Who failed whom?
STUDENT POWER PATRICK COSGRAVE
Very recently, a serious and intelligent young don from New Zealand asked me whether I thought the student revolt and the alienation of the young would last long enough and find resources enough to become a permanent politi- cal and social force. I said I thought not: my own freshmen pupils during the last year at Cambridge seemed singularly dissatisfied (where they were not unconcerned) with the wider implications of student power. I had in mind the lesson of experience, the knowledge that, from generation to generation, students react against the methods and aims of their predeces- sors. And although I had among my first-year pupils at least one or two' convinced socialist revolutionaries, I felt they had the necessary sense, dedication, discipline and toughness of mind to work at the transformation of society in this country from within accepted norms and institutions.
I still believe that the fundamental, anony- mous resources of Western European society will be sufficient to contain and redirect the energies of discontent of the younger genera- tion. But, on the other hand, I would not be content altogether to rely on anonymity and the force of circumstance. The spirit of the status quo, of the acceptance of change within a known framework, of a certain measure of delight in the traditional values of history and society, of discipline and order in the processes of thought, need to make themselves manifest. It will not do that Mr Heath should blame the Government for discontent with our institu- tions; it will not do that half a million Gaullists marching in Paris should wait to find the well- springs of their action in the ability of one man to take their defence on his own shoulders. It is time, surely, that the traditional society went on the offensive.
Two features have distinguished the main- stream of the flood of commentary and analysis which has poured forth in recent weeks on the subject of the discontent of the young. The first is an inherent defensiveness of attitude: examination of the conscience of society has been undertaken at length in order to suggest ways in which it has failed the discontented. Little effort, if any, has been directed to suggest- ing ways in which the young have failed us. And this is associated with the second feature of discussion, a distinct failure to assess and evaluate the intellectual and moral calibre of the position adopted by the discontented. In The Times's series on student power, in the Observer's purported assessment of it, a certain morally contentless admiration has been the order of the day. Effort has been directed principally to announcing and asserting the depth of feeling of revolutionary students; little has been spent on the merits and demerits of their case, and the case of their supporters.
Yet, surely, there has rarely been a case so riddled with demerits. The advocates of student Power seem to require no more than the power to achieve and then indefinitely prolong a moment of disintegration. At the Sorbonne (to take the most successful assertion of student Power to date) interminable debate has pro- duced no more than the reassertion of the same anarchist slogans flaunted at the begin- ning. In so far as elaboration has been notice- able it has been in M Cohn-Bendit's extension of the categories of person whom he considers `fascist' and who, therefore, will not be allowed free speech. He wishes, in other words, to exclude all essential disagreement. At the same time a note of fear has crept into the student voice—and a note of regret into that of many commentators—at the prospect that the French bourgeoisie, by rallying to General de Gaulle, will cheat the revolution, as though the bour- geoisie were not living human beings with a right to defend and protect the fabric of their civilisation.
Now, a certain kind of intransigence, the kind that sees fully the implications of action. often commands a grudging respect, if not admiration. The intransigence of the destroyer who freely admits his determination to wreck society and freely admits he has nothing with which to replace it, and who avows at the same time his willingness •to live in the ruins—this demands a certain recognition, perhaps even a salute. It distinguishes only a very few advo- cates of student power and the cause of the discontented young. Indeed, most of the com- mentators who have lavished admiration of the student revolt are either essentially opposed to it or concerned to mask a muddled and half- hearted attitude with the appearances of en- thusiastic praise. Mr Raymond Williams con- tinually accepts (most recently in an article called `Why do I demonstrate?') the motive and the ends of anarchistic demonstration against the established order, but refuses to accept the implications of its mans. Asking the question `But need the demonstrations be violent?', Mr Williams, in a classic evasion by smear, &plies: 'The last really violent demon- stration I went on was across the Rhine in 1945, with what was then called the British Libera- tion Army,' and goes on to describe the kind of activity we have seen in the streets of Paris and Germany as 'scuffles in the street.' From his indulgent sanctuary in Jesus College, Cam- bridge, it may well appear so.
It may be objected that in Mr Williams I have selected particularly easy meat. No so : all the advocates of discontent are easy meat and their success so far has been due to the willingness of the established order to accept them at their own valuation and to the voracious appetite which the communications industry has for their pronouncements. I have seen both Herr Dutschke and M Cohn-Bendit offer justifications similar to that of Mr Wil- liams for the violence they engender and en- courage. One Cambridge economist took the easy ride to popularity with the assertion that an unsatisfactory canteen made him ashamed to be associated with the university. Mr John Morgan has praised the Paris students for rais- ing again the hope that revolution (nowhere defined) is possible in industrial society, failing to tell us whether he would accept with equanimity the abolition of his comfortable job in Harlech television which revolution would certainly entail.
Having said all this I am still prepared to accept that much of the student movement is. as a not unsympathetic friend of mine called it, 'an inarticulate moral force,' with emphasis on 'moral.' All the more reason then for responding to it, not with indulgence or appeasement but with a challenge, as Senator McCarthy has done—a challenge to the edu- cated to undertake their disciplined responsi- bility to society. For the intelligent and educated to become alienated is not society's fault, but their own crime. Let us begin the challenge with just one essential point. By and large I believe that, in the universities, students have an excellent case for the reform or abolition of many traditional methods of discipline and for the improvement (within possible financial limits) of their ameni- ties. But the idea that traditional curricula and methods of examination should be exchanged for anything less rigorous, less demanding on their powers of intellect, is both absurd and wrong. The demand for student participation in curricula arrangement and examination- setting is an attempt to sacrifice the search for quality to the indulgence of whims. It is no less than a demand for power without responsibility, and without any intellectual or moral support to it either. By all means let us listen, with a view to change, to student criticism of the system. But any replacement must be something resulting in a more searching test of ability, a more rigorous final distinction between different achievements.
If society has failed the present generation of discontented students, that failure is mani- fested only in their inability or unwillingness to think logically, coherently and powerfully. A university is not a way of life, not a religion, not a moral philosophy. We shall most seriously mislead the young if we pretend (to gratify present whims) that it 4 (or could be) anything more than an institution for teaching methods of achieving limited truth by the limited means of logical and precise thought. The debate about the ends and nature of society takes place elsewhere, in private life, in the organs of opinion, in democratic politics. The duty of our students is not to indulge themselves in the doctrines of anarchism, but, at the universi- ties, to forge their minds into sensitive and tempered weapons for use in other arenas. The university itself can contribute in only a limited way to that process. To the extent that our students (and their teachers) educate themselves they will be given a hearing. But they ought to know that, whatever a few Oxford proctors do, society as a whole will not yield to force, vehemence or emotional ranting.
Previous page
