC’s voice73 in Welsh affairs. NUS Wales saw Welsh unions as crucial evidence that they were credible and seen to be taking a lead. In the long term the respect shown to Welsh within UCMC during the 1970s with simultaneous translations and bilingual publications pioneered an approach that is widely adopted in Wales to this day.74 Neil Caldwell believes that UCMC facilitated ‘political activists in the Labour and Liberal parties as well as those in Plaid Cymru of course, to develop their thinking on these issues during the 1970s and 1980s and went onto play significant roles in championing the language and the cause of devolution’.75

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The relationship between UCMC and NUSUK was influenced by tensions between those who wanted total independence for Wales, those who favoured a degree of devolution, and those wishing to maintain the existing constitutional arrangements. Compared with Scotland, the added language and cultural dimensions in Wales generated a greater desire in UCMC to distance itself from the NEC in London. The first UCMC conference passed a motion from Swansea suggesting that the NEC be told to ‘get their reactionary finger out’ and that if demands were not met, all Welsh colleges should be advised to disaffiliate. NUSUK were perceived by Welsh SUs as bureaucratic, slow to respond and ignorant of Welsh affairs. There were policy differences over international matters with UCMC adopting a liberationist approach aligning themselves with global anti-colonial struggles.76 They even explored the possibility of joining the International Union of Students (IUS) which NUSUK had left in 1951 because of Soviet domination. Strong links with other ‘Celtic’ countries were developed with activists from Brittany who, like the Welsh, were alarmed at the decline of their own language and culture. The Irish and Eudzoki (Basques) were seen as allies with a common cause.77 Unlike the Federation of Student Nationalists in Scotland, Plaid Cymru students engaged with UCMC structures with a good deal of electoral success. By 1980 they held an executive majority. There were differences with NUSUK but no breach. The development of the autonomous region had gone a long way to avoid this. Andrew Chandler (President of UCMC/NUS Wales 1979–1980) was in no doubt that the devolved powers that UCMC enjoyed were instrumental in making sure that Welsh SUs remained affiliated.

The Devolution Vote 1978 The Labour government elected in 1974 pledged to hold referenda on devolved powers for elected assemblies in both Wales and Scotland.78 Both NUS Scotland and UCMC campaigned in favour of devolution and welcomed the publication of the White Paper, and a joint conference on devolution was held in January 1976 to exchange campaign tactics.79 Of course for some activists nothing less than independence was good enough, but UCMC and NUS Scotland leaders recognised the need to maintain the current NUS structures.80 The Callaghan government passed the necessary legislation in 1978 that allowed for devolved assemblies subject to an affirmative referendum vote in both Scotland

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and Wales. A 40% threshold of the registered electorate was established through a last minute amendment to the Act. The campaign allowed both NUS Scotland and UCMC to build links with a wide range of organisations involved in public life. In Scotland those in favour exceeded 50% but the overall turnout was only 32.9%. UCMC campaigned under the slogan ‘A Stronger Wales in a United Britain’. There were differences over mechanisms for the funding and regulation of Welsh universities and colleges. UCMC wanted to see a Welsh College in the public sector and took the view that all further and higher education provision in Wales should be brought under one body. They were prepared to see the Secretary of State for Wales, and the Welsh Office, have this power, but their preference was for a democratically elected assembly with legislative authority.81 The referendum which took place on St David’s Day 1979, saw Wales vote no, a defeat that became known as the ‘St David’s Day Massacre’. This latest devolution debate and the growth of membership led to the appointment in 1977 of another NUS Constitutional Review Board (CRB) to discuss levels of engagement in what were seen as outdated structures. Ad hoc changes over the years had rendered the constitution confusing and unwieldy.82 The CRB discussed ways of developing stronger relations with individual students, how to accommodate parttime students and the composition of the NEC.83 There was a good deal of discussion about ‘nations’, autonomy, and it was argued that NUS subscriptions should be collected locally with a share passed to NUSUK, and further that they should be able to charge variable fees. There were also tensions over who employed the staff in devolved offices. Practically they worked for the local executive but in reality decisions on staffing levels and duties were made in London. The UCMC’s submission to the CRB in 1977 called for the creation of a federal British NUS, consisting of independent national unions in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These ideas were opposed by the Communist Students and the Broad Left.84 They successfully argued for policy autonomy, and this was accepted and passed as NUS policy in April 1979.85 Attempts at creating English regions had proved to be a failure as they lacked identity and there was no formal policy development role. Where regionalisation did work was through the network of staff Regional Officers/Assistants who for generations of student activists were a source of practical support and inspiration. Despite political differences between NUSUK and member SUs, they were a consistent and valued service. Areas and

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‘nations’ did, by contrast, have a purpose in policy, advocacy and union development that made sense to SU members who felt an affinity to these smaller organisational elements. Whilst there were differences of perspective between NUSUK, UCMC, NUS Scotland and NUS-USI, the devolved structures both thrived and developed an aligned agenda to meet the challenges presented by the Conservative governments of 1979–1997, opposing cuts, full cost fees for international students, proposals to introduce student loans and tuition fees. Political leadership from 1982 to 2000 was provided by the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS). They found solid support across the UK and in Scotland and enough in Wales and Northern Ireland to keep tensions to a minimum. In April 1982, Neil Stewart of Aberdeen University was elected as National President of NUSUK, the first President of a devolved part of NUSUK to attain the position.86 Over the next 20 years the devolved nations of NUS lobbied on local matters where they could make an impact and their strong focus on membership engagement strengthened NUSUK as a whole. As such they were in a strong position to take advantage of legislative devolution when it came.

Conclusion: 1999—Real Devolution and Peace Throughout the 1980s all parts of NUSUK had campaigned together with differences kept to a minimum. The student movement’s fight against proposals to restrict the activities of SUs outlined in the Education Bill published in 1992, and the subsequent legislation in the 1994 Education Act, clarified the role of SUs and provided a level of protection for autonomous student organisations, a significant victory for a united student movement. The election of a Labour government in May 1997 brought devolution back onto the agenda. Legislation was put in place for referenda in Scotland and Wales, with both NUS Scotland and UCMC campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote. The referenda achieved a majority ‘Yes’ vote which led to the creation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly through the Scotland Act and Government of Wales Act, both passed in 1998.87 The Welsh settlement evolved further when the Welsh Assembly Government was created in 2006 and was granted limited law-making powers, and in March 2011 another referendum came out in favour of increased legislative powers.88 In Northern Ireland the ‘Good Friday’ agreement of 1998 led to the creation of a new Assembly for Northern Ireland which, after a period of suspension

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in 2002, resumed business in 2007.89 The role of the bi-lateral NUS-USI agreement in helping create the conditions for a wider political settlement in Northern Ireland was acknowledged by politicians of all persuasions at the NUS-USI 40th anniversary celebrations in 2012.90 The same year also saw the creation of a ‘Tri-lateral’ agreement in which NUS-USI was accepted as an equal partner with both NUSUK and USI. To advise on the unique situation of devolved government in Northern Ireland, a Trustee Board was built into the constitution of NUS-USI. All three devolved nations seized the opportunities presented by devolved legislatures, securing more favourable funding arrangements compared with England. Tuition fees were abolished in Scotland after they were introduced by the Westminster government in 2010 and a tuition fee subsidy was agreed in both Wales and Northern Ireland. The new governments fostered a spirit of co-operation to work with civic society. The creation of the Student Participation in Quality Scotland (sparqs) as a partnership between the Scottish Funding Council, Universities Scotland, Colleges Scotland, the Quality Assurance Agency Scotland, Education Scotland and the Higher Education Academy in 2003 is a good example. The agency seeks to put students at the heart of decisions being made about the quality and governance of the learning experience by working with both students and academics.91 A similar initiative now exists in Wales92 NUS-USI were in the midst of negotiations with the NI Assembly 93 however Assembly elections and then the collapse of power sharing in January 2017 have placed these discussions on hold. In England the Student Engagement Partnership has done much to conduct similar work but is still in its infancy. More recently NUS Scotland played a significant role in the Commission on Widening Access which it had long campaigned for, and has made the case for a commission to examine student finance.94 They have also campaigned for immigrants and refugees, and in 2016 NUS Scotland successfully campaigned to prevent the deportation of a Strathclyde student.95 NUS Scotland remained neutral during the referendum on Scottish Independence in 2015, taking the decision to inform rather than guide student voters, although with a week to go the full-time officers declared their support for independence in a ‘personal capacity’. NUSUK had carried out some basic scenario planning that ranged from complete separation of the student movement to business as usual, in effect becoming a trans-national organisation. NUS Wales was fully involved in the Diamond Review of student finances in Wales and agreed with the proposals that funds should be used to provide support for students from the

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poorest communities as part of a wider strategy on access.96 Student leaders in Northern Ireland have made progress on student funding, most recently saving part-time tuition fee grants as well as a new non-means tested top up fee loan for part-time students. Persistent lobbying has resulted in a majority in the Assembly for equal marriage thwarted only by the veto of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).97 It is clear from these successes that the NUS devolved nations are seen as a key part of public life. In Scotland, the organisation as a whole is comfortable with devolved structures and having established them in advance of any legislation has been able to capitalise on the new reality.98 The speed of David Cameron’s announcement on greater devolution meant there was a chance that national legislation could be ahead of the organisation. The rationale behind these discussions at a governmental level is to keep the United Kingdom together; whether this approach succeeds in the long term remains to be seen, with the vote to leave the European Union was thought to have made a second referendum on Scottish Independence a strong possibility the loss of 21 seats in the “snap election” of June 2017 pushes that likelihood to the back burner. The 2015 General Election result saw NUS Scotland deploying its experience of working with the SNP to NUSUK’s overall influencing strategy, the results in 2017 will rely on the expertise and experience of NUS-USI. What is sure is that the UK will be more devolved in the future and NUSUK will again need to respond to it. The launch of a new strategic framework in July 2016 clearly advocated a four nations approach. Aside from mapping out the direction of the student movement until 2022, discussions around membership engagement are looking once again at English regional structures and officers responsible for education and welfare to be elected by student leaders in England only these proposals received initial agreement at NUSUK’s Conference in May 2017. It is recognised that any future structures need to respond to where decisions about the student experience are made at a local, national and increasingly international level.99

Notes

1. In answer to the question ‘If held tomorrow, how would you vote in a Scottish independence referendum?’ 53% indicated they would vote no, 32% said they would vote yes and 15% were undecided (poll taken January 2012, What Scotland Thinks http://whatscotlandthinks.org/questions/ if-held-tomorrow-how-would-you-vote-in-a-scottish-independencereferendum#line (accessed 17 September 2016).

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2. Joe Pike, Project Fear: How an Unlikely Alliance Left a Kingdom United but a Country Divided (London: Biteback Publishing Ltd., 2015), ix. 3. BBC, ‘EU referendum: Sturgeon says Scotland sees its future in European Union’, 24 June 2016, BBC News Website, http://whatscotlandthinks. org/questions/if-held-tomorrow-how-would-you-vote-in-a-scottishindependence-referendum#line (accessed 17 September 2016). 4. ‘The Vow—Three leaders sign promise to Scotland’, Daily Record, 16 September 2014. 5.  BBC, ‘David Cameron statement on the UK’s future’, 19 September 2014, BBC News Website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29271765 (accessed 17 September 2016). 6. A sabbatical officer will take a year away from their studies to take up a full-time paid position. 7.  Handbook for the Annual Council of NUS held at Birmingham University, 22–26 November 1923. 8. Minutes of the Inaugural Meeting of NUS, 10–11 February 1922. 9. Ibid. 10. A. Morgan, Scottish University Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). 11.  C. W. Judd, ‘What was done at Oxford’ National Union News, Michaelmas Term 1923, 23. 12. Minutes of the Meeting of the Executive Committee held at University College, Nottingham, 18–19 May 1922. The meeting also agreed that a minimum quota of three women should be established. 13. NUS Annual Report 1926–1927, 20. 14. NUS Executive Minutes, February 1941. Quoted in S.N. Appleton, The National Union of Students: A Contributor to Educational Policy Making? (NUS, London 1987). 15.  Gert van Maanen, The International Student Movement: History and Background (Interdoc, The Hague, 1966) 87. For a discussion of the IUS and ISC see: Philip G. Altbach, ‘The International Student Movement’, Journal of Contemporary History 5, no. 1 (1970). 16. NUS Annual Report 1947–1948 (NA: UGC7/135). The first holder of the post of Welsh VP was A.D. Cullen; it is not known what students’ union he came from. The position was abolished in 1964 when the post of Deputy President was created. 17. J.E. Meredith of University College Wales Bangor (1926–1927); Sam Cohen of Cardiff University (1929–30); Tony James, Aberystwyth University College (1944–1946). 18. F.A. Rhodes, ‘The National Union of Students 1922–1968’ (MEd thesis, Institute of Education, London, 1968 [published by SUSOC 1990]), 53. 19. NUS Supplementary Executive Report on NUS Area Organisations presented to Easter Conference 1978.

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20. Mike Day, NUS 90. A History of the National Union of Students (London: St James Publishing, 2012), 92. 21. Ronald Fraser, (ed.) 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988). Jodi Burkett, Constructing Post-Imperial Britain: Britishness, ‘Race’ and the Radical Left in the 1960s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) Passim. 22. Ciara Hanna, ‘The Background History and Development of the NUSUSI Northern Ireland Student Centre’ (PhD thesis, University of Ulster, Coleraine, 2000), 6. USI replaced the Irish Students’ Association. 23. Bill Savage 1964–66 and Geoff Martin 1966–68. 24. Caroline Hoefferle, British Student Activism in the Long Sixties (Routledge Abingdon, 2013) 95. 25. Now Bernadette McAliskey. 26. Hoefferle, British Student Activism, 97. 27. Conflict on Campus—A Chronology of How the Troubles Impacted on Academia in Northern Ireland (NUS/USI March 2000). 28. Fraser, 1968, 204. 29. Correspondence with Albert Preston, 7 August 2001. 30. Hanna, ‘The Background History and Development of the NUS-USI’, 15. 31. NUS Minutes of the Extraordinary Conference held at London on 29 and 30 January 1972 (this meeting expressed its support for ‘the resistance shown by the people of Northern Ireland to the army and police and supports all actions which are committed in self-defence of the anti-Unionist community including both wings of the IRA’. The position changed at the next Conference, see: NUS Minutes of April Conference held at Birmingham University, 10–14 April 1972. For examples of the criticism these policies received see: Federation of Conservative Students, ‘The Forgotten Closed Shop’, 16, and Conservative Collegiate Forum, ‘The Long March into Obscurity—a report on the decline of the National Union of Students’ (1990) 5. 32.  Correspondence between Patrick Brady (USI Executive 1973, later President) and Peter O’Neill, Manager of the Northern Ireland Student Centre April 1997. 33. Hanna, ‘The Background History and Development of the NUS-USI’. 34. Minutes of NUS Conference April 1973, 73. 35. The new appointment was Ray Cashell who had previously held the parttime position of Northern Ireland Regional Chairman (1972–1973). Hanna, ‘The Background History and Development of the NUS-USI’, 19. 36. NUS Minutes of April Conference 7–11 April 1975, 73. This meeting also saw the final draft of the NUS-USI bi-lateral agreement endorsed by Conference.

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37. ‘Robbo and the Yobbos’, National Student 5, no. 1, February 1980, 2. Also Resolutions of the National Conference 7–10 December 1979, Blackpool. The detained student was from Rupert Stanley College; also detained was Brendan Heaney, the NUS-USI staff member. 38. Hanna, ‘The Background History and Development of the NUS-USI’, 33. They re-joined in 2013. 39. Gerry Cushnahan was appointed; he was succeeded in 1985 by Peter O’Neill. 40. ‘Violence in Northern Ireland’, NUS News, Friday 29 May 1981, 9. 41.  Strathclyde Telegraph, 26 October 1978. NUS President, Geoff Martin took the same line, see David Widgery, ‘NUS—The Students Muffler’ in Alexander Cockburn and Robin Blackburn, Student Power (London: Penguin Special, 1969), 134. 42. Note attached to correspondence between John Randall, President, and Gerry Fowler MP, Minister for Higher Education, 6 August 1975. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45.  ‘NUS welcome for merger with Scots’, The Times Educational Supplement, 26 March 1971. Doug Harrison (Chair 1973–1975) recalls that he received £75 a month. 46.  NUS Executive Report presented to November Conference, Margate, 1971. 47. Henderson went onto work for the GMB initially as a research officer and later as a union organiser. He was elected to Parliament in 1987 as MP for Newcastle North. 48. ‘Petition for winding up of students’ union’, The Scotsman, 5 October 1972. 49.  Minutes and Summary of Proceedings of NUS April Conference, Lancaster University, 29 March–2 April 1971. 50. At this time all NUS regions were given a number, Scotland was designated as Region 10. Minutes and Summary of Proceedings of NUS April Conference, Lancaster University, 29 March–2 April 1971, 12. ‘Inquiry urged on dismissal of lecturer’, Daily Telegraph, 21 June 1971. 51. NUS yearbook 1972, 99–108. 52. NUS Scotland Archives. 53. ‘NUS/SUS:The story so far’, Strathclyde Telegraph, 26 October 1978, 8–9. 54. Ibid. 55. NUS Scotland Archives. Note on SUS Finances. 56. ‘Rival students form group to challenge NUS’, The Times, 6 October 1976. 57. NUS Scotland Archives ‘Yes to NUS’ Leaflet.

152  M. Day 58.  NUS Scotland Archives. Letter from Leo Martini-Brown to Student Unions, September 1976. 59.  John Reid, Baron Reid of Cardowan, served in the Westminster Parliament from 1987 to 2010 as a Labour MP and most notably served as Health Secretary (2003–2005), Defence Secretary (2005–2006) and Home Secretary (2006–2007). 60.  Kenneth O Morgan, The People’s Peace: British History 1945–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). 61. NUS Scotland Interim Report of the Structure Commission presented to NUS Scotland Conference, February 1977. 62. Minutes and Summary of Proceedings of an Extraordinary Conference held at Dundee University, 23 April 1977. 63. Correspondence with Dr Neil Caldwell. Charles Edward Stuart’s Army in fact got as far as Derby before retreating to Scotland and the final battle at Culloden. 64.  NUS Memo from Tony Peacock, Field Officer NUS Wales to John Randall, Deputy President, 20 April 1972. 65. The last meeting of the Welsh Region of NUS took place at Glamorgan Polytechnic, 27 October 1973. 66. Motions Document NUS Conference, Margate, 1974. 67. For a discussion of the importance of language in Welsh national identity see: Colin J. Thomas and Colin H. Williams, ‘Language and Nationalism in Wales: A Case Study,’ Ethnic & Racial Studies 1, no. 2 (1978); Iolo Madoc-Jones, Odette Parry, and Dawn Jones, ‘The “Chip Shop Welsh”: Aspects of “Welsh Speaking” Identity in Contemporary Wales’, Studies In Ethnicity & Nationalism 13, no. 3 (2013). 68. Morgan The People’s Peace, 287–90. 69. Correspondence with Dr Neil Caldwell. 70. Minutes of the Welsh Regional meeting, 12 May 1973 at Coleg Harlech. Memo from John Randall to Jeff Staniforth, Stuart Paul and Steve Parry, 12 June 1973. 71. UCMC Executive Report 1974. 72.  Supplement to the UCMC Section of the report to NUS Annual Conference 1977. One example is the campaign to create a Welsh Language Television Channel. Some students supported Dr Gwynfor Evans who mounted a hunger strike to highlight broken promises on granting the channel. He was the first Plaid Cymru MP in Westminster serving from 1966 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1979. According to papers released in December 2010 by the National Archive, Evan’s hunger strike was a key consideration in the eventual decision to concede and create S4C. BBC News, ‘New papers reveal hunger strike secret of S4C’s birth’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12062288 (accessed 17

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September 2016). UCMC Executive Report to UCMC Conference, 12–13 March 1977, Aberystwyth. 73. The Bangor Union was funded by a well-run café. 74. Correspondence with Dr Neil Caldwell. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. UCMC Executive Report presented to UCMC Conference 1975. 78.  This built on recommendations from the Kilbrandon Report which in turn was based on the conclusions of the Royal Commission on the Constitution that met between 1969 and 1973. 79. Minutes of the UCMC Conference 1976—policy agreed at the UCMC Conference at Cardiff 1975. 80. UCMC Briefing on the Structure and Function of NUS Wales 1977. 81.  UCMC Executive Report presented to UCMC Conference Bangor, 19–20 March 1977. 82.  ‘A Vindication—the whys and wherefores of the position of the Constitutional Review Body’ (CD19) Presented to Ordinary Conference April 1979. 83. ‘Part Time Students in the NUS’ (CD26) Document from the NUS PT Students National Committee. Presented to National Conference April 1979. 84. ‘The Welsh Region—The Way Forward’, Communist Student leaflet circulated c.1974. 85. UCMC Review Committee Report presented to UCMC Conference at Swansea March 1978. 86. Stewart has been followed by Jim Murphy (1994–96), Douglas Trainer (1996–1998), and Mandy Telford (2002–04) all from Strathclyde University and backed by NOLS, then Liam Burns (2011–13) of HeriotWatt University and Megan Dunn (2015–16) of Aberdeen University, both of whom were Independents. No one from Wales has been elected as President, nor Northern Ireland, although Maxine Brady, NUS-USI Convenor, served as USI President (1991–93) as well as Ben Archibald (2004–06). 87. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/46 (Scotland) and http:// www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/38/contents (Wales) (both accessed 28 January 2017). 88. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/32/contents (accessed 28 January 2017). 89. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-belfast-agreement (accessed 28 January 2017). 90.  http://mrhannasays.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/mc-guiness-at-receptionto-honour.html (accessed 28 January 2017).

154  M. Day 91.  http://www.sparqs.ac.uk/aboutus.php (accessed 7 October 2016). The organisation has now changed its name to Student Partnerships in Quality Scotland. 92. WISE Wales, http://www.wisewales.org.uk/ (accessed 7 October 2016), founded in 2009. 93. The National Student Engagement Project, http://usi.ie/nstep/ (accessed 9 May 2017). 94. h ttps://www.holyr ood.com/ar ticles/news/widening-accesscommissioner-%E2%80%98within-weeks%E2%80%99-education%E2%80%98tops-priorities%E2%80%99-snp%E2%80%99s (accessed 28 January 2017). 95.  https://www.holyrood.com/articles/news/student-protest-nus-scotlandofficer-faces-deportation (accessed 28 January 2017). 96. http://gov.wales/topics/educationandskills/highereducation/reviewof-he-funding-and-student-finance-arrangements/?lang=en (accessed 28 January 2017). 97.  http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/11/09/dup-blocks-public-consultation-on-same-sex-marriage-in-northern-ireland/ (accessed 28 January 2017). 98. It should not be forgotten that the NUSUK Liberation Campaigns are also politically autonomous. 99. http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/resources/nus-100-democracy-background-paper (accessed 28 January 2017).

Author Biography Mike Day is the Director of Devolved Nations and Internationalism for the National Union of Students UK (NUSUK). He works with staff and elected officers within NUS-USI, NUS Wales and NUS Scotland and coordinates NUSUK’s international relations with student organisations around the world. He is the author of NUS 90: 1922–2012, a history of the first 90 years of the organisation, published in 2012.

CHAPTER 7

Investigating the Relationship Between Students and NUS Wales Jeremy Harvey

Introduction ‘It is only a few who get involved in the National Union of Students in supporting dubious causes of no interest to students,’ stated John Patten in 1992.1 Mr Patten was, at the time, Secretary of State for Education, the government department then responsible for higher education, and he aimed to end the ‘closed shop’ of the National Union of Students (NUS). While he was not successful in his aims, he raised a point that had been one of contention since the early 1970s when Margaret Thatcher had been Secretary of State for Education and attempted to make a similar assault on student representation. Regardless of the failure of their attempts, the quote above raises a question that many people have had cause to ask: for whom does the NUS exist? This chapter does not aim to question the validity of the existence of the NUS or NUS Wales. The work of the organisation is vital and of real and measurable benefit to students, universities and the higher education sector at large. But the NUS is largely presented as an organisation run

J. Harvey (*)  Swansea SA1 1UD, UK © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_7

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by and for students. It is this assumption that is tested here. The NUS leadership is not a directly elected body; as a confederation of constituent unions it is not impacted by the legislation that requires trades unions to directly ballot all members. If there is a democratic gap between the majority of the student body and the leadership of the NUS, can it legitimately claim to be run by students? Is it not largely a matter of presentation and political posturing that it claims to be a grassroots organisation? Unless the NUS can demonstrate its relevance to students directly, and that the wider student body has a measureable impact on the NUS, can it really claim to be representative? Standing between the student body and the NUS exist the officers that run local students’ unions (SUs) at universities and colleges across the UK. Elected on an annual basis by the student body as sabbatical officers, often at the end of their degrees, many of them have a larger numerical mandate than the officers of the NUS. While the majority of the NUS leadership is elected at an annual conference with roughly 800 attendees, SU officers are elected at cross-campus ballots in which any student can vote. While the turnout is often in the 10–25% range, this can still amount to more votes than the NUS elections.2 Furthermore, they spend their terms of office at the heart of the student body on campus, and are often more closely linked to the student body than NUS officers, some of who may not have been a student for some years. For example, Liam Burns, who was President of the NUS between 2011 and 2013, had last been a student in 2005. NUS Wales, in conversations with the author, were clear that they do not, indeed cannot, aim to directly converse and interact with the student body themselves. Their aim is to work with local SU officers to disseminate information and run campaigns at a local level. NUS Wales provides the resources and information, but the local unions provide the manpower. They expect this to be a two-way street, however, and rely on SU officers to inform them of student opinion, either through official channels, at democratic meetings, or through more informal conversations. This is undoubtedly an easier job in Wales than in England. Wales, with its smaller population and lower number of universities and colleges, allows for a closer relationship between the NUS Wales officer and local officers. NUS Wales is an interesting organisation from the perspective of a study of democracy and engagement. Despite being an organisation with a democratic basis, staff members control much of the bureaucratic

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work. From personal experience, there are two common complaints from students and student officers. The first is that NUS Wales is always hassling them with pointless information; and the second is that they never hear from NUS Wales. This is obviously a situation that cannot be true. The aim of this work is to ensure that the situation Crozier3 refers to is understood and solved. ‘People who make the decisions cannot have direct first-hand knowledge of the problems they are called upon to solve. On the other hand, the field officers who know these problems can never have the power necessary to adjust, to experiment, to innovate.’4 I should be clear from the start regarding my own involvement. I am very much one of the ‘few’ that Patten refers to. In 2009 I attended my first NUS Wales event as a student representative from Bangor University. Since then, I have attended more than a dozen NUS and NUS Wales events, both as a delegate and as an NUS Wales elected official. Over that time, I have had many experiences of NUS Wales, both as someone involved in the organisation and as an external stakeholder. It may also aid understanding of this work to give a brief description of NUS and NUS Wales and its structures. The NUS is a confederation of SUs from across the country, the main body of which is known as NUSUK. Within NUSUK, there are a variety of full- and part-time officers, from the president to representatives of specific student groups, such as international students or LGBT+ students. NUS Wales is a politically autonomous organisation, with ultimate oversight from the NUSUK Board of Trustees. While much co-operation takes place between the two, NUS Wales is politically independent of the main organisation, with its own democratic structures and a full-time, three-person sabbatical team and staff.

Critical Review of the Literature One of the most interesting and, perhaps, alarming outcomes of this project has been the revelation that remarkably little has been written about the student movement, students’ unions or the NUS in the last decade. This is perhaps not surprising. After a long period of direct action and activism in the 1960s to 1980s, there has been a period of comparative quiet in the student movement. The issues surrounding this are worthy of much further investigation, and are beyond the scope of this chapter. However, it has had an impact on the amount of relevant literature to inform this discussion.

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Related searches for literature on trades unions, community groups, charities and other groups also showed a dearth of relevant recent literature. Despite the enormous changes that have impacted society in the last 30 years (including, for example, the rapid changes in technology, changing demographics, changes in political engagement), little has been written on how mass-movement groups interact with their core membership. The academic focus on these groups has been largely concerned with how they have dealt with their relationship with the changing political landscape.5 For trades unions, this has largely involved their changing relationship with the Labour Party and the tensions between them and the New Labour leadership.6 Widening the search to include student movements in other countries was equally unrewarding. More seems to be published by scholars from the UK regarding the student movement in China or Ethiopia than in the UK. This is understandable. Students have often been at the forefront of social and political upheaval globally, and areas where the student movement is most vibrant tend to be those areas going through the most change. Additionally, the UK is exceptional in having only a single national student body. Generally speaking, the student movement at national level tends to be fractured along political lines; the student wings of political parties and movements. Manja Klemenčič explores this in detail.7 While these groups do exist in the UK (Labour Students, National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, Student Broad Left, Union of Jewish Students, to name just a few), they all engage, to a greater or lesser extent, with the National Union and utilise the democratic processes within it. This leads to some positives and negatives. While there is perhaps more internal strife at work within the NUS than if it was more ideologically cohesive and political exclusive, it does ensure that it is a generally united body to external groups. This places the NUS in a stronger position within the UK higher education sector, with more influence, than similar bodies internationally. However, this has tended to reduce the interest in the organisation as a focus for academic study. This situation is beginning to change as the current turmoil within the higher education (HE) sector increases the amount of academic focus and the student movement becomes more active, and arguably more fractured. In the main, therefore, this chapter is based on primary research undertaken by the author as well as inference and indicative and

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abductive reasoning based on a knowledge base developed over my 4 years of involvement with the student movement. Mike Day argues that the process by which students raise concerns to NUS National Executive has remained largely the same between the late 1940s and the early twenty-first century.8 Despite numerous changes to the structures within the NUS and a variety of new initiatives to encourage student activism, little has changed from the perspective of students; there is still a gap between the student and the NUS which is, in theory, bridged by the local SU. How the democratic principles of a member-led organisation work alongside the increasingly professionalised staff within the NUS is summed up by McVitty.9 She discusses the difficulties for staff within the NUS to balance what they believe to be the right course of action with the wishes of the National Conference. It is, she states, difficult enough to formulate policy without, ‘handing the decision over to a thousandstrong student rabble with a three-day hangover. Who know significantly less than you do about any given policy issue in higher education.’ While she goes on to claim support for the democratic principles of the organisation, it is arguable that this reveals a deep sense of a divide between the staff of the NUS and the idea of the student movement. Dr McVitty was head of Higher Education and Research for the NUS when she made this statement, and, as such, a key staff member in the development of policy guided by the wishes of conference. She went on to state that, ‘Our job as staff supporting the work of NUS is to work in the spirit of conference policy, not require a formal vote of the entire membership on every single policy issue.’ This, however, undermines the principles of student leadership. Against this perspective, Kumar argues that in places such as France and Italy, the fact that there were a variety of groups at work allowed for a greater upspring of student unrest10: In these instances, strikes were promoted by coordinated action through a united demand, founded through direct democratic processes—such as mass assemblies—which was a critical feature lacking in the UK … activists in the UK have hesitated about taking such radical measures, and have lacked a common constructive idea of how to shape the education system. This may be related to the fact that the National Union of Students (NUS) has long been seen as the only ‘legitimate’ and ‘democratic’ body for students in the UK.

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Kumar also discusses some of the failings he sees in the NUS’s approach to engagement with the wider student body, saying that ‘the NUS has seven million members, but it also has a deep cultural inability to engage or mobilise its membership into something tangible’. He compares it to the changes that occurred within the Labour Party in the 1990s, arguing that the NUS saw ‘a monumental decline in grassroots activism as its politics have moved towards the centre. The languages its leaders speak is the same language that the Blairites perfected concerning the need to “modernise”’. He argues that the NUS has moved from being a democratic, representative union to a service-based organisation, and identifies this as the main cause for the failings he perceives within it. He argues that: in recent years, the NUS has positioned itself as a national level lobbying group with local unions as service providers, members as consumers, and democracy as expendable. Some unions no longer even have general meetings and the leadership of the student movement has spiralled away from the activists who used to sustain it.11

Kumar’s dissatisfaction with what he sees as NUS’s abandonment of its roots in the student movement and direct action reached a fever pitch under the Presidency of Aaron Porter. Porter was President of the NUS between June 2010 and June 2011. Kumar argues that at this time: the widespread dissatisfaction with the NUS on many campuses cut deeper than questioning the integrity of the NUS’s democratic decision-making structures, with all eyes looking towards the actions and comments of the NUS President, Aaron Porter. Students grew increasingly tired of the NUS’s inability to keep up with the ‘movement’ that had galloped ahead of it. While the movement called for over half a dozen forms of direct action over several months, the NUS leadership refused to back all but one in the name of preserving its precious reputation against so-called ‘student thugs’.12

Other critics of NUS have claimed that it is at risk of making itself irrelevant to students and the student movement. Michael Chessum, a student activist well known in left-wing groups, argued that: The leadership of NUS have for months been outsiders to their own movement. The campus occupations that sprang up over last term; the mobilisation of 130,000 students on 24 November; the mass demonstration on the

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day of the parliamentary vote; and then a revival of the movement, unexpected from some quarters, on 29 January—all were organised independently of, if not in defiance of, the NUS leadership … With or without the NUS, the movement will continue.13

The picture articulated by Kumar and Chessum and that of the NUS itself are entirely at odds with one another and it is difficult to ascertain which of these seemingly mutually exclusive assessments is correct. Kumar and Chessum represent arguably a more historic view of the student movement, while the NUS has the validity of democratic backing. For all that the left (and it should be noted that among students, almost all criticism of how NUS works comes from the left of the movement) make complaints about the failure of the NUS to be a democratic organisation, every change that has occurred to NUS procedures has had the backing of at least two NUS conferences. Descriptions of students that vote for these changes as ‘sheep’ are at least as insulting to them as McVitty’s comments that students are a drunken rabble. Regardless of the occasional apparent lack of respect for the general student body, both sides arguably have valid concerns regarding the way in which the NUS interacts with students, and they represent the twin strands of any representative organisation: active campaigning and passive policy creation. While the NUS has indeed moved closer to what Kumar suggested was a service-provision model, there are arguably valid reasons for this. The changing nature of national politics and increased financial pressures has meant that a process of centralisation has been required. However, the left are arguably correct in their assessment that there is now far more of a gap between the student body and the leadership of the NUS and the student movement. Despite their concerns, the left is unable to attract more students to its events which continue to be less well attended than those of the NUS. This, therefore, undermines any claims they make of providing ‘the new voice of students’. The question of who, if anyone, speaks for students is the focus of a far more broad-ranging project.

Methodological Approach The methodological approach of this chapter is relatively simple. An online approach was deemed most appropriate to engage the students targeted. This is for a variety of reasons, both theoretical and practical.

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One of the main practical reasons was that it was by far the simplest and cheapest approach to use. Being limited by budget and transport meant that the ease of dissemination of the survey favoured an online approach. Throughout the conducting of this research, simplicity was a guiding principle. The nature of the survey and the target respondents pointed to online surveys, but there are a variety of options within this area to consider. Firstly, there was the option of using an existing software package to create a survey and then to host it personally online. However, this option required learning a variety of new skills, as discussed in Brace.14 The central part of this project was a questionnaire aimed at all students within Welsh HEIs (Higher Education Institutions), roughly 140,000 possible respondents. Babbie states that online surveys have approximate response rates of postal surveys, at most about 70%.15 Bilton et al. give a drastically different standard response rate of closer to 30–40%.16 These were far higher than expected for a survey of this type. Another practical consideration was the distribution of the survey. Costs associated with alternative approaches meant that I had to rely on social media rather distributing directly to all students at Welsh HEIs. This was done primarily by contacting the controllers of Facebook accounts and Twitter pages for SUs and universities, and posting it myself in other areas where students might see it, including university online notice boards, student forums and relying on word of mouth. Many people generously responded to appeals for help in sharing the survey.

The Questionnaire The survey gathered a limited, and specifically relevant, set of demographic information about respondents. One of the more commonly heard complaints regarding NUS Wales is that they are much better at engaging with students in institutions closer to their base office. If true, this is somewhat understandable. Transport links between North and South Wales are poor, and the majority of HEIs in Wales are, like NUS Wales, based in the South. It was, therefore, important to collect information about which institution students attended and its distance from NUS Wales offices. The first main section of the survey was titled, ‘You and Your SU’. Being able to compare engagement rates between students and their local SU against students and NUS Wales was important. If the process of expecting local SUs to be the ambassador for NUS Wales was

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working, places where students were more engaged with their SU should also be more engaged with, or at least aware of, NUS Wales. Student engagement levels with their own SU could be gathered in the demographics section with one question, but it was felt that this was an area which needed more detail. Therefore, questions were included to better define involvement type. Many students take part in volunteering, societies or athletic clubs during university. For some, this can be a route to more engagement at a political level with Unions, but not always. This is also true of involvement with student media or academic representation systems. Students involved with democratic bodies within SUs should, theoretically, show the highest levels of awareness or engagement with NUS Wales. The difference between awareness and engagement is an important distinction, especially with regards to SUs. There is currently a focus on attempting to increase engagement with students, by many of the stakeholders in the HE sector: from Sus to universities to sector-wide bodies such as the OIA (Office of the Independent Adjudicator) and OFFA (Office For Fair Access). The second section examined the areas that students felt were most important to them in their lives as students. This included how much influence they felt they had over these areas and who they saw as the best source of support on these issues. This was designed to understand the relevance of the work that NUS Wales was doing for and among students. It also included a question on levels of involvement with campaigns on the issues students said were important to them. This was deemed an important question as if it revealed if students had low levels of involvement with any campaigning but high awareness levels of their SU and NUS Wales, this would point to deeper issues with student representation than simply ineffective communication methods. The third section focused on investigating student opinion on NUS Wales, their awareness and involvement with it and, arguably most importantly, their awareness of the campaigns NUS Wales runs. NUS Wales were asked to provide a list of their most recent campaigns and events that they had been involved with, and this was used as the basis for this question. A key aspect of NUS Wales’ approach to engagement is to focus attention on their campaigns, events and projects, rather than on themselves. This is standard behaviour for organisations such as NUS Wales, and a sensible route forward. However, it was important to be able to differentiate between awareness of NUS Wales campaigns, events

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and projects and awareness of the organisation itself. This question was also used to measure the extent to which the issues that students indicated that they were interested in were mirrored in the national organisation’s activities. If there is a variance between ‘customer’ expectations and the provider’s perceptions of these expectations then a gap develops between the two. Gap analysis (comparing the difference between actual results and the potential or desired result) is an important tool in customer satisfaction research and would clearly apply to the relationship between students and their Unions.

Results of the Survey The response rate was far below what was hoped or expected. One hundred and three responses were received, out of which one was discarded as it was clearly not a serious response. There are a number of possible reasons why the response rate was so low, including a lack of respondent interest, failures in the dissemination process and a lack of any incentives offered. It is difficult to say if one of these was more important than the others. Unfortunately, the constraints within which the project was undertaken did not allow for changes in these areas which might have improved the response rate. The survey was open for a period of several months from the end of June to the end of October 2012, and student union officers, university staff and others were contacted repeatedly and asked to disseminate the survey. Uptake was not particularly high, though it is telling that where Unions did disseminate the survey or where it was included in all student emails a higher response rate was seen. In terms of where respondents came from, it was agreed, to maintain anonymity, that institutions would be referred to by number. One respondent failed to answer this question, although replied fully to the rest of the survey. Institution 1 accounted for thirty-three responses, institution 2 thirty-one responses, institution 3 eleven responses, institution 4 two responses, institution 5 eighteen responses, institution 6 four responses and institutions 7 and 8 one response each. Two institutions between them provided over 60 of the responses. Both institutions, while geographically separate, have many similarities in the activeness of their SU and the SU’s involvement with NUS Wales. Both institutions were very supportive in the efforts to disseminate the survey and this appears to have played a role in the higher response rate.

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The first section of the questionnaire focused on students and their student unions. First of all, student awareness of their Union was measured. SUs will be relieved to know that all bar one student that responded was aware of their SU, and that the majority of students (79) were very aware of them. Student involvement with their SU also seems to be high. Over half of respondents answered that they were very or somewhat involved in their Union. In fact, the highest response rate (27) was that students were very involved with their SU. Only 15 students were not involved with their Unions at all. The next section dealt with what issues mattered most to students. Respondents were given seven fixed choices, as well as the ability to write in others they felt were important. They were allowed a maximum of three, however, some did not stick to this. As this does not affect any important totals or percentages, they have all been included in the final count. The three top results were, perhaps, to be expected. Learning resources (53), personal finances (60) and essays and exams (58) all scored higher than 50% from respondents. The question was phrased ‘Which of these are the most important things to you as a student?’ to ensure that respondents focused specifically on student life. It was, therefore, expected that academic and financial issues scored the highest. Perhaps more surprising was that nearly half of respondents (46) stated that their social lives were one of the three top issues in their life as a student. A third of respondents selected housing and welfare issues (33), with union issues (26) and wider student politics (18) making up almost all the rest of the responses. Two students used the option of writing in their own comments, with one mentioning quality of supervision and one citing friendliness of staff and students. The next question asked students how much influence they felt they had on these issues. The majority (66) of respondents agree or strongly agree that they have influence on these issues, with only 25 disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. There are a variety of potential reasons for this. For instance, those who selected financial issues or social life may believe that they have direct influence on these issues. As well as this, it is likely that the survey is weighted somewhat towards those that are more engaged with their student union and its representative structures, and thus the respondents are more likely to feel they have some influence. The respondents were then questioned on how much involvement they have with campaigning on these issues. The majority of respondents have had some involvement with campaigns on these issues, with only

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22 students saying they were never involved. Forty-six respondents were involved or very involved, and only three responded that they had no interest in being involved with them. It is interesting to note that while given the option to say that they were not interested in campaigning on these issues, nearly a quarter responded that they had no involvement with campaigns on these issues. It is unclear whether this was because campaigns were not provided that they were interested in participating in, a lack of time or perhaps just that they had not fully read the question and possible answers. The following question dealt with the adequacy of support they felt there was available to help them to campaign on these issues. The question was, ‘Would you agree that adequate support exists to help you make changes you want to see in your life as a student?’ and was phrased in this way to encourage respondents to think about their life generally, not just with reference to their union. It was hoped that in phrasing the question this way responses would not be limited to ‘campaigns’, as this word can have different meanings for different people. The majority of students (60) either agreed or strongly agreed that there was adequate support, with only 23 disagreeing or strongly disagreeing. The following section of the survey was the central focus of the research project. The first question gauged general awareness levels of NUS Wales among respondents. Fewer than 10% of respondents had not heard of NUS Wales, which can be seen as encouraging. For our purposes, though, it is important to understand in what context they are aware of it. Unsurprisingly, the most well-known aspect of NUS Wales cited by respondents was the NUS Extra discount card. However, NUS Wales has little to do with the promotion or organisation of the card, it being an NUSUK offer promoted through local SUs. Sixty respondents were aware of the campaigning and protesting done by the organisation, although this result was perhaps linked to the press coverage of the 2010 Demonstration that included the events at Millbank. Nearly half (47) of respondents were aware of the democratic conferences run by NUS Wales, with at least of a third of respondents being aware of the other aspects of NUS Wales. These were somewhat better results than expected. Again though, this may be the working of the weighting of the dissemination of the survey rather than actually reflective of the student population. The following question asked respondents about their involvement with NUS Wales and is, perhaps, more revealing. Over half (54)

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of respondents said they were not involved at all with NUS Wales, with 32 either rarely or occasionally involved. Only 14 were involved or very involved. There is an interesting feature that relates to the perhaps unexpectedly high awareness of the various issues undertaken by NUS Wales coupled with low participation rates. The fact that respondents are not involved with NUS Wales but are still aware of its activities is encouraging as it implies that the Union is able to communicate effectively with the wider student body as well as those more active with the student movement. The survey then moved on to explore issues that impact involvement with NUS Wales. Unsurprisingly, the more a respondent was involved with their local SU, the more likely they were to be involved with NUS Wales. The survey asked respondents to state the extent to which NUS Wales reflected their views as students. The responses here show a key problem for NUS Wales. It is not so much that 39 respondents believed that NUS Wales does not represent their views at all or only a very little, or that only 3 respondents believe it very much represents their views but that 20 are unable to say whether or not NUS Wales represents their views. If we accept the picture that seems to be building regarding the weighting of the survey towards those more involved generally with either unions or NUS Wales, this is highly problematic for the organisation. Either people do not believe that NUS Wales represents their views because they are uncertain what views NUS Wales holds because they are uninvolved, or they are involved and simply disagree with NUS Wales. Either way, this indicates significant issues for NUS Wales in representing the views of students. The responses to this question were then broken down by Union to explore the extent to which feelings of being represented by NUS Wales differed between constituent Unions. Among the two groups most involved with their Unions, who make up the majority of respondents, there is generally a fairly even split. Among those most involved, 13 state that NUS Wales either does not represent them at all or only represents their views very little. This is the same number as for those somewhat or occasionally involved. We also see a general decrease in the numbers who could not say whether or not NUS Wales represents their views as respondent involvement with their union increases. When responses are broken down by respondents’ involvement with NUS Wales, we see a weighting towards those not at all involved in NUS Wales because of the response rate. Unlike the previous analysis, this seems to indicate that

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higher rates of involvement with NUS Wales is linked to higher rates of agreement that NUS Wales represents their views. However, this is more likely because people who think NUS Wales reflects their views are more likely to become involved with NUS Wales. It is not necessarily the case though, and more investigation would be needed to discover whether this was the case. Respondents were next asked to rate how important they felt NUS Wales was to students. These responses show a somewhat negative picture for NUS Wales. Thirty-eight respondents stated that NUS Wales was either not at all or of very little importance to them. Only 20, roughly a fifth, stated that it was either important or very important. The highest rated response was that NUS Wales was somewhat important to them. It is not necessarily a bad picture. However, unlike the previous question, far fewer respondents were unable to say whether it was important to them and while the majority seemed to be, at most, lukewarm regarding NUS Wales, nearly a fifth felt that NUS Wales was either important or very important. Responses here were then measured to determine the extent to which they were affected by involvement with NUS Wales and local unions. As with the analysis relating to NUS Wales representing student’s views and SU involvement explored previously, while the numbers who consider NUS Wales either important or very important as SU involvement increases, the numbers who view it as not at all or very unimportant tends to remain level across the spectrum. This is, again, in part because of the weighting towards higher involvement rates; however, it does seem to suggest that there is a barrier to understanding what NUS Wales does, even among those involved with the Union. Here there is also an inherent weighting towards those not at all involved with NUS Wales, with over half the respondents (54) being in this category. While there is a slight trend to viewing NUS Wales as more important as involvement with it increases, those seeing NUS Wales as somewhat important remains the dominant opinion. At least some of the trend can be put down to people becoming involved with NUS Wales because they see it as important. The final question in this section asked respondents to select from a fixed-choice list of campaigns run by either NUSUK or NUS Wales in recent years those they were aware of. Due to the close links between NUSUK and NUS Wales, they often run tandem campaigns, so it is likely that not all the awareness will be due to NUS Wales. Another

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reason for this is that campaigns such as the Student Led Teaching Awards and the WISE/Have Your Say project are only partly due to NUS, with many other stakeholders being involved. The responses show that awareness especially for the campaigns solely run by NUS is low. In particular, Access Agreement and Deepening Participation scored quite low in these responses. The highest rated campaign, the Student Led Teaching Awards, is fast becoming a sector-wide event, run by SUs or universities. Awareness of it is far more likely to come from it being held at their institution than through work done by NUS Wales. The third highest response, from nearly a third of respondents, was that they had not heard of any campaigns. While some campaigns are certainly aimed at lobbying others in the HE sector or the government, it is a concern that awareness is so low. Many of them, especially Hidden Costs, Come Clean, Access Agreement and Deepening Participation, rely on student involvement in some way. NUS Wales relies on local Unions to disseminate these campaigns to their students; the fact that awareness is low indicates problems with this approach. It should be noted that two respondents named other campaigns that they were aware of. One respondent mentioned the Global Future campaign, not included in the list as it is aimed at international students as opposed to the wider student body, and one respondent named the Keep FE Free Campaign (not included as it was an FE campaign, not HE) and the I Am The Change campaign, which had not been launched at the time of writing the questionnaire.

Conclusions Clearly, there were significant issues with the response rate to the survey. The reasons behind this are varied and include a variety of structural limitations including finances. The methods used were also somewhat patchy in that they relied on the work and investment of a variety of people with varying commitment to the project and varying amounts of available time to devote to the project. However, the response rate in itself is an indication of some of the problems that NUS Wales faces in their interaction with students, and student union officers. Even with this limited response rate this data is significant, particularly if we consider that only 40–50 students attend the NUS Wales Conference which elect the President and Deputy President of the organisation and debate and set the political direction of the organisation. Much of this policy comes

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from within NUS Wales itself and few motions are submitted from member unions. If 40–50 delegates at a conference are sufficiently representative of the student body of Wales for these purposes, then 101 responses to a survey certainly carry some legitimacy. This project has demonstrated some of the key assumptions made by NUS Wales and the problems that they face. NUS Wales tends to assume that students are (a) already aware of the organisation, and (b) wish to be engaged. It should be clear from experience that this simply is not the case, and yet every time attempts are made to investigate why this might be, the starting position maintains these basic assumptions and thus fails to reach those that NUS Wales is aiming for. The picture that emerges from this piece of research is that, in many ways, the current process that NUS Wales relies on to connect and interact with students is unworkable. There are a variety of reasons why this is. Firstly, there is the assumption regarding students, that they have some interest or engagement with the wider student movement. As shown above, the largest group of students can perhaps be summed up as the, ‘Don’t know and don’t care’ group. Those who have been involved with NUS Wales and who view it as a vital organisation that does good for students, have wrongly assumed that because we see NUS Wales as a positive force, others either do, or should, also see it in this way. Perhaps a better way of understanding how students view NUS Wales, and indeed the student movement at large, is a marketing term ‘grudge purchase’. A ‘grudge purchase’ is one in which, ‘customers’ behavior [sic] is on autopilot and they are going through the service motion without paying much attention to the surroundings.’17 While there are obviously some issues in this definition (for one, students don’t even have to make the effort of going through the ‘purchase’, they are members automatically and have to opt-out), the key components of this view seem to apply. The general student body do not view NUS Wales in the same way as people actively involved in the organisation do. They see it and, arguably, their own SU, as something akin to insurance. In general, it is something not thought about or engaged with, but when pressed, agree is important. This is one of the two main issues. Secondly, is NUS Wales’ ability to claim that it is a truly representative organisation. With such low levels of involvement or engagement with the general student population, how can organisation be truly representative? The argument here from NUS Wales is that the route from NUS Wales to students via student union officers is a two-way street. While

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they rely on union officers to disseminate information to students, they also expect officers to feedback the opinion of the wider student body to them. While there is no specific data on this, experience shows this is somewhat more successful than the process in the other direction. It could, however, be argued that Parliament and the Welsh Assembly work in much the same way and that this model is the best practical option. If, however, this does not hold up, the question remains if NUS Wales is not representative, is it useful? Arguably, yes. While there was only one standout campaign by NUS Wales recalled by students, the other campaigns that were included in that question were successful. NUS Wales certainly played a role in the decision by the Welsh government not to raise fees for Welsh domiciled students, though there was arguably a natural inclination among the politicians of Cardiff Bay not to follow the English example in this area. Regardless, there has been measureable success from NUS Wales in recent years for students. It is unclear whether a fully engaged student body is needed in order to show the importance and success of the organisation. Ultimately, there is a central fact that is regularly ignored by NUS Wales, student officers and those engaged and involved with the student movement, and this is true of NUSUK as well as NUS Wales. Constitutionally, NUSUK and NUS Wales are not truly membership-led organisations, though they could argue to be membership-driven. The organisation is a confederation of other organisations, which are themselves membership-led. This fact is usually glossed over. Apart from a period in the late 1980s and early 1990s under the Thatcher and Major governments, the legitimacy of the NUS to represent students at the highest political levels has never been seriously challenged. The success of the NUS in representing students can be seen in the fact that the closest the Blair governments ever came to a defeat in the House of Commons was over the introduction of top-up fees. It can, therefore, be argued that the question of whether or not NUS Wales is successful in engaging students is somewhat irrelevant. Students seemingly do not wish to be engaged, and the increasing numbers of professional staff within the movement is evidence that it is more and more unnecessary for them to be so. But it is a two-way street. Decisions, as the saying goes, are made by those who turn up. If students do not wish to be engaged, then they miss out on the opportunity to have their say. There are some issues with this, not least that unless there is a fundamental change within the structures of NUS Wales, the

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opportunities for students to become fully engaged with NUS Wales will remain low. This project has demonstrated that there are areas where the strategy under which NUS Wales attempts to engage and interact with students is successful. Where students are able to personalise the campaigns that NUS Wales runs, there are higher levels of engagement and awareness. More campaigns that personalise the issue could lead to higher levels of engagement and awareness of the campaigns, and ultimately of NUS Wales. The entire student movement needs to look at ways of reengaging with students in new ways; the changing attitudes of students and their relationship with their institutions could mean that they come to see the student movement as some form of consumer’s organisation. And it is true to say that this is a problem faced by many other organisations, such as trades unions and professional/trade bodies, which exist to represent and protect individuals and companies within their sphere of interest. NUS Wales is by no means alone. NUS Wales has been a strong defender of students, their rights and their experience, without the need to fully engage or interact with the student body. But we have seen that when NUS Wales is successful, the campaigns are more successful. And that should be what NUS Wales aims for. They don’t need to; but that’s no reason why they should not. The student movement of the ‘noughties’ has, so far, been under-researched. This project has shown that there are areas where more research is both necessary and possible. The changing nature of the ‘model student’ and their relationship between their institution and the representation structures at work mean that it is important for organisations such as NUS Wales to know more about how those changes will impact them and how best to respond to them. It also links strongly into the changing nature of society generally. Has our society lost its capability to protest, do we need representation or do we need activism? These are questions that are relevant. The most public of recent direct action groups has been UK Uncut. This organisation has a large number of students within it, but it did not come from the mainstream student movement, as would have been likely in the 1970s. However, it is arguable that an organisation like UK Uncut would not exist if not for the changes wrought in earlier decades by the student movement.

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Notes

1. S. Goodwin and D. Macleod, Patten set to end NUS “closed shop” The Independent, 8 October 1992. 2.  NUS Elections Report (2015). https://www.linkedin.com/in/ liamburns/?ppe=1 (accessed 8 June 2017). 3. M. Ellman, Socialist Planning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 4. Michael Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 190. 5. R. Katz and P. Mair, How Parties Organize (London: SAGE, 1994). 6.  J. McIlroy, ‘The Enduring Alliance? Trade Unions and the Making of New Labour, 1994–1997’, International Journal of Employment Relations (December 1998). 7. Manja Klemenčič, ‘Student representation in Western Europe’, European Journal of Higher Education 2, no.1 (2012), 2–19. 8. Mike Day, ‘Dubious Cause of No Interest to Students? The Development of National Union of Students in the United Kingdom’, European Journal of Higher Education 2, no. 1 (2012), 32–46. 9. D. McVitty ‘Dispatches from a wonk’s nightmare’ WonkHE Blog (2012). http://www.wonkhe.com/2012/05/02/dispatches-from-a-wonksnightmare/ (accessed 3 December 2012). 10. A. Kumar, ‘Achievements and Limitations of the UK Student Movement’ in M. Bailey and D. Freedman (eds.), The Assault on Universities (London: Pluto Press, 2011), 134. 11.. Ibid., 136. 12. Ibid., 137. 13.  M. Chessum ‘Under Porter, the NUS risked making itself irrelevant’, Guardian, 21 February 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/21/aaron-porter-nus-student-movement?intcmp=239 (accessed 3 December 2012). 14. I. Brace, Questionnaire Design (London: Kogan Page, 2008). 15. E. Babbie, The Practice of Social Science Research (Andover: Cengage, 2012). 16. T. Bilton, K. Bonnett, P. Jones, T. Lawson, D. Skinner, M. Stanworth and A.Webster, Introductory Sociology (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 17. J.-P. Lacroix, Belonging Experiences: Designing Engaged Brands (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2010).

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Author Biography Jeremy Harvey is currently working in a students’ union in Wales. After completing his MA (the thesis for which forms the base of his chapter), he continued studying and working in student representation. He has recently developed an interest in quality assurance processes, because if there’s one thing more exciting than students’ union bureaucracy, it’s university bureaucracy.

PART III

Student Networks and the Wider Community

CHAPTER 8

Sound, Gown and Town: Students in the Economy and Culture of UK Popular Music Paul Long and Lauren Thompson

Introduction David Hare’s 1975 play Teeth and Smiles constructs its drama around the appearance of a rock band at the 1969 ‘May Ball’ at Jesus College, Cambridge. Speaking to Time Out magazine in 1975, Hare reflected on the inspiration for the play in his own experience at that very institution and this presentation of ‘an extraordinary clash of two worlds’.1 This scenario was one in which students ‘dressed up and performing a complete parody of a life that was over many, many years ago’ were confronted by ‘these rock bands, like travelling people on the move’.2 While the aims of the play are sometimes confusing, ‘pointless’ even, the historical setting is loaded with significance.3 The representation of the moribund culture of the May Ball takes place in a moment of student radicalism that was emerging elsewhere, described by the National Union of

P. Long (*)  Birmingham City University, Birmingham B4 7BD, UK L. Thompson  University of Warwick, Leamington Spa CV31 2AG, Warwickshire, UK © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_8

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Students (NUS) as heralding ‘A new era of campaigning and protest.’4 Likewise, the appearance of a band in this milieu, at a time when rock music aspired to significance and was associated with the challenge of the counter-culture, presents interesting if largely unrealised dramaturgical potential.5 Setting aside the grand political gestures of this conjunction and the issues adumbrated in the play, a pertinent question is to ask: what is a rock band doing at a May Ball anyway? How is it that representatives of the popular culture of the era have been booked to entertain the young fogeys nurtured by one of the pre-eminent bastions of British tradition and high culture? This is not to question the verisimilitude of the play in bringing the two camps together. It is, after all, a fiction and, by the moment of its drama, the appearance of pop and rock bands in university refectories, guilds, union sites and at student balls around the UK was well established (hereafter we use students’ union (SU) as a term encompassing both organisation and space). Contemporary testaments to this relationship include Davey Graham’s album After Hours, recorded at Hull University in 1967, and The Who’s Live at Leeds, released in 1970. The BBC exhibited this relationship in concerts broadcast from universities in the form of Jazz Goes to College in 1966–1967. By the late 1970s its series Rock Goes to College (1978–1981) appeared to underline a natural relationship between popular music forms and young people in higher education (HE). As its starting point, this chapter suggests that this relationship is anything but natural or obvious, that there is something particular and significant about this relationship that merits closer scrutiny. In outlining this significance, this chapter investigates the origins of the interactions between students, their organisations and institutional bases with the business and culture of popular music in post-war Britain. It assesses the conditions and meaning of this relationship and its value for understanding the wider role of students in the historiography of the twentieth century. There is more to be said about the role of students in creating music but the particular concern here is with their status as agents, organisers and consumers. We are interested in their involvement in the economics and consumption of live music and the co-production of its associated cultures: within and without the university environs. In proceeding, the opening section considers the relative lack of attention afforded both union and the leisure activities of students outside of their identities allied to particular subject areas and institutional character. The

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particular challenges for historical work in this field are discussed with an outline of how research for this paper draws on vernacular archival materials. Building on accounts from particular sites, the chapter identifies instances of the emergence of post-war programming of popular music in HE. It then goes on to outline some of the issues dealt with by students organising popular music in university spaces and the nature of ‘professional’ relations with the music industries and indeed between students across the HE sector. Finally, we consider how such histories reveal aspects of interactions between students and locals in their meeting at popular music events. Taken together, this survey attests to a relationship between students within and without university, between sound, gown and town in its specific and conceptual sense.

Historicising Student Organisation and Music Culture Scholars of the Interdisciplinary Network for the Study of Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change have argued that elements of youth culture, which include popular forms like music, are simultaneously products of and responses to contemporary issues and forces. They suggest in particular that ‘youth culture and popular music help inform and redefine the construction of class, gender, national and other personal identities’.6 In spite of the suggestiveness of this subject, they argue that modern British historians have shown little interest in youth and music as objects of study when compared to researchers from other disciplines such as sociology, political science or cultural studies. For the authors of this critique therefore, it is time ‘to take youth seriously’, that studying young people and the cultures consumed and produced by them offers opportunities to historicise aspects of socio-political change, mediated through young people’s experiences and role as cultural creators and consumers. One means of responding to this critique comes in this collection in general and the focus of this chapter in particular. Here, two fields of research conjoin: that of the role of young people in HE and the domain of popular music culture. Echoing the absences noted above, however, and while there is an extensive body of literature on the history of HE in Britain, the specific role and function of the SU (or other spaces for student organisation) remains under-scrutinised.7 As Silver and Silver have noted of the attention afforded the NUS, for instance, its operations and polices are not echoed in an interest in the historical development

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of local SUs and their activities.8 While ‘house histories’ of individual SUs exist, these are often published in celebration of major anniversaries. Warner’s Conquering By Degrees promises a ‘centenary history’ of Glasgow University Union in 1985; Bates and Ibbetson’s history of University College London’s Union celebrates the centenary of what is said to be England’s oldest student union (established in 1893), while Mathers’ Standing up for Students records One Hundred Years of the University of Sheffield Union of Students.9 Where critical studies exist, they have highlighted in particular the importance of the union as a mechanism for engaging students as political agents.10 Yet the role of the union has always been much broader. As Brooks et al. highlight, alongside campaigning on national and local political issues SUs in the UK ‘have tended, historically, to carry out a range of functions for their members including: organising social activities; providing support on a range of academic and welfare issues; representing students both individually and collectively’.11 Allied to this wider set of activity, and most useful in addressing some of the historical absences identified by Silver and Silver, is Brewis’ work on student voluntarism.12 This recognises the manner in which students have constituted a historical cultural force, in this case voluntary organisation and activity impacting on their own experiences and communities and individuals outside of colleges and universities. There are parallels here for this examination of the organisation of music events by students but also significant divergences: the interaction with commerce with an ultimately self-serving pursuit of leisure, for instance. Nonetheless, this chapter echoes Brewis’ endorsement of Reba Soffer’s argument that extracurricular learning and cultural activity by students remains under-researched.13 The paucity of extant historical accounts is emphasised by recent work that has concerned issues of the commercialisation of the union in the context of an increased marketisation of HE. In such cases, a concern with student ‘voice’ is increasingly linked to conceptions of the status of learners as consumers, rather than as political actors. It is suggested that student concerns have lately become ‘domesticated’, and campaigning students are ‘more likely to be found sitting on Staff-Student Liaison Committees than on picket lines’.14 This sense of domestication tends to point to and partition aspects of the extracurricular life of students in a space of secondary importance and social value when compared to their civic identity. Yet as Paul Chatterton has shown, the fulfilment of leisure

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activity is an important aspect of student demand and constitutes a major activity of individual unions.15 As he suggests, there is a wider impact to account for in assessing their role as producers and promoters of culture. In particular, in many university towns and cities, it is the SU that ‘is one of the main venues for live music in the city.’.16 To extend an earlier question: how is it that students came to be in the business of music promotions at all? Indeed, why they have been so engaged might not be simply a matter of economic gain explained by processes of marketisation and exploitation. Any historical account of how such circumstances developed might attest to a cultural politics of student taste, consumption and participation in activities not solely defined by their institution and education. By way of comparison, in the literature on the economics and cultures of the music world, and indeed in music press features and reports, the university or SU (which, while distinct, are sometimes conflated) is not usually afforded much scrutiny or explanation. For instance, in Wendy Fonarow’s impressive study of independent music, she notes the classinflected ethos associated with this type of music and its subcultures and that the indie fan ‘is usually educated and paradigmatically is a university student’.17 This characteristic invites further reflection, especially when considered in tandem with Sarah Thornton’s suggestion that by the 1980s, union venues played host to a considerable proportion of ‘middle-sized gigs’ on the touring circuit and that: ‘college students now make up the bulk of the audience for live popular music and the live circuit is heavily dominated by a few subgenres, like alternative rock and indie music’.18 Across such work, it is rare to find any explanation for how this mise en scène developed as an important site for performance and consumption, the particular character of unions and students as consumers and their interaction with the meanings of music culture and their making. Thus, in his expansive history of British nightclubs and venues, Dave Haslam has little to say on the specific provision of unions and university sites.19 More useful is a recent survey of the history of live music in Britain which notes the importance of unions in student life and that ‘from the mid-1950s onwards, there is evidence of union-sponsored music societies and, in particular, jazz societies promoting concerts on college campuses’.20 Without specificity, the authors note the establishment of sabbatical relief for social secretaries tasked with booking bands and the promotion of events. While more detail is promised in a second volume, this period of origin is one deserving of closer attention.

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One should note also the treatment and position of students in the literature of youth. Where students have figured in such work, it is largely in the role of a politically mobilised group and in relation to formations such as the counter-culture.21 With the notable exception of art college students, one way of seeing the activities of students, for the most part, is in terms of a history of elites.22 As an ‘elite’, students are a group who have not figured in the often romantic purview of studies of youth culture and subcultural work in particular in which working-class and spectacular characteristics have drawn most attention.23 An exception here is Fowler’s complaint of a lack of historical attention to a ‘subterranean’ world of ‘middle-class or elite youth who were often shaping youth culture as a conscious pursuit of “new ways of living”’.24 In taking issue with characterisations of youth culture as simply expressions of pop culture, Fowler is eager to highlight continuities in British life. In so doing he does rather overstate his case, lacking an address to and understanding of the political economy of the cultural sector, its nature and organisation as pertinent to young people in and outside of their place in education. As we suggest in the present chapter, there was an interaction between the circumstances of the post-war expansion of HE, attendant developments in student organisation and the attention of the music industries. However, for any scholar interested in the organisation of unions, of individual action, let alone the particular nature of music programming, there are some challenges. Firstly is the fact that the UK HE sector was marked by considerable expansion and change in the latter half of the twentieth century. Stefan Collini records that in 1939, 50,000 people (mostly men), fewer than 2% of the population, went to the available 21 university-level institutions.25 In the progressive context of the social justice and modernising thrust of the post-war settlement, governments began to subsidise HE institutions and students, the latter funded with grants for fees and maintenance. New universities were founded such as the ‘plate-glass’ institutions like Sussex (in 1961), Lancaster (1964) and Warwick (1965). By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Collini reports, there were 300,000 students in 46 universities.26 If one looks at the broader HE sector, which included polytechnics and colleges, by this time there were 777,800 students in HE.27 The majority were still men. While the demographics of HE have proceeded in a more equitable direction, institutions have also gone through further structural and constitutional transformations.

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Alongside the post-war context of expansion and change, a second challenge for this history concerns the extant record of student organisation and activity—of whatever stripe—as well as the very nature of education at this level. Attempts to preserve SU records by universities and libraries have been scattergun at best. Often, while universities rigorously maintain archives of their own institutional practice, the records of student organisation are treated as ‘dispensable ephemera’ or left to SUs themselves to preserve and catalogue.28 As a foundational source, therefore, this chapter draws upon records of the NUS as well as student newspapers held by the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick. Further to issues with the existence and availability of records, degree courses last an average of 3 years. To identify students qua students is to view them in the context of a relatively short period of their lives. Students might be identified in relation to the institution, the nature of their studies, but there are myriad ways in which they may be understood in relation to studies of youth, as citizens, cultural consumers and so on. One outcome of this context of change, development and potential lack of continuity in HE is apparent in a lack of cultural memory concerning the nature of student activity around music programming. As one feature on Lancaster University reflects: This may come as a surprise to some, but over the last 50 years Lancaster University has hosted performances from an impressive roster of bands. In fact, Lancaster University used to be one of the big guns on the touring scene, back in the days before huge arenas such as Birmingham NEC surfaced.29

Here, contemporary acts that have performed on and off campus are described as ‘small fry compared the leviathans of music who once graced the Great Hall’. Such reflections are echoed by some SUs that in conjunction with universities have begun to explore their histories. The University of Brighton offers an online history of ‘The Basement’, then part of the Art College and which ‘by the 1970s … had become a key venue for Brighton students’.30 Dating from 1963 and starting with Humphrey Lyttleton, Manchester University offers a year-by-year list of the numerous acts that have performed in its venues. On one hand, the production of such histories might be viewed as an attempt to capture the character

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of individual unions as part of university branding and recruitment. While this is certainly a pronounced element of the contemporary marketisation of universities and unions, these histories attest to the development of reputations for student activities that occurred largely outside of the official strategies or even notice of institutions. The reputation of individual unions played a role in many student choices about where to study, sometimes presented in ‘alternative’ prospectuses or features in youth-oriented publications such as the music press. For some, music programming proved to be the primary reason dictating their choice of university. The broadcaster Andy Kershaw, for instance, ‘went to Leeds University, partly to study politics in the half-hope of becoming a journalist, but chiefly because the student union at Leeds put on the biggest college concerts in the country’.31 Lately, the refectory too has begun to celebrate its history as a venue, most notably with the unveiling of a Blue Plaque that commemorates a performance of The Who in 1970 that was recorded for their Live at Leeds album. For many individuals—famous or otherwise—commitments and attachments to music and experiences at university have informed celebrations of music pasts that interact with contemporary forms of public history making that have proven useful to this research. As Collins and Long suggest, a prodigious range of activity has cohered online around communities of interest that address themselves to music histories.32 Whether organised in terms of artist, era, location (local and global) or genre, such sites often claim the title of archive, even if their practices appear quite distinct from the ordering principles of the sites in which most historians feel at ease.33 Conceived as archives nonetheless, they involve the sharing of digitised artefacts—music, record sleeves, posters, ticket stubs, press reports, posters and so on—as well as memories shared on forums and discussion threads. By way of example, Manchester District Music Archive is a volunteer-run charity that aims to celebrate that region’s music and social history. It has lately partnered with Manchester Students’ Union in order to expand its history as a music provider, calling on those who went there to aid in the building of an online repository: ‘We want you to upload your photos, ticket stubs, nicked set lists, autographs, videos, flyers and posters to MDMarchive, but above all we want your stories.’34 In such spaces, individuals exhibit the importance of their engagement in music cultures as integral to their experience, identities and memories.

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Many contributors online were students who remember their time in education as consumers and organisers in the union space. At another online site—Birmingham Music Archive, for instance—there are forums on the Guild of Students at the University of Birmingham and the union of the former Birmingham Polytechnic. Another thread concerns Aston University, where the value of music in individual experience and memory is apparent: one woman recalls her time there in the late 1960s and never missing the midweek ‘Impact’ disco: ‘Whenever I hear “Heard it on the Grapevine” it brings back those times.’ Another poster records his ‘Great memories’ and time as a Chemistry undergrad from 1969– 1973, ‘new to city life and loved the music scene in the Students’ Union. Superb variety of bands and a great atmosphere … Met a girl at the Wednesday Disco who is today still my wife, so “Impact” indeed’.35 As this example attests, sites offer valuable materials as they collate vernacular accounts and material evidence of the historical role of SUs, gathering memories from former students, non-students, band members as well as entertainment officers. Mindful of questions about the nature of the evidence at such sites and its usability, we draw upon these sources in the sections that follow in order to contextualise and enliven archival materials more formally preserved and organised.

The Development of Music Provision in  Post-war Higher Education In the archives of student newspapers, biographies and institutional histories, there is evidence of the historical provision of dances, balls and classical concerts organised by students themselves and in tandem with universities.36 F.E. Foden’s account of West Brunton Technical College’s Students’ Union suggests that it was notable for ‘running the most popular dances in the town’ by the end of the last war.37 Student entertainment was one aspect of student life that ‘remained continuously successful’ into the mid-1950s, despite a perceived decline in participation across most other areas of activity.38 This provision was marked by a shift from ‘small hops’ to ‘more ambitious affairs at the Town Hall’, indicating a move towards more externally focused and centrally located entertainments.39 Such activity was not completely at odds with the impulse of students who entered HE during the post-war period of expansion, but the scope,

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scale and cultural context were markedly different. The University Grants Committee noted in 1958 that coming to university for the first time were ‘increased numbers of students who come from with little or no tradition of culture’.40 Certainly, a snapshot from the first year of operations at the newly founded University of Warwick illustrates the incongruity and less than automatic presence of popular music in all student lives and leisure time. As reported by the student newspaper The Giblet, a Student Council Meeting of January 1966 adjudged that music in the Junior Common Room (JCR) was ‘to be tolerated as long as it does not become too bad’.41 A letter in a subsequent issue affirmed that this was a cause for concern, complaining of ‘constant pop music’ that is ‘highly disturbing to the basic digestive tract’.42 Another invited students to try the ‘visiting string quartets’ of the Music Society, asking ‘are you fed up of listening to the Beatles in the JCR?’43 Such individuals no doubt approved of the first President’s Ball that took place in March 1966 in the presence of invited local dignitaries. It offered ballroom dancing with music provided by the rather traditional Temperance Seven and Alan Williams Quintet. The Ball was originally headlined in the student newspaper as ‘Something Better’, a title that evinced a clear judgment of the musical preferences of many students. The article noted that this was one occasion in the year when an event would not feature ‘beat groups’.44 Whatever contemporary youth culture might be, it was allied with contemporary pop music, which was for many, and as Bryan Wilson suggested, the enemy of ‘a received cultural tradition’ embodied in the university.45 Nonetheless, Warwick’s student entertainments committee had clearly been focused on introducing this enemy to the union. It had appealed to the student body to ‘play an active part in the selection of groups for university dances’, inviting readers of The Giblet to cast their votes from a list including The Animals, Manfred Mann, Moody Blues, The Hollies and The Who, and welcoming further suggestions for bookings.46 Alongside such appearances, there was a wider and vibrant music scene dedicated to other non-classical genres and tastes supported by specialised interest groups such as the Jazz Society and which were active from the induction of the first student cohort. In the second issue of The Giblet, the founders of the Folk Club declared their intention to, ‘organize a full scale concert with some of the best folk singers from near and far’.47 By February, only a year after Warwick’s first intake, the Folk Club ‘claimed to be the most

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thriving society in the University’ with over 200 members and meeting every week.48 In newly established institutions, such activity and ambition to develop the scope of music programming was both enabled and constrained by available space. Commenting on university expansion in 1964, Bryan Wilson noted that, ‘At present, universities are not very effectively organized to deal with very large numbers. They lack residential accommodation, and their teaching methods emphasize frequent personal student-teacher contact in tutorials or supervised laboratory work.’49 Not surprisingly, at the University of Warwick, substantial leisure space was not a priority for the university. Inadequacies with the spatial set-up at Warwick in terms of its ability to host live music events become apparent during the first year, where the appearance of Manfred Mann at the Midsummer’s Night Ball had to be cancelled due to the capacity of the venue which could only hold 500 people.50 There was a drive from the Students’ Council for a central union building to allow students to come together as well as supporting other organisational needs. A report of a meeting from May 1966 stated that ‘[i]t was felt that a central union building, run by the Union and containing all the offices of the Union was essential if the Union is to play its full part in University Society’, and rejected the University’s plans to ‘establish a large number of small social centres, without a focal point of University life’.51 Ultimately, it was 10 years before a dedicated union building was provided. Memoirs, biographies and anecdotes from those in HE and the music industries in the 1960s and 1970s situate developments at Warwick in a wider sphere of activity in universities new and old. They reveal how music programming across SUs was improvised, unevenly organised and experienced. In a number of instances, programming emerged as a result not of collective policy and action but thanks to enterprising individuals with a passion for music. Harvey Goldsmith, training in pharmacy at Brighton College of Technology, founded a music club and venue for students in 1965. As Frith et al. relate, Goldsmith had been a student rep and Chairman of the Rag Week organisation.52 He took on the role of social secretary for the college ‘booking bands and developing contracts with London agencies … He also started booked acts outside the college, creating his own Kangaroo Club and using existing Brighton venue like the Metropol.’53 In Newcastle, Terry Ellis booked bands for his union including The Animals, Cream, Roxy Music and Rod Stewart. He

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also wrote a music column for The Courier, or the University newspaper and appears in the documentary Dont Look Back (sic) (1965), interviewing Bob Dylan backstage on his 1965 tour.54 At Manchester University in the same period, Chris Wright began booking bands in his role as social secretary, later recalling how serious an undertaking it was: ‘We had to come up with serious money to pay the emerging groups. So it was, as a student aged just 20, I was becoming one of the biggest music promoters in the country.’55

The Growth and Professionalisation of Music Provision in Post-war Higher Education Wright has remarked that ‘Nobody else appeared to be doing what we were doing.’56 That such figures worked in ignorance of each other is instructive, as others were clearly engaged in similar enterprises, indicating the nature of an expanding area of provision for students that impacted the finances and culture of unions. Brighton’s Basement Club is a signal example. It quickly became a fixture in the student itinerary, ‘[d]escribed by some as “a rite of passage”’ while also, at times, ‘a considerable source of Union income’.57 In one interview with Goldsmith, it is reported that his club generated enough money for the union to earn him a place on the finance committee. For many like Wright, Ellis and Goldberg, it became a vocation as they went on to careers as music industry entrepreneurs. As Goldsmith recalls: ‘It was my bent and it took over my life.’58 Events organisation then offered a range of attractions and challenges for unions and individuals eager to get involved and make the most of personal and collective opportunities. These can be understood in terms of a gradual and often uneven movement from an often individualised entrepreneurial impulse to local and nationally co-ordinated organisational professionalisation. Studying at Aston University from 1967 to 1970, Pat Myhill started his union engagement as an operator on its lightshow, progressing to head of the events technical team before becoming social cecretary and chair of the Entertainments Committee. As he recounts, the union team was able to draw on creative, commercial and technical skills from individuals studying across disciplines, building ‘an interesting and valuable mix of skills’. He recalls the professionalism and technical capability of his team, which had already established a reputation around the country:

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‘We took great pride in the standard of our shows and were good enough to go out on the road, particularly with the disco—Impact—and the lightshow. Our posters were always good as well, often too good as they got pinched to decorate flats!’59 When Myhill arrived at Aston, there were a variety of union spaces, societies and regular events organised independently of each other that served to undermine opportunities for student participation, economic viability and sustainability for such activities. He recalls the business (and busyness) of the programme in which there was a standard formula to book two bands to perform at a night dance; Wednesday saw the regular ‘Impact’ disco ‘always a sell out’; groups such as Folk Society needed support for their performances; and there were balls at each end of every term with mid-term hops and carnivals which would also engage bands. Not surprisingly, ‘[i]t was quite an exercise in logistics to handle the changeover and have enough crew.’ Myhill reflects that as a result of this situation, ‘[m]y first act was to use my Appointment as Social Sec … to institute a joint programming meeting to ensure the competition and clashes ended and also to get all the bodies merged together under one umbrella headed by the social sec.’ With funding pooled, a system of coordinated budgeting and co-operation programming, the union maintained financial health ‘proved by putting on Eric Clapton in the Town Hall as opener to the 70 autumn term.’ Consolidation of resources for bigger impact, but at potentially greater risk, was a tactic in evidence at Lancaster University. Lonsdale College was one of several with independent SU operations when its social secretary, Barry Lucas, teamed up with another in order to pool resources in order to book The Who. This event was successful enough to support further engagements by bands such as Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. In places like Lancaster, where there was no comparable public venue, the union created a new fixture on the live circuit and made an audience available as ‘bands wanted to sell albums and students were keen to both go to gigs and buy their music’.60 Elsewhere, unions emerged into a more plural economy that challenged unions for student attention. At Aston, for instance, Myhill recalls the coming of a new alternative venue in Birmingham that appealed to students: ‘Mothers had opened, and was a serious competitor as well. In trying to cater for the progressive audience, and with funding available as “risk” money, Events Group started to put on large Friday night events.’

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The ‘risk’ money referred to by Myhill hints at the competitive advantage that some unions gained by virtue of volunteer staff, established premises and (where applicable) equipment, as well as financial underwriting from union funds. Thus, where Haslam registers student activity in his chapter on the 1960s, he describes how by way of comparison with other available public venues ‘[a] safe and more lucrative circuit had developed at university and college unions, where there was a captive audience, more prone to growing their hair than the rest of the population, and with a looser gold of budgets than most club owners’.61 An unintended consequence of the use of union budgets for booking bands is suggested by Paul Anderson’s oral history of the 1960s Mod subculture. He suggests that by 1967, many established small clubs were unable to compete and some went out of business as a result.62 Whatever the perceptions of student risk management from outside of the university, bookings and business in unions was not a guaranteed success. In the case of Warwick, union reports and various manifestations of the student newspaper suggest an uneven history of management, deficits and a recurring sense of crisis regarding the economics and attractions of entertainment provision. For instance, an article of 1975 in the student newspaper, now retitled The Warwick Boar, discusses the ‘lack of interest in rock concerts’ as being a ‘constant source of anguish’. The newspaper’s arts editor asserted that: ‘At one time the University rock circuit was a guaranteed money-spinner to the bands and Social Secretaries, but its hey-day is now well over.’63 Such assertions might require further investigation in relation to the institutional organisational and indeed commercial memory and knowledge of students given their relatively short-term status as students. The turnover of students as well as changes in attendant taste cultures and their expectations as consumers of music are aspects of popular music economies to consider in any greater survey. For instance, consider Raoul De La Bedoyere’s account of coming to the University of Birmingham in the late 1970s.64 He identifies his teenage self as a ‘London punk’, exiled to a university he describes as akin to ‘the land that time forgot’. For him, those he discovered operating the Guild were ‘aging hippy post grads and the events lot were a beardy, speccy crowd who loathed punk, disco, funk, soul and reggae’. The bands admired by those in charge were the stadium giants of the period—Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin—acts way beyond the scope of available budgets and,

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indeed, for the majority of students ‘were completely unknown and their music quite unlike what they heard on the radio or chose to buy’. According to De La Bedoyere, when bands were programmed, ‘[t]wo or three hundred of the 8500 students would turn up to these gigs leading to spiraling losses and worse, a kind of dreary malaise and indifference’. While some local promoters might have viewed such attendances with envy, De La Bedoyere saw this lack of engagement as the result of the betrayal of contemporary taste by Guild organisers as well as their very mission to serve their constituents. For this commentator, it was also very poor business that he sought to address during his own tenure as social secretary. More detailed evidence is needed for a fuller understanding of the size and range of the economy of practices in any one site or across the sector, but during the 1970s, the nature of the role of entertainments officer or social secretary and its challenges was recognised and given developmental support by individual unions and the NUS. The latter’s national co-ordinating role sought a means of aiding local unions in properly satisfying the demand for live music among students and mitigating risks to union funds as substantial amounts were being deployed. This aimed as much at managing what some saw as predatory music business agents as much as the naïve student officers of whom they sought to take advantage. Some of the issues were brought to wider attention in a discussion paper for social secretaries at a conference in 1976. B.R. Devoil of Reading University argued that subsidies across HE in the previous 2 years were responsible for keeping band prices high. In polemical tone, he encouraged his audience of social secretaries to be more instrumental in their attitude to their work. He asked readers to consider whether agents saw themselves as providing a ‘service to students’, advising that: ‘Entertainments, whether you like it or not, is a business. A cut-throat one at that too.’65 Under the auspices of the NUS, a series of conferences for social secretaries took place from 1975 to 1979 and indicate the growing professionalisation of this and of the links between unions, the NUS and the music industry. This sense of professionalisation might also be seen as a practical response to some serious crises in NUS funding and management during this period.66 Conference booklets report on NUS Entertainments Sub Committee (ESC) attempts to standardise and manage the quality of practice across affiliated unions, encouraging co-operation across

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regions. For example, the 1975 Report outlines developments of: a standard NUS contract for artists; development of an NUS price list; guidance for dealing with music agencies; the practicality of percentage deals between unions and artists. The ESC also developed a lobbying role: liaising with the Musicians’ Union; working to convince the Performing Rights Society (PRS) to alter its rates; supporting campaigns such as Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League.67 The year 1979 was a watershed in which the success of the aforementioned BBC series Rock Goes to College was highlighted by a member of the NUS Steering Committee as being among several contracts which ‘have helped build our credibility in the industry’.68 The NUS conference of that year in Sheffield saw the launch of a dedicated programme of training for social secretaries as well as a dedicated Entertainments Yearbook, which developed out of an annual guide produced for social secretaries and distributed at conference.69 Authoritative and practical, the guide offered comprehensive information on: truck hire; lighting; PA companies; film companies and distributors; publications; music organisations; television companies; independent local radio stations; BBC radio stations; Arts Councils and Associations; accessories firms; record companies; agencies; concert promoters; staging hire firms; and disco equipment. The handbook was a useful aid for time-pressed social secretaries with limited experience and time—most inhabited a non-sabbatical post. It was also an important source of advertising space sold to the music industries. A leaflet produced by the NUS to promote the advertising opportunities in the yearbook and exhibition sales at the annual conference effusively outlined the value of SUs to the industry. It told of how they represented a combined purchasing power in excess of £30 million: ‘Social Secretaries throughout the country between them spend well over £4 million in bringing entertainment to over 900,000 full-time and nearly 2000,000 part-time students at the 900 colleges in membership of the NUS.’70 Students represented audiences for further live performances and purchasers of records and other products. The leaflet challenged: ‘Can you afford to ignore such a market?’ Completed order forms in the archive attest to the response to this question among record labels (CBS, Greensleeves, Jet), publications (Time Out, Morning Star), the PRS, record shops, agents, promoters, advertising agencies, radio stations, arts associations, DJs, a pin badge company, and local councils and leisure centres.

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Sound, Gown and Town The range, organisation and ambition of entertainments provision, largely, but not exclusively focused on popular music, suggest an expanding purview for unions, their officers and indeed constituents. In particular, this use of union spaces presents some practical and conceptual instances for thinking about the relationship of universities, location and the identities of students. This relationship is often visible in reactions to the performance of student politics or voluntarism—at ‘Rag Week’ for instance.71 It is apparent in reactions to ‘studentification’ of locations as a consequence of provision of accommodation.72 These relations have been negatively characterised by what Marks labels ‘The spatial-cultural hostility to outsiders of the ancient, civic and Robbins universities’, a disposition that endured ‘up to the creation of the polytechnics in the 1960s’.73 On this note, Chatterton is useful too in observing that, alongside teaching and research, universities have a major cultural role in the community.74 However, this role has been an opaque one as institutions have traditionally been seen as ‘of’ rather than ‘in’ their localities.75 Chatterton cites Dennis Hardy who notes of the traditional of ceremony and cultural role of universities, that ‘nor did these functions do much to assuage the prejudices of a citizenry who have continued to see it all as a case of us and them’.76 Pop concerts—and perhaps dances, discos and such like—have offered spaces in which this boundary was explored: for students and locals both. Aspects of this relationship have already been identified in terms of the impact of programming on local music economies as unions added to available cultural assets as well as entering into competition with them. Whether these sites and the events they have organised have been accessible to non-students, however, is moot. Historically, many unions have been constituted as private members clubs, able to restrict entry to those already holding NUS cards. Admittance to non-student visitors in this system involved being sponsored and signed in by ‘friends’, often found and cultivated in the queue for entry or the walk up to the union. Policing of entry to concerts and unions in general was sometimes in response to overt hostility exhibited towards students. Mike Day, who was at Lancaster in the early 1970s, recalls public houses in the town with notices forbidding entry to students, for instance. Thus, unions could be equally suspicious of non-student interlopers. In his history of the University of Brighton’s venue, Woodham relates that:

194  P. Long and L. Thompson Although The Basement’s official policy was to restrict entrance to National Union of Students’ card-bearers, discretion largely lay with door staff—as had been the case for much of its existence. At one time there was occasional trouble between the mod-revivalist ‘Scooter Boys’ from outside the Faculty and the graphic design students from within. There was also, as one bar worker confirmed, a baseball bat behind the bar that was occasionally called into action.

The regular presence of bands at union venues suggests that artists themselves were at ease with engaging with a student audience: Pete Townshend of The Who describes students approvingly as ‘often irreverent and noisy’.77 However, some artists appeared suspicious of union audiences and there is evidence of contractual stipulations by some bands that sought to ensure access to non-students. Occasionally, suspicion of students translated into expressions of hostility to the audience of a kind captured in particular in and around episodes of the BBC’s Rock Goes To College. A performance by The Specials (tx 21 January 1980) captured singer Terry Hall making disparaging remarks about students, their pursuit of a degree and future prospects as an introduction to the song Rat Race: ‘You plan your conversation to impress the college bar/Just talking about your Mother and Daddy’s Jaguar/Wear your political T-shirt and sacred college scarf/Discussing the worlds situation but just for a laugh.’ Particularly rancorous relations between band, BBC and university characterised a performance by The Stranglers at Surrey University in Guildford. For this ‘hometown’ gig, the band had insisted that 50% of tickets should be available to non-students, but discovered at the recording that none had been distributed outside of the university. Incensed, the band played a short set punctuated with insults levelled at the audience and commemorated in a song that bemoans ‘Wasting time on social secs’: ‘They say the kids can’t come in/you’ve got to have a grant to win.’78 The BBC transmission of this concert was abandoned. Singer Hugh Cornwell had stormed off stage with the farewell ‘Guildford University never represented Guildford, we hate playing to elitist audiences so fuck off.’ An eyewitness account of this event wryly notes the singer’s educational pedigree: ‘William Ellis School, Highgate and BA in Biochemistry, Bristol University.’79 This account from a student fan of the band suggests a performative element in this encounter but is most valuable in challenging assumptions about the union audience. In general, NUS accreditation allowed students from other institutions to attend concerts

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alongside non-students—when the latter group were admitted. In the context of the expanding field of HE in the UK in the post-war period, what constituted a student in relation to non-student groups problematised the notion that there was an easily identifiable individual or group ‘students’, especially one that might unambiguously be labelled ‘elitist’. These highly visible examples might be balanced by other accounts of a largely untroubled history of co-existence and co-operation between students and non-students. In fact, at Warwick, there were those who acknowledged a gap between students of the University and the city in which they were based. A newspaper editorial from April 1966 mentions the opening of the new swimming baths in Coventry, and notes that ‘many students seem to take the peculiar attitude that Coventry does not exist’, a ‘grossly introverted attitude’ which, the writer promises, ‘will not be pursued by this paper’.80 In another instance, a review of a concert at Lanchester Polytechnic (now Coventry University) echoes these sentiments, but also reflects the writer’s romanticising of working class culture: describing a room ‘crowded with Coventry youth, a reminder that real people exist beyond the Warwick campus’, he celebrates the atmosphere of a room filled not with ‘the apathetic wimps who only emerge for free union parties’, but with ‘enthusiastic participants in working-class culture’.81 Whatever the historical permeability of union sites, appearances by touring bands were advertised beyond the university to wider audiences in tour posters, flyers and in the music press. Such audiences also had an economic role in balancing student demand and return on investment. Whatever available support, unions have always sought to spread risk and non-student guests have also seen the attraction of subsidised bars or late licences and indeed the presence of like-minded individuals with particular cultural dispositions. As advertised by the NUS’s appeal to the music industries, students have also presented a historically important part of the audience for live music in any locale beyond the union. This value is recognised both within and outside the union. New students arriving at university in the autumn have long had promotional flyers and venue guides thrust upon them. Tour organisers take account of the academic cycle and the availability of student audiences in drawing up itineraries. NUS deals have also ensured discounts for cardholders across venues and many local establishments offer reduced entry rates in turn in order to boost capacity. As Fonarow attests, students have a role in some subcultural ‘scenes’.82 As the discussion above suggests, union reputation has

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proven important to the kinds of choices applicants make and in turn has an impact on the wider cultural ambiance of place. Reflecting on Manchester’s cultural status and subcultural scenes, Will Straw argues that in the 1980s and 1990s it ‘was one of the most important Western cities in the field of popular music, the birthplace of highly influential cross-fertilizations of post-punk rock and forms of dance music’.83 This development had much to do with the considerable student population in the city, resulting from the fact that all universities ‘generate forms of learning and expressive practices that are in excess of their intended function as places for the imparting of formal, disciplinary knowledge’.84 It is not simply that students have economic value in their status as consumers supporting venues, bars, clubs or retail. They have been cultural agents by virtue of the events and scenes made in the union but also for the manner in which they have engaged with and helped form local meanings of popular cultures.

Conclusions The importance of student union activity can be appreciated in both economic and cultural terms. Whatever the continuities with pre-war HE, there is an inter-relationship that has been identified in this chapter between the post-war expansion of provision of music in tandem with that of access to HE and the British music industry. The nature of the student ‘market’, its value to the cultural industries—as advertised by the NUS—as well as the investment in the provision of music by SUs has represented a considerable historical proposition, the development of which demands assessment. The evidence of this chapter suggests some of the ways in which individual students played a role in this development. The provision of music entertainments by and in the union called upon the organisational and entrepreneurial skills of such individuals: if they had none, they had to develop and sometimes to invent them. Whatever the successes represented by the expanding student market and visible schedule of events, there were also many ‘failures’. These also bear scrutiny as a means of understanding the union as a business entity with a particular cultural mission on behalf of its members. Either way, students and their organisations were not merely clients of the music industries but might have had a hand in shaping them. The development of the post-education careers of some social secretaries suggests as much.

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Students also had a role in shaping popular music culture—within and outside of union environs. We might ponder further related issues in debates over the cultural politics of the presence of popular music in unions per se and of the politics of the music itself. Here, ideas of class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and taste arise which are only touched upon in this chapter. In pursuit of these themes, one can imagine a wider project of historical retrieval that would gather and consider perceptions of the union from the perspective of those in the music industry: the bands, labels, promoters and indeed owners of competing venues. Likewise, insights from those who might identify themselves as non-students would be valuable for making sense of the union milieu. The context and the framing of this chapter then suggest further routes for the consideration of students in relation to historical issues of youth culture and its parameters. The sometimes limited ways in which students have been understood in terms of studies of HE, young people and popular culture are challenged by a recognition of their role in the economy and cultures of popular music provision. The history of these activities merits further consideration as a means of expanding our understanding of university life, the interactions of students with their institutions and the wider world.

Notes





1. Ann McFerran, ‘End of the Acid Era’, Time Out, 29 August 1975, 13. 2. Ibid. 3. Finlay Donesky, ‘Nostalgia for Consensus in Knuckle and Teeth ‘n’ Smiles’, in Hersh Zeifman (ed.), David Hare: A Casebook (London and New York: Garland Press, 1994), 122. 4. National Union of Students, ‘A brief history’, no date, http://www.nus. org.uk/en/who-we-are/our-history/a-brief-history/ (accessed 1 October 2016). 5. Edward Macan, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University, 1997); Sheila Whiteley, The Space Between the Notes: Rock and the Counter-culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). 6.  Jon Garland, Keith Gildart, Anna Gough-Yates, Paul Hodkinson, Bill Osgerby, Lucy Robinson, John Street, Pete Webb and Matthew Worley, ‘Youth Culture, Popular Music and the End of “Consensus” in Post-War Britain’, Contemporary British History 26, no. 3 (2012), 267.

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7. See: Rachel Brooks, Kate Byford and Katherine Sela, ‘The Spaces of UK Students’ Unions: Extending the Critical Geographies of the University Campus’, Social & Cultural Geography 17, no. 4 (2016). 8. Harold Silver and Pamela Silver, Students: Changing Roles, Changing Lives (Buckingham [England]; Bristol, PA: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press, 1997), 11. 9. Warner, Gerald. Conquering by Degrees: Glasgow University Union – A Centenary History, 1885–1985. Glasgow: Glasgow University Union, 1985; Bates, James and Carol Ibbetson. The World of UCL (University College London) Union. London: University College London Union, 1994; Mathers, Helen. Standing up for Students: One Hundred Years of the University of Sheffield Union of Students. Sheffield: University of Sheffield Union of Students, 2007. 10. For example see: Nick Crossley ‘Social Networks and Student Activism: On the Politicising Effect of Campus Connections’, The Sociological Review 56, no. 1 (2008): 18–38; Nick Crossley and Joseph Ibrahim, ‘Critical Mass, Social Networks and Collective Action: Exploring Student Political Worlds’, Sociology 46, no. 4. (2012), 596—612; Alexander Hensby, ‘Networks, Counter-networks and Political Socialization— Paths and Barriers to High-cost/Risk Activism in the 2010/11 Student Protests against Fees and Cuts’, Contemporary Social Science 9, no. 1 (2013), 92–105. 11. Brooks et al., ‘The Spaces of UK Students’ Unions’, 165; see also: Mike Day, ‘Dubious Causes of no Interest to Students? The Development of National Union of Students in the United Kingdom’, European Journal of Higher Education 2, no. 1 (2012); Mike Day, National Union of Students: 1922–2012 (London: Regal Press, 2015). 12. Georgina Brewis, A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond, 1880–1980 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 13. Reba Soffer, Discipline and Power: The University, History, and the Making of an English Elite, 1870–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 14.  Louise Morley, ‘Restructuring Students as Consumers’, in Maria Slowey and David Watson (eds), Higher Education and the Lifecourse (Maidenhead: The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press, 2003), 79–92; Joanna Williams, Consuming Higher Education: Why Learning Can’t Be Bought (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 110. 15. Paul Chatterton, ‘The Cultural Role of Universities in the Community: Revisiting the University–Community Debate’, Environment and Planning 32 (2000), 175. 16. Ibid., 173–4.

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17. Wendy Fonarow, Empire of Dirt: The Aesthetics and Rituals of British Indie Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006), 52. 18. Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), 48. 19. Dave Haslam, Life After Dark: A History of British Nightclubs & Music Venues (London: Simon and Schuster, 2015). 20. Simon Frith and Howard Horne, Art Into Pop (London and New York: Routledge, 2016 [first published 1987]), 179. 21. For a discussion of students as a politically mobilised group see: Caroline Hoefferle, British Student Activism in the Long Sixties (London and New York: Routledge, 2012); Gerard DeGroot, Student Protest: The Sixties and After (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). For a discussion related to the formation of such a counter-culture see: Bill Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998); Daniel Laughey, Music and Youth Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006). 22. For example see: Frith and Horne, Art Into Pop. 23. For example see: Hodkinson and Deike, Youth Subcultures; Keith Gildart, Images of England Through Popular Music: Class, Youth and Rock’n’roll, 1955–1976 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 24. David Fowler, Youth Culture in Modern Britain, c.1920–c.1970: From Ivory Tower to Global Movement—A New History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 4. 25. Stefan Collini, What are Universities for? (London: Penguin, 2012), 30. 26. Ibid., 31. 27. Brown and Carasso, Everything For Sale?, 5. 28. Silver and Silver, Students, 11. 29.  ‘Carolynne’, ‘50 years of live music at Lancaster’, Scan, 1 July 2014. http://scan.lusu.co.uk/index.php/2014/07/01/50-years-of-livemusic-at-lancaster/ (accessed 10 May 2017). 30.  Jonathan M. Woodham ‘The “Art College” Basement: Some Recollections’ at http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/faculty-of-arts-brighton/ alumni-and-associates/the-history-of-arts-education-in-brighton/the-artcollege-basement-some-recollections (accessed 10 May 2017). 31.  Anon, ‘About Andy’, Andy Kershaw http://www.andykershaw.co.uk/ andy-kershaw (accessed 10 May 2017). 32. Collins and Long, ‘fillin’ in any blanks I can’. 33. See: Paul Long and Jez Collins, ‘Affective Memories of Music in Online Heritage Practice’, in Johannes Brusila, Bruce Johnson and John Richardson, Memory, Space, Sound (Bristol: Intellect, 2016), 87–104. 34.  MDM Archive, 2017, https://www.mdmarchive.co.uk/ (accessed 10 May 2017).

200  P. Long and L. Thompson 35.  Birmingham Music Archive, 2017, http://www.birminghammusicarchive.com/. 36. See also: Soffer, Discipline and Power; Dyhouse, Students. 37. F.E. Foden, ‘Students Union’, The Vocational Aspect of Education 7, no. 15 (1955), 117. 38. Ibid., 120. 39. Ibid. 40. Quoted in Silver and Silver, Students, 22. 41. A definition of ‘bad’ is not supplied; Anon, ‘Student Council Meeting’, The Giblet (1966), 1. 42. Crumpton-Taylor, ‘More About that Music’, The Giblet no. 9 (January 1966) 29: 7. 43.  Michael Stein, ‘Another Species of Music’, The Giblet no. 9 (January 1966), 29: 7. 44. Anon, ‘Something Better’, The Giblet (1966), 1. 45. Silver and Silver, Students, 32. 46. Anon, ‘University Dances’, The Giblet no.4 (17 November 1965), 6. 47. Anon, ‘Clubs and Societies News’, The Giblet, no. 2 (3 November 1965), 4. 48. Peter Lindley, Tim Hapson and Jenny Clift, ‘Folk at Warwick’, The Giblet no. 13 (23 February 1966), 6. 49. Bryan R. Wilson, The Youth Culture and the Universities (London: Faber & Faber, 1970), 101. 50. Anon, ‘Warwick Week’, The Giblet (16 March 1966), 8. 51. Anon, ‘President Hill’, The Giblet, no. 20 (25 May 1966), 1. 52.  Simon Frith, Matt Brennan and Emma Webster, The History of Live Music in Britain, Volume I: 1950–1967: From Dance Hall to the 100 Club (London: Routledge, 2016). 53. Ibid., 193. 54. terry-ellis.com (accessed 10 May 2017). 55. Chris Wright, One Way or Another: My Life in Music, Sport & Entertainment (London: Omnibus Press, 2013), 19. 56. Ibid. 57. Woodham, ‘The “Art College” Basement’. 58. Quoted in Anon, ‘Promoter who intends to run and run’, The Guardian, 10 March 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/mar/10/ greaterlondonauthority.olympics2012 (accessed 1 October 2016). 59. Birmingham Music Archive, 2017. 60.  Anon, ‘Let him entertain you’, Steps (Lancaster: Lancaster University, 2009), 6. 61. Haslam, Life After Dark, 182. 62. Paul Anderson, Mods: The New Religion (London: Omnibus Press, 2014), 206.

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63. David Wilby, ‘Interview with Godfrey Rush’, Warwick Boar, 7 October 1975, 5. 64. Birmingham Music Archive, 2017. 65. Modern Records Centre MSS/280/128/3, 19. 66. See: Day, National Union of Students, 62–5. 67.  On liaising with the Musicians’ Union see: MSS/280/128/4, 7; on the Performing Rights Society altering its rates see: MSS/280/128/4, 5; for material on Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League see: MSS/280/128/4, 6, 7. 68. Linda Miller, MSS/280/128/4, 3. 69.  Entertainments Yearbook, MSS/280/128/4, 3. 70. MSS/280/128/4, 2. 71. Brewis, A Social History of Student Volunteering. 72.  Phil Hubbard, ‘Geographies of Studentification and Purpose-built Student Accommodation: Leading Separate Lives?’ Environment and Planning A 41, no. 8 (2009), 1903–23. 73.  Andrew Marks, ‘Changing Spatial and Synchronous Structures in the History and Culture of Learning’, Higher Education 50, no. 4 (2005), 263. 74. Chatterton, ‘The Cultural Role of Universities’. 75. See also: Goddard, Charles, Pike, Potts and Bradley, ‘Universities and Communities’. 76. Quoted in Chatterton, ‘The Cultural Role of Universities’, 167. 77. Pete Townshend, Who I Am: A Memoir (New York: Harper Collins, 2012), 186. 78. See: Anon, ‘The band & the BBC—the ‘Rock Goes To College’ incident’, The Stranglers, Black and White, 19 October 2013, http://www.thestranglers.net/?p=8875 (accessed 10 May 2017). 79. Alistair Burns, ‘Being There: The Stranglers University of Surrey 19th October 1978’, Gashead’s Blog, 2003, https://gashead.wordpress. com/2010/01/03/being-there-the-stranglers-university-of-surrey-19thOctober-1978 (accessed 10 May 2017). 80. Anon, ‘Editorial’, The Giblet no. 17 (27 April 1966), 2. 81. Steve Rapport, ‘Live Review’, The Boar (22 October 1980), 4. 82. Fonarow, Empire of Dirt. 83. Will Straw, ‘Cultural Scenes’, Loisir et société/Society and Leisure 27, no. 2 (2004), 414. 84. Ibid.

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Author Biography Lauren Jade Thompson works in the Department of Film Studies and the Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning at the University of Warwick. As well as being an experienced widening participation practitioner, she has research interests in domestic space in film and television, post-feminist media studies, student histories and comedy.

CHAPTER 9

The National Union of Students and the Policy of ‘No Platform’ in the 1970s and 1980s Evan Smith

Introduction In late 2015, Germaine Greer made headlines when there were calls for a proposed talk by the second wave feminist author and activist at Cardiff University to be banned. Greer had made transphobic remarks previously and a number of trans activists campaigned that no platform be provided for her ‘hate speech’. A significant section of the media coverage on this controversy debated whether calls to ‘no platform’ certain speakers at universities around the UK were limiting free speech on campuses across the country. As Helen Lewis and Ian Dunt had demonstrated, the Greer episode came off a series of instances where people representing a myriad of different political agendas had been banned (or attempts had been made to ban them) from speaking at various universities in the UK.1 This followed the debate among anti-racist activists over whether to apply a policy of ‘no platform’ to UKIP in the lead up to the 2015

E. Smith (*)  School of History and International Relations, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_9

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General Election. UKIP representatives had been banned from several universities by their students’ unions (SUs), but other anti-fascists, who advocated the strategy against the far right British National Party, argued that that this was not the correct path to take. As the Socialist Worker Party’s Charlie Kimber argued: Ukip [sic] is a right wing party using racism to bolster its electoral support, rather than a fascist organisation. Therefore, we do not call for ‘No Platform’ for Ukip, in the way that we would for groups such as the BNP [British National Party] or EDL [English Defence League]. But racist politicians should be challenged and that means contesting their arguments and protesting outside their meetings.2

However in these debates, few commentators have put the policy of ‘no platform’ in its political and historical context, or described exactly what the tactic actually meant. The aim of this chapter is to explore the origins of the ‘no platform’ strategy and how it was developed into a practical anti-fascist strategy by the National Union of Students (NUS) (along with sections of the British far left) in the 1970s, as well as how this policy evolved from its narrow application against the National Front (NF) in the 1970s to its broad use by university activists in the contemporary era.

Traditional Anti-Fascism and the Denial of Public Space In the early 1970s, the term ‘no platform’ was first used to describe the anti-fascist strategy of denying fascist organisations the public space to organise and disseminate their propaganda. The denial of public space had been an integral part of the militant anti-fascist movement since the 1930s, employed by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), various Jewish groups and other assorted anti-fascists.3 Fighting Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), these anti-fascists broke up meetings, occupied spaces to prevent the BUF gaining access and mobilised massive demonstrations to physically confront the fascists in the streets. This continued after the Second World War with various groups, such as the 43 Group, the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and the Revolutionary Communist Party, joining the CPGB to combat Mosley’s Union Movement (UM).4 As well as physically confronting the UM, part

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of the anti-fascists’ strategy was appealing to the local councils, particularly in boroughs where the Labour Party was in charge, to deny the UM (or its various aliases, such as the British League of Ex-Servicemen) access to any council property.5 The anti-fascist movement was quite successful in its approach and Mosley fled to Ireland in the early 1950s. Until the emergence of the NF in the late 1960s, the fascist groups in Britain remained small and the anti-fascist movement gradually faded away. Formed in 1967, the NF brought together a number of disparate fascist and anti-immigration groups, originally led by former BUF propaganda chief A.K. Chesterton, but taken over by the younger (and more Nazi-oriented) John Tyndall in 1972.6 By the early 1970s, it was making headway by attracting disaffected Conservative Party voters who felt that the Tories were ‘too soft’ on immigration.7 When the Ugandan Asian controversy emerged in 1972, the NF publicised its opposition to letting these British citizens into the country after the Heath government acknowledged that it had no legal reason to deny them entry. By 1974, it was estimated that the NF’s membership was between 14,000 and 17,500, having grown from around 1500 in 1967.8

The International Marxist Group and  the Concept of ‘No Platform’ The Communist Party had traditionally been the leading organisation within the British anti-fascist movement, particularly among9 left-wing groups. But the CPGB’s dominance was challenged within the anti-fascist movement and on the far left by several Trotskyist and Maoist groups that had expanded rapidly in the late 1960s and early 1970s,10 in particular the International Socialists (IS) (later to become the Socialist Workers Party) and the International Marxist Group (IMG). It was within this context that the anti-fascist concept of ‘no platform’ was developed. The first use of the term ‘no platform’ was in 1972 in the IMG newspaper, The Red Mole. The IMG was a Trotskyist organisation that built quickly among the student and anti-Vietnam War movements in the late 1960s, led by Tariq Ali, Robin Blackburn and Pat Jordan. In the issue for 18 September 1972, the front page headline declared ‘NO PLATFORM FOR RACISTS’. It described the NF and the Monday Club (a pro-empire and anti-immigration grouping within the Conservative Party)11 as ‘mortal enemies of the working class’ and stated

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that these two groups ‘must be stopped in their tracks’.12 The newspaper argued that these groups needed to be confronted and were ‘not going to be convinced by rational argument’, calling for ‘a concerted counterattack’ at meetings of both groups.13 The IMG proposed that groups like the NF could not be afforded ‘free speech’ because ‘their racist campaigns are a means to destroy the organisations of the working class which defend such bourgeois democratic rights’. An editorial in the same issue claimed: the only way to deal with fascist type organisations like the National Front is to break up their activities before they grow to a size where they can begin to smash the activities of the working class.14

While the article acknowledged that ‘[w]e are nowhere near a threatened Fascist coup yet’, it said ‘the methods necessary on preventing such a threat must be explained and demonstrated in practice now … We must begin to adopt the right tactics right from the start’ (original emphasis).15

The 1974 NUS Conference The IMG was one of the most influential leftist groups in the student movement in Britain in the early 1970s, but competed with the IS and the CPGB (who were part of the Broad Left group with students associated with the Labour left). It was through the student movement that the IMG pushed the policy of ‘no platform’. The student movement had boomed in the late 1960s and probably reached its zenith in the early 1970s, as part of a wider upsurge in industrial and cultural radicalism. Prior to 1969, the NUS been a relatively apolitical organisation, and in the wake of other more radical student organisations, such as the Radical Students Alliance and the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation, was described by others as ‘reactionary’.16 Despite not representing all students in Britain, the NUS was the largest student organisation in the country and was dominated in the 1970s by various left-wing and far left groups.17 In 1974, the NUS was under the leadership of Steve Parry, a member of the CPGB and the Broad Left, and the organisation agreed (in principle) that a policy of ‘no platform’ should be applied to NF and other fascist organisations attempting to recruit students on university campuses.

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At the Liverpool conference in 1974, the policy of ‘no platform’ was devised as part of a wider stance against racism, in particular the discrimination faced by foreign students in Britain.18 Amendment 4 of the resolution on the fight against racialism stated: Conference recognises the need to refuse assistance (financial or otherwise) to openly racist or fascist organisations or societies … and to deny them a platform. However conference believes that in order to counter these groups, it is also necessary to prevent any member of these organisations or individuals known to espouse similar views from speaking in colleges by whatever means necessary (including disrupting of the meeting).19

SUs were also called upon to ‘prevent any racist or fascist propaganda being displayed, sold, distributed, or propagated through meetings by whatever means may be necessary’.20 The resolution was passed by a vote of 204,619–182,760, with a number of student groups, including the Confederation of Conservative Students, opposing it.21 Anticipating the controversy surrounding the passing of the resolution, the NUS issued a press release to clarify what ‘no platform’ meant. The press release stated the NUS were ‘not going to send round a “heavy squad” to break up meetings’, nor were they ‘going to try to restrict activities of the Conservative Party’.22 Instead, the NUS intended ‘to deny platforms to the apostles of racial hatred’,23 presumably by not allowing SU buildings around the UK to be used by fascist groups. However, this was not clarified in the press release and was open to interpretation by the various anti-fascist and far left groups. A number of individual SUs, such as those from the University of Keele, Huddersfield Polytechnic, Queen Mary College, the University of Hull, St Hilda’s College, St John’s College and Balliol College at Oxford, Churchill College, Christ’s College and Emmanuel College at Cambridge, opposed the resolution and wrote to the NUS to inform it that the ‘no platform’ policy would not be administered by the SUs.24 Furthermore, representatives from the SUs of Balliol College and the Open University, as well as from the Monday Club’s student association, the Army and Navy Club and the Labour Society of the London School of Economics (LSE), condemned the policy in the letters pages of the New Statesman.25 While the SU at the University of Warwick gave

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‘qualified support’ to the policy, the students’ newspaper, The Warwick Boar, reported that in a poll of students, only 12% agreed with the policy.26 ‘The rest of the sample’, the newspaper said, ‘expressed personal repugnance over the views of many of the fascist groups [but] saw the motion as an unacceptable attack on the rights of free speech’.27 Although the concept of ‘no platform’ was agreed in principle, the Communist Party, the IMG and the IS differed on the details of the resolution and how the strategy should be applied. The IMG felt that the joint action suggested in the resolution would not transfer into practice and declared that the other left-wing groups were unwilling to be involved in such joint practical action. Steve Webster wrote in Red Weekly (the renamed paper of the IMG): The fascists will not be defeated by resolutions or statements alone. There are three specific issues which face us immediately: the activity of the right in the colleges, the campaign against the reactionary anti-abortion group, SPUC [the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children], and the fight against racism. The other groups of the left rejected joint action around these issues. But it is only by such joint mobilisations, by confronting the right wing head-on, that the fascists and racists will be routed.28

The LSE branch of the IS put together a newsletter called The Red Agitator which stated that they believed that the policy was ‘fundamentally correct’, but took issue with the lumping together of racists and fascists in the resolution, as there was a difference in approach to fascists and those in the mainstream who promoted racist ideas. The IS raised the point of the racist claims made by the psychologist Hans Eysenck who toured universities in the early 1970s, espousing the idea that there were significant differences in mental capacity between the races. Eysenck was a racist, but not a fascist, and the IS suggested approaching his meetings in a slightly different way than the employment of the ‘no platform’ strategy: To debate with Eysenck, to treat him as a genuine scientist, is thus to indirectly legitimise Powellism. This is not to say that we should go out to break up meetings which he addresses – the real threat lies in organised fascist groups – but rather that we should picket them and organise counter-meetings in order to show up the real nature of his ideas.29

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But dealing with the openly fascist NF, the IS agreed with the IMG. The Red Agitator newsletter finished with this: The racists and fascists of today are not something that we can ignore. They are a growing menace. The liberties we have today are worth defending, small though they are. Fascism aims to smash, racism creates the conditions for their destruction. We cannot allow the open fascist, or the concealed fascist working in the Monday Club or some similar organisation to gain a hearing. Every meeting that they hold gives them confidence. Every apologist for racism lends them comfort. Every liberal who debates with them gives them aid – much against their will. Every time they are stopped from meeting, every time their meetings are broke up, their task becomes harder and harder. The moral of the fascists fall. People turn away from them as a miserable and pathetic group with nothing to offer. Every success that we have demonstrates to the waverers that we are a better solution. That is the only way to fight fascism and racism.30

The Communist Party’s National Student Organiser, Dave Cook, also took exception to the broad nature of the ‘no platform’ resolution devised by the NUS. Cook, writing in the CPGB’s Morning Star, argued that the second part of the resolution calling for the prevention of those speaking who espoused ‘similar views’ by any means necessary endangered support for the NUS policy because of its broad interpretation and could have potentially isolated the more moderate and centrist elements in the NUS. Cook proposed that there should not be an all-applying response set at the national level, but that each individual student council should be allowed to decide whether to implement the policy of ‘no platform’. Like the Party’s wider anti-fascist strategy in the 1970s, Cook also warned against the vanguardist approach of breaking up meetings by a minority of students, writing ‘It is important that direct action does not become a substitute for the often more difficult task of winning the majority.’ In the Party’s internal documents, the broad and all-applying response of ‘no platform’ was criticised further. The Communist Party was particularly concerned with making the distinction between the fascism of the NF and the racism of the Conservatives (and other right-wing groups), which nonetheless operated within a democratic framework. The Political Committee stated:

210  E. Smith It is important to state from the start that the resolution is not a threat to the right of the Tory party to politically operate in the colleges. The resolution clearly and correctly differentiates between the expression of a Conservative viewpoint and organisations whose declared objective is racist. This is not to say that racism is an attitude that stops at the boundaries of the Conservative Party. On the contrary. Certain Tory leaders are more potent symbols of racism than anyone in the National Front … However it is important to draw the distinction between individual Tory racists, and organisations that are part of the Tory party like the Monday Club on one hand; and organisations whose declared objective is to further race hatred on the other – not because our opposition to them is any less intense, but because they are often best fought in different ways. It is so that it can more effectively fight them that NUS policy must hinge on this distinction.31

The Party also felt that the resolution could be used to enact the ‘no platform’ policy against individuals, rather than organised fascist groups, and that this went past necessary anti-fascist activism and contravened the idea of ‘free speech’. Another internal document made this clear: No matter how nauseous we find the views of individuals who are not members of such [fascist] organisations, e.g. [Hans] Eysenck and [William] Shockley; or the views of the right wing of the Tory Party, e.g. the Monday Club; the fact is that both of these differ significantly from organisations whose aims is declaredly fascist.32

While the NUS resolution, as well as the IMG and the IS, all saw the Monday Club as resembling a proto-fascist organisation that should be barred from meeting and organising on university campuses, the CPGB stressed that the Monday Club (from which there was a conveyer belt of recruitment into the NF in the early 1970s) was merely a group within the Conservatives and thus should be allowed to organise publicly. Furthermore, the CPGB was worried that the phrase ‘by any means necessary’ could be interpreted in a number of ways and was concerned about physical violence at public events involving sections of the nonfascist right wing, such as Eysenck’s university tours. This had already occurred the previous year when the tiny Maoist group, the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) (CPE(M-L)) broke up a presentation by Eysenck at the LSE.33 In the wake of this incident, the CPGB

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criticised the CPE(M-L) for its violence, stating that ‘physical thuggery’ was counter-productive which created sympathy for those attacked and demonstrated ‘the sort of bigotry and intolerance that alienates potential supporters’.34 The resolution was heavily criticised in the mainstream media, with even the Guardian’s John Fairhall describing the move as a denial of free speech, voted for by students ‘under the spell of Mr Parry’s oratory’.35 Fairhall predicted that ‘[t]rouble and violence seem inevitable’ and warned: Students should perhaps remember that frustration which leads to a denial of the right of one section of society is not something new. It is classic pattern of fascism.36

Parry replied in a letter to the newspaper, arguing: Our members overseas have been singled out for abuse, threats and outright economic attack by powerful extreme right-wingers during the time of the last Government. All our conference agreed was that at least they should not be subject to that abuse in our own student union.37

Parry further addressed his critics in the press in an article in the journal Labour Monthly, which had been run since the 1920s by CPGB stalwart, R. Palme Dutt. Unlike the position taken by Dave Cook, Parry saw the Monday Club and the NF as very similar and posed the question, ‘What is the difference between the ideologies of the National Front and the Nazi party?’ Responding to the claim that the notion of ‘no platform’ put restrictions on ‘free speech’, Parry answered at length: One must accept that to deny racists and fascists a platform is to ‘limit freedom of speech’ but one cannot see this freedom as something which exists in the abstract. It is a freedom which is already limited by such laws as the Race Relations Act and the law of libel, and must also be seen in the context of a class society in Britain which limits the freedom of speech for the vast majority of people … In refusing to assist the spread of racism the NUS is fighting for a freedom of even greater importance: the freedom to live without discrimination on the basis of race. It is only in relation to reality that principles of freedom can be seen. It is not an abstract intellectual exercise.38

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Although the IMG and IS were in favour of the radical agenda of the student movement and largely supported the ‘no platform’ policy, the CPGB was more divided over this and was indicative of a wider schism between the (generally younger) neo-Gramscian wing of the Party and the (older) traditional industrial wing. In 1974, the Young Communist League produced a pamphlet, The Fascist Threat and, while acknowledging that ‘the fight must not only be confined to the Socialist students and the Left within the labour movement’, recognised that the NUS had ‘played an important part in this fight, by its decision to refuse a platform to fascist speakers’.39 However, many of the trade unionists attached to the CPGB were hesitant to support the confrontational anti-fascist strategies of the student movement and the far left. ‘I appreciate the role of the students in this struggle’, wrote Frank Watters in the CPGB’s fortnightly journal, Comment, ‘But because we need the involvement of the labour movement any committees set up to organise this struggle must have the aim the winning of the organised working class.’40 The student activists, though radicalised and influenced by the far left, were felt to be disassociated from the traditional labour movement, and the anti-fascist bodies organised beforehand were described by Watters as ‘“ad hoc” committees … set up … by a handful of people with little or no influence, in the labour movement’.41 In a veiled attack on the far left, Watters claimed that these committees ‘expect the [labour] movement to respond to calls which are not designed to secure the fullest possible mobilisation of anti-fascist forces’ and ‘instead are geared towards “confrontation”’.42 The IMG took exception to the Communist Party’s support of the ‘no platform’ strategy only while the current laws against incitement to race hatred were inadequate.43 ‘The “no platform” position … cannot be made dependent on the legal situation’, argued the IMG’s John Kilbane, reiterating that ‘mass action will remain necessary’.44 The argument for direct action, with the potential for physical confrontation, was also made by the IS, who criticised those on the left, such as the CPGB, who ‘end up… talking of “peaceful pickets” and implying that the police can “stop the fascists”’.45 The ‘peaceful picket, pious resolutions, rational arguments alone’ would not stop the fascist threat as fascists ‘have to be driven physically from the streets’.46 The issue of ‘no platform’ and direct action, the far left, the police and the NF first came to a head on 15 June 1974, when an anti-fascist demonstration in Red Lion Square in London ended in the death of a demonstrator, Kevin Gately.

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The Emergency Conference and the Death of Kevin Gately Because of the controversial nature of the ‘no platform’ resolution passed earlier in the year, the NUS held a special emergency conference in London on 15 June 1974. This was the same day that the NF attempted to hold a meeting at Conway Hall in Red Lion Square and a counterdemonstration was held by Liberation and other anti-fascists, including the IMG. The resulting melee between anti-fascists and the police led to the death of Warwick University student Kevin Gately.47 Nigel Copsey has suggested that the IMG was determined to ‘organise a mass picket at the main entrance of the hall thereby denying the NF access’.48 The police attempted to disperse the IMG contingent that were blocking the NF’s access to Conway Hall.49 The IMG members refused to be dispersed and, according to Lord Scarman’s subsequent report into Gately’s death, ‘when the IMG assaulted the police cordon there began a riot, which it was the duty of the police to suppress, by force if necessary’.50 It was in this initial violent clash between police and militant anti-fascists, lasting for less than 15 min, that Kevin Gately, a student from Warwick University, was fatally injured. Gately died from a brain haemorrhage stemming from a blow to the head.51 Further clashes between police and anti-fascist demonstrators occurred throughout the day, with the end result being that ‘one person died, 46 policemen and at least 12 demonstrators were injured, 51 people arrested and the whole police operation had cost an estimated £15,000’.52 At the June conference, the debate was over the application of the ‘no platform’ resolution. Dave Cook, writing again in Morning Star, said that the IMG and the IS wanted to maintain the resolution as it was passed, ‘which dictated a common response to all racist and fascist organisations in all situations’.53 The Communist-affiliated Broad Left group opposed this, arguing that ‘the best way to implement national policy was for decisions to be made by each individual union in accordance with its local situation’.54 Put to a vote, the amendment suggested by Broad Left failed to get over the line and the resolution remained as it was, despite the Federation of Conservative Students seeking the opportunity to defeat the resolution in its entirety. But the death of Gately, described above, bolstered the argument made by the Trotskyist groups—if fascism was not countered ‘by any means necessary’, then people on the left

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were to become targets of violence. As Dave Hann has shown, throughout the mid-1970s, NF activists violently broke up a number of meetings by the left, leading to the need for meetings to be stewarded by militant anti-fascists.55 The NUS produced a pamphlet in the aftermath of Gately’s death that called for a mobilisation of an anti-fascist movement against the NF, but, while not mentioning the ‘no platform’ on university campuses, also called for other institutions to implement the ‘no platform’ policy. The pamphlet proclaimed: we call upon the government and local councils to recognise their responsibilities and ban further marches by the National Front and other fascist groups, and to deny them the use of public facilities. Such measures alone will not alone win the fight against racism and fascism, but will be an expression of the government’s resolve to check its growth and to protect hard-won democratic rights of working people.56

The call for the banning of NF marches was something that divided antifascist and far left forces in Britain during the 1970s. Like the NUS, the Communist Party had called for the police and local governments to ban marches by fascist groups and for the prosecution of these groups for the incitement of racial hatred.57 But appealing to the police to deal with fascists was an inconsistent strategy, particularly as the police’s treatment of both the left and Britain’s black communities was discriminatory and far from impartial. ‘For the left to call upon the police force to deal with the fascists’, it was asserted in the journal International Socialism, ‘is to provide it with a chance to enhance its own powers for attacking the left’.58

‘No Platform’ in the Late 1970s By the mid-1970s, the NF were starting to change tactics. For most of the early 1970s, the NF had played up its ‘respectability’ and tried to attract disaffected Tory voters (and members) who were anti-immigrant, pro-empire and anti-Common Market. ‘No platform’ was probably at its most controversial, but also very necessary, during this period, when a determined anti-fascist movement was needed to break the respectable veneer that the NF was putting forward while trying to woo the Tory right.

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It reached its highest membership during this period and concentrated on electoral politics. The NF continued to contest elections from 1974 to 1977, but switched to an attempt to siphon off right-leaning Labour voters. However the small electoral fortunes of the NF kickstarted the anti-fascist movement against them, and the years from 1977 to 1979 saw increasing confrontation between the NF and anti-fascists on the streets. By the late 1970s, the idea of ‘no platform’ seemed fairly straightforward—occupy the streets and the places where the NF seek to publicly assemble. Colin Sparks, from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), explained in the pamphlet, Fascism and the National Front: We do not engage in this sort of activity because we like violence or because the NF are reactionary. There are many other reactionary organisations around, for instance the Tory Party, which we do not attempt to smash up. The National Front differs from the Tories because their aims are precisely to control the streets, to build a mass fighting movement. In this, they need the marches and rallies.59

The Communist Party, which was largely critical of the SWP’s ‘adventurist’ approach, also recognised the need to confront the NF, but argued that this needed to be done on a mass scale. But they also advocated using the Race Relations Act to combat the NF and their ‘claim to have a democratic right to flaunt their racism’. In his pamphlet, A Knife at the Throat of Us All, Dave Cook, now the CPGB’s National Organiser, wrote: Communists support, and will defend to the utmost, the right of people to freely speak their mind. But to attack people because they are black is not a political argument. People form their political views on the basis of conviction. They are born with their colour. That is why to attack someone because of his or her race is to attack that person as a human being. Their political views can change, colour cannot. To permit the NF the ‘freedom’ to be anti-human can end up destroying the freedom of us all. That is why incitement to racial hatred must have no place in a civilised society.60

Even the Labour Party accepted a form of ‘no platform’ for the NF when the Party’s National Executive Committee declared:

216  E. Smith Labour candidates should not share platforms at meetings or appear on constituency programmes on radio or television with candidates or other members of the National Front.61

Despite the original NUS resolution targeting specifically openly fascist and racist organisations, such as the NF and (perhaps controversially) the Monday Club, there were fears that the policy could widened to be used against any political organisation and individual that fell foul of the NUS leadership. In their pamphlet, Fascism: How to Smash It, the IMG gave instances where ‘no platform’ had been applied to political ‘enemies’ who were not fascists: Racists like Powell or Harold Soref – who are not fascists – have often been driven off university campuses. This is because the effect these people can have is similar to fascists – that is, terrorising black people or others chosen as scapegoats for capitalism’s social ills, and encouraging social violence, legal or otherwise, against them… ‘No Platform’ has been applied to many people by the workers’ movement. Trade unionists, for example, would generally expel employees who attended their meetings. Print workers sometimes censor by blacking a newspaper editorial attacking the unions. When Mr. Godber, Tory Minister for Agriculture, [was] sent to Birmingham one day last year to do a public relations job for Tory price policy, he was mobbed off the street by angry housewives. All these actions are against ‘free speech’ and sometimes involve a physical struggle.62

‘No Platform’ or ‘No Invitation’: The Continuing Debate at the NUS Conferences Throughout the 1970s, the ‘no platform’ policy was challenged at the NUS annual conference. At the 1977 conference, concerns were raised about demonstrations against Sir Keith Joseph speaking at Essex University. In the Guardian, John Fairhall wrote that the NUS Executive Committee felt that actions, such as the one against Joseph, were ‘against the interest of the union, and damage an anti-racialism campaign’.63 Alan Elsner, a member of the Union of Jewish Students, wrote in the New Statesman that the Joseph incident ‘heightened the fear that “no platform” policy could be used as a means of silencing people whose views might be controversial or unpopular’.64 A possible example of this

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occurred the following year when the LSE Students’ Union opposed Joseph speaking on the grounds that it was ‘Union policy … that there was no platform for racists and fascists and that [LSE Students’ Union] policy stated that immigration controls were racist.’65 Since immigration controls were central to Conservative Party policy, Joseph was not allowed to speak, unless he signed a statement opposing controls. Elsner also raised the controversy over the use of ‘no platform’ against organisations that were explicitly Zionist or supporters of Israel.66 This followed on from a wider global campaign (promoted by the Soviet Bloc and the Arab world) that equated Zionism with racism and apartheid, which reached its height with the UN resolution in 1975 that declared, ‘Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.’67 David Cesarani wrote, ‘The UN resolution made it possible to link popular mass-based anti-racist campaigns at home with palpably less relevant anti-Zionism.’68 Over the next few years, there were various incidents reported of individual SUs using the ‘no platform’ resolution to prevent Zionist and proIsraeli student organisations from being on campus, but by the end of 1977, the NUS Executive took actions to stop these actions from occurring.69 However, according to Noah Lucas, the ‘campus war’ between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups continued into the 1980s, particularly after invasion of Lebanon by Israel in 1982.70 At the 1977 NUS conference, John Fairhall reported that some on the NUS Executive Committee wanted to change the policy from ‘no platform’ to ‘no invitation’, allegedly supported by the Communists in the Broad Left coalition, but this was defeated, 182,333 to 154,033 (with 33,948 abstentions).71 Future Labour MP Charles Clarke was, at the time, NUS President and a member of Broad Left, but after the vote, he defined the existing policy of ‘no platform’ as: A student union would do anything it could physically – such as picketing and demonstrating – to prevent people whom the student union decided by a general meeting vote were racists or fascists from speaking on a campus. But prevention would stop short of violence.72

The Times’ Ian Bradley stated that the policy was dropped by the NUS in December 1977 but reinstated at the 1978 NUS conference just four months later.73 Although the moderate NUS leadership opposed it, the far left, including the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS), managed to get the policy reinstated. Trevor Phillips, the incoming NUS

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President and who was personally against the policy, maintained that the policy would be used against the NF, but ‘would oppose any attempt to use it against Mrs Thatcher or other members of major political parties’.74 The outgoing NUS President, Susan Slipman, added, ‘The new policy will not mean the infringement of the democratic right of any members and it will definitely not mean reraising the question of banning Jewish student organisations.’75 The Glasgow University Guardian reported that NOLS supported the policy of ‘no platform’ but made an amendment to the motion supporting this with the statement: that racists and fascists should be denied a platform wherever it is possible to do so through mass collective action, not through individual acts of violence.76

In response, the student newspaper questioned ‘whether this watereddown version of “No Platform” will prevent the more extremist student elements from manipulating the policy to their own ends remains to be seen’.77

‘No Platform’ in the 1980s By 1979, the NF had fallen into disarray, marginalised by the growing anti-fascist movement from one side and by the right-wing shift of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher from the other. However the ‘no platform’ policy was maintained and, many would argue, succumbed to the newly developed interest in ‘identity politics’. Alongside a ‘no platform’ policy for racists, many individual SUs pursued a policy of ‘no platform’ for sexists, such as the SU at LSE.78 Another controversial use of ‘no platform’ came in 1984 when a campaign was launched against the attendance of Young NF leader and deputy editor of NF News, Patrick Harrington, at North London Polytechnic. This campaign was led by the SWP, which had recently enjoyed success with the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism campaigns against the NF between 1977 and 1981.79 The Socialist Worker Student Society believed that Harrington was organising on campus and that his attendance at the Polytechnic was threatening to others. In Socialist Worker Review, the campaigners argued: Harrington is not ‘ordinary’ student … His very presence in the college is a threat to other students and intimidates them, especially in view of the

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NF’s habit of publishing the names and addresses of their political opponents. Freedom of speech for Harrington is incompatible with that of the other students at NLP [North London Polytechnic].80

Despite a court order barring protestors from picketing his lectures, antifascist activists continued in their attempts to prevent Harrington from attending classes. In the end, the Polytechnic allowed Harrington to complete his studies in segregation from the rest of the student population.81 The extension of the ‘no platform’ policy made some of those who had been part of the anti-fascist movement in the 1970s worried about its new applications by SUs in the 1980s. Writing in Socialist Worker Review in the mid-1980s, Lindsey German said: the policy often means little in confronting racism and sexism on more than an individual level. But what is more, it broadens the definition of no platform to an almost unworkable degree. The original no platform went for stopping organised fascists and racists, because their organisation was such a threat. That is not the case with individual members of the rugby club, however noxious they might be. Those people have to be defeated politically, in open and hopefully large union meetings.82

German defended the policy, but argued that it needed to be limited to its original intent—against the NF and other fascist organisations, such as the emerging British National Party. She warned that there were two things that were to be avoided if the NUS was to maintain the policy: The first is to widen the policy far too far, and therefore allow the right wing to make capital from particular issues. The second is to get trapped into allowing the right to pose as defenders of free speech. Nothing could be further from the truth.83

It seems that German was very astute in her prediction. For example, by the 1990s, controversial sections of the far left, such as the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), were campaigning in defence of the British National Party, a successor organisation of the NF, to speak on university campuses.84 Over the last 20 years, far right activists and libertarians, such as those attached to the RCP’s later incarnation, Spiked! Online, have portrayed themselves as the protectors of free speech against the censorious politically correct left, with Britain’s universities at the battleground.85 BNP leader Nick Griffin courted several controversies in the early to -mid-2000s with invitations to speak at Oxford, Cambridge and

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St Andrews’ Universities—all protested by anti-fascists on the principle of ‘no platform’. But ‘no platform’ was also transformed with the shift from a student radicalism based on class politics to a student radicalism deeply indebted to ‘identity politics’.86 The policy of ‘no platform’ on university campuses was extended from opposing fascists and explicit racists to opposing purveyors of ‘hate speech’ against many other oppressed groups, primarily women and the LGBTIQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans Intersex Queer*) community. As Theresa O’Keefe has written, feminist and LGBTIQ activists pushed for the NUS to expand the ‘no platform’ policy to include ‘misogyny and transmisogyny in an attempt to make campuses safe spaces for those hurt by these ideas and practices’, basing this practice not just on the anti-fascist policy of ‘no platform’ but on the feminist idea of ‘safe spaces’, which had been developed since the 1970s.87

Conclusion ‘No platform’ was developed as a specific tactic to prevent the encroachment of the NF (and the Monday Club) onto university campuses in the mid-1970s. However, over the last 40 years, the policy has been used by different sections of the student population to oppose various political opponents deemed to be ‘beyond the pale’. This has led to accusations that the policy has been open to misinterpretation and abuse by certain student groups, threatening free speech on university campuses. This chapter has sought to show that before it became a widely used tactic by various student groups, ‘no platform’ had a discreet and specific context to be used in an explicitly anti-fascist framework. Contemporary applications of the policy seem to be removed from its historical context and used in different ways than originally intended in the 1970s. A separate debate among contemporary student activists is whether the transformation of the ‘no platform’ policy is a suitable strategy for tackling oppression and discrimination on the university campus.

Notes

1.  Helen Lewis, ‘What the row over banning Germaine Greer is really about’, New Statesman (27 October 2015). http://www.newstatesman. com/politics/feminism/2015/10/what-row-over-banning-germainegreer-really-about (accessed 28 December 2015); Ian Dunt, ‘Safe space

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or free speech? The crisis around debate at UK universities’, Guardian (6 February 2015). http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/ feb/06/safe-space-or-free-speech-crisis-debate-uk-universities (accessed 28 December 2015). 2. Charlie Kimber, ‘Standing Up to Ukip’s Racism’, Socialist Review, no. 391 (May 2015). http://socialistreview.org.uk/391/standing-ukips-racism (accessed 28 December 2015). 3. Phil Piratin, Our Flag Stays Red (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1978); Nigel Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000). 4. Morris Beckman, The 43 Group (London: Centerprise, 1999); David Renton, Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Britain in the 1940s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 81–101; Graham Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism after 1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007). 5. Edward Thompson, Fascist Threat to Britain (London: CPGB pamphlet, 1947), 14–15. 6. D.S. Lewis, Illusions of Grandeur: Mosley, Fascism and British Society, 1931–1981 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 248–252; Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts to the National Front (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), 246–249. 7. Roger Eatwell, Fascism: A History (London: Pimlico, 2003), 336. 8. Lewis, Illusions of Grandeur, 248; Roger Eatwell, ‘Continuity and Metamorphosis: Fascism in Britain since 1945’, in S. Larsen (ed.), Modern Europe After Fascism (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1998), 1200; Thurlow, Fascism in Britain, 259. 9. Evan Smith, ‘A Bulwark Diminished? The Communist Party, the SWP and Anti-Fascism in the 1970 s’, Socialist History Journal 35 (2009), 59–80. 10. Satnam Virdee, ‘Anti-racism and the Socialist Left, 1968–1979’, in Evan Smith and Matthew Worley (eds), Against the Grain: The British Far Left from 1956 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 209–228. 11. See: M. Hanna, ‘The National Front and Other Right-Wing Organisations’, Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies 3, nos 1–2 (1974), 49–55; Mark Pitchford, The Conservative Party and the Extreme Right, 1945–1975 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 181–219. 12.  The Red Mole, 18 September 1972, 1. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Jodi Burkett, Constructing Post-Imperial Britain: Britishness, ‘Race’ and the Radical Left in the 1960s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) 14. 17. Ibid., 14; Jeremy Moon and Martin Holland, ‘A Review of NUS Politics: From Protest to Moderation’, Political Quarterly 51, no. 4 (October 1980), 503.

222  E. Smith 18. ‘NUS v Fascists’, The Warwick Boar, 2 May 1974, 2. 19. As cited in, ‘The Dialectics of Freedom’, Patterns of Prejudice 8, no. 3 (1974), 13. 20. Ibid., 13. 21. Ibid., 12–13. 22.  NUS press release, ‘NUS Statement on Racism’, 16 April 1974, MSS 280/54/1, NUS papers, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick. 23. Ibid. 24. See correspondence to NUS President John Randall by various unions in the file MSS 280/54/1, NUS papers, MRC. 25.  New Statesman, 10 May 1974; 17 May 1974. 26. ‘NUS v Fascists’, 2. 27. Ibid. 28.  Red Weekly, 12 April 1974, 13. 29. LSE International Socialists, The Red Agitator (London: LSE IS pamphlet, 1974), 2–3. 30. Ibid., 6. 31. CPGB PC, ‘The Fight Against Racism and Fascism’ (22 May 1974) CP/ CENT/PC/13/05, CPGB Archives, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester. 32.  CPGB PC, ‘The Fight Against Racism and Fascism (no date) CP/ CENT/PC/13/05, LHASC. 33. Roderick D. Buchanan, Playing with Fire: The Controversial Career of Hans J. Eysenck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 300–301. 34. LSE CPGB Branch, ‘Thuggery & Fascism & Exit of Socialism’, CP/ CENT/STAT/03/02, LHASC. 35.  Guardian, 9 April 1974. 36. Ibid. 37.  Guardian, 16 April 1974. 38. Steve Parry, ‘Students Against Racism and Fascism’, Labour Monthly (June 1974), 259. 39. Mike Power, The Fascist Threat: A Young Communist Review of Fascist and Authoritarian Trends (Manchester: YCL pamphlet, 1974), 11. 40.  Frank Watters, ‘Birmingham’s Lead in Fight Against Racialism’, Comment, 10 August 1974, 250. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43.  Red Weekly, 29 March 1974. 44. Ibid. 45. ‘Fists Against Fascists’, International Socialism 1, no. 70 (June 1974) 5. 46. Ibid. 47. See: Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain, 120.



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48. Ibid. 49. Lord Justice Scarman, The Red Lion Square Disorders of 15 June 1974: Report of Inquiry by the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Scarman, OBE (1975), 8. 50. Ibid. 51. Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain, 120; Scarman, The Red Lion Square Disorders of 15 June 1974, 11. 52. Copsey, Anti-Fascism in Britain, 120. 53.  Morning Star, 21 June 1974, 54. Ibid. 55. Dave Hann, Physical Resistance: A Hundred Years of Anti-Fascism (London: Zero Books, 2013) 250–251. 56. NUS, The Myth of Red Lion Square (London: NUS pamphlet, 1974) 21–22. 57. Evan Smith, ‘Bridging the Gap: The British Communist Party and the Limits of the State in Tackling Racism’, in Evan Smith (ed.), Europe’s Expansions and Contractions (Adelaide: Australian Humanities Press, 2010) 308. 58. ‘Fists Against Fascists’, 5. 59. Colin Sparks, Fascism and the National Front (London: SWP pamphlet, 1978), 41. 60. Dave Cook, A Knife at the Throat of Us All: Racism and the National Front (London: CPGB pamphlet, 1978), 28. 61.  Labour Party NEC, Statement by the National Executive Committee: Response to the National Front (London: Labour Party pamphlet, 1978), 3. 62. IMG, Fascism: How to Smash It (London: IMG pamphlet, 1974), 11. 63. Guardian, 23 March 1977. 64. Alan Elsner, ‘Race, Tolerance and the NUS’, New Statesman (13 May 1977), 638. 65. Bruce Fell, ‘Red Fascists?’, The Beaver, 3 May 1978, 1. 66. Elsner, ‘Race, tolerance and the NUS’, 638. 67. Bernard Lewis, ‘The Anti-Zionist Resolution’, Foreign Affairs 55 (1976), 54. 68. David Cesarani, ‘Anti-Zionism in Britain, 1922–2002: Continuities and Discontinuities’, Journal of Israeli History 25, no. 1 (2006) 146. 69.  The Times, 26 November 1977. 70. Noah Lucas, ‘Jewish Students, the Jewish Community and the “Campus War” in Britain’, Patterns of Prejudice 19, no. 4 (1985) 27–34. 71.  Guardian, 1 April 1977. 72. Cited in ibid. 73.  The Times, 7 April 1978. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid.

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76. ‘NUS—Conference Report’, Glasgow University Guardian, 22 April 1978, 3. 77. Ibid. 78. Colin Bates, ‘Hot Gossip Protest’, The Beaver, 11 March 1981, 3; Mary Middleton, ‘Not So Hot…’, Spare Rib (May 1981) 17. 79.  For a history of the Anti-Nazi League, see: David Renton, When We Touched the Sky: The Anti-Nazi League 1977–1981 (Cheltenham: New Clarion Press, 2006). 80. Paul McGarr and Ginny Holland, ‘A Rat Crawls Out’, Socialist Review (June 1984) 24. 81.  The Times, 8 January 1985, 3. 82. Lindsey German, ‘No Platform: Free Speech for All?’, Socialist Worker Review (April 1986), 12. 83. Ibid. 84.  ‘Workers Against Racism’, http://powerbase.info/index.php/Workers_ Against_Racism (accessed 14 October 2016). 85. Mick Hume, ‘What’s new about no platform mania?’, Spiked Online (8 October 2015) http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/whatsnew-about-no-platform-mania/17526#.WAIWsFtXMy4 (accessed 15 October 2016). 86. For a discussion of this shift to ‘identity politics’, see: Andrew Pearmain, The Politics of New Labour: A Gramscian Analysis (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2011) 214–236. 87. Theresa O’Keefe, ‘Open Space: Making Feminist Sense of No-Platforming’, Feminist Review 113 (2016), 86.

Author Biography Evan Smith is a Visiting Adjunct Fellow in the School of History and International Relations at Flinders University, South Australia. He has written widely on the left, anti-racism and social movements in Britain and Australia. His monograph, British Communism and the Politics of Race, is forthcoming as part of Brill’s Historical Materialism series.

CHAPTER 10

‘Don’t Bank on Apartheid’: The National Union of Students and the Boycott Barclays Campaign Jodi Burkett

Introduction On 24 November 1986, Barclays Bank announced that they were pulling out of South Africa. News reports in the UK focused on the commercial reasons for the decision and cited the fact that Barclays’ profits from South Africa had dropped from 25 to 8% in recent years.1 The Times was more sceptical of this view, suggesting that ‘the bank’s decision to quit South Africa has been motivated almost entirely by political reasons’.2 These ‘political reasons’ were the ‘severe pressure’ that Barclays had been under from anti-apartheid groups, particularly ‘demonstrations outside its branches’.3 What these British accounts fail to mention was the vital input of students across the UK in staging these demonstrations and maintaining this pressure on Barclays. Reporters outside the UK were clearer about this connection. Writing for the Los Angeles Times from Johannesburg, Michael Parks quoted Vicky Phillips, the President of the

J. Burkett (*)  School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK PO1 3AS © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_10

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National Union of Students (NUS), saying that Barclays’ decision was a ‘major victory’ in their campaign. Although, even here, the scale of the NUS campaign was misunderstood, as it is suggested that it was a 2-year campaign rather than the 16 years that the NUS had been campaigning for Barclays to leave South Africa.4 There is remarkably little historical literature about the Boycott Barclays campaign, given its prominence as a key decisive factor in British financial disinvestment from South Africa and weakening of the apartheid regime. In a press statement issued in 1991, the African National Congress (ANC) argued that ‘Financial sanctions [were] … a critical pressure point which has pushed the process of political transformation’.5 According to Roger Fieldhouse, whether Barclays’ withdrawal ‘was the result of anti-apartheid campaigning or the state of the South African economy is questionable, but Barclays did admit that its withdrawal was brought about primarily by the adverse effect on its customer base’.6 In an interview with Sir John Quinton, who became chairman of Barclays in 1987, Nerys John has noted that what most concerned the bank was its losses within the student market, what it saw as ‘its business of the future’.7 Given this, it is surprising that student actions as part of the Boycott Barclays campaign are either neglected or only mentioned in passing.8 John herself, now Community Relations Manager for De Beers, is somewhat dismissive of the involvement of students in the campaign, although she does credit the ‘strong working relationship which developed between the AAM and the NUS in the early 1970s’ as a significant factor in the Barclays withdrawal.9 The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) itself, in reflecting on its activities, asserted that students ‘were at the forefront of Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigns’.10 However, the description of what students did as part of the movement tends to focus on their physical activities rather than leadership or development of the movement itself. This chapter aims to put students back in the centre of the historical understanding of Barclays’ withdrawal from South Africa. It argues that student activism, and the leadership of the NUS, were instrumental in the success of the campaign to get Barclays to disinvest from South and Southern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. More broadly, this activity is revealing about the nature and effectiveness of transnational solidarity activism and the role of students in social movement activism across Britain and internationally in this period.11 This chapter will begin by outlining some of the context of the apartheid system, and the British

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movement of opposition to apartheid. It will then explore the relationship between the AAM and the NUS before going into more detail about the specific actions and activities being undertaken by the NUS and British students as part of the Boycott Barclays campaign and to oppose apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s.

Apartheid and Anti-Apartheid Activity in the UK The apartheid regime in South Africa was established in 1948 with the election of the National Party, and by the 1960s was the subject of extensive international protest throughout the West.12 International calls for a boycott of apartheid South Africa were growing in the late 1950s, particularly after the All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana in 1958.13 However, it was the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960, in which South African police shot and killed 69 protesters, that ‘awakened global consciousness and propelled stronger global calls for the boycott of apartheid South Africa’.14 Håkan Thörn has argued that the global anti-apartheid movement was crucial in the ‘construction of an emerging global civil society’.15 While Johnson argues that the roots of global civil society should be seen emerging much further back, he agrees that widespread agreement on the need to dismantle apartheid was a key defining feature of the humanism that underlines global civil society.16 Several scholars point to a shift in international norms that was taking place in the 1960s which made it increasingly difficult for South Africa to be accepted into mainstream international circles. From the early 1960s the UN passed a series of resolutions calling for arms embargos against the South African state, calling for member states to ‘enlighten’ their own publics ‘on the evils of apartheid’, and for an end to ‘cultural, educational, and sporting ties with South Africa’.17 Despite these activities, it has been suggested by Guelke that during the 1960s ‘business and the political establishment could get away with making rhetorical denunciations of apartheid’ and that it was not until the 1970s that they were under significant pressure to do something to end the apartheid system.18 What exactly these activities should be remained a significant feature of debate within political and business circles throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The main fracture within this debate was whether it would be more effective to isolate the South African state to try to force them to change, or to work with them and promote incremental changes.

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Those who argued for the isolation of South Africa claimed that such activity would impair the South African economy and their ability ‘to sustain the apartheid-based political and social system’. The isolation of South Africa also had the symbolic importance of demonstrating that ‘an apartheid-based South Africa … [was] a pariah deserving of isolation’. On the other side, those who were against the isolation of South Africa feared that the impacts on the economy would be felt most keenly by black South Africans and that without the involvement of Western companies and states, the treatment of these people would deteriorate further.19 Within Britain this debate largely aligned with political divisions, with those on the left arguing for the isolation of South Africa and those on the right suggesting that it was only by working with South Africa that real change could be effected. However, by the end of the 1980s, as the South African apartheid regime was feeling the strain, the arguments for boycotts, sanctions and divestment were winning out.20 Boycotts, sanctions and disinvestment (BDS) campaigns were not, of course, uniquely directed against South Africa. They have been widely used by the international community both before and since the South African campaign to encourage states to change their ways, make specific decisions (for example, about nuclear proliferation) or change political leaders. Boycotting is also used by protesters to present an ‘alternative narrative’ to the one presented by the regime.21 South Africa was subject to widespread boycotts and sanctions, perhaps the most successful of which was the sporting boycott, which ranged from stopping tours of South African athletes and trips by other athletes to South Africa to the banning of South Africa from the Olympics between 1964 and 1992. However, while many protesters saw sporting and cultural boycotts as important for the isolation of apartheid South Africa, it was economic disinvestment that most people expected would really hurt the South African government and force real changes to the system.

Disinvestment and the Targeting of Barclays Anti-apartheid protesters faced an uphill battle in convincing companies to divest from South Africa, particularly if their activities in South Africa were profitable. Business and financial scholars have investigated the impact of divestment, or the refusal to do so, on companies and their stakeholders, focusing in particular on American firms. Within the US context it has been found that those companies which signed up to

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the Sullivan principles, seven principles for the treatment of workers in South Africa developed in 1977 which some American firms signed up to voluntarily, may have initially suffered a set-back in their stock prices, but with the end of apartheid they recovered more quickly and out-performed non-signatories.22 The decision to adhere to these principles, or indeed to withdraw from activity within South Africa, heralded a new way of thinking for top corporate managers who placed other issues above simple economic ones.23 They may, however, have been responding to wider cultural changes. There is evidence that from the mid-1980s ‘the number of investors using social/ethical criteria in their decisionmaking process exploded’.24 Beznar, Nigh and Kwok found that by the end of the 1980s most American companies had withdrawn from South Africa.25 Even more challenging to campaigners was convincing financial institutions, namely banks, to divest from their activity within South Africa. By the mid-1980s there were hints that this demand might be winning out. In 1985 Chase Manhattan, a major American bank and international creditor bank, ‘refused to roll over a maturing [South African] debt’.26 In the wake of this decision, all major banks began refusing to give loans to companies within South Africa.27 It is within this international context that Barclays decided to withdraw from South Africa. However, to fully understand this decision we need to go back and explore when and why Barclays was singled out for attention by antiapartheid and student activists. In the late 1960s plans were being drawn up by the fascist Portuguese government for a new dam in Mozambique. The Cabora Bassa Dam project was to be funded by Barclays. Barclays was first targeted by campaigners interested in stopping the building of the dam. Upon further investigation, campaigners uncovered the extent of Barclays’ dealings within South Africa where its subsidiary, Barclays National, was the largest bank. Barclays’ activities were deemed to be ‘playing a crucial role in propping up the South African economy’ as ‘the British bank most deeply involved in South Africa’.28 Barclays was also, in 1969, making a concerted effort to build its share of the student banking market, which brought the bank even more squarely into the sights of the NUS and student activists. In 1969 Barclays changed the face of banking in the student market by offering all new student customers a free gift described as a ‘dazzling white plastic zip-case which contains a sergeantmajor type clip-board, a ball-point pen, and an engagement diary as well

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as folders for bank statement and cheque book’. This gift seems to have been a remarkable success as they quickly ran out of the first 50,000 ordered and had to order an additional 50,000. As a result of this campaign, Barclays claimed that they had taken ‘48% of the 1969 vintage of university freshmen’ as new customers.29 However, even as they were declaring their success in the student banking market, Barclays was aware of the boycott campaign against them which the NUS had launched at their April conference in 1969, and were concerned about the impact it might have. They were so concerned that senior bank officials, including the chairman of Barclays DCO (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas), Sir Frederick Seebohm, agreed to ‘meet student leaders’ in November 1970, and it was reported that ‘branch managers are… having earnest talks with small groups of students’.30 John notes that Barclays’ share of the student market declined from 23 to 13%, while the Los Angeles Times suggests it fell from 27% at the beginning of the 1970s to 15% by 1986.31 By either reckoning, this was a significant loss. Exactly what students were doing to educate freshmen about the Barclays campaign will be discussed in more detail below. First, some background on the AAM, the NUS and their relationship.

The AAM and the NUS In Britain a boycott movement—boycotting South African products—began in 1959. In March 1960, around the same time as the Sharpeville massacre the AAM was established in Britain.32 The AAM was a relatively small organisation that suffered from unstable financing throughout the 1960s and early 1970s but grew in popularity and became increasingly established in the late 1970s and 1980s. Despite its ongoing financial woes, the AAM was able to punch above its weight and have a disproportionately large impact on popular opinion. Until the late 1960s the AAM focused its efforts on governments and the United Nations hoping to get strong international sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. The AAM relied quite heavily on student action and involvement for its success during the 1960s. In 1963 the AAM reported that they had 1138 full-time members with one-third of them students.33 The following year, 1964, the AAM enrolled 543 fulltime ‘ordinary’ members and 641 full-time student members.34 Into the 1970s, Gurney argues, AAM identified students as one of its four key constituencies.35

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While the AAM did rely on student activity and support, there were concerns raised within the organisation about the impact of student involvement on their wider reputation. They did not want to be associated with ‘student politics’ particularly after 1968. At the end of the 1960s they shifted their focus towards exposing ‘the role of individual firms in collaboration with apartheid’.36 Their campaign outlined in 1967 included three strands focussing on ‘how individual firms profited from apartheid’, attempting to persuade ‘trade unions, church bodies, local council and universities to sell any shares in companies in S[outh] A[frica]’ and calling on the British government ‘to curb investment and loans in SA’.37 By the early 1970s the AAM, which had initially been dominated by those in exile from South Africa and middle-and upperclass English people aligned to the Liberal party, was moving increasingly leftward.38 This move left coincided with changes being made within the NUS which facilitated the two groups working together. The NUS was, from its inception in 1922, an internationally interested organisation.39 However, after the Second World War the NUS was concerned to not become a ‘political debating forum’, which was reflected in Clause 3 of the constitution prohibiting the discussion of any issues at NUS conference that did not address students because they were students. This clause came under increasing pressure throughout the 1960s and was finally removed from the constitution in 1969, allowing the organisation to take a political stance on issues such as apartheid. In fact, being able to have a policy on apartheid was one of the main arguments used by those wanting to change the NUS constitution. Throughout the 1960s there were discussions at NUS conferences about the impact of apartheid on access to education in South Africa—which could be constitutionally discussed—which points to a widespread concern among student delegates to NUS conference about equality and racial discrimination and the impact of the work of the AAM on students. Before their change of constitution, the NUS had supported the fight against apartheid by focusing on the academic boycott, calling on British graduates not to take up positions in South Africa, and supporting the cultural and sporting boycotts, which sometimes meant condemning individual university sporting teams who took up invitations to tour South Africa, as they did, for example, when a joint Oxford and Cambridge rugby tour was planned in 1963.40 In the early 1970s the NUS and the AAM set out to work more closely together, setting up a joint committee and holding a series of

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joint conferences, meetings and events. In July 1973 they held a joint conference on Southern Africa in Birmingham. This was the second conference of this type, with 80 delegates representing 24 colleges and universities, which was double the attendance of the previous year.41 All manner of activities designed to oppose apartheid in Southern Africa were discussed at this meeting, including the Barclays Boycott which, it was agreed, did not aim simply ‘to lose the bank money’. Barclays was seen as an ‘appropriate target’ because of its heavy involvement in Southern Africa. The campaign was designed to ‘involve the mass of students, and aim at raising consciousness about the situation in SA, increasing student involvement and activity in all aspects of the campaign’.42 The campaign was going to be pursued by ‘counteract[ing] Barclays’ own propaganda to freshers …[and] suggest[ing] the Co-op Bank as an alternative’, as well as forcing Barclays to move branches off campuses and pressuring local education authorities not to allow Barclays to tour schools.43 Yet, this boycott was seen as only one aspect of a much wider ranging campaign including academic, cultural, sporting and produce boycotts. Over the next couple of years they continued to hold an annual summer conference, which operated, at least at the outset, as a training forum for the AAM to communicate with student leaders. For example, the 1974 conference opened with numerous speeches outlining the history of NUS policy on Southern Africa and the situation in South Africa more generally.44 The same occurred the following year when the first evening was taken up with outlining the situation in South Africa, showing films and talking about the history of the area and solidarity actions undertaken in Britain to support the struggle.45 This suggests that while there was evidently a keen interest among some students to get involved, the level of information that was readily available to students was somewhat sketchy. While one role of the conferences was clearly to fill an information gap among students, they also set out comprehensive and detailed programmes of action for the NUS and local students’ unions (SUs) to follow. In 1974 it was agreed that the campaign up to that point had been too broad, so it was decided to focus on two main issues: ‘support for the liberation movements’ particularly centred around fundraising; and the ‘disinvestment campaign in solidarity with the liberation movements’. While the Barclays campaign was part of the programme for disinvestment, it was depicted as an extra issue, as it was decided that ‘in

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addition … to run a Boycott Barclays campaign at the start of the year’. This was seen as the ‘ideal’ way of ‘raising the issue of Southern Africa amongst new students and will lead into the other campaigns’.46 The Barclays campaign was not seen as an end in itself, but as a means to draw student attention to the issue and encourage support of the more ‘important’ elements of their solidarity work. This was re-iterated in 1975, and showing solidarity by raising money for independence movements was the primary goal. However, the Boycott Barclays campaign was seen as an ‘integral part of the anti-colloboration [sic] campaign’. The effectiveness of the campaign was argued to be ‘proven by the increase in advertisements from Barclays aimed at students’ and it was seen as ‘the best way to raise anti-apartheid work with freshers’. There was also some discussion about expanding the campaign to address the involvement of other banks within South Africa, particularly the Midland Bank, but it was decided to keep the campaign focused solely on Barclays.47 In 1976, in the wake of the Soweto uprising, the solidarity activity of the AAM and NUS was noted, but NUS leaders were seen as having ‘failed to meet the need of increasing support for the people in the battlegrounds’.48 The main reason given for this lack of success was a ‘lack of co-ordinations and adequate co-operation’ between national antiapartheid network and local organisations. The only successes within the anti-apartheid activity of the NUS were identified as a demonstration on 18 June 1977 ‘commemorating the Soweto uprisings’ and the Barclays disinvestment campaigns, which were seen to have ‘played an important role in developing consciousness and work on Southern Africa’.49 At the end of the 1970s a ‘new approach’ was being suggested which focused much more on ‘practical activities’ rather than education.50 The Boycott Barclays campaign was identified as ‘without a doubt the most successful campaign’ undertaken by the AAM–NUS network and it was reported that ‘a number of University branches [of Barclays] are actually running at a loss’.51 In the early 1980s the Boycott Barclays campaign continued to be a focal point for student activists and it was commented on by the AAM–NUS network that it continued to have ‘growing success”. But it was still felt that more could be done and they planned to hold a ‘national day of picketing’ outside thousands of Barclays branches in early October 1981 in order to ‘provide a focus for action’. The timing of this event was in line with the university year, which was thought to be ‘particularly important for students, as Barclays will be trying to

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get new accounts from first year students’.52 The 1982 conference was the last conference held of the joint AAM and NUS campaigning network. While the activities of both groups carried on and developed, their ability and desire to work together as organisations petered out. Unfortunately, the precise reason for this remains unclear. Overall, the minutes of these conferences depict a relationship in which one organisation, the AAM, provided information and speakers to ‘educate’ another, the NUS, who provided the brawn, the physical bodies, energy and vigour required of the movement.

NUS and Anti-Apartheid Work In April 1970 the NUS passed a comprehensive resolution explicitly condemning all aspects of apartheid in South and Southern Africa. They spent the majority of a day at their conference that month talking about the issues, showing a clear interest and willingness to expend a great deal of time and energy on opposition to apartheid. As part of the resolution, the NUS Executive pledged to ‘launch an immediate publicity campaign to inform students and the general public of the situation in Southern Africa’, to fundraise, to keep pressure on the government to keep up the ban on the sale of arms and to support UN resolutions on sanctions. They also pledged their support of economic and sporting boycotts and encouraged all SUs to ‘investigate, explore and attack any links which may exist between either colleges or members of their governing bodies with Southern Africa’.53 Specifically with reference to the Barclays Boycott, the NUS Executive was instructed to: 1. Lobby the government to put pressure on Barclays Bank to withdraw the capital backing [of the Cabora Bassa dam]… 2. To inform all students of the role of Barclays Bank in this scheme. They ‘deplored’ Barclays’ involvement with the Cabora Bassa dam project in Mozambique and urged all unions to ‘extend full support to the Dambusters Mobilising Committee, and to the “Barclays Bank Campaign” currently being conducted in many Constituent Organisations to withdraw both Student Union Accounts and individual accounts from Barclays and Martins Bank in opposition to that Bank’s policies in Southern Africa’.54

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While the decision at the April 1970 NUS conference was passed by a majority, it was not necessarily an overwhelming majority. It was subject to a card vote which received 144,998 for the policy, 136,087 against, and there were 11,317 spoiled ballots. The NUS Executive still had quite a lot of work to do in communicating the decision to all local SUs and students throughout the UK. Part of the 1970 resolution was certainly about clarifying the situation with constituent unions and ensuring that students were aware of these issues. Mike Terry, who was NUS National Secretary between 1971 and 1973 and went on to become the Executive Secretary of the AAM in 1975, sent out a circular to all SU presidents in March 1972 reminding them that it was NUS policy to oppose any weakening of sanctions against Rhodesia, particularly in that instance opposing the building of the Cabora Bassa dam. He also urged them all to ‘implement NUS policy by Boycotting Barclays and refuse to include Barclays’ ads in your Union Publications’.55 The Times reported that ‘two university publications … refused to carry the bank’s advertisements, and a Southampton newspaper carried the advertisement on its back page, but apologised for it in an editorial on the front.’ It was also reported that Aston Students’ Union in Birmingham had withdrawn their own accounts from Barclays and that approximately 600 students at East Anglia University were withholding their rents until the University switched their accounts away from Barclays. Howard Clark, a student at the University of East Anglia in the late 1960s, remembered how the SU ‘passed resolutions against the university buying apartheid fruit’ and then ‘took up a campaign against Barclays Bank, the most popular bank for British students at that time and, as it happened, the bank used by my university’. Their first activity was to persuade new students not to open accounts with Barclays and try to convince other students to withdraw their accounts from the bank. The second step of the campaign involved withholding rents due to the University that would be paid into a Barclays account. This created a prolonged confrontation with University authorities who, according to Clark, ‘eventually… conceded’.56 Some universities were less reticent about backing the campaign and helped by breaking Barclays’ monopoly of branches on campus, for example at the University of Sussex.57 However, in some places it was less straightforward to get local SUs to implement the Barclays Boycott. The correspondence of Steve Parry, who was International Secretary for the NUS in 1973–1974, with a variety of local SUs shows the difficulty that the NUS executive had

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in convincing some local unions to carry out this policy. In the run-up to the new university year 1973–1974, Steve Parry visited a number of institutions around the country and looked at several of their student handbooks. On a variety of occasions he was shocked or dismayed to see that they contained advertising for Barclays Bank 3 years after it became NUS policy to boycott Barclays. Parry wrote to a number of these unions expressing his dismay. He wrote to John Haynes of St David’s College Lampeter, who replied that the money from Barclays went a long way towards financing the handbook and that ‘there is a feeling in this Union that the other “big three” banks are also heavily committed in South Africa and it would seem incongruous to exclude Barclays from our handbook without excluding the others’.58 This sentiment was reiterated by Iain Picton of the University of Liverpool, who said that they operated ‘a policy of equal opportunity for all banks to advertise in our handbook and participate in our Freshers’ Conference’.59 Yet, for others Parry’s uncovering of Barclays ads were indicative of deeper issues of student financing and student autonomy. As Ian Buxton of the Cardiff Area Students’ Union wrote, they had run out of money halfway through production of the handbook and had been forced to take advertising from Barclays when no one else was willing to pay.60 Perhaps even more troubling was the issue brought up by Dave Chell of Keele University in the summer of 1974. He brought it to Parry’s attention that the SU relied on Dominion Press to print their handbook, as they had done for a number of years, and that despite quite clear instructions not to include advertising from Barclays, Dominion Press went ahead and included it without the SU’s knowledge. Dave Chell had responded to this by terminating Keele’s relationship with Dominion Press but asked Steve Parry how prevalent this practice was throughout the country. Unfortunately, there is no reply to Chell about this matter in the archives. The NUS Executive did not just rely on the actions and activities of local SU presidents but also tried to address students, and the wider public, directly. This they did through the press. They responded directly to Barclays advertising within national newspapers directed at students. One flyer showed the free gift offered by Barclays with the headline ‘Students! This is no ordinary carrot.’ It went on to remind students that: Barclays profit from the exploitation of the Africans and coloured peoples of Southern Africa and for this reason NUS, your union, has for a long time had a policy of boycotting Barclays.61

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Another NUS flyer was equally blunt stating ‘Barclays offers bribes to students.’ It critiqued the national ads that Barclays was running to appeal to students and encouraged students not to let Barclays PR staff ‘kid’ them into thinking that Barclays was working to improve the lives of black people in South Africa. They made their objection clear, stating ‘Apartheid is not just racism for racism’s sake. It’s racism for profit’.62 Steve Parry also wrote letters to the editor of national newspapers directly attacking Barclays’ targeting of the student audience. In a letter to the editor of the Observer on 7 August 1974, Parry argued that: ‘The need [by Barclays] to present this glowing image, enticing students to join Barclays by offers of various trinkets is obviated by the fact that Barclays Bank is banned from a large number of campuses, refused advertising in student publications and is the subject of a boycott campaign’.63 The NUS believed that the fact that Barclays was more proactive about providing new customers with free gifts, as mentioned above, was due to the activity of the AAM and the NUS calling for Barclays to withdraw from South Africa and the impact this was having on their market share. Campaigning at individual universities about disinvestment became increasingly widespread from the middle of the 1970s. The campaigns were launched at a number of universities with varying success. Students at Hull, Manchester, Swansea and Leeds all took up such campaigns and saw themselves as part of a national movement with success at each institution supporting the work of students elsewhere.64 The University of Hull had clear and direct links to Reckitt and Colman, a large company founded in 1840, which had extensive international holdings including in South Africa. Basil Reckitt, the company owner, was Chairman of the University Council in the early 1970s and, therefore, Reckitt and Colman, became the focus for the students’ disinvestment campaign at Hull University. In 1972 more than 2000 students voted in a SU meeting to stage a sit-in ‘directed mainly against Reckitt and Colman’ and they followed up this action with a call for ‘total disinvestment’ of all university holdings in South Africa.65 The SU had done extensive work in tracking the University’s shares in companies beyond Reckitt and Colman who were invested in South Africa providing a list of 15, including Barclays, Boots, Bowater Paper, Midland Bank, Shell and Unilever. The University responded in a typical fashion, as discussed above, claiming that by investing in companies in South Africa they could improve the lot of black Africans. The students, therefore, went to

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great effort to show that the wage differentials between black and white, money spent on educating different ‘races’ and infant mortality rates showed that this was not, in fact, the case. The students at Hull were particularly angered that ‘a seat of learning’ was financially supporting the apartheid regime and gave their fellow students a list of eight things they could do to stop this situation, including joining the AAM, fighting for disinvestment, engaging in the Boycott Barclays campaign and ‘rais[ing] material aid’.66 The disinvestment campaign at Manchester University started around the same time. A general meeting of the SU on 27 October 1972 called for the University authorities to sell shares in companies with interests in South Africa.67 Students at Manchester were particularly clear about the motivations for the disinvestment campaign, stating that the objective was ‘not to undermine the Southern African economy’ but ‘rather to increase the political isolation of these reactionary regimes and provide a concrete gesture of solidarity with the African peoples’.68 Manchester students saw themselves as leading in this area, saying that while SUs around the country were pressing on the issue of disinvestment ‘it is Manchester which leads this campaign—we must demonstrate that it can be effective’.69 When the students’ demands resulted in the University Council referring the issue to an investment sub-committee, the SU held a mass meeting of around 400 students, which led to the occupation of the Council chambers.70 The University released a statement stating their opposition to apartheid, which the occupying students dismissed as ‘liberal sentiment’ and ‘white paternalism’.71 Once again, the students reiterated that their objective was not to improve the wages of black Africans in Southern Africa but to ‘see the [apartheid] regime… brought down’.72 This activity at Manchester University did not die away. Sarah Webster has found that there were 12 protests held at Manchester around issues of apartheid during the 1970s and that this remained relatively stable, and slightly increased in the 1980s, when there were 13 demonstrations about these issues.73 While the same issues were being raised by students at Swansea, there is a hint within their archived materials that there was a lower general awareness of the South African situation at the University. The socialist society produced a leaflet titled ‘Investment in Racism’ in 1973, which outlined the University’s investments in South Africa. The first part of this pamphlet, however, was devoted to detailing background information about what apartheid was and how the apartheid regime worked. It

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also acknowledged that students might be asking ‘what does Britain do about all this?’ They did, of course, assume that given this information students would want to do something to help, and it gave them concrete avenues for action, particularly focusing on encouraging the University to pull out of its South African investments. The Swansea campaign also made explicit links to companies in South Africa and Rhodesia and pointed out how investments in South Africa were used to undermine existing sanctions against Rhodesia. The Swansea campaign ended their pamphlet by stating that ‘whether conscious of it or not the members of Swansea University College Council have blood on their hands—did you sleep well last night Principal?’74 At Leeds University, known for its political activism in the late 1960s, there was also a strong disinvestment campaign. However, Leeds was not leading in this area, as their campaign did not begin to make real headway until the end of the 1970s. In 1978 the disinvestment campaign within the SU published a pamphlet which detailed more than 20 companies with South African subsidiaries that Leeds University had investments in. The University did have a policy of not investing in any company whose total interests in South Africa exceeded 5%, but this meant that they continued to make investments in large companies like Unilever and Barclays whose total monetary investments in the country were extensive but who did not meet the 5% threshold because of the size of the business.75 The disinvestment campaign detailed what activities they were undertaking, including a public meeting and ‘Week of Action’ in March 1978. They were also clearly aware of actions and activities being taken at other institutions, mentioning the selling of Barclays shares by Aberdeen University, the disinvestment from Consolidated Goldfields by Birkbeck College and the activities undertaken by staff at Leicester, Durham and East Anglia.76 Across the country local student groups used disinvestment campaigns, which often featured activities around the Boycott Barclays campaign, combined with more local concerns, to promote their antiapartheid work. The existing archival materials suggest that activities around anti-apartheid in general, and disinvestment and the Boycott Barclays campaign in particular, continued and developed into the mid1980s. As Sarah Webster has shown, there were four times more protests at the London School of Economics against apartheid in the 1980s than there had been during the 1970s.77

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By the early 1980s the evidence shows that students across the UK were aware of the Boycott Barclays campaign and that eschewing banking with Barclays was a key marker of student identity. A number of people interviewed who were students in the early 1980s spoke about how refusing to bank with Barclays was seen as almost obvious or ‘natural’; that ‘fitting in’ as a student at this time meant that you could not bank with Barclays. However, there were indications that the Barclays campaign was still not generally known about beyond campuses. One interviewee, Kay Peggs, who was a student at Portsmouth Polytechnic in the early 1980s and became the chair of the anti-apartheid group on campus and secretary of the Portsmouth city AAM group, described not being aware of the Boycott Barclays campaign when she first arrived in Portsmouth and taking out a Barclays account because there was a Barclays branch in the SU. However, as soon as she found out ‘that it was heavily associated with South Africa and apartheid’, she says, ‘I had to move my bank.’78 There was no question about this action and Peggs identified it as the first action that required her to think more deeply about how her own day-to-day activities helped to prop up regimes like that in South Africa.

Conclusion The overall success of the Boycott Barclays campaign indicates that there was quite a high level of support for this position throughout the student population even if, at times, the NUS Executive did not always have an easy time convincing local SUs to follow policies set down at conference. By the late 1970s the tide against Barclays appeared to have changed among students and the NUS Executive no longer had to fight so hard within its own ranks. The Boycott Barclays campaign also illuminates a number of crucial issues to the history of students and student activism. The first of these is the issue of generation. Already between the decision at NUS conference in 1970 to boycott Barclays and Steve Parry’s discovery in 1973 that a number of SUs were including advertising for Barclays within their handbooks, there had been at least one generation of students. The majority of those in their second or third (or beyond) year of university in 1970 were no longer students in 1973. This raises a number of questions for people interested in promoting student activism and activity—mechanisms for creating and ensuring an ‘institutional’ memory are needed. It

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also means that the winds of change can blow quite rapidly through student organisations, making them appear, particularly from the outside, like they are fickle and ever-changing, or preventing those on the inside from effectively building upon the successes of the past. For scholars of students and student activity it encourages us to look very carefully at timing and to expect quick changes of opinion and therefore, perhaps, to concentrate on longer term trends. It also encourages us to look for specific individuals and trace changes in attitudes and ideas through these individuals. Close attention to the issue of short student generations also allows us to delve into questions about how student organisations train new members—both officially and unofficially—as well as how myths, stories and legends of previous actions and individuals are created and communicated among students. A second issue that the Barclays campaign elucidates is that of student control and autonomy. It was clear to Dave Chell at Keele that in entrusting the Dominion Press to publish the student handbook they ended up with something that did not fit their values. There are significant questions about whether organisations like Dominion Press would dare to directly contravene the instructions of other organisations that it worked with. This provides some insight into how students were perceived and treated. Student autonomy was a key issue for the NUS in this period. This tends to be seen as an issue of having student representation on university governing bodies—and there is no doubt that this is important—but it is also evident in smaller and more unofficial areas like controlling the content of handbooks. This points to a cultural shift away from students as ‘youth’ or ‘young people’ and towards students as adults, expecting and expected to make their own decisions and be responsible for their own lives. Thinking about the development of these issues is important both for cultural and social history generally, and for thinking about the history and development of students and the relationships between students and institutions of higher learning. Finally, the Barclays campaign clearly shows us that there are a multiplicity of voices within student groups—about all issues, all of the time. It, therefore, cautions us from speaking too generally or in too broad terms about ‘students’ believing anything in particular. While this is certainly not unique to students, there is a way in which ‘students’ are seen as more homogenous than other sections of society and, clearly, this is not the case.

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The Boycott Barclays campaign was not an endeavour undertaken solely by students. But it was the action, activity, enthusiasm and principled moral stand taken by students which made it a success. It was also not the only activity that the NUS, and British students more generally, were engaged into oppose apartheid in South and Southern Africa. This campaign shows a great deal of concern within the British student population about the well-being of people around the world. It also shows a deep-seated concern among the majority of British students in this period about equality, especially racial equality, and points to the impact that students can have in effecting real international change.

Notes



1. Andrew Alexander, ‘Barclays cuts back links with S. Africa’, Daily Mail, 15 August 1985. 2.  Michael Hornsby, ‘Barclays to sell interests in SA to Anglo-American Corporation’, The Times, 24 November 1986, 20. 3. ‘Barclays set for pull-out’, Daily Mail, 24 November 1986. 4. Michael Parks, ‘Barclays’ exit biggest pullout yet in S. Africa’, Los Angeles Times, 25 November 1986. 5.  Nerys John, ‘The Campaign against British Bank Involvement in Apartheid South Africa’, African Affairs 99, no. 396 (2000), 415. 6. Roger Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid: A History of the Movement in Britain: A Study in Pressure Group Politics (London: Merlin, 2004), 88. 7. John, ‘The Campaign’. 8. Vernon D. Johnson and Eliot Dickinson, ‘International Norms and the End of Apartheid in South Africa’, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 16, no. 4 (2015), 369. 9. John, ‘The Campaign’, 418. 10. AAM online archives: ‘Forward to freedom: The history of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement 1959–1994’, http://www.aamarchives.org/ who-was-involved/students.html (accessed 30 January 2017). 11. For further discussions of the importance of international solidarity as part of student activism see: Jodi Burkett, ‘The National Union of Students and Transnational Solidarity, 1958–1968’ European Review of History 21, no. 4 (2014), 539–55. 12. The most detailed account of the AAM can be found in: Fieldhouse, Anti-Apartheid: A History of the Movement in Britain. 13. Vernon D. Johnson and Eliot Dickinson, ‘International Norms and the End of Apartheid in South Africa’, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies 16, no. 4 (2015), 366.

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14. Paul Di Stefano and Mostafa Henaway, ‘Boycotting Apartheid from South Africa to Palestine’ Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 26, nos. 9–27 (2014), 20. 15. Håkan Thörn, Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 5. 16. Johnson and Dickinson, ‘International Norms’, 358. 17. Ibid., 367. 18. A. Guelke, Rethinking the Rise and Fall of Apartheid, quoted in Christabel Gurney, ‘A Great Cause’: The Origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959–March 1960’, Journal of Southern African Studies 26, no. 1 (2000), 473. 19. For a discussion of the debate and its impact on businesses see: Beznar, Nigh and Kwok, ‘Effect of Announcements of Withdrawal’, 1634. 20. di Norcia, 870. 21. Di Stefano and Henaway, ‘Boycotting Apartheid’, 21. 22. William B. Lamb, Raman Kumar and Richard E. Wokutch, ‘Corporate Social Performance and the Road to Redemption: Insights from the South Africa Sanctions’, Organizational Analysis 13, no. 1 (2005), 12. 23.  Beznar, Nigh and Kwok, ‘Effect of Announcements of Withdrawal’, 1644–5. 24. Lamb, Kumar and Wokutch, ‘Corporate Social Performance’, 2. 25. Beznar, Nigh and Kwok, ‘Effect of Announcements of Withdrawal’, 1635. 26.  Kathleen C. Schwartzman, ‘Can International Boycotts Transform Political Systems? The Cases of Cuba and South Africa’, Latin American Politics and Society 43, no. 2 (2001), 117. 27. Johnson and Dickinson, ‘International Norms and the End of Apartheid in South Africa’, 372. 28. ELTSA [End Loans to Southern Africa], the Haselmere Group, the AntiApartheid Movement, ‘Are you banking on apartheid?’, ca. 1974 (BL YD.2005.b.1493). 29.  Tim Devlin, ‘The battle for student bank accounts’, The Times, 31 October 1970, 12. 30. Ibid. 31. John, ‘The Campaign’; Parks, ‘Barclays’ exit biggest pullout yet’. 32. Gurney, ‘The 1970’. 33. Rhodes House: MSS AAM 13, Annual report, September 1963. [Hereafter all AAM annual reports will be listed by date only.] 34. AAM, Annual report, 1964. 35. Gurney, ‘The 1970s’, 472. 36. AAM Annual Report, September 1967. 37. Gurney, ‘The 1970s’, 473. 38. Ibid., 476.

244  J. Burkett 39. Burkett, ‘Transnational Solidarity’ and Georgina Brewis, A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond, 1880–1980 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 40. NUS, Annual Conference, April 1963, 157. 41.  NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa, Aston Joint Union Birmingham, 6–8 July 1973. 42. Modern Records Centre (MRC), NUS/280/35/1. 43. Ibid. 44. NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa, Keele University, 5–7 July 1974. 45. NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa, Salford, July 1975. 46. NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa, Keele University, 5–7 July 1974. 47. NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa, Salford, July 1975. 48. NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa, Loughborough, 1–3 July 1977, 1. 49. Ibid. 50. NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa leaflet, University of Warwick, 6–8 July 1979. 51. NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa, report on conference 1979. 52. NUS/AAM Conference on South Africa, Campaign paper, July 1981, 3–4. 53. NUS, Summary and Minutes of Proceedings of Annual Conference, April 1970, 85–7. 54. Ibid. 55. MRC, NUS/280/32/11. 56. Howard Clark, ‘Actions and Solidarity campaign with South Africa’, War Resisters’ International http://wri-irg.org/node/5181 (accessed 10 May 2017). 57. Devlin, ‘The battle’. 58.  Letter from John Haynes to Steve Parry, 19 November 1973, MRC, NUS/280/32/11. 59.  Letter from Iain Picton to Steve Parry, 11 October 1973, MRC, NUS/280/32/11. 60.  Letter from Ian Buxton to Steve Parry, 27 September 1973, MRC, NUS/280/32/11. 61.  Letter from Dave Chell to Steve Parry, 17 July 1974, MRC, MSS/230/32/11. 62.  ‘Barclays offers bribes to students’, NUS pamphlet MRC/NUS/ MSS/280/32/11. 63. MRC, NUS/280/32/11. 64. ‘Hull University Finances This’, Hull Student’s Union Publication [no date (1977?)]. 65. Ibid., 1–3, ff.

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66. Ibid., 19. 67. AAM online archives, http://www.aamarchives.org/file-view/category/ 32-students.html?limitstart=0 (accessed 10 May 2017). 68.  The Manchester Connection (no date [February 1973?]). 69. Ibid. 70. Manchester connection, no. 8 (no date [Thursday 15 February 1972?]). 71. ‘Manchester University Council Statement’, quoted in Manchester connection, no. 8. 72. ‘Statement of those occupying [Manchester University] council chambers’, quoted in Manchester connection, no. 8. 73. Sarah Webster, ‘Protest Activity in the British Student Movements, 1944 to 2011’ (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2015), 148. 74.  ‘Investment in Racism’, University College Swansea Socialist Society [1973]. 75.  Anti-Apartheid Bulletin of Leeds University, No. 2, South Africa Disinvestment Group. February 1978. 76. Ibid. 77. Webster, ‘Protest Activity’, 150. 78. Jodi Burkett interview with Kay Peggs. Portsmouth, 29 October 2015.

Author Biography Jodi Burkett is Principal Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth. She received her PhD from York University, Toronto, Canada in 2009 and has been living and working in the UK since 2006. Her first book, Constructing Post-Imperial Britain: Britishness, ‘Race’ and the Radical Left in the 1960s, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. Her research interests revolve around themes of anti-racist activism, solidarity and post-imperial British national identity.

PART IV

Student Activism: Practice and Theory

CHAPTER 11

Rebels and Rustici: Students and the Formation of the Irish State Steven Conlon

Introduction The Irish student movement was born from an admiration of the fathers of Irish nationalism and republicanism and an unwavering belief that students were their own constituency. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, student activists regularly evoked the memories and deeds of prominent past students, such as Theobald Wolfe Tone, Thomas Davis, John Blake Dillon and William Colbert, at rallies and in speeches. The evidence, however, suggests that many of the aforementioned protagonists, especially Wolfe Tone, were not as rebellious in their student days as their admirers would like to think. Nonetheless, the apotheosis by student leaders, of many of these personas, persisted.1 Men like Wolfe Tone and Davis organised student debates on key political issues, which were inflammatory to both state and college authorities. They used their university experience to experiment and develop the ideologies and skills that would later make them synonymous

S. Conlon (*)  Dublin City University, 122 Castleforbes Square, Castleforbes Road, Dublin 1, Ireland © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_11

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with the shaping of a nation. Wolfe Tone remarked towards the end of his life that he looked back on his ‘college days with regret, and I preserve, and ever shall, a most sincere affection for the University of Dublin’.2 Robert Emmet, a prominent member of the Trinity Historical Society,3 was expelled from the college on ‘suspicion of seditious conspiracy’ after a Trinity College investigation into student sympathisers of the United Irishmen.4 It was through Emmet’s participation in the Historical Society debates that he came to acknowledge the ‘falsehood of the history of Ireland … by the accident of having to take part in a college discussion on the Irish massacre and rebellion of 1641’.5 Emmet later admitted that ‘this made a mark on me … and much changed my life’.6 Lord Clare7 described Emmet as the ‘most wicked and extreme’ of the college radicals.8 Emmet would later be exemplified by Na Fianna Éireann,9 to nationalist boys, of what young people could achieve for the nationalist cause.10 It was also in the Historical Society that Thomas Davis, the founder of the Young Ireland movement,11 first preached the doctrine of nationalism.12 Davis was raised a unionist but changed his views during his studies in Trinity College, influenced heavily by Thomas Wallis, an older student who convinced him that the nationalist ideology was worthy of pursuit.13 While studying, he and John Blake Dillon (educated in Maynooth and Trinity) joined the Repeal Association,14 in April 1841. Their college society life was often marred with controversy. McDowell and Webb remarked on this behaviour: Their loyalty was scandalised by open admiration of the ideology of a government with whom the Sovereign was at war; their clerical ears were offended by the outspoken defence of infidelity; their Protestantism felt itself menaced by ever-widening Catholic claims; and their pockets were threatened by the prospects of an agrarian revolution.15

1900–1914 The organisational landscape of the proto-student movement was one of grand debating societies and few students’ unions or councils. Debating societies, such as Trinity College’s Historical Society, were the main political outlets for students and these were often the platforms used by nationalist politicians to espouse concepts of democracy repugnant to the Crown. However, for all their rhetoric, most students mirrored their parents and general Irish opinion on the direction of the nation.

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Some students were not content waiting for reform, especially on the topic of national identity, and engaged in direct action. A group of Catholic University of Ireland (CUI)16 students, infuriated with the delay in establishing a National University of Ireland, began to hold regular protests. In 1904, St. Stephen’s, the student periodical for the CUI, declared, after the formation of the Catholic Graduates’ and Undergraduates’ Association, that: If you want justice from Westminster you must fight for it …The University agitation, especially among the educated class of Catholics, had always been of the nambiest-pambiest character. We have aimed at being merely reasonable, when all experience counseled us to be unpleasant.17

In 1905, rhetoric turned into direct action when students interrupted a CUI conferring ceremony over delays in establishing the National University. The Chancellor, and Earl of Meath, Lord Reginald Brabazon, an ardent imperialist and philanthropist, summoned suspected student agitators for questioning, which many refused. As a result, the university was widely condemned in the media and by Arthur Griffith’s United Irishman.18 The Chancellor later resigned. The students responsible, Cruise O’Brien, Eugene Sheehy, John Kennedy, Thomas Madden and Patrick Little, made no apologies for their action. Another protest, a year later, saw O’Brien rusticated, with the shutting down of his paper, St. Stephen’s, by university ‘presidential thunderbolt’.19 Little later recalled: We were all proud of our achievement and believed that we did stir the British politicians into speeding up the long delayed measure of establishing the National University. Afterwards I intensely disked the ‘Rags’ at conferring as disorderly and unintelligent and as a degrading caricature of our own conduct.20

This was Little’s first ‘adventures in national affairs’. He went on to become editor of New Ireland, Eire, Sinn Féin, and An Pobhlacht between the years 1916 and 1926. In later years, he became parliamentary secretary and a minister, from 1933 to 1948. Little was also a founding member of Fianna Fáil.21 Continued militant action by Catholic students led to political leaders fearing that the establishment of a state-funded, wholly Catholic,

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university would further increase the sectarian divide in Ireland. Instead, successive British governments supported the idea of a secular national university for Ireland, in the hope that ‘exposure to education by middleclass Catholics would cultivate a more urbane and tolerant society, thus improving Anglo-Irish relations’.22 Debating chambers in the various colleges were often consumed by debates on ideas of nationalism and the pros and cons of compulsory Irish. In 1906, the administrative council of Maynooth College, a seminary for Catholic priests, expressed concern about the radical nationalist tone that many of these debates took.23 Concern over this growing sectarianism led a graduate of Trinity College to pen an ambitious proposal in The Irish Times, in 1909. He proposed a national students’ union, ‘molded, by the criticism from all quarters … [to] … promote peace and progress amongst us and where young people of all creeds and backgrounds would come together’.24 These were the first soundings for a national student organisation. With the establishment of the National University of Ireland, in 1908, it became possible for students to conceptualise a future Irish national identity and the role they could play in shaping this identity. Those students, who had finally got a taste of national politics, continued their agitation. Patrick Little later recalled, in his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History, To indicate the way the younger people felt, I said to Dr. Coffey at the time, ‘If you bring your University Bill before you bring Home Rule, you will have an explosion’. It was an indication of the state of mind at that time generally, and Pearse and MacDonagh and Sheehy Skeffington and those who were the product of that period at the University did become the leaders in 1916.25

Nationalist and republican leaders also began to recognise the importance of students in national affairs. Constance Markievicz addressed the Students’ National Literary Society, in 1909, on the topic of ‘Women, ideals and the Nation’. Her speech was aimed squarely at ensuring that nationalist students knew their duty: We older people look to you with great hopes and a great confidence that in your gradual emancipation you are bringing fresh ideas, fresh energies, and above all a great genius for sacrifice into the life of the nation. In Ireland the

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women seem to have taken less part in public life, and to have had less share in the struggle of liberty, than in other nations… fix your mind on the ideal of Ireland free, with her women enjoying the full rights of citizenship in their own nation, and no one will be able to side-track you.26

In tandem with the revival in support by middle-class society for Irish self-governance was the cultural revival and various distinctly Irish sporting and cultural societies that sprang up in all the universities. The participation and role that students and young people played in this cultural revival was summarised by Colum: Almost everything significant in the Dublin of that period was run by the young; youth, eagerness, brains, imagination, are what I remember of everybody. There was something else that was in all of them: a desire for self-sacrifice, a devotion to causes; everyone was working for a cause, for practically everything was a cause.27

The influence of these cultural revival organisations, and their ‘metamorphosis of the revival from a movement largely devoted to promoting native Irish culture to one which increasingly married culture with nationalist sentiment’, enhanced its attractiveness ‘for an increasingly politicised student body’.28 This influence, and the introduction of the National University of Ireland, meant there were cultural changes to the Cork and Galway universities. Previously, these were Queen’s colleges,29 which attracted young people, who were not overtly nationalistic, as well as academics and students who were antagonistic to most games and social events that celebrated Irish culture. This changed over the course of 10 years, when a student named Brian Cusack, and the Bishop of Galway, Thomas O’Dea, started Sigerson Cup30 participation by University College Galway (UCG). Their objective was to encourage an Irish outlook among the university societies.31 Cusack later went on to be elected as a Sinn Féin MP for Galway North at the 1918 general election. He was re-elected as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála32 (TD), for the Galway constituency, at the 1921 general election. Cusack opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and voted against it. He was re-elected as an anti-Treaty Sinn Féin TD, for Galway, at the 1922 General Election, but did not take his seat in Dáil Éireann. He was a founder member of Fianna Fáil.

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Students, especially those from University College Dublin (UCD), were not afraid to assert their right to be recognised as a political constituency. In 1910, the National Student, a student newspaper for UCD, was established to ‘provide a field for the exercise of student intellect … to awaken among the students a consciousness that they belong to an important class, and can, if unified, exert considerable influence’.33 The participation in the cultural revival by students led to ideations of collective organisations for students. Student leaders wanted to mirror some parliamentary structures in their own organisations, in preparation for their future careers. Republican and nationalist students recognised the important role that university life played in shaping the future political careers and ideologies of those who wanted to lead an Irish parliament and civil service. George O’Brien, a UCD economist, later reflected that the student organisations were structured to ensure ‘that there were only three positions for which we were being fitted by our education— prime minister, leader of the opposition and speaker of the House of Commons’.34 Student representative councils (SRCs) existed across the UK by this time but organised representation for students was almost non-existent in Ireland. The first issue of the National Student carried an article calling for the establishment of a students’ union in UCD, as the ‘university is utterly incomplete unless it affords the students an opportunity of mutual intercourse and proper university life’.35 The January 1911 edition described its aspirational ideal for a SRC: The Council would be a great organising power and represent corporately the student body… the Council would also have power to enforce its awards among the students, and since it could thus speak collectively and answer for the students, would have the greater power in obtaining concessions and advantages from the College Council … it should exercise a powerful influence in unifying the student body and engendering common and concerted action.36

The attitude of Trinity students towards national politics was much less enthusiastic in the first decade of the twentieth century. Kevin O’Sheil, a Trinity law student, from 1909, remarked that the malaise of Trinity students, in the case of nationalist students was … caused by the aftermath of the Parnell tragedy that sickened politics for two generations. Another reason

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for it was that there was no place for the young man, particularly the educated or enterprising young man, in the political organisations of that time. The U.I.L.37 and the A.O.H.38 smothered the country in a strong network of branches and lodges under the powerful and autocratic control of elderly men in Dublin who would brook no criticism whatsoever of their methods or proceedings.39

The marked cultural and social differences between those attending Trinity College and UCD contributed greatly to this. O’Sheil later observed, ‘in general, politics, particularly Irish politics, were hardly touched on amongst students in Trinity, a phenomenon due … to the mixed character of Trinity studentry and the disparate, intense and extremely centrifugal background of the two great sections of the Irish population to one or other of which the students belonged’.40 The relationship between the Trinity students and Dublin city were often strained, most notably on St Patrick’s Day. O’Sheil notes in his memoires: On that day, the dignified passage of the Lord Mayor’s carriage past the Front Gate of the college ‘was always a single for a violent attack on it by Trinity students who had concentrated there in force’.41

This annual attack by the students, inflamed the populace, who made violent assaults on the college, breaking its windows and charging the gates … the enraged mob, on one occasion, headed by the famous Jim Larkin, burst through the iron gates, knocking students over wholesale, and charged against the great oaken door … from which they had to be driven by reinforcements of the D.M.P.42

O’Sheil would later become the first judge in the Dáil courts, assistant legal advisor to the first Free State government, and a key player in Ireland’s admission to the League of Nations.43 Three major developments were to ignite students’ passion and desire to become more involved in national politics: Home Rule, the 1913 Lock Out, and the establishment of the Irish Volunteers. During the Home Rule demonstration, of March 1912, students joined academic staff on the university platform, authenticating the role of the national university in national life and, as the National Student noted in a subsequent editorial, ‘nothing that concerned Ireland’s affairs

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was alien to its sympathy’.44 However, the boisterous expressions from a number of students quickly attracted criticism from newspapers and organisations. The Leader asked whether students believed ‘in anything in the enthusiastic way of boys, expressing the opinion that they have become old men before their time’.45 In response, the editorial of the National Student attacked the necessity for a nationalist to be a member of any organisation: Unless one would be a professed anti-Irish Irishman one must don the regalia of some League, be a member of some branch or other. You must take up arms against something, it matters very little what that something is. It is quite true that in some measure Ireland suffered in the past through excess of individualism … We think it is not too much to say that the evil results of this system are becoming already apparent. League domination is showing itself in all spheres of thought and action … if there is one centre from which revolt against this threatening tyranny may be hoped for it is the University … we may at least rest satisfied that they are as fully aware of the duties they owe their country as their would-be mentors.46

By the first decade of the twentieth century, debates and various student organisations became more structured and representative. Trades unions also began to grow in strength, and tensions between employers and employees began to reach boiling point. Both working and living conditions for unskilled and semi-skilled workers were terrible. James Larkin,47 a high-profile trade unionist, along with James Connolly and Captain Jack White, a former British military officer converted to socialism by James Connolly, formed the Irish Citizen Army to protect workers and their rallies, which were regularly attacked by police. Senior trade unionists and nationalist politicians began to address student societies in Dublin. At a meeting of the Trinity Gaelic Society, in November 1913, White encouraged the students to ‘lay the foundations of a great national movement for the creation of that order and discipline which they so sadly lacked by raising again the standard of the Irish Volunteers’.48 He urged the students to strike and to tell the university professors to close the gates, as they had a more important duty to the people involved in the Lock Out49 of Irish workers. He invited students to attend a meeting the next day that was arranged by the Civic League, to protest against the decision to postpone an inquiry into police actions surrounding the arrest of James Larkin. The provost of Trinity College

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made a declaration that any resident student who attended a meeting hosted by White would be deprived of their rooms. Despite the threat, approximately 100 students marched from the college grounds to attend the meeting. The Dublin Civic League passed a resolution condemning the unjustifiable attempt to prevent them attending.50 A Trinity student, named Armstrong, addressed the meeting, assuring the assembled that ‘a university was ever on the side of the people, and he believed the majority of students in Trinity were entirely on the side of the workers’.51 Justice Cahir Davitt, then a student at UCD, later remarked: The National Student observed editorially that ‘No one could live in Dublin during the strike or lockout and not be provoked to examine his social values and perhaps to make new ones’. I believe, to the credit of the College, several students were to be found among the volunteer workers who devoted much time and attention to relieving to some extent the hardships of the strikers’ families.52

Cahir later went on to sit on the Dáil Courts and become president of the High Court (1951–1966). A week after the Civic League meeting, 350 students from UCD registered their membership of the Irish Volunteers. It ‘was a remarkable show of solidarity, given that it represented half the total of male students … then registered [at] the college’.53 The National Student claimed that this number represented practically every student not restricted by special circumstance, owing to his clerical duties.54 A branch of the Volunteers was not established in UCD until after 1916.55 Branches were also established in University College Cork (UCC) and UCG . The Cork city Irish Volunteers Corp was established in December 1913 and had two university students as its first organising committee: A list was made out of names to be submitted to the public meeting, to form a Provisional Committee. In addition to those of our own, informal, organising body they were Enright, a student of University College (later, a medical doctor); Sean O’Hegarty, Terence MacSwiney, William Owens of Youghal (also a university student), Tomás MacCurtain, Seán O’Sullivan and Patrick Corkery of the Fianna Éireann.56

In addition to the above, Maurice O’Connor, a law student, who later became state solicitor, was on the provisional committee.

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The preparation of mines and other weapons was a key activity of the UCG branch. One volunteer, Martin Fahy, of UCG, recalls: We worked at the filling and the fitting of detonators and fuses in the College Club. The majority of the Company were members of the College Gaelic football and hurling clubs. Under the pretense that we were holding meetings we worked away at filling the mines. Michael Walsh, the Quartermaster of the Galway Brigade who was a student of the College, supplied the explosive. It was always gelignite. About twelve sticks of gelignite were put in each mine. It was packed as tightly as possible. One stick at the centre of the mine was filled with detonator and fuse attached. Michael Walsh was in charge of mines assembly and was always present while we worked at making the mines. He always took them away when finished for distribution to Units outside the College.57

The UCG company was also involved in the obtaining of weapons and for attacks on Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) stations. Confidence to comment, authoritatively, on national issues grew among students and their publications. In 1914, with the Home Rule Bill before the House of Commons, the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, proposed to allow the Ulster counties to vote on whether or not to join the proposed parliament in Dublin. This met with an angry reaction from students and, in its editorial, ‘The importance of a Nation’, the National Student sought to rally support against this idea: Dismember Ireland, try to erect foolish and impossible territorial divisions, separate into the vilest, obscurantist camps two great elements of the people of Ireland, and you will commit the most cynical betrayal of Nationalist and Unionist in modern politics … the set of politicians who try those things will be the first to learn that – Ireland can do without anyone of us; none of us can do without her. They will learn in violence.58

The Trinity Gaelic Society would once more ruffle the university hierarchy in 1914 by planning to mark the centenary of the birth of Thomas Davis. The society had become ‘a hub for student radicals of all persuasions’.59 Both W.B. Yeats and Patrick Pearse were due to speak at the event with provost-elect, John Pentland Mahaffy, to chair. However, Pearse’s agitation against Crown recruitment for the First World War led Mahaffy to ban the event, citing Pearse’s ‘traitorous views’.60 Several officers of the society resigned in protest and released the

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correspondence to the Irish Times, resulting in the suppression of the society by the University. The event went ahead in the nearby Ancient Concert Hall, however.

1914–1923 With the outbreak of war in 1914, the loyalties and priorities of the Irish people were in doubt. The UCD Volunteers disbanded after John Redmond called on them to join ‘wherever the firing-line extends, in defence of right, of freedom and of religion’.61 Eoin MacNeill, UCD lecturer and founder of the Volunteers, was vehemently against such a move, but ‘less than two dozen students and half a dozen junior members of the academic staff supported the Volunteers led by MacNeill’.62 The National Student ascertained that between 300 and 400 students joined up to fight in the war, while a large number also applied for commissions. It is believed that no more than 100 students from UCD joined up. It did not condemn those who went from UCD. Instead, it declared: There is this essential difference between the attitude of Trinity and our own, that the man who does not make some attempt to go to the war from Trinity must have some reason preventing him, whereas with us the men who have gone are exceptional … the Trinity men have been reared in the belief that they owe their first duty to the Empire, and we act from a purely Irish standpoint.63

Both the newspaper and the student body reflected the opinion of the country, in its support for Home Rule. Participation in the war was viewed, not as support for the Empire, but as a selfless act to protect one’s country; thus, Ireland’s contribution was merely ‘enough to satisfy Irish honour’.64 The British authorities were unimpressed with the efforts of the UCD authorities to enlist students in the war and by the anti-recruitment campaign waged on campus by elements of the student body and academics. The National Student was accused of ‘hovering over the German side’ by elements of the university management.65 In an editorial, the paper gave a forceful rebuttal to the accusations of its German sympathies and was keen to point out it was neither pro-German nor anti-German, but proIrish. It declared that Irish people had come ‘to regard the question of

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Irish nationality as ordinary politics, and so find it quite easy to side-track it on to other and often minor issues’. It defended the role that university men must play in the building of Ireland as a nation and its belief that Ireland must still be the priority for all Irishmen, In all other countries the universities have had their say in the events that make history, and it would be a disgrace if the National University of Ireland were not to play a leading part in the Irish National Movement … Many of the potential leaders of the Irish nation are now students of the University College. They are studying the past chapters of the History in whose future chapters they are going to act … they know [their history]… They know how Henry II invaded Ireland; how Henry VIII bled her; and how Elizabeth crushed her … away then with muddling and confusion; away with ignorance; away with cheap cynicism. We have a people to lead, a nation to build, and a whole lifetime to do it in. How often have young men had a better opportunity offered them? The main thing is to begin. Let us begin now.66

The First World War was an opportunity for many revolutionaries to liberate Ireland from Britain and such thoughts were growing in minority quarters. In a strongly worded editorial, the National Student highlighted how little appetite there was for revolution and how there were few national political organisations that could be reasoned with, for the sake of Ireland, With the Separatists and Sinn Féiners it is no use arguing; they ought to be shot. But it might be possible to convince the Constitutionalists, who have shown a modicum of British patriotism, that they are following the wrong course.67

Students were confident about the future and supportive of Home Rule and expected that they would become the leaders of a new Ireland. These aspirations were to prove short-lived, as the 1916 Rising was to change the Irish political landscape utterly.

The 1916 Rising and Students The 1916 Rising was the most significant uprising since the 1798 rebellion. It was organised by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB, replacing the Young Ireland movement) and supported by a number of other republican

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and nationalist groups. Most students were taken aback by the Rising. Others immediately took up arms with the rebels. James Ryan, a fifth-year UCD medical student, was put in charge of the hospital in the General Post Office (GPO) while others were given commissions in the field. Trinity College was heavily defended due to its strategic location in the city centre, and the fact that it housed munitions for the Dublin University Officer Training Corp (OTC), established in 1910 to protect Trinity College in a time of armed rebellion. After the Rising, a cadet, T.C. Kingsmill Moore, lamented: To be called upon to defend our University against the attack of Irishmen, to be forced in self-defence to shoot down our countrymen – these are things which even the knowledge of duty well fulfilled cannot render anything but sad and distasteful.68

In his resignation letter, the chief secretary of Ireland, Augustine Birrell, remarked that there were ‘a great many young fools from the National University!’ among those taken prisoner.69 Birrell was a strong supporter of the National University and the irony, that students and academics from the institution he helped to establish repaid his work with participation in the Rising, was not lost on him. The Easter Rising marked a seismic shift in student attitudes towards republicanism. In its edition just after the Rising, the National Student warned that the country was passing through ‘a critical time in Irish politics, a time when a signal false step may irretrievably damage the national cause’.70 This was in contrast to the position that the students in Maynooth College held. A priest, Fr Cahill, when attending a meeting between the Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Fogarty, on the Catholic Church’s position on the Rising, would later recall that as ‘a senior student in Maynooth in 1916 … students unanimously and enthusiastically favoured the Rising’.71 However, the publication and student body soon changed its opinion and it began to publish tributes to the 1916 martyrs and criticised the Home Rule movement: Now we are not opposed to Home Rule merely because England wishes us to have it, though that, of itself, would be a beautiful and an obvious reason. Neither do we oppose it on sentimental grounds; nor have we an

262  S. Conlon eye to the Peace Conference. We simply fail to see how a transfer of graft and grafters from Westminster to College Green can materially or mentally benefit the Irish People. Home Rule does not even mean a change of masters, but only of mouthpieces, for we should still be ruled by ventriloquism from London.72

The disquiet of the National Student and other student organisations in UCD began to concern its governing body, which was accused of stalling the establishment of a students’ union. While SRC elections had taken place in 1917, there was ‘disagreement among members of the governing body as to the advisability of having a students’ union at the present time’.73 In the 1918 general election, a number of the members of the Literary and Historical Society canvassed for Eamonn de Valera74 in East Mayo at the behest of Josephine ‘Min’ Ryan, sister of James Ryan, the UCD medical student who served in the GPO during the 1916 Rising. Ryan, who was elected to the first Dáil, later went on to hold three ministries. Several UCD graduates enjoyed success in this historic general election that resulted in the annihilation of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP).75 In 1918, the UCD branch of Cumann na mBan, a nationalist women’s group founded with the assistance of Agnes O’Farrelly, UCD graduate, was established. The executive of Cumann na mBan was initially resistant to the idea of a university branch, believing it to be elitist, and allowed the students to establish a ‘half-branch’ under Captain Loo Kennedy. Eileen McCarvill was duly elected as the first lieutenant. The half-branch began regular training exercises with participation and assistance from the Volunteers. In 1918, the status of the half-branch was upgraded to independent branch, on the recommendation of Captain Kennedy. McCarvill subsequently became the captain, with Beatrice Brady as lieutenant. The branch was highly active, making bandages, drilling and engaging in other training, with a view to possible conflict. The branch also had some members from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Queen’s University Belfast. Katherine Barry, sister of Kevin Barry, a student of UCD and member of the Irish Volunteers, was also a member and was, among other activities, involved in weapons storage.76 McCarvill graduated from UCD and later went on to change the structures of Cumann na mBan to reflect more military ones. Another member of note from the UCD branch was Josephine Aherne, who married James McNeill, second governor-general of the

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Irish Free State. She joined Clann na Poblachta77 in 1946 and, in 1950, became Irish minister at the Hague, the first woman to be appointed to such a position.78

Irish War of Independence In March 1919, 2 months after the War of Independence began, a National Student editorial called on students and the SRC to defy the forces of West Britonism that existed in the university.79 While the effectiveness of this editorial was limited, it was viewed by university and British authorities as an ‘open manifesto of rebellion’.80 Several students were arrested during the war, but the capture and execution of UCD student, Kevin Barry, in November 1920 had the most profound effect on the student body. Barry had joined the Volunteers during his second year of studies. He quickly rose through the ranks. On 20 September, he was arrested while engaged in military action on North King Street. He was eventually transferred to Mountjoy Prison for execution. There were several attempts made to have his death sentence commuted. British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, gave his ‘personal word of honour’ that Barry’s sentence would be commuted. It was later revealed that the chief of the imperial staff, Sir Henry Wilson, had threatened to resign if Barry wasn’t executed. Barry also refused to allow any rescue attempt. Students gathered outside Mountjoy Prison the day before his execution, in protest at the reports of the torture of Barry. A priest brought a final message to the assembled group, which was, according to Celia Shaw, ‘an exhortation to fight for the cause for which he was dying’.81 His sister would later correct the statement to be ‘Hold on and stick to the Republic.’82 Barry’s execution was said to have done more in ‘influencing students in the direction of the republican idea … (and produced) … a wave of intense anti-English feeling’.83 A Sinn Féin flag was hoisted at half-mast over UCD the day after the execution. One of the items returned to the Barry family was a copy of the novel Knocknagow, sent to him by his sister. Inside, Kevin Barry had written a description of himself, K.G. Barry, M.S. A dangerous criminal.

264  S. Conlon A decided menace to the British Empire. Captured 20th Sept. 1920. Tried 20th Oct. 1920. Hanged 1th Nov. 1920 Up the prisoners of war. Amongst the many crimes put down to this dangerous man is that he did put pepper in the cat’s milk and steal a penny from a blind man beside willfully, feloniously and of his malice aforethought, smiling derisevly (sic) at a policeman.84

On the day of Barry’s funeral, the college was closed, by order of Dublin Castle.85 Life in the University quickly became unbearable, with random and aggressive raids by the ‘Black and Tans’.86 Speeches suspected of sedition in the societies were reported to Dublin Castle and students were routinely arrested. Many students attended nationalist and republican events held off campus. The Confederate Literary and Debating Society, established by Seán T. O’Kelly,87 and other members of the IRB, was regularly attended by students from both UCD and Trinity College, and proved a useful recruiting ground for the IRB throughout the early 1900s. George Clancy, a UCD student, regularly taught Irish classes in the society. Clancy later went on to become mayor of Limerick. He was murdered by the Black and Tans in 1920.88 After intense conflict, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed in December 1921. The civil war that followed split the student body, but the students, like the country, were predominately pro-treaty. Celia Shaw, a UCD student, recorded the reaction of the contemporaries in her diary: We heard tonight Ireland is a Free State and every English soldier is to be out of Ireland in six months – we cheered … there is an oath though subtly worded … the irreconcilables say we’re sold … Dev’s proclamation [caused] a panic…Opinion pretty evenly divided…Dev is making impassioned speeches but talking too much, Harry Boland is malicious so is C. Brugha. Mary McSweeney took our breath away – the unbalanced feminine … Cathal Brugha’s speech disgusting, person abuse is so weak for an argument.89

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Several former students, who had joined the Irish Volunteers during their college years, held major roles in both the Free State and Republican forces. One such former student was Thomas Derrig, who held the rank of first lieutenant in the UCG Irish Volunteers branch. Derrig was arrested and detained in the Curragh during the war.90 He later became minister for education under de Valera, holding the ministry twice. During his first ministry, he was responsible for the shelving of the Cussen Report (1936), which was highly critical of the industrial and reformatory schools. At the end of the War of Independence, former students of the universities sought redress from the state for having halted their studies to fight. Many of these students were angry that British soldiers were receiving up to £200 per annum from the state, while they received nothing. Various letters were sent by groups representing the students to the Department of Finance and the Department of Home Affairs, pleading for assistance for the students. State papers show that the government was willing to assist some students, on a case-by-case basis, but the extent of the support given is unknown.91

Towards a National Organisation On 31 May 1924, a conference of delegates representing the universities of Ireland met at 86 St Stephen’s Green to agree a structure for a national union of students. F. Budd of Trinity College proposed the following motion, which was seconded by E. Moran of UCG: That we, the representatives of the Universities of Ireland, do, on behalf of our Universities, call hereby for a National Union of Students.92

This union had little-to-no activity. Five years later, the Sunday Independent highlighted the need for a national students’ union, based on the structures of the Irish Federation of University Women: Those students, too, who still hope for an Irish National Union of Students, embracing the men and women of every University in Ireland and affiliated with the International Confederation of Students, may take heart from the success achieved by the women graduates in forming the Irish Federation of University Women, in face of difficulties as great as any which lie in the way of an Irish National Union of Students.93

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A meeting took place in Trinity College in March 1928 to continue the work of establishing the national student organisation but even the establishment of local representative unions was difficult.94 In February 1931, Cumann na Mac Léinn was established as the students’ union of UCD. Enrolment was voluntary and, by May, its membership stood at 1100.95 Within weeks, a meeting was held, of the various National University of Ireland (NUI) universities, to establish a national student organisation, the Irish Student Association (ISA). The objects of the ISA were, among others, To create among Irish students a consciousness of their corporate existence … to voice [student] opinion and speak in their collective name, and enable them to take their proper part at international gathering.96

The ISA was also to set up an employment bureau and facilitate individual travel for students. The first chairman was Seán Murray, who was President of the UCD SRC.97 The ISA was also instructed to contact the organising committee of the Eucharistic Congress to seek permission to participate.98 It was formally established with agreement from the councils of UCC, UCD, UCG, and QUB on 21 May 1931, at a meeting in Galway. Its officers were Seán F. Murray (UCD), as President, D.J. O’Sullivan, as Secretary, while R. McMeekin (Queen’s University Belfast (QUB)), J. Bailey (UCC) and P. Cafferky (UCG) became its Vice-Presidents.99 The ISA was one of the few all-island bodies, incorporating representations from both the Free State and Northern Ireland, in existence at the time.100 By the end of 1933, dissatisfaction with the ISA began to show. The UCD correspondent in the Irish Times noted that a meeting of the executive of the national organisation was to take place in December but questioned the relevance of the ISA beyond its annual congress.101 Separate to the representation afforded by the ISA, students began to organise among themselves. The lack of political action by the ISA led many students to organise their own political groupings. Many young people, dissatisfied with their role in the state, began to flock to such groups. A student named Charles Donnelly established the Student Vanguard. Donnelly was originally from Co. Tyrone but moved to Dublin in 1928. He studied English, History, Logic and Irish in UCD. Donnelly became interested in socialism while in Dublin and joined a number of youth revolutionary groups, eventually founding the Student Vanguard in 1934, in response to the growing support and influence of the ‘Blueshirts’. The Blueshirts were a quasi-fascist organisation

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that adopted the style and some of the substance of the European fascist movements. They wore uniforms, went on parade and held rallies. It did not take long for trouble to break out between the two organisations. The night of the first meeting of the Vanguard, chaired by Donagh MacDonagh, son of 1916 Rising leader, Thomas MacDonagh, a scuffle broke out between 11 students who identified themselves as Blueshirts.102 In a manifesto released before the meeting it was stated: The majority of students are bitterly opposed to all that fascism stands for, but hitherto this opposition has found expression only in individual and, therefore, ineffectual protests. Meanwhile the fascists are consistently endeavouring to get control of student institutions, and creating outside the belief that the more educated part of the community, the students, support fascism. This libel is of great propagandist value to the fascists. This, fellow students, while in heart opposed to fascism, in reality we have hitherto supported it.103

A statement on the ideals of the Student Vanguard was read aloud at the meeting. The Vanguard, sees in fascism in Ireland the bludgeon of the reactionary elements against the struggle for the national and social liberation of the Irish people. It recognises no difference between functions of Blueshirt fascism in the South and Craigavon fascism in the North.104

The manifesto continued by declaring that fascism meant political, economic and cultural repression; distortion and restriction of education; the crushing of all progressive movements; perpetuation by force of the present economic anarchy, unemployment and distress; and that the Student Vanguard would combat fascism in the universities and support republican and Labour bodies in the anti-fascist fight. A branch of the Student Vanguard also opened in Galway in late May 1934. Cora Hughes (Cora Nic Aodha) was honorary secretary of the UCD Student Vanguard. Hughes came from a highly respected republican family, and was the goddaughter of de Valera (then President of the Irish Free State). While in UCD, she studied Celtic studies and completed a MA in Educational Science. She held a number of positions in various groups, including the position of commander of the Cumann na mBan division in UCD, and was a leading members of the Inter-University Republican Club. Her family was staunchly conservative and shunned her for her

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radical beliefs. She was one of the main youth leaders in the Republican Congress movement (An Chomhdháil Phoblachtach), established by disenfranchised Irish Republican Army members who sought the creation of a workers’ republic. She was elected to the executive of the Congress in September 1934.105 Cora was often described as the ‘Joan of Arc’ of the movement by many of its leaders and spoke at or chaired Congress meetings throughout Ireland and London.106 She regularly defended the work of the Student Vanguard in the press and was a strong advocate for the establishment of a republic and the end of the Free State dominion status, ‘Out of the Empire! On to the Republic!’107 Hughes also campaigned hard to have the living conditions in the tenements of Dublin improved. It was there she contracted TB and later died from it in 1940, aged 26. De Valera assisted in the removal of her remains.108 Both Donnelly and Hughes were major trade union activists and this was reflected in the work of the Vanguard. The Vanguard sent two representatives to the Labour League Against Fascism meeting, which was held in June 1934. It also established a committee to investigate the labour conditions for women in clothing factories.109 Accusations of communist influence in the Student Vanguard were made at a meeting of the St Patricks’ League of Youth (UCD), by Captain K. Patton of the Blueshirts, stating the organisation should be more accurately referred to as the ‘communism vanguard’.110 The accusation was strongly rebutted by Donnelly: We are not concerned by the charge of communism coming from a source which has already described every opposing political body as communistic. In the interest of clarity, however, it is necessary to state that: The Student Vanguard is connected with no political party, but includes members from all parties opposed to fascism.111

At a subsequent meeting of the Labour League, Donnelly told them that de Valera was not doing enough to quash the Blueshirts: In every country which fascism had triumphed, it had done so under the protecting arm of the Government in power, to whom the workers looked for protection. There was also the big possibility that fascism would come, not from the Blueshirts, but from the Fianna Fáil Government itself.112

Members of the Student Vanguard participated in a number of protests in support of workers, including the bakers’ protests, resulting in the arrest of Donnelly and his imprisonment for two weeks.113

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The Student Vanguard’s influence was primarily in challenging the growth of the Blueshirts in the universities, which was highly successful. It also promoted links between the trade unions and student leaders and groups, which would later be strengthened. Donnelly joined the International Brigade in 1936 and, in January 1937, met up with the Irish Connolly column, led by Frank Ryan, another former UCD student fighting in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. Donnelly was soon given the rank of field commander. He was killed in action in February 1937, at the age of 22.

Conclusion The early twentieth century was a time of much political turmoil and uncertainty for Ireland. Many groups were keen to play their role in the development of modern Ireland and university students took advantage of the unique role afforded to them by their status. They engaged in social commentary, political agitation and social contribution, founding various groups to advance their cause. The students of pre-independence Ireland saw themselves as the future ruling class of a new country; one ruled from home but under dominion. The First World War and the 1916 Rising destroyed this dream and forced all sections of society to re-examine what a future Ireland should look like. However, the Democratic Programme declared by the first Dáil was quickly abandoned and the social guarantees for young people espoused in it never materialised. To achieve these, students had to organise. This organisation led to the first all-island representational body, the Irish Student Association, and, later, the Union of Students in Ireland. Collective student participation in the 1916 Rising and the War of Independence is often ignored by historians in favour of tales of heroic individuals or bands of men facing overwhelming odds. While it would be difficult to argue a movement of students existed in Ireland in the early twentieth century, as we would understand it today, Irish students organised within their own circles to influence both public opinion and to participate in the liberation of the country from British rule. The Bureau of Military History’s witness statement archives are a testament to the number of engineering and medical students who actively participated in IRB or Irish Volunteer activities. Many students of note from this period went on to hold senior ministries or civil servant positions later and introduced significant legislation

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in education and health during their time. This trend continues to this day. Pašeta (1999) remarks that many of the individuals synonymous with the founding of the nation, such as de Valera, Pearse et al., led quiet university lives, with little to no interaction with the university experience of those students outlined in this chapter. This lack of participation may reflect their abhorrence to the dreams and aspirations of the university elite, yet hundreds of those elite would later participate in the rebellions, wars and elections of those very same men.

Notes











1. M. Elliott, Wolfe Tone, Prophet of Irish Independence (London: New Haven, 1989). 2. Ibid. 3. The TCD Historical Society, founded in 1770, sprang from two associations, both founded in the middle of the eighteenth century: Edmund Burke’s Club, and the Historical Club. It is the oldest undergraduate debating society in the world. 4.  The United Irishmen was a liberal republican political organisation, founded by Wolfe Tone. It was inspired by the American Revolution and launched a failed rebellion in 1798 against British rule in Ireland. It was committed to Catholic emancipation and religious equality. 5. Elliott, Wolfe Tone, 33. 6. Ibid. 7. Lord Clare (John FitzGibbon) was Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1789 to 1802. He was staunchly opposed to any liberalisation of laws in relation to Catholics. 8. J.V. Luce, Trinity College Dublin. The First 400 Years (Dublin: Trinity College Dublin Press, 1992), 67. 9. Founded in 1902 by Bulmer Hobson, Na Fianna Éireann (or, Fianna na hÉireann) was established as a junior league to promote the study of the Irish language. It later went on to play an active role in the 1913 Dublin Lock-Out, the 1916 Rising, and the civil war. Among its chiefs was Countess Constance Markievicz, the first female MP in the House of Commons. 10.  Irish Freedom, December 1910. 11. The Young Ireland movement was a political and cultural social movement, established by Thomas Davis in the 1830s. The group attempted a rebellion in 1848 in response to the introduction of martial law and the growing deaths from the 1845 Irish famine.

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12. T. De Vere, ‘The Hist and Edmund Burkes Club: An anthology of the College Historical Society’, in D. Budd and R. Hinds, The Student Debating Society of Trinity College Dublin, from its Origins in Edmund Burke’s Club 1747–1997 (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1997). 13. Luce, Trinity College Dublin. 14. The Repeal Association was established by Daniel O’Donnell in 1830 to campaign for the repeal of the Action of Union of 1880. 15. R.B. McDowell and D.A. Webb, Trinity College Dublin 1592–1952, An Academic History (Dublin: Trinity College Dublin Press, 2004). 16. The Catholic University of Ireland was established in 1854, under the rectorship of Cardinal John Henry Newman, in response to the establishment of the Queen’s University of Ireland, the ‘godless colleges’. 17.  St. Stephen’s, February 1904. 18. D. McCartney, UCD: A National Idea: The History of University College Dublin (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1999). 19. J.N. Meenan, ‘The Student Body’, in M. Tierney, Struggle with Fortune: A Centenary Miscellany (Dublin: Browne & Nolan, 1954). 20. S. Pašeta, Before the Revolution: Nationalism, Social Change and Ireland’s Catholic Élite (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999), 70. 21. P. Little, ‘Witness Statement’, 25 March 1959 (N.A.I., B.M.H., 1769); Fianna Fáil is an Irish centrist republican political party founded in 1926 after a split from Sinn Féin. 22. Pašeta, Before the Revolution, 7. 23. D. Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland: 1900–2000 (London: Profile Books, 2005). 24.  A graduate of Dublin University, ‘University Students of Ireland: Proposed “Union” in Dublin’, Irish Times, 10 July 1909, 8. 25. Little, ‘Witness Statement’, 3. 26. C. de Markievicz, Women, Ideals and The Nation (Dublin: Daughters of Erin, 1909). 27. M. Colum, Life and the Dream, 2nd edition (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1999), 133. 28. Pašeta, Before the Revolution, 53. 29. The Queen’s colleges were established in Ireland in 1845. They included Cork, Galway and Belfast, in order to afford a university education to Irish Catholics who traditionally did not attend Trinity College Dublin. Attendance was shunned by the Catholic hierarchy, who referred to them as ‘godless colleges’ due to their secular nature. 30.  The Sigerson Cup is the trophy for the premier Gaelic Football Championship among higher education institutions, established in 1910. 31. B.A. Cusack, ‘Witness Statement’, 9 October 1952 (N.A.I., B.M.H., 736).

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32. Member of Parliament for the lower house. 33.  National Student, May 1910, 1. 34. Meenan, ‘The Student Body’, 33. 35.  National Student, May 1910, 17. 36.  National Student, January 1911, 76. 37. The United Irish League (UIL) was a nationalist political party that sought land reform. It was founded in 1898 by William O’Brien, former MP for Mallow, Cork. 38. The Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) was founded in 1836. It has its roots in various agrarian revolutionary movements in opposition to the Orange Order in Ulster. It was dominated by Joseph Devlin who helped to re-establish it in the 1890s. Many republican leaders were members of the AOH prior to becoming members of the Irish Volunteers. 39.  K.R. O’Sheil, ‘Witness Statement’, no date (N.A.I., B.M.H., 1770), 171. 40. Ibid., 174. 41. E. Sagarram, Kevin O’Sheil: Tyrone Nationalist and Irish State-Builder (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2013), 53. 42. Sagarram, Kevin O’Sheil: Tyrone Nationalist and Irish State-Builder, 53; D.M.P., the Dublin Metropolitan Police. 43. The Dáil Courts were the judicial branch of government of the Irish Republic, during the Irish War of Independence. The Dáil Courts were established to undermine British rule in Ireland by offering an alternative Irish arbitration system. 44.  National Student, December 1913, 27. 45.  National Student, December 1912, 38. 46.  National Student, December 1912, 38–9. 47.  James Larkin was an Irish labour leader who established the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. He was a Marxist who was a dedicated trade unionist. He used militant strike methods and led the 1913 Dublin Lockout. 48. ‘Dublin Civic League. Protest Meeting last night. Trinity College students’ position. Dr. Traill’s action’, Irish Times, 20 November 1913, 6; the Irish Volunteers was a military organisation established in 1913 to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland. 49.  The 1913 Lock Out was a major Irish industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers, which took place in Dublin. The dispute lasted from August 1913 to January 1914. Central to the dispute was the workers’ right to unionise and the living conditions endured in tenements. 50. ‘Dublin Civic League. Protest Meeting last night’, 6.

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51. Ibid. 52. C. Davitt, ‘Witness Statement’, 20 August 1957 (N.A.I., B.M.H., 993), 4. 53. McCartney, UCD: A National Idea, 99. 54.  National Student, December 1913, 28. 55.  G. Brennan, ‘Witness Statement’, 30 March 1957 (N.A.I., B.M.H., 1601). 56.  L. de Róistee, ‘Witness Statement’, 27 November 1957 (N.A.I., B.M.H., 1968). 57. M. Fahy, ‘Witness Statement’, 5 October 1954 (N.A.I., B.M.H., WS 1018). 58.  National Student, March 1914, 81. 59. T. Irish, Trinity in War and Revolution: 1912–1923 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2015). 60. Irish, Trinity in War and Revolution: 1912–1923, 168. 61. McCartney, UCD: A National Idea, 99. 62. F.X. Martin, The Easter Rising, and University College, Dublin (Dublin: Publisher, 1966), 21. 63.  National Student, May 1914, 2. 64.  National Student, May 1914, 1. 65.  National Student, May 1915, 2. 66.  National Student, May 1915, 2–3. 67.  National Student, December 1915, 1. 68. Luce, Trinity College Dublin, 131. 69. McCartney, UCD: A National Idea, 103. 70.  National Student, April 1916, 2. 71. M. Fogarty, ‘Witness Statement’, 7 June 1949 (N.A.I., B.M.H., 271). 72.  National Student, December 1916, 2. 73.  National Student, May 1917, 2. 74. Eamonn de Valera was a senior commander in the 1916 Rising. He escaped execution and would later go on to lead the Dáil Éireann, lead anti-Treaty forces in the Civil War and found Fianna Fáil. 75. McCartney, UCD: A National Idea, 103; the IPP was formed in 1882 and advocated self-government, or Home Rule for Ireland. It fell out of popularity in the early twentieth century, as its leaders were seen as aging, conservative and out of touch. It was unable to compete with the emerging romantic and youthful ‘new nationalism’ organisations and parties. 76. K. Moloney-Barry ‘Witness Statement’, no date (N.A.I., B.M.H., WS 731). 77. Clann na Poblachta was an Irish centre-left republican political party founded by former IRA chief of Staff Seán MacBride in 1946. It was

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mostly made up of young urban voters with republican leanings and those tired of civil war politics. 78. E. McCarvill, ‘Witness Statement’, no date (N.A.I., B.M.H., WS 1752). 79.  National Student, March 1919, 1–2. 80. J. Mowbray, ‘Curfew—Part III’, in J. Meenan, Centenary History of the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin 1855—1955 (Tralee: The Kerryman, 1956). 81. Diary of Celia Shaw, November 1920, 2–3. 82. Moloney-Barry, ‘Witness Statement’, 46. 83. Mowbray, ‘Curfew—Part III’, 176. 84. Moloney-Barry, ‘Witness Statement’. 85. Dublin Castle was the administrative seat of British rule in Ireland. It was in the ‘Castle’ where a number of IRA members were tortured and killed during the War of Independence and where the official handover of power from the British military to the Irish Free State army took place. 86.  Diary of Celia Shaw, November 1920, 9; The Black & Tans was a nickname for the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, recruited in 1919 to assist the Royal Irish Constabulary during the War of Independence. They were mostly First World War veterans and were infamous for their attacks on civilians without provocation. 87. Seán T. O’Kelly was the second President of Ireland. 88. S.T. O’Kelly, ‘Witness Statement’, National Archives of Ireland: BMH. WS1765 Part 1. 89. Diary of Celia Shaw, December 1921—January 1922, 21–6. 90. Fahy, ‘Witness Statement’. 91.  Irish Volunteer Students’ Aid Committee, 1922; Students Redress Union 1922. 92. ‘Irish Students’, Irish Times, 3 June 1924, 2. 93.  ‘Irish Federation of University Women’, Sunday Independent, 5 May 1929, 6. 94. ‘The Students’ Union,’ Comhthrom Féinne, 1 May 1931, 16. 95. ‘Union Notes,’ Comhthrom Féinne, 15 May 1931, 28. 96. ‘Union Notes,’ Comhthrom Féinne, 15 May 1931, 16. 97. ‘Notes from the National’, Irish Times, 27 April 1931, 4. 98. ‘NUI Students Meet—Foreign travel suggested’, Irish Independent, 31 March 1931, 12. 99. ‘Irish Students’ Association’, Comhthrom Féinne, Summer edition, 1931, 26. 100. ‘Youth at the Helm—Irish students meet visitors in debate’, Irish Press, 17 February 1936, 7.

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101. ‘University College Notes: The Irish Students’ Association’, Irish Times, 20 November 1933, 4. 102.  ‘College students in scene—Anti-fascist meeting in Dublin’, Irish Independent, 12 May 1934, 9. 103. ‘Anti-fascist students’, Irish Press, 21 May 1934, 7. 104. Ibid. 105. ‘Republican Congress: call for working class front’, Irish Independent, 3 October 1934, 11. 106. P. Byrne, The Irish Republican Congress Revisited (London: Connolly Publication Ltd, 1994). 107. ‘Republican unity: congress speaker and war mongers’, Irish Press, 23 March 1936, 2. 108. ‘Late Miss Cora Hughes’, Irish Press, 20 April 1940, 7. 109. ‘Anti-fascist students’, Irish Press, 21 May 1934, 7. 110. ‘Student Vanguard criticised’, Irish Independent, 26 May 1934, 11. 111. ‘Purely anti-fascist—statement by President of Student Vanguard’, The Irish Press, 1 June 1934, 9. 112. ‘General O’Duffy banned’, Anglo-Celt, 1 September 1934, 9. 113. ‘Dublin Court scenes: charges in connection with strike’, Irish Press, 19 July 1934, 9.

Author Biography Steve Conlon is a former sabbatical officer of Institute of Technology Sligo Students’ Union and the Irish national students’ union, the Union of Students in Ireland. He was awarded his PhD from Dublin City University in 2016, which examines the role of the Irish student movement in the liberalisation of reproductive and sexuality policy in the Republic of Ireland. He has previously written on student issues for the Irish Times and Sunday Independent, and has appeared on Irish national radio and television as a contributor on student political issues. A former digital media lecturer at Dublin City University, he is now Head of Creative & Online for an Irish-American communications technology company.

CHAPTER 12

‘Women Are Far Too Sweet for This Kind of Game’: Women, Feminism and Student Politics in Scotland, c.1968–c.1979 Sarah Browne

Introduction In the Strathclyde Telegraph, a newspaper produced by students at the University of Strathclyde, a male student commented, in an article published in February 1968, that ‘women are far too sweet for this kind of game’.1 The game this male student was referring to was politics and in particular the attempts by some women to hold ‘high office’ especially on university campuses.2 This was 1968, a significant year in the history of student politics. This was a year which became noteworthy in the history of student politics as it was a time when some students around the world seemed to be in revolt, with mass protests occurring on many university campuses. Fuelled by some of the ideas about equality and fairness which were emerging from the civil rights movement and left-wing politics during the 1960s, these protests provided hope to both students and those on the left more generally, who often saw them as a direct challenge to authority and the traditional order. Part of these discussions

S. Browne (*)  Dundee, Scotland, UK © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_12

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included reflecting upon the role of women in British society. In keeping with the times, a debate about the equality of the sexes was held at the University of Strathclyde, and it was after attending this event that one male student deemed women ‘far too sweet’. Indeed, a cursory look at most student newspapers in Scotland produced during the 1960s reveals that some of the ideas about equality and fairness which were circulating in wider society during the 1960s, especially in relation to the role of women, had appeared to pass university campuses by. Referred to as ‘dollies’ or ‘decorative’, women on university campuses in Scotland could often find it difficult to be heard and to be taken seriously. Indeed, for some young women, the student experience at university was a frustrating one, and it was in this environment where they often first realised the barriers they faced as women when attempting to participate in the political process and in life more generally. Realising this often spurred them on to campaign as women and on issues relating to women’s lives, and, more significantly, to become involved in feminist politics, primarily through the Women’s Liberation Movement. The Women’s Liberation Movement emerged in many countries around the world during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In Scotland it first emerged in the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and by the end of the 1970s other groups existed throughout Scotland including in Dundee, Aberdeen, St Andrews and Lerwick. Although routes into women’s liberation were varied for women, one major way was through a consciousness-raising group where small groups of women met in local towns and cities to discuss issues affecting their lives. From these discussions they drew political analyses about women’s role in society. This then led to interesting and effective campaigns which highlighted the discrimination women faced on a daily basis. The movement in Scotland, as elsewhere in the UK, focused its campaigning work on a list of seven demands.3 They also held conferences, protests, organised campaigns, produced publications and contributed to the setting up of organisations like Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis. Of major importance to the creation of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland was increasing numbers of women entering higher education some of whom, during their studies or upon becoming graduates, helped to set up women’s liberation groups in the towns and cities where they were studying, thus indicating the wider significance of student politics in our understanding of the development of feminism in the post-1945 period.

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This chapter will consider the role and experiences of women on university campuses in the 1960s and 1970s in Scotland. It will argue that the contradiction between some of the rhetoric used to describe what was happening on university campuses around the world, and how women at Scottish universities were treated and spoken about, contributed to the creation of the conditions from which emerged the Women’s Liberation Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. Through attempts to challenge traditional views of women, and feeling emboldened by discussions and examples of activism from around the world, women were able to claim space on campus, at times take the lead in university disputes and contribute to the politicisation of the wider student population through offering fresh new analyses of issues of importance to women. In this way some female students not only contributed to changing the organisation and operation of student political life on campuses but they also created a key site in the development of feminist thought and practice in Scotland, indicating the relevance of student politics to the political life of women and Scotland more generally.

The 1960s: University Life in Scotland The 1960s was a significant decade in the history of higher education in the United Kingdom and not least for women. It was during this decade that higher education was opened up to potential students from non-traditional backgrounds, fundamentally changing the look and feel of student life. Before this decade universities had mainly been the preserve of upper- and middle-class men. However, with the publication of the Robbins Report in 1963, which argued that higher education should widen access, students from a more diverse range of backgrounds began their studies at universities.4 This marked a significant change for many women for whom higher education suddenly became a real possibility. This change in student demographics happened (probably not coincidently) at the same time as students appeared to be more willing to challenge the traditional order. Inspired by the civil rights movement in the USA and influenced by a range of left-wing theorists, many students began to think critically about the way the world was run and their most immediate concern became the management of their university campus. The 1960s have largely been defined as a time when a generation came of age, with popular images of the decade being anti-Vietnam

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War demonstrations, the summer of ‘free love’ and student sit-ins. Ideas about widening and expanding democracy, a more participative political process and equality were ideas widely discussed by many on the left during this time. While there has been some debate over whether or not Scotland experienced ‘the Sixties’ as broadly defined here, it is clear that these ideas influenced a number of students studying on Scottish campuses and indeed if ‘the Sixties’ happened anywhere in Scotland it most likely happened on university campuses.5 Reading student newspapers from this time, it can be seen that some students in Scotland were inspired by their counterparts around the world. For example, in the University of St Andrews’ student newspaper AIEN, a call to their readers was published in 1968: The session 1968–9, which this edition of AIEN introduces, must be the year in which St Andrews catches up on the rest of the university world. Exclusive traditionalism is fine for the tourist brochures, but an embarrassing anachronism in the today world of modern students.6

Indeed, university campuses in Scotland seemed to be competing with one another to take the title of the most radical student political culture. For example, the Strathclyde Telegraph urged its readers to ‘put Strathclyde far ahead of any other British University in the field of student representation’.7 Debates and discussions about student life, the role of education and the ways in which students could contribute to transforming wider society were happening on most university campuses in Scotland during this time. High-profile speakers from the left who appeared at universities in Scotland during this time included Tariq Ali, Tony Benn and Daniel Cohn-Bendit.8 Indeed, with the arrival of new students, there developed a left-wing culture on university campuses. Led by groups like socialist societies and through the organisations of demonstrations and sit-ins, political discussions became more intense as the 1970s arrived. This culture led to debates about the injustice of the Vietnam War, class politics and the role of students in wider political struggles. One area that students in Scotland focused on, which reflected these wider discussions, was the student representation system. Some students during this period took on board the ideas of equality and representation and argued for the inclusion of students in the decision-making processes of universities. Yet again there was a focus on opposition to tradition,

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for example, Ben Anderson, the President of the Student Representative Council (SRC) at the University of Dundee argued in 1969 that: Let the Court and the Senate cast aside the shackles of tradition and outmoded ideas. Students have a useful role to play. They have their rights as individuals to have a say in their government.9

One manifestation of these debates was the election of student rectors in the 1970s. The rector played a particular role in the life of the Scottish universities. A rector was chosen to reflect and represent the views of students on the university bodies of Court and Senate. However, by the late 1960s many students were concerned about the effectiveness of rectors. As we will see, the role of women in this particular debate was crucial and a key moment in the politicisation of female students. And yet for all these examples of the traditional order being challenged, ideas about women were less easily questioned or swept away. This is unsurprising given that student life often reflected trends apparent in wider society. Examples of sexist culture are to be found throughout the pages of student newspapers during this period. For example, the Labour Club at the University of Strathclyde ran a ‘Labour Girl’ competition in which their chosen ‘girl’ was pictured as if she was on a modelling shoot. Glasgow University Guardian printed pictures of women with the title ‘another dolly from our files’, and the student newspaper at the University of Aberdeen, Gaudie, had a feature entitled ‘King’s Kutie’, the title named after one of the colleges at the University, and the feature included pictures of women.10 All of this led to a culture that was demeaning to women and undermined their efforts to be taken seriously. Yet despite this, women who were arriving at university for the first time, often the first women in their families to attend university, found creative ways to question this culture and in doing so they helped to challenge and to some extent change aspects of student life. During the 1960s women began to ask questions about their place in the student body. With these questions, interesting ideas about women’s role more generally began to emerge. In asking these questions, women on university campuses in Scotland challenged the way student politics and student life had been run in three main ways which will be explored in turn in the next three sections.

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Claiming Space: Challenging Male-Only Culture The first way that women on university campuses in Scotland challenged student politics and student life was through claiming space on campus and thereby challenging some aspects of male-only culture. This was important in order to be able to access resources and space and, more importantly, to be able to participate in important discussions. Up until the 1970s it was still very common for students’ unions (SUs) to have ‘women’s rooms’ separate from the main unions which were run by men, for men. For example, the beer bar at the University of St Andrews became a particular focus for female students studying there during the late 1960s. Viewed by some female students as a ‘male stronghold of the university’, this set-up changed during the period as women were eventually allowed access to this particular space on campus. However, this change did not happen without some threats being made. One report in AIEN, the University of St Andrews student newspaper, claimed that a notice had been placed on the SU noticeboard threatening that ‘any woman daring to enter the Beer Bar would have her knickers taken off’.11 Although women faced intimidation and threats like this when challenging the male-only space on campus, their efforts were successful with a gradual change happening during this period with the creation of mixed unions, albeit often with a private space for men remaining.12 In this way the physical space of student life was beginning to change, however slowly. These challenges and their claims for space also led to some women demanding access to clubs and societies that were male-only. For example, women at St Andrews University were willing to challenge one of the most traditional aspects of student life: the Kate Kennedy Club.13 The Kate Kennedy Club was a prominent fixture on the university campus and organised many events, including an annual procession which celebrated student life past and present in St Andrews. However, during the 1960s some women began to challenge this club for its insistence on having a male-only membership. During this decade, the Kate Kennedy Club allowed women to take part in the procession for the first time (albeit they were still not allowed to become members of the club), with one St Andrews student viewing this as the ‘latest instance of a St Andrews masculine fortress to fall to the feminists’.14 While this claim is most probably exaggerated, it is evident that space was changing on many university campuses during this period, reflecting the growing diversity of the student body. As some female students began to claim

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space, this gave them confidence to challenge the wider culture of university campuses. Despite the physical space changing, sexist culture continued to permeate much of student life in Scotland during the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, many aspects of this culture were celebrated parts of the student calendar, including the annual Charities’ Queen contests. Charities’ Queens were selected, often only by male students, to represent the student body and their fundraising efforts during the academic year. Many universities ran elections for their Queen and upon her election, the Queen was crowned in a small ceremony. This contest was viewed by some women as merely being a beauty competition and they organised protests about this. As one student at the University of St Andrews said, this competition could only be viewed as the ‘exploitation of the female body’ and another labelled it as ‘the most blatant form of sexism’.15 While it was difficult to make arguments in an often hostile environment, women were successful, as Charities’ Queen contests were eventually phased out. Demanding their right, as women, to access the same space as men led to challenging other aspects of male-only culture on campus. In these ways, some female students in the 1960s and 1970s were able to change aspects of student life so that it better reflected the range of students now attending universities in Scotland. From these protests, they also began to draw interesting conclusions about women’s role in wider society and began to identify forms of sexism which prevented women from fully participating in life.

Taking the Lead: Women and Student Politics Claims for space were also happening on another more ‘formal’ level during this period and this was through women becoming involved in SU politics, the second main way in which women challenged the organisation of student life in Scotland. What is interesting about this period, however, is that some women not only became more involved in ‘formal’ student politics but, it can be argued, that some individual women were also taking the lead in student politics in Scotland during this time and were often setting the agenda of student political life. The two most notable examples of student activism during the late 1960s and into the 1970s in Scotland was the ‘Muggeridge affair’ at the University of Edinburgh and the Queen’s visit to the University of Stirling, both of which saw women taking an active lead in the protests.

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As discussed above, there was a focus during this period on the role and effectiveness of rectors within the wider student representation system. The ‘Muggeridge Affair’ at the University of Edinburgh became a focus for many of these campaigns. Malcolm Muggeridge was the Rector at the University of Edinburgh, elected in 1966. A prominent journalist, Muggeridge was a high-profile rector with a national UK presence, but by the late 1960s some students were growing disillusioned with his style of representation and some of them felt he did not meet students enough, was not attending enough meetings and was generally failing in his duties as Rector and in representing students.16 However, opposition to Muggeridge became more intense after he delivered a speech in 1968 on the topic, very close to the heart of women’s liberation, of the oral contraceptive pill. Standing in St Giles Cathedral, Muggeridge was reported to have delivered an almost sermon-like speech in which he publicly opposed the SU’s decision to provide the oral contraceptive pill on campus, believing it contributed to a wider culture of promiscuity. Many students were aghast that the public face of students at the University of Edinburgh would make such claims and the University of Edinburgh’s student newspaper, The Student, began a campaign to oust Muggeridge from office. This campaign focused on the fact that Muggeridge was not representing the voice of students, the main task of any rector, as he had publicly declared himself opposed to the SRC’s motion that the oral contraceptive pill should be supplied by the student health service. In focusing on the problems with student representation, The Student asked Muggeridge ‘do you agree with the Students’ Council motion?—or will you resign?’17 The answer was unsurprising. Muggeridge resigned in 1968 and one of the most high-profile incidents in student politics in Scotland in recent years came to an end. The Muggeridge affair had caught the attention of many students throughout Scotland, with extensive coverage of it in many student newspapers around the country. Views were split, with some students upset at how Malcolm Muggeridge had been treated, and for those who subscribed to this interpretation of events, they often agreed with Muggeridge’s views on contraception. Other students, however, thought the protests against Muggeridge had been right.18 However, for those who opposed the actions of the students at the University of Edinburgh, their opposition often focused on one person who had been at the very heart of the protests: Anna Coote, the then editor of The Student. Some of the ways in which this opposition was expressed reveals very

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interesting views about women and their role in student life during this period. For example, one student writing for the Glasgow University Guardian called her a harlot and accused her of gutter politics.19 Such gender-specific insults highlight the uneasiness with which student politics was developing during this period, demonstrating the inability of some male students to be able to accept the involvement of women in discussions. Given this experience, it should be no surprise that Coote went on to be influential in the Women’s Liberation Movement in the UK during the 1970s, indicating on a very individual level the importance of experiences within higher education to the development of feminism during the 1970s. Indeed, for some women who would latterly become involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement, the Muggeridge affair and its association with the issue of the oral contraceptive pill had contributed to the development of an initial interest in feminism.20 The Muggeridge affair was also significant in the way it transformed student representation. It sparked demands for student rectors who would, it was believed, more fairly represent the voice of students. It is no coincidence that the University of Edinburgh led the way in this regard with the election in the early 1970s of a student, Jonathan Wills, to the post of Rector, followed by Gordon Brown, the future Prime Minister.21 Other tactics included putting up more left-wing figures for the election of rector, including Daniel Cohn-Bendit at the University of Glasgow in 1968.22 In doing so, students were expressing concerns about the effectiveness of student representation and were attempting to ensure students had some input into the management of universities. The second high-profile incident in the history of student politics in Scotland during this time was the Queen’s visit to the University of Stirling in 1972. The Queen had been asked to attend the University of Stirling, and a group of students decided to organise a protest and occupation when they learned the cost of the visit, mainly in supplying security. Their chosen place for occupation on the University of Stirling’s campus was the MacRobert Centre, as the Queen was unveiling a plaque there to open the newly renamed ‘Queen’s Court’ in the courtyard of this building.23 The Times reported on its front page that ‘drinking students barracked her [the Queen] and shouted obscene remarks’.24 Indeed, much of the coverage of this incident reveals interesting insights into establishment views of students. The Times described the students as ‘long-haired, drinking students’ who shouted ‘obscene remarks including

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four-letter words’, reflecting a stereotypical view of what a student was supposed to look like that was fairly dominant in this period.25 The Times also reported that the ‘Red flag’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ had been sung by students, helping to put forward the view that this was an anti-establishment protest as much as it was about students complaining about the cost of such a high-profile visit.26 By far the most shocking coverage of this visit for many people was the picture published on the front page of The Times which showed a student drinking from a bottle of wine in front of the Queen.27 Indeed, the protests surrounding the Queen’s visit to the University of Stirling caused such a stir that The Times printed almost 30 articles about it and there was also extensive coverage in student newspapers. For women involved in student life during this time, it was an especially important event as one of the main forces behind this protest was the President of the Student Council, Linda Quinn. Quinn had also edited the student newspaper at the University of Stirling, Brig. This newspaper reported that during the protest, Quinn had been ‘pushed to the ground and kicked by policemen … when she tried to persuade students to stop pushing and sit down’.28 She was recognised by many as having played a prominent part in the occupation that happened that day.29 Much like the Muggeridge affair, the aftermath of this incident revealed how those women who were at the forefront of political actions were viewed by some in society. And much of the criticism of Quinn was gender-specific. In one issue of Brig, a selection of letters that had been sent to the student newspaper not only by students but also by the general public were published. Stereotypical views about students being lazy and subsidised by the state sat alongside insults directed specifically at Quinn for a being ‘a silly little bitch’ and a ‘prostitute’, which are very clearly gender-specific insults.30 Quinn, alongside other students, had to face a disciplinary committee hearing at the University of Stirling, where management had been keen to gain control of the situation and to counter some of the public criticism which had emerged. She was accused of taking part in meetings which had led to the occupation and her penalty was to be excluded from University areas and activities for one semester. However, some students and staff were appalled at the treatment of her and the other students who had been involved on the day. Brig commented that ‘it appears that the President’s [Quinn’s] only crime … was being the representative of the students and not the administration hacks’.31 In

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fact they reported that the National Union of Students conference in November 1972 had unanimously passed support for students like Quinn at the University of Stirling and that they viewed the University’s reaction to the occupation and protest as putting democracy at stake.32 Indeed for many students in Scotland the investigation at the University of Stirling was viewed as a witch-hunt and they found ways to express their support for those affected. For example, students at the University of Dundee sent £100 to help with any legal costs that the affected students might incur, and students at the University of Strathclyde paid for one edition of Brig to be published due to the fact that the student newspaper offices at Stirling had been closed down while the investigation into the occupation was ongoing.33 While for some in the general public and the media, this incident fed into stereotypical views of students as being lazy layabouts who were subsidised by the state, it was viewed very differently by many students. Although in the days after the protest, about 600 students at the University of Stirling had signed a petition which sought to disassociate themselves from the action, a campaign began to build which supported the right of those involved to take action. At a meeting of students at the University of Stirling in October 1972 a vote of no confidence in the Principal of the University was passed by 768 votes to 160 and a second motion criticising attempts to discipline students was also passed by 784 votes to 94.34 For these students this incident brought into sharp focus the problems with creating an effective system of student representation on university campuses, and for some women it was an inspiring moment to see women like Linda Quinn take the lead in this action. Sandie Wyles, who would later become very active in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland, had grown up in Stirling and for her Linda Quinn was like a deity: they were the people that were in charge. They were the ones running that show and we were just like wee lassies. We just thought ‘oh this is fantastic’ and they took us under their wing completely. Treated us with a lot of respect.35

For Sandie, this action led to the creation of ‘a political feeling’ in Stirling and it encouraged her to think about issues which she might not otherwise have considered, contributing to her politicisation. While Quinn, like Coote, had faced gender-specific insults and criticism for

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being involved in a high-profile student campaign, their impact was to inspire others, some of whom went on to become active in women’s liberation politics in Scotland.

Putting Feminism on the Agenda It is no surprise, then, given women’s claims for space on campus, with individual women taking the lead in university disputes, that some students began to organise on university campuses around the issues of feminism and women’s liberation, the third main way that female students contributed to changing student politics in the 1960s and 1970s. There is a definite change in the content of student newspapers during this period, with issues such as abortion, rape, domestic abuse, the politics of housework and childcare, among many other issues, being written about, usually by female students putting forward ideas that were new and fresh and contributing to often heated debates on campus about women’s role in society more generally.36 Indeed one trend which was evident during this period was that women were becoming more involved in the running of and writing for student newspapers with, most notably, two women who would later be extremely influential in setting up a women’s liberation group editing AIEN at the University of St Andrews.37 Women also contributed new ideas through getting involved in debating societies and proposing motions which reflected broader discussions on women’s role. For example, at the University of Aberdeen in 1974, Chris Durndell proposed a motion that ‘abortion is a woman’s birthright’. Although this motion was defeated by 62 votes to 74, it had an impact on other women in the room. Lorna, who had attended this debate and then went on to become active in the Women’s Liberation Movement, remembered Chris’s performance and described her as ‘brave’ saying how it was ‘amazing that somebody was saying something that actually engaged with … how I saw the world’.38 After this debate Lorna began attending women’s group meetings as she had been so inspired at seeing a woman talk about an issue from a feminist perspective. Openly discussing issues such as abortion, which was central to the Women’s Liberation Movement, helped to expand support for women’s liberation and drew in women to local women’s liberation groups. Indeed, many women’s liberation groups used space on university campuses to hold meetings. Through these meetings and the reports published in student newspapers afterwards, other students were

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introduced to the difficulties that women faced on campus, including the lack of childcare facilities. As a result of this, women at the University of Aberdeen campaigned for university day-care facilities, and at the University of Dundee a ‘baby demonstration’ was organised where female students were encouraged to bring their babies with them to university in order to demonstrate the need for a crèche on campus.39 In doing this, these female students were challenging the invisibility of women on campus and drawing attention to the barriers they faced when trying to participate fully in campus life. They also shared feminist analyses of particular issues which had been developed in their women’s liberation groups with the wider student population. For example, at the University of St Andrews they challenged ideas about rape by writing articles and sending letters to the student newspaper about this issue. In this they highlighted the idea of a double sexual standard for men and women, the need to move away from considering a woman’s sexual history when she has been raped, and the idea that women have their freedom restricted due to the fear of ‘the sexually aggressive male’.40 All of these ideas had been developed through discussions in the Women’s Liberation Movement and, in sharing these through a student newspaper, these feminist analyses had a much wider impact. These discussions also led to some women questioning the status quo on campus. At the University of Strathclyde, for example, a female student wondered why two jobs which had been advertised for Strathclyde University Union had been for a ‘female’ secretary and a union manager, which was reserved for men only. She observed, ‘one would have thought that after a term spent listening to Tariq Ali … some of it would have rubbed off on our alleged “radicals”…’41 Indeed, a tactic often used by female students during the 1960s and 1970s was to draw attention to the discrepancy between some male students arguing for equality and progressive politics, while at the same time happily discriminating against women. In fact, a motion was brought to the union council at the University of Strathclyde in 1974 to stop strip shows being organised on campus. This motion was proposed by two women who explained that strip shows were sexist and degrading to women, again indicating a more strident approach to opposing discrimination by some women on campus during the 1970s.42 In doing so, they contributed to questioning the status quo and challenged men and universities to take the issue of sex discrimination more seriously.

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Although some male students were uncomfortable with this development with, for example, one man at the University of St Andrews commenting that ‘it appears that the place is overrun with Liberation Women’, it is the reaction of some female students that is more interesting.43 For some female students at university in Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s it was an exciting and productive place to be in terms of the development of their own feminist politics. Providing space both in terms of meeting rooms and also intellectual space to allow them to consider issues related to women’s liberation, universities became key sites in the development of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland. Furthermore, as many women went to university for the first time, they became concerned that this was only viewed by society as a hiatus from the acceptable path for women; once they graduated they were still expected to marry, have children and not enter the labour market. As Jane Lewis has argued: The women becoming feminists at the end of the 1960s were registering the discrepancy between the rosy world of equal expectations engendered by the college education that so many more women obtained during the late 1960s and the reality of early marriage and children that followed.44

In this context, therefore, it should be no surprise that for some women their campaigns for women’s liberation and feminism began on their university campus, as it was there where they had the space to become involved in this feminist activism and they realised that in order to pursue their interests after graduation they would need to change how women were viewed in wider society. Through exploring these issues, discussing them with other female students, producing fresh new analyses of issues and then sharing these with the wider student population, they contributed to changing the content of student newspapers, putting forward interesting motions for debate and adoption by SUs, and helped to create a more supportive environment for those female students who would follow them.

Conclusion Like many university campuses around the world, university campuses in Scotland were changing during the 1960s and 1970s. More students were attending university, leading to a much more diverse student

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body. How students dealt with these changes quickly become evident through reading the pages of their student newspapers. ‘The Sixties’ and in particular protests which happened around the world during 1968 clearly had influence and encouraged some students to push for more progressive and representative politics on university campuses. Often absent from these discussions was a consideration of the role of women. However, these discussions, underpinned by ideas of equality, fairness and representation, encouraged some women on campus to think about how this related to them and to consider why, despite these discussions, women still had to fight to be heard and to be taken seriously. It has been argued here that female students in Scotland did this through three main ways. The first was through claiming space on campus. Shut out of physical areas of student life, it also became evident that this meant they were not able to claim the same resources or the same access to discussions as male students were. Coming up with creative ideas for protests, some female students were successful in gaining access to once male-only spaces and in seeing the gradual phasing out of some of the most sexist aspects of student life. They also claimed space through more formal routes such as gaining election to SUs or in taking a leading role in the production of student newspapers, the second main way women contributed to changing university life. In Scotland both the Muggeridge affair and the Queen’s visit to the University of Stirling highlighted both the possibilities for women to get involved in student politics as well as the problems they faced because of this involvement. Indeed, these two incidents highlight the sexism and discrimination female students were continuing to face throughout the 1960s and 1970s in Scotland. The Muggeridge Affair was also important because of its link to an issue of importance to the Women’s Liberation Movement—the oral contraceptive pill. This and other issues like rape, domestic violence, childcare and housework were increasingly discussed on many university campuses in Scotland during this period and was the third main way in which women contributed to changing student life. In sharing the ideas they were creating within women’s liberation groups or through their own reading, some female students introduced ideas which were new and interesting and often encouraged a fierce reaction from some men on campus. In having a willingness to discuss issues such as abortion, the oral contraceptive pill, sexuality and rape, these women encouraged others to get involved in women’s liberation or feminist activism, indicating

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why universities were so important to the development of the Women’s Liberation Movement. While student life continues, at times, to be an unwelcoming space for women, without those women coming into higher education for the first time in the 1960s and 1970s many sexist ideas likely would have persisted and made it much more difficult for women in the future to participate fully in student life. Through challenging ideas that they were ‘too sweet’, some female students created alternative spaces where women could meet, discuss and build campaigns to change the university they attended. In doing so university campuses changed in some aspects and the development of feminism was also altered as women brought their experiences of student life and their fears for what life held for them upon graduation, and helped to create and then develop the Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland. It is evident, therefore, that the histories of feminism and student politics in the 1960s and 1970s are inextricably intertwined and considering the history of student life in this way provides us with interesting insights into the development and impact of feminist ideas during this period.

Notes





1. Please note that some of the material for this chapter was first published in my book—Sarah Browne, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). Thank you to Emma Brennan and MUP for allowing me to use this material to form the basis of this chapter. 2. Strathclyde Telegraph, 13 February 1968, 12, University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections. 3. The seven demands were: equal pay for equal work; equal opportunities and equal education; free contraception and abortion on demand; free community-controlled childcare; legal and financial independence for women; an end to all discrimination against lesbians; freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of violence or sexual coercion, regardless of marital status. An end to all laws, assumptions and institutions that perpetuate male dominance and men’s aggression towards women. 4. Sue Sharpe, Just Like A Girl—How Girls Learn to be Women—From the Seventies to the Nineties (London: Penguin, 1994), 9–10. 5. An excellent discussion of the ways in which Scotland had a ‘sixties’ experience can be found in Angela Bartie, ‘Festival City: The Arts, Culture

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and Moral Conflict in Edinburgh 1947–1967’ (PhD thesis, University of Dundee, 2006), 14. 6.  AIEN, 2 October 1968, 1. StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library. 7. ‘Representation on the Senate Student “Rector”?’, Strathclyde Telegraph, 22 October 1969, 1, University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections. 8. Glasgow University Guardian, 5 November 1968, 3, University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections; Records of Glasgow University Students Representative Council (GB 248 DC 157); AIEN, 9 October 1968, 1, StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library; Annasach, 18 October 1968, 1, University of Dundee Archive Services. 9. Annasach, 17 January 1969, 1, University of Dundee Archive Services. 10.  Strathclyde Telegraph, 9 October 1969, 8, University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections. Glasgow University Guardian, 13 May 1968, University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections; Records of Glasgow University Students Representative Council (GB 248 DC 157), 7, Gaudie, King’s Kutie frequently appeared in this paper during the 1960s and 1970s, LfperAaP87G, Courtesy of the Special Collections Centre, The Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen. 11. AIEN, 30 April 1969. StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library. 12.  Glasgow University Guardian, 14 October 1969, University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections; Records of Glasgow University Students Representative Council (GB 248 DC 157); The Student, 10 February 1971, 1, University of Edinburgh, Main Library Special Collections. 13. For more on student politics at St Andrews University see S. Browne, ‘A Veritable Hotbed of Feminism: Women’s Liberation in St Andrews, Scotland, c. 1968–c.1979’ Twentieth Century British History 23 no. 1 (2012), 100–23. 14.  AIEN, 16 April 1969. StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library. 15. AIEN, 29 April 1970, 29; AIEN, 20 January 1971. StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library. 16. For an excellent summary of this episode 10 years on, see: The Student, 9 November 1978, 4, University of Edinburgh, Main Library Special Collections. 17.  The Student, 9 November 1978, University of Edinburgh, Main Library Special Collections.

294  S. Browne 18.  For opposition, see Glasgow University Guardian, 29 January 1968, 4, University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections; Records of Glasgow University Students Representative Council (GB 248 DC 157). For a more supportive article see Strathclyde Telegraph, 30 January 1968, 2, University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections. 19. Glasgow University Guardian, 29 January 1968, 1, University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections; Records of Glasgow University Students Representative Council (GB 248 DC 157). 20. Transcript of interview with Esther Breitenbach, 24 May 2007, 3. 21.  Strathclyde Telegraph, 25 November 1971, 1, University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections. 22. Glasgow University Guardian, 17 October 1968, 4–5, University of Glasgow Archives and Special Collections; Records of Glasgow University Students Representative Council (GB 248 DC 157). 23. The Times, 13 October 1972, 1. 24. The Times, 14 October 1972, 1. 25. The Times, 13 October 1972, 1. 26. The Times, 13 October 1972, 1. 27. The Times, 13 October 1972, 1. 28. Brig, vol. 4, no. 2, 12 October 1972, 2. UA/D/2/1/31: University of Stirling Archives. 29. Brig, vol. 4, no. 7, 5 February 1973, 1. UA/D/2/1/36: University of Stirling Archives. 30.  Brig, vol. 4, no. 2, 12 October 1972, 3. UA/D/2/1/31: University of Stirling Archives. 31.  Brig, vol. 4, no. 7, 5 February 1973, 1. UA/D/2/1/36: University of Stirling Archives. 32. Brig, vol. 4, no. 7, 5 February 1973, 2. UA/D/2/1/36: University of Stirling Archives. 33.  Brig, vol. 5, no. 1, 17 September 1973, 1. UA/D/2/1/44: University of Stirling Archives. 34. The Times, 14 October 1972, 1; The Times, 19 October 1972, 4. 35. Transcript of interview with Sandie Wyles, 18 September 2007, 2. 36. For example see AIEN, 6 October 1971 StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library and Strathclyde University Telegraph, 6 December 1973, 5, University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections. 37.  AIEN, 6 May 1970—Zoe Fairbairns and Stevie Norris announced as editors of AIEN and were in fact the first female editors of this publication. StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library. 38. Transcript of interview with Lorna Peters (LP), 4 September 2007, 1. NB. This transcript has been anonymised and a pseudonym used.

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39. Gaudie, 7 February 1973, 3 LfperAaP87G, Courtesy of the Special Collections Centre, The Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen and Annasach, 7 February 1975, 1‚ University of Dundee Archive Services. 40. AIEN, 14 November 1973 and 28 November 1973. StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library 41.  Strathclyde Telegraph, 27 January 1972, 2, University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections. 42.  Strathclyde Telegraph, 9 May 1974, 12, University of Strathclyde Library, Department of Archives and Special Collections. 43.  AIEN, 3 March 1971. StALF1119.A2S23. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library. 44. Jane Lewis, ‘From Equality to Liberation: Contextualising the Emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement’, in Bart Moore-Gilbert and John Seed (eds), Cultural Revolution? The Challenge of the Arts in the 1960s (London: Routledge, 1992), 112.

Author Biography Sarah Browne  researches the history of feminism, the women’s movement, and women and politics. Most recently her book, The Women’s Liberation Movement in Scotland, based on her PhD thesis, has been published by Manchester University Press (2014). She has published on a number of themes, including the inter-war women’s movement, women’s groups in Dundee and the role of religion in the Women’s Liberation Movement. She is currently coordinating a Heritage Lottery Funded project called Speaking Out: Recalling Women’s Aid in Scotland, which is documenting and recording the history of Women’s Aid in Scotland. For more information, please visit: http://womenslibrary.org.uk/ discover-our-projects/speaking-out/.

CHAPTER 13

Altbach’s Theory of Student Activism in the Twentieth Century: Ten Propositions that Matter Thierry M. Luescher

Introduction Student activism is ‘a highly complex, many-faceted phenomenon’ for which serious systematic efforts at understanding it only emerged as a scholarly response to the student revolts of the twentieth century.1 Until the mid1960s, student activism was thought of as more characteristic of developing countries, especially South America, India and Africa, than the industrialised countries of Western Europe and North America, even though students had historically been part of the political equation there, such as during the Bourgeois revolutions of the 1840s.2 The student activism of the late 1960s stands out, however, as perhaps the most significant student political period of the twentieth century in Europe and North America.

T.M. Luescher (*)  Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Education and Skills Development, Cape Town, South Africa T.M. Luescher  University of the Free State, Mangaung, South Africa © The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_13

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Philip Altbach was there. As a student at the University of Chicago, he was part of the anti-war Student Peace Union (SPU) from its establishment in 1959, and he served as National Chairman of the SPU from 1959 to 1963. When invited to join a major rally of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in London, the SPU sent the 19-year-old Altbach as one of its representatives to London; when returning to the United States, Altbach brought along a pocketful of the ubiquitous ‘peace symbol’ pins from England, which, after much deliberation the SPU adopted, widely distributed and turned into a global anti-war symbol and indeed the symbol of an entire generation.3 By the time Altbach entered graduate school, he was involved with international student movements from as far away as Japan and had attended youth and student conferences at places as remote as the Soviet Union. At this time he turned his attention to studying student politics rather than actively participating in it. During this period he produced his PhD thesis, Students, Politics and Higher Education in a Developing Society: The Case of Bombay, India, and began to make a name as an emerging scholar on student politics in America, India and the developing world (working on related topics with Seymore Martin Lipset), and he tried himself as scholarly commentator on matters such as the civil rights movement in the US.4 When the student revolts swept through Europe and other parts of the globe in 1968, Altbach as a young post-doc at the University of Chicago, became one of the foremost scholars to provide expert commentary and analysis. In ‘Student Revolt in Europe’, Altbach succinctly compared the student protests in Italy, West Germany and Poland to each other and to the student activism in US universities and universities in developing countries.5 In ‘The Student Barometer’, Altbach focused on student politics in Czechoslovakia after the Soviet intervention of August 1968.6 European student activism also featured prominently in large edited volumes like Students in Revolt, Student Politics: Perspectives for the Eighties and in Altbach’s global round-up Student Activism: An International Reference Handbook.7 Student activism in Europe was, however, not Altbach’s major focus, and he hardly ever commented on student activism in Britain, where he argued ‘there was relatively little activism’ and ‘which was relatively quiet during [the 1960s]’.8 His attention was on American student politics, including pioneering work on the history of student politics there in the period of 1900–1960, which he published as Student Politics in America: A Historical Analysis, and on India and the developing world more widely, with his own doctoral work eventually published as Student

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Politics in Bombay, the anthology Turmoil and Transition: Higher Education and Student Politics in India, and journal articles like ‘Student Politics in the Third World’ published in Higher Education.9 Whereas his most significant empirical contribution to the study of student politics is focused on the United States and India, and to a lesser extent the developing world at large and Europe, Altbach’s lasting theoretical contribution on student activism has a wide international application. Altbach’s theoretical work on student activism takes as its starting point empirical observations which are analysed, categorised and synthesised in a manner not unlike the development of grounded theory.10 Some of that empirical work was done by Altbach himself and included archival work; especially in later years the refining of Altbach’s thinking was based on a wide reading of case studies done by others, which over two and a half decades congealed into a ‘canon’ of key ideas about ways of understanding student activism. As I argued elsewhere: By 1989, Altbach’s thinking on student activism crystallised to a point where the prism of analysis was set. His encyclopaedic chapters – that is his contributions on student activism to several higher education reference works such as Student Political Activism: An International Reference Handbook (1989), International Higher Education: An Encyclopaedia (1991), The Encyclopedia of Higher Education (1992), and International Handbook of Higher Education (2006) – largely recap a story which, conceptually speaking, is complete as his contribution, and only requires the occasional empirical update. High-level inferences make up most of that contribution; in large parts, they are not generalisations based on the rigorous application of the comparative method as it is understood today. Rather, Altbach’s method is that of a synthesiser, one of discerning commonalities and differences across various contexts, and establishing modal characteristics.11

Altbach did not view his work on student activism as theoretical; indeed, he continued to assert that ‘student activism lacks any overarching theoretical explanation’.12 Meanwhile, his work involves the specification of concepts and the relationships between them, which is fundamental to the development of empirically grounded theory in the social sciences. It includes a complex multi-level system of classification for categorisation as well as implicit and explicit propositions regarding the emergence, the outcomes and impact of student activism, the responses to student activism, and the typical characteristics of student organisations and movements and of student activists. As a way of ordering Altbach’s

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theoretical contribution systematically, I have formulated ten propositions for understanding student activism based on his work.

Altbach’s Framework for Studying Student Activism in Ten Propositions Conceptual Points of Departure The starting point for understanding Altbach’s contribution to the study of student activism in the twentieth century is his use and specification of key concepts. Within the context of higher education in general, Altbach refers to the collective of students as the ‘student community’ or the ‘student body’ when making reference to all students of a particular institution.13 The designation of student communities as distinct from other kinds of politically significant social groups is important insofar as student communities have typical characteristics: they are to some extent age-graded; they tend to be closely-knit residential communities and yet transient in nature; they are divided by faculty and discipline, and yet subject to the rigours and rhythms of academic life in general; and students tend to come from similar familial and class backgrounds.14 The latter is more true for the first half of the twentieth century, where students tended to come from elite families or at least saw themselves as ‘incipient elite’; this changed with the massification of higher education (starting in the US in the post-Second World War period, and eventually in the UK and other Western countries) and even more so with the universalisation of higher education. The typical characteristics of the student community are important insofar as they make student organisations and movements somewhat unusual.15 Student activism is the collective public expression of ideas by students aimed at creating politically pertinent public debate on a topic and seeking to bring about significant (moderate, radical or even revolutionary) socio-cultural and political change. From his earliest articles, Altbach uses this basic conceptual toolkit and progressively elaborates analytical strategies and categories that facilitate the analysis of different kinds of student movements and organisations as the platforms for student activism, their historical origins and scope of activity; and of the student activists themselves, their family,

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class and academic backgrounds, their political ‘impetus’, ideological orientation and protest repertoire. His main explanatory foci can be grouped under four rubrics, namely: the conditions under which student activism is likely to emerge, including both general conditions as well as trigger events; the typical organisational platforms of student activism; the typical characteristics of student activists (and non-participants) including the notion of ‘activist impulse’; and the effectiveness and future pattern of student activism. Proposition 1: Conceptual Frameworks Matter Altbach’s first analytical strategy for understanding student activism involves a multi-levelled conception of the student polity and a multistakeholder conception of student politics. In this regard, his conception of higher education mirrors that of his contemporary, Burton Clark, who was an equally groundbreaking theorist of higher education.16 The student polity is analytically conceived in terms of four levels: a macropolitical or regime level of analysis, which is typically focused on the national level of governance but which may extend to the supra-national; the systemic level of higher education, insofar as different national higher education systems have certain politically salient, inherent characteristics; the institutional level of higher education and different types of universities and similar higher education institutions (e.g. polytechnics); and the organisational level of student politics where there are features and characteristics of student organisations and movements that distinguish them from other youth and social movements. Moreover, student politics is best understood in terms of a multistakeholder perspective, whereby students are political participants in contentious politics involving a range of other political role-players in the sector and beyond. At the national level, students may be conceived as a highly organised section of civil society (along others); in the higher education sector and at institutional level, the major other stakeholders include government, university management and academics, as well as other ‘market players’. This differentiated conceptual-analytical framework of the student polity and student politics is implicit in Altbach’s writing, as shown in the propositions below, and key to understanding student activism in the twentieth century from his perspective.

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Proposition 2: Political Development and Legitimacy Matters Being an international comparative higher education expert, Altbach always stressed the argument that student politics must be understood within its particular historical, socio-political and cultural context, even if his task was to point out the typical characteristics, discernible commonalities (and differences), and continuities (and discontinuities) of student politics across time and space. Thus, in keeping with the conception of a multi-levelled student polity, at the regime level of governance, the degree of national political development and regime legitimacy is considered a key factor in understanding the emergence, outcomes and impact of student activism. In this respect, where political systems are less democratic and less responsive, and therefore lacking in legitimacy, Altbach argues that ‘students often provide articulation for much more widely held views and concerns. Their movements are frequently the conscience of at least the educated segment of the population.’17 Nations where regimes have faced a legitimacy deficit—‘such as in much of eastern Europe, and in several western countries during the 1960s’—student activism can be significant and influential.18 In contrast, student efforts to overturn a government seem both difficult and unnecessary in countries with open, democratic systems of government.19 Correspondingly, the legitimacy of students themselves also matters. While in highly developed, democratic polities, ‘students do not see themselves nor are they seen by society as being legitimate political actors’, at least not to the extent this is the case in non-democratic societies, in ‘new’ nations, students have often played an important part in bringing about self-determination through their participation in nationalist and liberation movements and therefore have a great degree of political legitimacy to ‘speak truth to power’ with considerable authority.20 In this respect, Altbach put forward a clear proposition, stating that ‘where student activism is traditionally accepted as a legitimate element of the political system it is more likely to have an impact on society’.21 The effectiveness and impact of student activism is therefore directly related to the respective levels of legitimacy of the political system and that of the student movement. Altbach’s assertion of the ‘dramatic’ differences of student activism between industrialised countries and developing countries must be understood on these terms.22 Later work suggests that this proposition may not only hold true with respect to the

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role and impact of student activism in national politics and society; in higher education politics, the same may hold with respect to university reforms, as suggested by Munene, Nkomo and others.23 Proposition 3: Higher Education Matters Under what higher education conditions does student activism emerge? Taking a multi-level perspective of higher education as constituted by a system level and an institutional level of higher education, Altbach’s distinction between different systems and institutions have enormous heuristic value; they also involve a number of highly suggestive propositions with great potential for further study. At the highest level, a question that is implicit in Altbach’s work but has only been taken further recently by Luescher and others is, whether student activism is a massification phenomenon or, more specifically, a ‘symptom’ of the changing political economy of higher education in the transition from elite to mass higher education, and again from mass to universal higher education.24 In a related argument, Trow argued that student activism has been observed in elite, mass and universal higher education institutions, but that its meaning may vary; and correspondingly, Luescher-Mamashela has shown the heuristic value of corresponding conceptions of student (e.g. member of the academic community, stakeholder, customer, citizen) for understanding student politics at institutional and sub-institutional levels.25 Altbach’s argument starts by considering the ways in which higher education in general provides conditions for student activism, and how these general conditions vary across different kinds of (national) higher education systems. His argument is that academic life in general both permits and hinders activist movements. Among the enabling conditions are that universities as factories of new ideas and the ‘structural realities of academic life’ have a powerful effect on student political thinking and organising, and create a tendency for students to be idealist, oppositional and impatient to see change.26 Academic life provides considerable free time for students to live life at their own pace. Among the constraining conditions is that the pursuit of a course of studies also regulates life by following a set timetable. Hence, periods of exams make activism more difficult, for example. Moreover, there are specific aspects of student life on campus, such as ‘an age-graded population, a fairly close community, common social class backgrounds and other elements [that] make

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student movements somewhat unusual’.27 The transient nature of the student population and the rapid turnovers in student leadership generations also have a powerful impact on student activism. Hence, student movements tend to be fast to emerge, difficult to sustain, short-lived and sporadic.28 There are large-scale differences between different traditional types of higher education systems. In the more open, laissez-faire, traditional continental European university systems and in universities set up against continental European models of higher education, student life tends to be less regulated and students can study at their own pace. The status of becoming a ‘permanent student’, who can devote extended periods to student activism or even take a year off, may be easier to achieve there than in the Anglo-American tradition of higher education, where more regulated academic programmes, strict academic timetables and frequent examinations are the rule.29 Finally, in terms of the organisation and impact of student activism, the size and heterogeneity of the higher education system matters. Altbach’s argument here is that in large and heterogeneous systems (like the American or British ones), organising a coherent student movement is extraordinarily difficult; conversely, in very small national systems made up of a handful of institutions, such as found in several developing countries, organising a student movement of national impact is much easier.30 Proposition 4: Institutional Characteristics Matter According to Altbach, there are a number of institutional characteristics that increase the likelihood for student activism to emerge. In particular, the type, size, prestige and location of a university matters greatly. Findings from Altbach’s work in the 1960s suggested that student activists at the time tended to come from well-educated, urban families, were wealthier and more privileged than the average student, and tended to be among the best students academically. Student activists were therefore found mostly in the best and most prestigious universities.31 These institutions were typically located in a country’s capital or in major cities, which ‘gives students a sense that they are at the centre of power’.32 He further argued that a central, urban location also provided better access to information and decision makers, and student activism was likely to receive better media coverage (which is very important in terms of getting

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a response). Moreover, prestigious institutions did not only attract better and more activist students; they also typically had better, more cosmopolitan and activist professors.33 Hence, Altbach argued with reference to the US in particular, that historically student activism could be found only in a small number of institutions: ‘The more cosmopolitan and prestigious universities on both coasts, a sprinkling of major public universities in between, and some traditionally progressive liberal arts colleges.’34 Proposition 5: Discipline Matters Activist students are not only typically clustered in the more prestigious universities, they are also more likely to be found in some academic disciplines than others. The disciplinary specialisation of student activists is one of the most commonly made findings of research into student activism in the late 1960s; Altbach and others have shown that students from the social sciences and humanities as well as from the sciences tend to be more inclined towards activism than those from applied and professional fields like commerce, engineering and agriculture.35 The reasons that were given for this pattern include that: 1. student activists self-select into the social sciences because these disciplines focus on the study of society and social problems; 2. the subject matters in some disciplines affects students and produces more radical views and a more activist inclination; and 3. the course of studies for regulated professions tends to be more structured and thus makes it more difficult for students to become deeply involved in student politics or even ‘take a year off’ to pursue political activism.36 As I have argued elsewhere, the findings regarding the disciplinary specialisation of student activists may be extended to the institutional and system levels. Thus, more vocationally or professionally oriented institutions, such as ‘commercialised’ private higher education institutions, universities of technology and polytechnics, are seldom the originators or hotbeds of student activism. Moreover, this argument may be extended even further to say that from the professionally oriented side of a binary system or in dual systems of higher education, student activism is less likely to emerge.37

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Proposition 6: Students’ Backgrounds and Experiences Matter Understanding the context of Altbach’s work, it is clear that some of his sociological generalisations concerning the typical characteristics of student activists are not necessarily transferable across time and space. In 1991 he argued: Student leaders are from more affluent families than the general student population. Leaders also come from families that are very well educated and in which mothers as well as fathers have a fairly high level of education. The families tend to be more urban in orientation and background, a key factor in third world nations. In short, the families are more cosmopolitan than the norm.38

The general point is that student activists are not only typically a small minority of the overall student population, but that the typical student activist may also not be representative of the student body. When seeking to understand student activism at the micro-level of activist engagement, what matters are the familial, socio-economic and political background; the proposition that minority groups tend to be overrepresented among student activists; and—as noted above—that student activists tend to come from a small number of academic disciplines and are among the academically best-performing students.39 Recent studies considering the ‘activist impulse’ have focused on ‘the subjective rationality of students’ decision making’ regarding participation in activism. In this respect, Hensby’s study of non-participation in the 2010/2011 UK student protests shows that students’ decisions to participate or not in protests could be explained with reference to ‘[their] subjective context of decision making, drawing strongly on surrounding social networks, and the knowledge and resources accumulated from childhood onwards’.40 An enduring finding from the 1960s to the 2010s is the fact that even in relation to widespread grievances and many opportunities to participate, typically only a minority of students participate in activism.41 The argument that students’ campus networks, along with family backgrounds provide the motivations and opportunities to participate in student activism and thus inform individual decision making, provides a welcome revision and extension to Altbach’s work.42 It also proposes a closer look at student engagement and non-engagement on campus from the perspective of the student experience (and its differentiation in terms

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of key sociological indicators). As far as student academic engagement is concerned, this has proven a very successful line of investigation developed in parts by another contemporary of Altbach, Vincent Tinto.43 Proposition 7: Ideas Matter As noted above, academic life per se is an essential element of the student activist equation: universities—as factories of new ideas—provide students the unique opportunity to explore, debate and mobilise for new ideas.44 The newness is in contrast to the established, and along with students’ youthful idealism and impatience, student activism is typically oppositional in nature, as shown in the cases of student opposition to matters like the nuclear arms race in the 1960s, calls for disinvestment from apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, and advocacy of women’s rights, gay rights and concerns over global warming in the 1990s and 2000s.45 In considering what Altbach calls ‘the activist impulse’ (or why students come to participate in student activism), he argues that ‘there is considerable disagreement concerning the psychological motivations for student political activism, [yet] it seems clear that psychological dispositions and orientations as well as the sociological factors discussed earlier must be part of the activist impulse’.46 Unlike much of the student activism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, which is more readily interpreted in terms of the political economy of contemporary society, student activism in earlier decades was frequently interpreted in terms of ideology and cultural and post-materialistic grievances, especially in industrialised countries.47 However, Altbach was critical of the ‘generational revolt theory’ which was advanced by some theorists to explain the 1968 student revolt; he rather agreed with arguments that students had a ‘propensity to “antiregime” attitudes because of the nature of the campus culture, youthful idealism, and the like’ and that student activists appeared to have ‘a higher moral sense’.48 The most frequent argument he makes is that student activism often pursues ‘idealistic causes’ rather than that students struggle for their own direct benefit (even though the latter is a characteristic of étudialist movements, i.e. inward-oriented student movements focused on education-related matters such as the curriculum or tuition fees). In particular, the ideas of freedom, national self-determination, democracy and social justice have informed many student causes. In a seminal article of

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1989, Altbach argued that ‘students have had a long-standing romance with nationalism’ and that ‘virtually every nationalist and independence struggle had a strong component of student participation’. Moreover, ‘students were generally on the political left’.49 At the same time, he also noted, however, that this was not always true: for example, in the 1920s and 1930s, students had been at the forefront of the fascist movements of Italy and Germany.50 Ideas also matter for distinguishing between different kinds of student movements. In his early writings, Altbach used ideological alignment, focus and orientation to distinguish between different types of student movements. A key distinction between so-called étudialist and society-oriented movements was that the former were more particularistic, norm-based and inward-oriented towards higher education and student grievances, while society-oriented student movements were more value-based and concerned with broader ideological, political, social or cultural issues.51 Proposition 8: Student Agency Matters Student organisations and student movements are the typical platforms from which student activism is collectively organised. While they can be international, national, inter-institutional or institutional, campusbased organisations, movements and campaigns are the most common.52 In Altbach’s writing, a student movement is defined as ‘an association of students inspired by aims set forth in a specific ideological doctrine, usually, although not exclusively, political in nature’.53 As noted above, the leadership of student movements is typically not representative of the student body as a whole; it also typically ‘constitute[s] a tiny minority of the student population’.54 Altbach argues that: Even in the most dramatic upheavals, such as at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 or during the 1968 events in Paris, most students were not involved in demonstrations … There are, in a sense, three ‘rings’ of activist participation: the core leadership, which is a tiny minority and is often significantly more radical than most participants; active followers, who are well aware of the issues involved and willing to be involved in demonstrations; and a much larger group of students who are sympathetic to the broad goals of the movement but who are rather vague about the specific aspects and who are sporadically, if at all, directly involved. Outside of these rings stand a large group of uninvolved students, some of whom may oppose the goals of the movement and some of whom are apathetic.55

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In keeping with his ‘ideological’ definition of what constitutes a movement, and the fact that the activist core is quite a small and unrepresentative group, to conscientise and mobilise a broader student group for activist participation requires a concerted effort from the committed leadership. Organisationally, student movements are often comprised of a number of established student organisations which have statutes and recognition, formal membership and so forth, yet the movement itself tends to be just ‘an amorphous grouping of loosely affiliated chapters’.56 The affiliation that characterises a student movement is a matter of ‘a combination of emotional response and intellectual conviction’.57 The activists gain student affiliation to their cause by conscientising other students and the broader public by means of publications, public speaking, campaigns, the use of mass media, etc., and finally by mobilising protest actions, marches and demonstrations and other forms of agitation.58 It is therefore the appeal of their cause and the tactics they employ—if they ‘struck a key nerve in the consciousness of the student generation’—by which the activists get a movement going.59 The key issue for Altbach is therefore not the establishment of formal organisational structures but rather the agency of the core activists and their followers and sympathisers. Later work by Klemenčič expands and theorises this notion of ‘student agency’ as “students’ capabilities to intervene in and influence their learning environments and learning pathways”60. This conception of student agency is built on two premises: One is students’ agentic possibilities as students’ real opportunities and positive freedoms to do and to be what they [have] reason to value within [the] university context. These are exogenously given—they originate outside the individual. The enabling condition for this premise is students’ autonomy (as freedom to act, think, be), which implies that students’ behavior is experienced as willingly enacted.[…] The other premise is students’ agentic orientations which refer to students’ predispositions and will to particular enactments of agency. These are endogenously constructed as they represent internal responses to external state of affairs.61

Student agency must always be understood within its context, such as the ‘structural realities of academic life’ referred to above, which provides both enabling and constraining conditions. Given the reliance on student agency, student movements are ‘generally not sustained beyond an academic year or two and seldom grow into permanent organizations or political parties’.62

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Proposition 9: Conjuncture Matters So far I have shown that there are conditions at the macro-political level and the macro, meso and micro levels of the higher education polity that provide both enabling and constraining conditions for student activism to emerge. Moreover, a great deal of emphasis in Altbach’s work of student activism is on ideas and the role they play in the association of students towards a common cause. The final element in this theoretical framework is provided by the notion of ‘conjuncture’. Student discontent with a particular set of conditions, an ameliorative (or revolutionary) ideology, and their will to grasp, and sense of, agentic possibility to do something about it, is yet not enough to explain the actual outbreak of protests. Altbach proposes that it is the conjuncture of the above and a trigger such as ‘a key political event’ that spark protest action.63 Thus, student activism ‘does not come out of a vacuum but reflects real issues’, and the actual emergence of protests is stimulated by a trigger event.64 In the higher education sector this may be the announcement of new policy proposals that severely affect students (such as a plan to impose or increase tuition fees); the trigger may be a highly significant social or political matter becoming public (e.g. election rigging or revelations of corruption; government impositions of austerity measures); or even a foreign policy or international event (such as the Soweto Riots of 1976), to mention but a few.65 Demonstrations may also arise in solidarity with marginalised and oppressed social groups, in keeping with student commitments to social justice, and the trigger may be ‘manufactured’ by the acts of a key activist or group.66 A way of keeping track of longitudinal trends in student activism is to periodise it by demarcating distinct moments and stages in its historical development on the basis of changes in significant characteristics.67 Altbach has repeatedly done so by decade.68 Proposition 10: The Response Matters The success of student activism is determined to a large extent by ‘external circumstances’, especially the extent of media coverage, the response of key social groups in and outside the university, and ultimately, the response it receives from university and government authorities.69 In order to provoke a response, the activists’ message must be widely disseminated among the public. Hence, the exposure student activism gets

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in the media is a crucial factor in its effectiveness. One of the problems is, however, that ‘the nature and scope of media coverage is difficult to predict and may of itself alter the forms of protest’.70 As far as the student activism of the 1960s is concerned, several analysts argued that students received over-exposure in the mass media.71 There are, of course, numerous ways to disseminate the message and provoke media coverage. The spectrum of students’ protest repertoire ranges from co-operative to confrontational forms. Less confrontational forms of student protest typically seek to inform, educate and instigate debate, for example by publishing student papers, pamphlets and posters, and organising meetings, debates and symposia. Often wellreported in public media are forms of student protest geared towards and often resulting in a breaking of institutional rules (e.g. the student code of conduct) or even national legislation.72 They include (unauthorised) mass meetings, class and examination boycotts, the organisation of rallies, sit-ins and teach-ins, protest marches, street demonstrations and large-scale student strikes. Eventually, protest action can become highly confrontational, aggressive and even violent, on or off campus. Rampaging, rioting and looting on campus and in residences, laying siege to senate or council meetings, and even the torching of buildings have occurred. Often such protest action results in serious damage to life and property. The kidnapping of senior university authorities (such as a vice-chancellor) and even torture of kidnapped persons have been reported.73 In response to violent student protests, university management and/ or governments often choose to call police to interfere; this typically results in greater violence along with the detention of student protesters, and occasionally even leads to bloodshed and the loss of student lives.74 Meanwhile as broad as the student activist protest repertoire is the spectrum of potential forms of responses to student activism by authorities, if not broader. Perhaps the most important and frequently rehearsed argument of Altbach regarding student activism has been his caution that the violent repression of student activism is often a factor in ‘increasing both the size and the militancy’ of activist movements.75 As a short-term strategy, repression may work well; for the long term, however, it may prove counter-productive by sowing, as Altbach warns, ‘the seeds of later unrest’, and therefore by conditioning student political culture into the future.76

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Finally, the history of studies into student activism in the twentieth century shows that student activists have been more effective in bringing about change in the university than in national politics. As far as the latter is concerned, Altbach argues that ‘despite their ability to precipitate political upheaval, students have never been able to take power’.77 Overall, revolutionary student activism has seen ambiguous results. In a number of cases, student-led revolutions have simultaneously been highly effective and counterproductive. For instance, in the twentieth century, students have been an instrumental part in the downfall of several governments, but then the military took over rather than the group favoured by the students.78 Meanwhile, student activism focused on higher education and the universities themselves led to significant internal changes in universities, such as the Argentine university reforma of 1918, and the emergence of the Gruppenuniversiät in Germany.79

Conclusion Student politics is a normal part of university life. For one, students are a constitutive element of the university: ‘Universities would not exist without students. Students are at the heart of the academic enterprise.’80 Moreover, politics is an integral part of academic life: ‘The fact is that universities are highly politicized institutions, full of dispute and contention.’81 The reason for this view is not primarily Altbach’s observation of student politics: that, one may say, is merely a symptom: Indeed, politics is an integral part [of university life], not only of the governance of academic institutions, but of the creation and dissemination of knowledge which stand at the centre of the university’s purpose.82

Engaging with knowledge critically is precisely the task set out for the successful student. Without students questioning and contesting received knowledge, the curriculum and teaching and learning, the organisation of academic life, the role of the university in society and, eventually, the constitution and contradictions that mar society, there would be nothing higher about higher education; it would certainly be the end of the academic project. Student activism is one of the ways in which students’ critical engagement with education, politics and society came to express itself forcefully in the long and tumultuous twentieth century. For over five decades,

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from the early 1960s to this day, Philip Altbach has acted as scholarly observer and commentator, historian, sociologist and comparative analyst of student politics internationally, and thus become the foremost scholar on student activism of the twentieth century and beyond. This chapter has critically reviewed Altbach’s work (1963–2016), not to ‘canonise’ his work, but as a theoretical inroad into twentieth century student activism by means of discerning from his expansive publication record key learnings presented here as ten sets of propositions. They were deliberately not formulated as pseudo-testable hypotheses, but as a systematically ordered collection of empirically grounded, theoretically pertinent statements of what matters when one seeks to understand student activism.

Notes





1.  P.G. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, in International Higher Education: An Encyclopedia (New York and London: Garland, 1991), 247. 2. P.G. Altbach, Student Politics in Bombay (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1968). 3.  P.G. Altbach, ‘The Complexity of Higher Education: A Career in Academics and Activism’, Paper prepared for the symposium: At the forefront of international higher education, Boston College, 5 April 2013. 4. P.G. Altbach, Students, Politics, and Higher Education in a Developing Society: The Case of Bombay, India (PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1966). P.G. Altbach, Abbreviated Resume, 2009 (Unpublished). Altbach, ‘The Complexity of Higher Education’. http://www.tuningjournal.org/ cv/Philip_G_Altbach.pdf 5. P.G. Altbach, ‘Student Revolt in Europe’, Economic and Political Weekly 3, no. 19 (1968), 755–6. 6. P.G. Altbach, ‘The Student Barometer’, Economic and Political Weekly 4, no. 8 (1969), 385–7. 7.  S.M. Lipset and P.G. Altbach, Students in Revolt (Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin, 1969); P.G. Altbach, Student Politics: Perspectives for the Eighties (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981); P.G. Altbach (ed.), Student Political Activism: An International Reference Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1989). 8. P.G. Altbach, ‘Student Politics: Activism and Culture’, in J.J.F. Forest and P.G. Altbach (eds), International Handbook of Higher Education (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 341–2. 9. P.G. Altbach, Student Politics in America: A Historical Analysis (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1968 (1997 [rev. edn.]); Altbach, Turmoil

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and Transition; Altbach, ‘Student Politics in the Third World’, Higher Education 13, no. 6 (1984), 635–5. 10. For example, see: A. Strauss and J. Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA, London and New Delhi: Sage, 1998). 11. T.M. Luescher-Mamashela, ‘Theorising Student Activism in and beyond the 20th Century: The Contribution of Philip G. Altbach’, in M. Klemenčič, S. Bergan and R. Primožič (eds), Student Engagement in Europe: Society, Higher Education and Governance (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2015), 38. http://www.tuningjournal.org/cv/Philip_G_Altbach.pdf. 12.  P.G. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, in International Higher Education: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 1991), 247. 13. P.G. Altbach, ‘Students and Politics’, Comparative Education Review 10, no. 2 (1966), 187. 14.  P.G. Altbach, ‘Perspectives on Student Political Activism’, in Student Political Activism: An International Reference Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1989), 8. 15. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 252. 16. See: B.R. Clark, ‘Academic Power: Concepts, Modes, and Perspectives’, in J.H. Van de Graaff, B.R. Clark, D. Furth, D. Goldschmidt and D.F. Wheeler (eds), Academic Power: Patterns of Authority in Seven National Systems of Higher Education (New York: Praeger, 1978), 164–89; B. R. Clark, The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in CrossNational Perspective (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983). 17.  P.G. Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’, in B.R. Clark and G. Neave (eds), The Encyclopaedia of Higher Education (New York: Pergamon, 1992), 1442. 18. Ibid. 19. G.C. Moodie, ‘Student Politics in the United States and Britain’ (Book Review), Minerva 37 (1999), 298. 20. Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’, 142. 21. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 250. 22. Ibid., 256. 23. I. Munene ‘Student Activism in African Higher Education’, in D. Teferra and P.G. Altbach (eds), African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), 117–27; M. Nkomo, Student Culture and Activism in Black South African Universities: The Roots of Resistance (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984). 24. T.M. Luescher, ‘Student Representation in a Context of Democratisation and Massification in Africa: Analytical Approaches, Theoretical Perspectives, and #RhodesMustFall’, in T.M. Luescher, M. Klemenčič

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and James Otieno Jowi (eds), Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism (Cape Town and Maputo: African Minds, 2016), 27–60. Also see: D. della Porta, Social Movements in Times of Austerity: Bringing Capitalism Back in Protest Analysis (Oxford: Polity Press, 2015); N. Fleet, and C. Guzmán-Concha, ‘Mass Higher Education and the 2011 Student Movement in Chile: Material and Ideological Implications’ Bulletin of Latin American Research (2016), 1–17. 25. M. Trow, ‘Reflections on the Transition from Elite to Mass to Universal Access in Modern Societies since WWII’, in J.F. Forest and P.G. Altbach (eds), International Handbook of Higher Education: Part One: Global Themes and Contemporary Challenges (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006); T.M. Luescher-Mamashela, ‘Student Representation in University Decision Making: Good Reasons, a New Lens?’ Studies in Higher Education 38, no. 10 (2013): 1442–56. doi:10.1080/03075079.2011.625496. 26.  Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’; Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’. Also see: T. Luescher, L. Lacea Loader and T. Mugume, ‘#FeesMustFall: An Internet-Age Student Movement in South Africa and the Case of the University of the Free State’, Politikon, 44:2 (2017), 231–45. doi:10.1080/02589346.2016.1238644. 27. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 252. 28. Ibid., 249. 29. Ibid. Also see Clark, ‘Academic Power’ and Clark, The Higher Education System. 30. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’. Also see Moodie, ‘Student Politics in the United States and Britain’, 296. 31. Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’, 1443. 32. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 257. 33. Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’, 1443. 34. Altbach, Student Politics in America, xxxvi. 35. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 252; Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’, 1443. Also see Lipset and Altbach, Students in Revolt. 36. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 253. 37. Luescher-Mamashela, ‘Theorising Student Activism’. 38. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 252. 39. Ibid., 252–3. 40.  A. Hensby, Networks of Non-Participation: Comparing ‘Supportive’, ‘Unsupportive’ and ‘Undecided’ Non-Participants in the UK Student Protests against Fees and Cuts, Sociology (2015). 13 October 2015‚ http://www.journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038038515608 113#articleCitationDownloadContainer. 41.  Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 252; Hensby, ‘Networks of Non-Participation’.

316  T.M. Luescher 42. Hensby, ‘Networks of Non-Participation’. 43. For example, see: V. Tinto ‘Tinto’s South Africa Lectures’, Journal of Student Affairs in Africa 2, no. 2 (2014): 5–28. doi:10.14426/jsaa. v2i2.66; B. Schreiber, T.M. Luescher-Mamashela, and T. Moja, ‘Tinto in South Africa: Student Integration, Persistence and Success, and the Role of Student Affairs’, Journal of Student Affairs in Africa 2, no. 2 (2014): v–x. doi:10.14426/jsaa.v2i2.64. 44. Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’, 1438. 45. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 248. 46. Ibid., 253. 47. On activism as a response to the political economy of contemporary society see: della Porta, Social Movements. 48. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 254. 49. Altbach, Student Political Activism, 97–8. 50. Ibid., 98. 51.  P.G. Altbach, ‘Japanese Students and Japanese Politics’, Comparative Education Review 7, no. 2 (1963), 183–4. 52.  P.G. Altbach ‘The International Student Movement’, Comparative Education Review 8, no. 2 (1964), 131–7. 53. P.G. Altbach, ‘Students and Politics’, Comparative Education Review 10, no. 2 (1966), 180. 54. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 252. 55. Ibid. 56.  P.G. Altbach, ‘A Wide-Angle View: The Student Movement and the American University’, Phi Delta Kappan 47, no. 8 (1966a), 425. See also: Altbach, ‘Students and Politics’, 178. 57. Ibid., 180. 58.  Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’, 1438; Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 248. 59. Altbach, ‘A Wide-Angle View’, 424. 60. M. Klemencic, ‘From student engagement to student agency: conceptual considerations of European policies on student-centered learning in higher education’, Higher Education Policy 30, no. 1 (2017): 69. 61. Ibid., 80–81. 62. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 249. 63. Ibid., 254. 64. P.G. Altbach, ‘A New Student Militancy’, Economic and Political Weekly 22, no. 13 (1987), 543. 65. Ibid. 66. A case in point is Chumani Maxwele’s performance piece of soiling the Rhodes statue on the campus of the University of Cape Town in March

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2015, which triggered the #RhodesMustFall movement and eventually derivative movements across South Africa. 67. S.M. Badat, Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid: From SASO to SANSCO, 1968–1990 (Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council, 1999), 27. 68. For example: Altbach, Student Politics in America; P. G. Altbach, ‘From Revolution to Apathy—American Student Activism in the 1970s’, Higher Education 8, no. 6 (1979b), 609–26; P.G. Altbach (ed.), Student Politics: Perspectives for the Eighties (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981). P.G. Altbach and R. Cohen, ‘American Student Activism—The Post-Sixties Transformation’, Journal of Higher Education 61, no. 1 (1990); P.G. Altbach and M. Klemenčič, ‘Student Activism remains a Potent Force Worldwide’, International Higher Education 76 (2014): 2–3. 69. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 249–50. 70. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 250. 71. For example see: S.M. Lipset and P.G. Altbach, ‘Students and Politics in Western Countries: Student Politics and Higher Education in the United States’, Comparative Education Review 10, no. 2 (1966), 175; Moodie, ‘Student Politics in the United States and Britain’. 72. S.M. Lipset, University Students and Politics in Underdeveloped Countries. Reprint No. 255 (Berkeley, CA: University of California, Institute of International Studies and Institute of Industrial Relations, 1965). 73. J.D. Ojo, Students’ Unrest in Nigerian Universities: A Legal and Historical Approach (Ibadan, Nigeria: Spectrum Books, 1995), 48. 74. Altbach, ‘Student Political Activism’, 250. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid., 251. 77. Ibid., 256. 78. Ibid., 256. 79. Ibid., 257; P.G. Altbach, ‘The Importance and Complexity of Students in Politics and Governance’, in Luescher et al., Student Politics in Africa, xi; H. de Boer and B. Stensaker ‘An Internal Representative System: The Democratic Vision’, in P. Maassen and J.P. Olsen (eds), University Dynamics and European Integration (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007): 99–118. 80. Altbach, ‘The Importance and Complexity of Students in Politics and Governance’, xi. 81. Altbach, ‘Politics of Students and Faculty’, 1438. 82. Ibid.

318  T.M. Luescher

Author Biography Dr. Thierry Luescher  (Luescher-Mamashela) is the Research Director: Education and Skills Development at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa. He has secondary academic affiliation with the University of the Free State, where he previously worked as Assistant Director for Institutional Research. Prior to that, he was a senior lecturer in higher education studies and extra-ordinary senior lecturer in political studies at the University of the Western Cape. Thierry was a student leader at the University of Cape Town, where he also completed his PhD. He has studied student politics and higher education in Africa as part of a number of research groups, including the Higher Education Research and Advocacy Network in Africa (HERANA), African Minds and the Mellon Project ‘From #RMF to #FMF’. He is on the editorial board of a number of journals, including Journal of College Student Development, Makerere Journal of Higher Education, and the book series African Higher Education Dynamics. His recent publications include the book Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism (Cape Town and Maputo: African Minds, 2016), which he edited with Manja Klemenčič and James Otieno Jowi SDG.

Erratum to: Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland Jodi Burkett Erratum to: J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2 In the original version of the book, the following corrections have been incorporated: In Bertie Dockerill’s chapter, the personal address in the footer has been replaced with “Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK”. Email addresses of all the authors have been removed in all the chapters. Editors and Contributors page has been updated with the newly provided information. The erratum book has been updated with the changes.

The updated online version of this book can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2_14

E1

Index

A Aberdeen, 79–82, 84, 86, 87, 89, 139, 146, 239, 278, 288, 289 Abortion, 78, 80, 85, 86, 88, 89, 92, 208, 288, 291 Act for the Better Administration and Endowment of the Universities of Scotland (1889), 132 Activism, 5, 6, 8, 9, 157, 159, 160, 172, 210, 226, 239, 240, 279, 283, 290, 291, 297–308, 310–313 Africa, 48 African National Congress (ANC), 226 AIEN, 280, 282, 288 Alcohol, 21, 28, 31, 33, 39, 88 Ali, Tariq, 205, 280, 289 All-African People’s Conference, 1958, 227 Altbach, Philip, 5, 9, 298–313 Anglo-Irish Agreement, 136 Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), 226, 227, 230–233, 235, 237, 238, 240 Anti-Fascism, 204

Anti-fascist, 204, 205, 215, 219, 220 Anti-Fascists, 214 Apartheid, 8, 55, 63, 217, 225–231, 233–235, 237–239, 242, 307 Apathy, 317 Awareness of Unions and union activities, 165 B Badat, S.M., 317 Barclays Bank, 225, 229, 234–237 Barry, Katherine, 262 Barry, Kevin, 262–264 Barthes, Roland, 57 Basement Club, The (University of Brighton), 188 Benn, Tony, 280 Better Together Campaign, 129 Birmingham Music Archive, 185 Birmingham Polytechnic, 185 Black and Tans, 264 Blake Dillion, John, 249, 250 Blueshirts, 266, 268, 269 Bourdieu, Pierre, 16

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 J. Burkett (ed.), Students in Twentieth-Century Britain and Ireland, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58241-2

319

320  Index Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions campaigns (BDS) Academic Boycott, 231 Cultural Boycott, 228 Produce Boycott, 232 Sporting Boycott, 228, 231, 234 Boycott Barclays Campaign Disinvestment campaign, 232, 233, 237–239 Brady, Beatrice, 262 Brewis, Georgina, 5, 180 Brig, 286, 287 Brighton College of Technology, 187 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 178, 192, 194 British National Party, 219 Broad Left, 145, 158, 206, 213, 217 Brook Advisory Centre/Brook Clinic, 80, 90 Browne Report, 3 Bureaucracy, 144, 156 C Cabora Bassa Dam project, 229 Caldwell, Neil, 141, 143 Callaghan, James, 144 Cambridge Union Society, 104 Carnivalesque, 20, 23, 24, 30–32, 35–38 Catholic University of Ireland (CUI), 251 Chandler, Andrew, 144 Characteristics Of higher education, 301 Of student activists, 301, 306 Of student organisations, 299 Of students, 119, 300, 301 Of universities/higher education institutions; Class and social composition, 301 Charities Queen, 283

Chatterton, Paul, 180, 193 Chell, Dave, 236, 241 Clann na Poblachta, 263 Clark, D., 314 Cohabitation, 93 Cohn-Bedit, Daniel, 280, 285 Coleg Cymraeg, 143 Colleges Scotland, 147 Collini, Stefan, 182 Communist party, 208 Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), 204–206, 209–212, 215 Communist Students, 145 Confederation, 156, 157, 171, 207, 265 Confederation International des Etudiants (CIE), 131 Connolly, James, 256, 269 Contraception (Pill), 80, 85–88, 90, 92, 284 Cook, Dave, 209 Co-operative Bank, 232 Coote, Anna, 284, 287 Copsey, Nigel, 213 Correspondence, 47, 48, 235, 259 Counter culture, 20, 81, 178, 182 Cumann na Mac Léinn, 266 Cumann na mBan, 262, 267 Curriculum, 312 Cusack, Brian, 253 D Dáil Éireann, 253 Davis, Thomas, 80, 249, 250, 258 Davitt, Cahir, 257 Dearing Report, 3 Debates Attendance, 50, 104, 109, 113, 114, 119, 134, 218, 232 Empire, 108, 118, 205, 259, 264, 268

Index

First World War, 102, 110, 111, 116, 258, 260, 269 Foreign policy, 112, 117, 118, 133, 310 Home Rule/Ireland, 105, 252, 255, 258–261 Humour, 109 League of Nations, 116, 117, 255 Militarism and pacificism, 102, 112 Political party, 268 Race, migration, anti-Semitism, 109 Role and nature of education, 183 Second World War, 2, 4, 48, 102, 111, 119, 204 Welfare and health, 52, 77, 80, 86, 108, 116, 140, 180 Women’s suffrage, 112 De La Bedoyere, Raoul, 190 Democracy/democratic, 30, 63, 105, 106, 156–161, 163, 166, 206, 209, 214, 215, 218, 250, 269, 280, 287, 302, 307 Derrig, Thomas, 265 Detention camps, 48 DeValera, Eamonn, 262, 265, 267, 268, 270 Devlin, Bernadette, 135 Devoil, BR, 191 Devolution Vote 1978, 144 Disabilities, 45 Donnelly, Charles, 266, 268, 269 Dublin Castle, 264 Dublin Civic League, 257 Dundee, 82, 84, 138–140, 278, 287, 289 Durham Union Society facilities, 106, 107 finances, 107 Foundation, 102, 119 E Edinburgh, 77, 80, 84, 85, 90, 105, 106, 131, 132, 138, 140, 278, 283–285

  321

Educating Rita, 56, 57 Education Act 1994, 146 Elite, 2, 3, 7, 16, 17, 20, 23, 26, 38, 182, 270, 300, 303 Ellis, Terry, 187, 188 Emmet, Robert, 250 Engagement, 8, 28, 35, 37, 46, 49, 64, 86, 90, 145–148, 156, 158, 160, 162, 163, 170, 172, 184, 188, 189, 191, 229, 306, 312 Ethnography, 17 Ex-prisoners, 47 Eysenck, Hans, 208, 210 F Family Planning Clinic, 86, 92 Fancy dress, 20, 32, 34 Fascism/Fascist, 205–216, 218, 229, 267, 268, 308 Federation of Conservative Students (FCS), 138, 213 Federation of Scottish Nationalists (FSN), 138 Federation of University Women, 265 Fianna Fáil, 251, 253 Fonarow, Wendy, 181 Foucault, Michel, 57 Fowler, Davie, 182 Free State, 132, 255, 263–265, 267, 268 Free Wales Army, 143 Freire, Paulo, 60 Freshers, 26, 29, 110, 233, 236 Frith, Simon, 187 G Gately, Kevin, 212, 213 Gaudie, 281, 293, 295 Gender, 4, 7, 78, 82, 91, 106, 179, 197, 285–287 Giblet,The (Warwick University), 186

322  Index Glasgow University Guardian, 218, 281, 285 The Great War, 258 Glyn, Brendan, 136 Going out, 7, 16–20, 32–34, 38, 39 Goldsmith, Harvey, 187 Good Friday Agreement, 62 Graham, Davey, 178 Griffin, Nick, 219 Guildford University, 194 H Halls of residence, 25, 28 Hare, David, 177 Harrington, Patrick, 218 Haslam, David, 190 Henderson, Doug, 138 Hensby, A., 306 Higher Education funding, 3, 189 growth, 2, 4 massification, 300, 303 universalisation, 300 Histories of Elites, 182 HMP Albany, 45 HMP Barlinnie, 59 HMP Chelmsford, 54 HMP Frankland, 54 HMP Full Sutton, 51 HMP Maghaberry, 52 HMP Maze/Long Kesh, 58, 59, 61–63, 71 HMP Parkhurst, 55 HMP Swaleside, 57 HMP The Wolds, 54 HMP Wakefield, 45 HMP Wymott, 54 Home Rule, 105, 252, 255, 258–261 Hughes Cora, 267

I Idealism/idealist, 114, 307 Identity politics, 218, 220 Ideology/ideological, 116, 250, 301, 307–310 India, 297, 298 Interdisciplinary Network for the Study of Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change, 179 International Marxist Group (IMG), 205, 206, 208–210, 212, 213, 216 International Socialists. See Socialist Workers Party, 208, 212 International Students Conference (ISC), 133 International Union of Students (IUS)., 133, 144 Internet, 33, 47, 52, 59 Involvement, 19, 27, 32, 35, 116, 134, 157, 159, 163–170, 178, 212, 228, 230, 232, 233, 285, 291 Ireland, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 46–48, 50, 51, 105, 108, 130–132, 250–252, 254–256, 258, 260, 261, 264–269 Irgun, 48 Irish Citizen Army, 256 Irish Civil War, 264 Irish Free State, 132, 262, 267 Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), 260, 264, 269 Irish Student Association, 266, 269 Irish Volunteers, 255–257, 262, 265 Israel, 48, 55, 63, 217 J Jazz Goes to College, 178 Jenkins, Stanley, 133

Index

K Kate Kennedy Club, 282 Kennedy, John, 251 Kershaw, Andy, 184 King and Country Debate, 117 Klemenčič, M., 158, 309 L Labour League Against Fascism, 268 Labour Party, 158, 160, 205, 215 Labour Students (National Organisation of Labour Students), 146, 158, 217 Lanchester Polytechnic, 195 Larkin, James, 256 Legitimacy/legitimate Legitimacy deficit, 302 Lewis, Jane, 290 Lipset, S.M., 298 Little, Patrick, 251, 252 Live at Leeds, 178, 184 Liverpool Debating Society finances, 101 Local Education Authority (LEA), 48 Lombroso, Cesare, 49 Lucas, Barry, 189 Lyttleton, Humphrey, 183 M MacDonagh, Thomas, 252, 267 MacNeill, Eoin, 259 Madden, Thomas, 251 Mahaffy, John Pentland, 258 Manchester District Music Archive, 184 Manchester Student’s Union, 184 Markievicz, Constance, 252 Marks, Andrew, 201 Marriage, 79–83, 86, 92, 148, 290

  323

May Ball, 177, 178 Mayhew, Henry, 49 Maynooth College, 252, 261 McAliskey, Bernadette. See Bernadette Devlin McCarvill, Eileen, 262 Midland Bank, 233, 237 Modern Records Centre, 183 Monday Club, 205, 207, 209–211, 216, 220 Moodie, G.C., 314 Morality, 77–79, 82, 88 Mountjoy Prison, 263 Muggeridge, Malcolm, 80, 283, 284 Muggeridge affair, 285, 291 Munene, I., 303 Murray, Seán, 266 Myhill, Pat, 188–190 N Na Fianna Éireann, 250 National Front, 8, 204, 206, 210, 211, 213–216, 218–220 Youth, 218 Nationalism/Nationalist, 8, 63, 129, 144, 249, 250, 252–254, 256, 258, 261, 262, 264, 302, 308 language, 143 National Student, 25, 30, 133, 158, 209, 252, 254, 255, 257–263, 265, 266, 298 National Union of Students Clause 3 of the constitution, 231 Conference, 5, 136, 138, 142, 161, 169, 192, 216, 217, 231, 235, 240, 287 Entertainments Sub Committee, 191, 192 Entertainments Yearbook, 192 Organisation of entertainments, 193 standard contract, 192

324  Index National Union of Students Scotland (NUSS), 5 National Union of Students Union of Students in Ireland (NUS-USI), 130, 135–137, 146, 147 National Union of Students United Kingdom (NUSUK), 130, 131, 135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143–145, 148, 168 National Union of Students Wales (NUSW), 8, 130, 141–144, 147, 155–157, 162–164, 166–172 National University of Ireland (NUI), 251–253, 260, 266 Nic Aodha, Cora. See Cora, Hughes Night-time economy, 16–18, 20, 27, 31–33, 35, 37 Nkomo, 303 No Platform, 8, 140, 203–220 North America, 297 Northern Ireland, 5, 47, 52, 58, 61–63, 65, 130, 133–137, 140, 145–148, 266 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, 134, 136 NUS-USI Bi-lateral Agreement, 150 O O’Brien, Cruise, 251 O’Connor, Maurice, 257 Ojo, J.D., 317 O’Keefe, Theresa, 220 O’Kelly, Sean T., 264 O’Neill, Martin, 138 Online music archives, 185 Open University, 7, 45, 53–57, 62–64, 207 1913 Lock Out, 255 1916 Rising, 260, 262, 267, 269 1968, 5, 6, 8, 9, 80, 86, 135, 137, 231, 277, 280, 284, 285, 291, 298, 307, 308

O’Sheil, Kevin, 254, 255 Oxford Union Society, 104 P Palestine, 35, 48, 63 Parry, Steve, 136, 206, 235, 237, 240 Part-time Students, 53, 145, 148, 192 Pearse, Patrick, 252, 258, 270 Permissiveness, 78, 79, 93 Phillips, Vicky, 225 Pike, Anne, 51, 52 Plaid Cymru, 143, 144 ‘Plate Glass’ universities, 182 Pleasure, 19, 20, 23, 26–28, 32–34, 36–39 Politics, 2, 8, 19, 20, 27, 34, 35, 64, 102, 109, 111, 119, 135, 160, 161, 165, 181, 184, 193, 197, 215, 220, 252, 254, 255, 258, 260, 261, 277–280, 284, 285, 288–292, 298, 301, 303, 305, 312 Popular music studies and students, 178 Portelli, Alessandro, 49 Portsmouth Polytechnic, 240 Student’s Union, 240 Pranks and stunts, 24, 30, 31 Pregnancy Unmarried pregnancy, 88, 89, 92 Prisoners, 7, 45–59, 61–65, 264 Prisons, 45, 47, 48, 50, 52–54, 56, 58, 60, 63, 65 Protest, 6, 20, 35, 59, 80, 134, 172, 178, 227, 228, 238, 251, 256, 258, 263, 268, 277, 285–287, 301, 309–311 Protest repertoire/tactics Campaign, 144 Demonstration, 6 Lobbying, 148 Sit-in, 311 Teach-in, 311

Index

Violent protest, 311 Pyjama Jump, 31–33, 38, 39 Pyrs, Sion, 142 Q Queen’s University Belfast, 262 Quinn, Linda, 286, 287 Quinton, Sir John, 226 R Rag, 17, 20, 23–27, 29–32, 34–37, 39, 187, 193 Reading Gaol, 48 Reckitt and Colman, 237 Redbrick/civic universities, 101, 103, 108 Red Lion Square, 212, 213 Reid, John, 141 Religion, 7, 90, 91, 92, 102, 259 Repeal Association, 250 Representative, 26, 102, 106, 107, 131–133, 137, 141, 156, 157, 160, 161, 170, 178, 204, 207, 254, 256, 265, 266, 268, 281, 286, 291, 298, 306, 308, 309 Revolution/Revolutionary, 7, 62, 79, 88, 91, 92, 114, 204, 206, 250, 260, 266, 297, 300, 310, 312 #RhodesMustFall, 317 Robbins Report, 3, 4, 279 Rock Goes to College, 178, 192, 194 Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), 258 Ryan, Frank, 269 Ryan, James, 261, 262 Ryan, Josephine, 262 S Sabbatical relief, 181 Salmond, Alex, 129 Samuel, Raphael, 49

  325

Scotland, 7, 78–80, 83, 85, 90, 91, 129–132, 136, 138–141, 144–148, 278–281, 283, 285, 287, 290–292 Scottish Nationalist party, 129 Scottish Union of Students (SUS), 132, 139 Seebohm, Sir Frederick, 230 Sex Premarital sex, 81–83, 88, 92 Sexually transmitted disease (STD, venereal disease), 78, 80 Sharpeville massacre, 227, 230 Shaw, Ceila, 263, 264 Sheehy, Eugene, 251, 252 Shockley, William, 210 Sigerson Cup, 253 Silver, Pamela and Silver, Harold, 179, 180 Sinn Féin, 61, 251, 253, 263 Socialist Workers Party (SWP), 215, 218 Social Justice/Social Just, 182, 307, 310 Soffer, Reba, 180 South Africa, 55, 63, 225–229, 231, 232, 237–240, 307 South America, 297 Soweto uprising, 233 Spanish Civil War, 269 Specials, The, 194 St. David’s College Lampeter, 236 St. Stephen’s, 251 Stewart, Alistair, 136 Stranglers, The, 194 Strathclyde Telegraph, 277, 280 Straw, Will, 196 Student Activism, 5, 6, 8, 9, 159, 226, 240, 283, 297–308, 310–313 Student culture HEI-centred phase, 16, 19, 21, 28, 29, 38

326  Index Heterogeneous phase, 16, 19, 26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 35, 37, 304 Homogenous phase, 7, 16, 19, 36, 38, 39, 91, 241 Studentland, 17 The Student, 284 The Student Engagement Partnership (TSEP), 147 Student Movement, 5, 8, 131, 134, 136, 143, 146–148, 157–161, 167, 170–172, 206, 212, 249, 250, 300, 302, 304, 307–309 Student Participation in Quality Scotland (sparqs), 147 Student Peace Union, 298 Student Press, 18, 20, 21, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 87 Student Rectors, 281, 285 Student Representative Council (CRC), 106, 132, 254, 284 Student Revolt/Unrest, 134, 135, 159, 297, 298, 307 Student Union, 8 Students And culture, 144, 177, 178, 181, 188, 197 As audience, 194, 195 as consumers, 181, 185, 190, 196 As cultural producers and promoters, 181 as events crew, 32 As market, 34, 196, 226, 229, 230 As political agents, 180 Chanting and yelling, 20, 32 Dancing, 20–22, 32, 186 Dress, 20, 32, 34 Drinking, 20, 21, 24, 34, 285 Drugs, 28, 34 Extra-curricular activities and, 102, 180 impact on locality, 3, 55, 116, 231, 242, 304

Market, 237 Numbers in Higher Education, 3 Politics, 281–283, 302 Relationships with bands, 189 Relationship with ‘town’, 23 Testimony and narratives, 46 Student Union Challenges for historical research, 179 Commercialisation of, 180 Competitive advantage as music venues, 190 Entertainments Officer, 191 finance, 135 Function of, 110, 179 Historians and, 48, 101, 105, 269, 313 House histories of, 180 Music provision; Growth of, 20, 269; Origins of, 178, 204; Risks of, 191 Politics, 283 Relationship with locals, 23, 85, 179, 193 Social Secretary, 187–189, 191 Structure, 8 Student Vanguard, 266–269 Sturgeon, Nicola, 130 Sullivan Principles, 229 Swinging Sixties, 78, 91, 93 T Teeth and Smiles, 177 Television, 47, 192, 216 Terry, Mike, 235 Theory/theoretical, 9, 16, 35, 49, 86, 159, 161, 299, 310, 313 Thomson, Alistair, 49 Thornton, Sarah, 181 Tone, Wolfe, 249, 250 Town and/versus Gown, 111

Index

Tradition, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24, 31, 35, 37, 57, 102, 110, 130, 136, 186, 280, 304 Transnational solidarity, 226 Trinity College Dublin, 270, 271, 273 Trinity Gaelic Society, 256, 258 Trinity Historical Society, 250 ‘The Troubles’, 47 Trow, M., 303 Tuition fees, 3, 35, 146, 147, 307, 310 Turner, Victor, 30 Tutor, 46, 47, 52–58, 62, 65 Types of Student Activist activist core, 309 followers, 308, 309 non-participants, 301 sympathizers, 89 U Undeb Cenedlaethol Myfyrwyr Cymru (UCMC). See NUS Wales Union Nationale des Etudiants Francais (UNEF), 131 United Kingdom, 8, 15, 148, 279 United Nations (UN), 230 Universities Scotland, 132, 280 Universities UK, 47 University Grants Committee, 186 University of Aberdeen, 281 University of Aberdeen, 79 Aston, 185, 188, 189, 235 Birkbeck, 53, 239 Birmingham; Guild of Students, 106, 185 Brighton, 55, 183, 193 Bristol, 17, 194 Cambridge, 103–107, 111, 112, 114, 177, 207, 219, 231 Chicago, 298

  327

College Cork, 257 College Dublin, 254 College Galway, 253, 257 Dublin, Trinity College, 250, 253, 255–257 Dundee, 287, 289 Durham; Church of England, 102; Curriculum, 103, 108, 307; Foundation, 119 East Anglia, 235 Edinburgh, 77, 80, 84, 85, 132, 140, 283–285 Glasgow, 80, 85, 89, 218, 281, 285 Hull, 178, 207, 237 Keele, 207, 236 Lancaster, 138, 182, 183, 189 Leeds, 184, 239 Leicester, 133, 239 Liverpool; curriculum, 103; foundation, 103; Gilmour Hall, 108 London, 53, 54, 63, 105, 131 London School of Economics, 6, 54, 207, 239 Newcastle, 103, 187 Open University, 7, 45, 53–55, 57, 62, 63, 207 Open University of Israel, 55, 63 Open University of South Africa, 55 Oxford, 103–105 Reading, 191 Robben Island University, 63 Sheffield, 7, 15, 17, 32, 180 St. Andrews, 140 Stirling, 141, 283, 285–287, 291 Strathclyde, 80, 81, 138, 140, 277, 278, 281, 287, 289 Sussex, 235 Swansea, 142, 239 Warwick; Student Council, 186, 209, 286 University of Birmingham, 103 University of Dundee, 281

328  Index University of Durham, 239 University of East Anglia, 239 University of Leeds, 103 University of Oxford, 219 University of Sheffield, 103 University of St Andrews, 282 University of Warwick, 213 Unrest, 134, 159, 311 V Vietnam War, 280 W Warner, Michael, 57, 61 War of Independence, 263, 265, 269 Warwick Boar (Warwick University), 190, 208 Webster, Steve, 208 Welsh Language Action Group, 143 Welsh Language Society (Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg), 142, 143 West Brunton Technical College’s, 185 Western Europe, 297

West Lothian Question, 131 White, Cpt. Jack, 256, 257 Who, The, 178, 184, 186, 189, 194 Widening Participation, 4 Wilson, Bryan, 186, 187 WISE Wales, 169 Women, accepted in debating societies, 288 Women, enrolment in universities, 4 Women’s Aid, 278 Women’s Liberation Movement, 9, 278, 279, 285, 287–292 Wright, Chris, 188 Wyles, Sandie, 287 Y Yeats, W.B., 258 Young Ireland, 250 Young Ireland Movement, 260 Youth culture British historians and, 179 Literature, 182 Middle classes and, 182 Students and, 6, 182