Students
Vipers in the nest
Rhodes Boyson
The fact that the Communist Party MarxistLeninist candidate in the Hove by-election polled 128 votes, one in every 300 cast, while no official Communist dared stand in any of the four by-elections for fear of a derisory result shows the microscopic support given to left-wing revolutionary parties in Britain. Yet to listen to certain communist and left-wing trade union and student leaders and to note the offices they hold could bring one to imagine that this country was on the verge of revolution.
Communist and trade union militants will increase in importance in this country until one set of strikers have to return to work for wages less than those offered by employers before their particular strike occurred and this will not happen as long as the deep purse of government subsidises, if it doesn't actually pay, each exorbitant settlement. Student union nonsense, however, could be quickly ended and before a winter of trade union discontent it would be as well if the university left renta-crowd were dealt with now by being struck off the long-suffering taxpayer's payroll. Student unions are a government-created closed shop in this country — every student must belong whether he wants to or not, otherwise he will not be given his degree. The fees are paid from the public purse not through the student but direct to the unions. This measure of collectivism decrees that some 580,000 students are members of their own students' union and of the National Union of Students in almost all cases even if they never enter their particular union and dislike the policies of the national body. The tax and ratepayer pays £10-£25 to university and —college unions for each student at a national cost of some ten million pounds — no mean sum. Many student union presidents and officials are elected by low unrepresentative polls like those of trade unions — polls as low as 3 to 5 per cent are on record, which simply plays into the hands of the militants. This year there are three Conservative union presidents but in very many places the law-abiding and conscientious students are not prepared to spend hours away from their books and pleasant leisure to listen to the long and weary Marxist sloganising of left-wing extremists in their regular filibusters. Student participation is thus often reduced to student left-wing politician participation only.
Last year students at Sussex and the London School of Economics, with an arrogance and intolerance reminiscent of the youth movements of totalitarian parties, decreed 'no free speech' and Professor Huntington and, Professor Eysenck were the innocent victims.' There was also the unpleasant and boorish disruption of the Queen's visit to Stirling University and the usual attempts, successful in the past at York and Southampton, to oppose any union money being voted to student right-wing societies while every crackpot overlapping left-wing society overflowed with milk and honey.
So far this aclademic year we have experienced troubles at the North London Polytechnic and Oxford University. The hardline International Socialists (a Trotskyist group) has been active at the North London Polytechnic. The Students' Union President there, a member of the International Socialists, is in his sixth year at the Poly, three as Union President on the public purse. The Director's office was ransacked as a reverse Watergate and confidential letters circulated. The sit-in there ended when clerical and technical union members, weary of the whole business, gave notice of withdrawing their labour, but it is likely to recur. Yet it was noticeable that only 7 to 10 per cent of students attendeá the various meetings. The rest presumably stayed at home and read.
The scene at Oxford makes one wonder how many university students go up to study at all. Oxford and Cambridge are famous for their collegiate system and one presumes even in this age of increasing illiteracy that potential undergraduates have read their brochures and are aware of this before they apply for admission to a college. Yet the International Socialists and the International Marxist Group with their supporters occupied the Examination Schools with the support of the NUS to demand a central union building Presumably to replace the college junior common rooms. Such a central union would of course be much easier to control by cells of extremists drawn from various colleges.
There is little sign that university vicechancellors and the academic staff will be able to control and discipline the disruptive students. Lancaster failed in its attempt to get the students to sign a pledge of good behaviour, no culprits were found at Sussex and the LSE, and Professor Asa Briggs has suggested dropping the proposed inquiry at Stirling into the unpleasantness on the Queen's visit. The Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham University is alleged to have suggested this year that "in the interests of more rational and better administration" students should have an "equal say in the appointment of the Vice-Chancellor." Perhaps he'd also like to share his salary with them in a move to genuine egalitarianism! Political and take-over sit-ins should be differentiated from the genuine grievances of many students over inadequate grants, low living standards and lack of residental accommodation which is itself a result of toorapid university expansion. It is, however, ominous that 6 per cent of Reading University students recently stated that they had opted for university for "a chance for political activity." Outside Red China this would seem a peculiar reason for university entry and it is certainly one which should alarm both universities and the general public.
There is, however, a very simple answer to the power of the student unions with their full-time presidents and their membership of the NUS with its leadership heavily inclined to the hard left — make student union membership voluntary. This would not only allow E10-£25 extra to be given immediately to hard-pressed students to improve their living standards but it would be a blow for the free society. The amount a student is expected to Spend on books is included in his grant so Why isn't the amount the student will need to Join his students' union included so that each student can decide his own priorities?
A spokesman for the National Union of Students once said, "voluntary membership would destroy the union as a representative body," It isn't now a genuine representative body of student opinion and if it fell apart altogether all to the good. On the day of Princess Anne's wedding When the country was rejoicing in the monarchy and that splendid ceremonial, Which is specially British, the 'student unions, staged occupations, boycotts and other demonstrations. These were supposed to draw.
attention to their plight in living on inadequate grants but they really drew stark attention to the gap that is widening between student unions and ordinary citizens. Far better for every university students' union to have had huge bonfires and fireworks and carnivals for townspeople to show their loyalty to the crown and provide a little sparkle in other people's lives instead of constant moans, unpleasantness, misery, and talk of revolution. Their nonsense only :,rought nearer a day of retribution.
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