Cultural Capital

Reflections on books and the arts from the New Statesman culture desk

"No one is going to do this for us, so we'd better get it right"

Why the university occupations are giving students a crash course in political activism.

By Sofie Buckland Published 29 November 2010 14:35

The defining image of the student occupation at University College London is probably a MacBook. Walk past security, through the corridor plastered with hand-made signs, and into the brightly-lit Jeremy Bentham Room, which is overflowing with students, and you'll be struck by the proliferation of laptops. Clusters of large tables are dominated by them, supporting the core of the UCL occupation: the working groups.

The Media Team are updating Twitter, an important tool that has brought the support of a previously reluctant NUS president. "Outreach" are working on the daily leaflet to persuade fellow students to join us. The "Process" group are untangling the complicated business of helping meetings of hundreds to make decisions. "Events" haven't taken a break for days, filling our schedule with meetings and entertainment. "Escalation", a group dedicated to building the movement, debate the next political action before breaking off to start it. The UCL occupation is constantly working.

These groups are largely composed of new activists. Fired up by attacks on education they've joined with living wage campaigners and union members, long active on campus, to form the backbone of the occupation. They are the social media obsessed, apathetic, celeb-enamoured generation of popular myth. But they're taking the emblems of this stereotype - the laptop, the Blackberry, the internet - and turning them into political tools. And for young people often tarred with the apathy brush, they're intensely hardworking. As a new visitor said to me last night, "you're surprisingly disciplined for a group of students".

It's not all hard work, despite the sense of commitment that gets us out of our sleeping bags every morning. As the temperature drops and the huge windows darken, clusters of tired occupiers enjoy music and comedy, provided by some of our 2,000 Twitter followers who've made the trip to Bloomsbury. The floor is covered with sheets and hunched figures paint our latest slogans on them. One security team comes in to grab some dinner from the communal supplies while another replaces them, carrying the books and playing cards they'll need to fill a four-hour shift. But as the day's work winds down, the discussion continues. With music and dancing in the background we keep talking politics.

This is important - in this space, politics has become not something we consume, then cast away, but a process we have to build for ourselves. There's a feeling of a work in progress here, a work that we own. Coming up against the sharp end of cuts brought the occupiers here. What's keeping us here is not just the struggle to defend education, but an investment in exploring how that can best be done. Fighting cuts and fee rises are our goals, but the ongoing experience of constructing our own movement from the ground up is of equal importance.

Let's not be starry-eyed about this. We're not a new "generation of 68", skipping past cops and holding hands across barricades. Implicit in the reclaiming of what constitutes politics is a hard-edged cynicism. Not about our ability to win, or at least to build something of lasting significance, but about university management, the media, mainstream politics and even "our" national union. When it was announced that the NUS President Aaron Porter planned to visit us, no one jumped for joy. A lot of us might be new to this, but none of us is naïve. As the debate stretches out into the night, as we wake up to another day of hard organising work, we continue precisely because of this cynicism - no one is going to do this for us, so we'd better get it right.

Sofie Buckland is an English Literature student at UCL, and a former member of the NUS National Executive Committee. You can follow the UCL occupation on Twitter here and find out about student actions across the country here.

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Tags: Student protests Spending Cuts education

More from Sofie Buckland

9 comments

Tue, 2010-11-30 11:00 — Jamie1

They could avoid having to raise tuition fees by starting to cull the soft degrees at lesser universities- with all due respect, being a 'Social Policy' student from a lower-end university is just a dumber way of taking out a loan- it's hardly going to raise your employment prospects and hurls you into debt.

We've got this belief now that everyone is obliged to go to university- but I thought the point was that anyone from any background could get into university, not EVERYONE from any background- far too many prospective students of poor quality, and it's a drain on those studying tough subjects at top-level institutions.

Tue, 2010-11-30 12:02 — Pete DerbyUCU (not verified)

Students, and youth generally, are polically volatile.
That is why the NUS, despite its leaders and bureaucracy have some importancem
That is why the Labour right wing have been so anxious to control the bureaucracy of the NUS and before Porter or Murphyn there have been the likes of Charles Clarke and Jack Straw who spent a good deal of time in the 60s persuading students to call off occupations.
Make no mistake, they need to be challenged and not merely, but rightly, denounced, or wrongly, ignored.
Well done UCL and Sofie for giving Porter no choice but to back the occupations.
But continue to do, as you are are, act independently whenever you need to.

Mon, 2010-11-29 15:45 — Clare (not verified)

Why is it surprising that students are disciplined and hardworking? The tea drinking, day-time tv watching lay about is loved by the media, but it doesn't mean it is an accurate depiction. Degrees are hard work! Maybe this is the real problem... A real lack of value for students and studying in general. Why would society continue to fund something it doesn't respect?

Mon, 2010-11-29 16:24 — Style Cramp (not verified)

This is a fantastic article! How do students at UCL feel about Aaron Porter's foot-dragging? Has he let students in this country down? It is daunting that students cannot really on the NUS to back their campaign whole-heartedly.

http://stylecramp.blogspot.com

Mon, 2010-11-29 19:19 — Jeremy Till (not verified)

I think that all Sofie modestly underestimates the effect of what the occupation is doing, and the brilliant orchestration of social and actual media. As Nina Power makes clear, the endless harking back to '68 by the old left (Polly Toynbee et al) is serving no purpose. http://infinitethought.cinestatic.com/index.php/5448/. We are facing new, rather better constructed barriers, and we need new ways of manoeuvering round them, and the UCL occupation shows a good way of achieving this. All power to them.

Mon, 2010-11-29 21:37 — jmothecat

It's great to see a perspective written from the UCL occupation given media coverage. Spending time with the Edinburgh occupation paints a similar picture. Laptops are everywhere and being used to communicate with the wider world. From a wider perspective the reaction from other students in the city is heart-warming. Many have expressed interest in the demonstration tomorrow as well as support for the occupation of Appleton tower. Support from Students, staff-members and the general public alike shows there is a hunger for a political voice amongst us all.

Great to see solidarity with UCL and the rest of the occupations in universities throughout the country.

Tue, 2010-12-07 03:09 — shoestrade05

Best regards for you all,

Looking forward to your visiting.

http://www.1shopping.us/

Best regards for you all,

Looking forward to your visiting.

http://www.1shopping.us/

Mon, 2010-11-29 22:43 — steve (not verified)

Students, please watch this character, Aaron Porter, like a hawk!!!! NUS leaders can not be trusted to represent the interests of the membership. I say this ainly because there are already indications that Mr. Porter will let you vent your anger but ultimately sell you out. What I write now is the absolute truth. The present shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, is the same Jim Murphy who ran the National Union of Students in the early 90s. I remember it like it was yesterday, seeing him in Manchester telling NUS members that it was "unrealistic" to expect the continuation of grants. His meetings were stage managed, so that only his cronies in the audience got to ask "safe" questions. He then had the nerve to march at a Campaign for Free Education rally in Leeds. I was there, too. He was nearly lynched when students recognized him. At the time we couldn't understand why he was acting so contradictory. However, a rumour soon spread that Murphy had been promised a chance to run for New Labour in Scotland. We thought it was just that, a rumour. Within two years Murphy received his thirty pieces of silver from the Labour party for deceiving the people he was meant to represent. He became an MP in Scotland. This man lived in South Africa for years, still received a student grant, and I don't think he even graduated. I wasn't the only former Labour supporter who was enlightened by this experience. From this experience many of us realized what had become of the party and our union leadership. Now, while the TUC and New Labour sit on their hands, the people they are meant to represent are taking to the streets. Miliband twiddles his thumbs, looking around for some kind of gimmick to fool those the party left behind long ago into voting for New Labour. The party has become a rotten corpse, and the stench is noted by everyone except those still wanting power by any means. Sadly, New Labour will win some people back, simply because those people despise New Labour slightly less than they hate the policies of the Tory/Lib partnership. As for you and your "dithering" Aaron Porter, the students are embarrassing you into making the right noises. Shame for you that they embarrass you into changing tack, while they continue their fight regardless of your ineffective "leadership." Students, I wish you the best of luck. Linking up with all the other protest organizations in Britain and Europe will strengthen your hand a lot more than waiting for Aaron Porter's knees to stop knocking.