Media 68

Great Britain of the Sixties is the place where some amazing novelties that involve especially the culture and customs of the young are produced.

From the movement of the "angry young men" to the first youth bands (the mods and the rockers), and then to the explosion of the Beatles phenomenon, the young English rebel at the way of living of their fathers and find in rock and pop music the language that is able to express their revolt.

During the same years, even if in quite limited circles, the need for a cultural and political renewal of the left is begun to be felt: in 1960 the New Left Review is founded with collaborators such as Stuart Hall, E.P.Thompson, Raymond Williams, Perry Anderson.

Just as in other western countries, in Great Britain also the mass university is born during the Sixties. The student population, which in the first post-war decade had remained stable at around 70 thousand, in 1965 reaches the number of 300 thousand.

The change of the function of the university, which is no longer a place reserved for the formation and reproduction of a governing élite, triggers off a series of transformations:

politics begin to enter the universities, where organizations of the left are formed; among these is the Radical Student Alliance (RSA), the members of which include young Labourites and Communists. The first conference of the RSA is held in London, at the London School of Economics, which will always be one of the focal centres of the movement, on 28 and 29 January of 1967.

The students protest against the increase in university taxes for foreigners and the reduction in scholarships, and demand a salary for all the students, who in this way would be put on a par with other workers. The RSA thus clashes with the leaders of the National Union for Students, the traditional semi-obligatory union that had been organizing British students since 1923.

The epicentre of the student revolt between 1967 and 1969 will be precisely the London School of Economics (LSE), the prestigious university characterized by its progressist, committed and pro-Labourite tradition, within which the role of avant-garde is taken by the faculty of sociology.

In autumn 1966 Walter Adams had been nominated director of the London School, although opposed by the students because of his past as director of the University College of racist Rhodesia. The students organize a protest meeting for 31 January 1967, but the academic authorities forbid them access to the university areas: a brawl begins during which a porter dies as a result of a heart attack.

Disciplinary measures are taken against some students among whom is Marshall Bloom, the organizer of the meeting, and an American who had participated in his country in the civil rights movement.

In March the tension has still not lessened: after a sit-in that will continue for five days, the students of the London School begin experimenting "free university", taking their cue from the American model.

In the summer of 1967, between the 15 and 30 July, in London a great conference is held, with participants from all over the world, with the title of "Dialectics of liberation".

The facts of the LSE do not remain isolated: by the autumn of 1967 other universities of the United Kingdom have begun to join the protest:

in London sit-ins are organized in front of the Regent Street Polytechnic and the Holborn College of Law and Commerce.

In the university of Sussex the speech of a representative of the American Embassy who had come to speak about the war in Vietnam is challenged.

Conflicts also take place in the universities of Edinburgh and Leicester; in the university of Essex the Conservative and racist member of parliament Enoch Powell is challenged. The students of the university of Essex claim the right to not have those who support colonialist or racist positions speak in academic seats.

In the meantime the protest movement against the American war in Vietnam is developing: the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, an organization founded in 1966 by exponents of various groups of the left (Labourites of the left and Trotskyists sustained by the contribution of the Bertrand Russell Foundation) arranges for the 22 October of 1967 the first great mass demonstration in favour of the struggle of the Vietnamese people, which ends with violent clashes in front of the American Embassy of Grosvenor Square.

Other huge protest demonstrations against the American war in Vietnam will be held in London and in other English cities on 17 March and 21 July 1968.

At the same time the campaign against bacteriological arms develops: accused is the Centre of Microbiological Research of Porton Down, controlled by the Ministry of Defence, which is considered responsible for having supplied the Americans with the deadly CS gas used in Vietnam. The universities are at the centre of the internationalist mobilization: in Cambridge the speech of Denis Healey, secretary of Defence, is contested; similar protests are encountered in Leeds university by Patrick Wall, member of parliament of the extreme left and supporter of the Rhodesian racist regime.

On 30 May the University of Hull, where the students ask for more democracy, goes on strike; in Bristol the headquarters of the Students Union is occupied and the students ask that the university areas are opened for use by the city; in Keele University, in June the students protest to obtain representation in the academic senate and in the university committees. During the same period in Newcastle, in the medicine school, a teach-in on Vietnam is held.

A cycle of particularly intense struggles develops in the art colleges and schools.

Starting from Hornsey College, the protest spreads to Croydon, Birmingham, Liverpool, Guildford, and to the Royal College of Arts of London.

On the initiative of the students of Hornsey and Guildford, the students of the arts schools form a movement to rethink education in art and design, and they assume an avant-garde role in the antiauthoritarian movement.

The slogan of the university revolt is "Student power": the students wish to participate in the decision-making bodies in the university structures, but soon, as in other European countries, they give themselves a revolutionary and anti-capitalistic objective that is more vast and general. It is with these intentions that, on 14 and 15 May of 1968, the Revolutionary Socialist Student Federation (RSSF) is formed in the London School of Economics: this is an organization of the new left that defines as its objective the "revolutionary reversal of capitalism and of imperialism".

The struggle against imperialism and racism is one of the central themes for the British students movement.

In June the House of Lords defeats with a majority the proposal of sanctions against the racist state of Rhodesia.

Protest strikes are organized by the students in many universities and the Labour Prime Minister Wilson announces a series of bills aimed at the reduction of the power of the House of Lords.

In Autumn it is the Vietnam question that triggers off the resumption of student mobilization.

The students of the London School of Economics (LSE) want to involve the university in the demonstrations organized for the 27 October in support of the struggle of the Vietnamese people. Following the refusal of the academic authorities, the London School is occupied; this is the beginning of the unrest that will continue until the end of the year. Meanwhile, at the end of October, in order to reopen the dialogue with the young people, the Labour government announces the imminent extension of the vote to eighteen year olds.

In December, many English universities are again in conflict, and that of Bristol is occupied. In the London School, the unrest continues even in 1969: in January a teach-in is held to protest against the investments of the LSE in Rhodesia and South Africa; the students engage in a prolonged clash to obtain free access to the school, to which the academic authorities respond with disciplinary measures.

The situation remains strongly conflictual for the whole academic year with strikes, boycotts and invasions of the administrative offices.

Although characterized by some extremely radical peaks, the protest movement of the students in Great Britain never did reach the extension and intensity that characterize the movements in France, Italy and Greece.