The new comformists
It is never pleasant to watch a privileged group abusing its good fortune. When at the same time it poses as an oppressed minority, the spectacle becomes absurd. Many of the students at the London School of Economics have been playing this unconvincing -role in recent days, and as a result have aroused understandable public animosity and have damaged both the school and themselves.
The trouble has been seriously exacerbated by the fact that the discontented students of the LSE have been abetted by many people old enough to know better. Fleet Street, in particular, has been consistently incapable of seeing the 'revolt' in perspective. The explanation is not to be found simply in the natural desire of newspapers for a good story: indeed, many readers must by now be thoroughly bored by the daily bul- letins from the battlefield of Houghton Street. It lies rather in the press's infection by the prevailing disease of trendiness, and its itch to catch up with the new conformists—that docile, easily led army for whom the magic word 'protest' justifies any action however empty-headed.
Lately there have been strong opinions expressed in the universities on the govern- ment's ill-considered increase of fees for over- seas students. Here was a genuine occasion for students and dons to press their views and seek public attention. In fact, many newspapers have been notably less interested in that worthwhile dispute than in the more modish goings-on at the LSE—which do not originate in any genuine issue of prin- ciple at all. Indeed, so far as principle is concerned, the insurgents of the LSE are in clear breach of the civilised rule that any- one who voluntarily joins an institution also accepts its rules: if he later thinks the rules are wrong he seeks to change them con- stitutionally, not by mob tactics.
It is true that LSE students have much to grumble about in their working con- ditions, but they are not unique in that. It is equally true that the administration of the school has made things worse by badly mis- handling the affair, but that cannot be used retrospectively to justify what should never have happened. As Mr Grimond warned the rebels last weekend, students are privileged dependents of the public; and they might re- member that there are forces in government, both local and national, very ready to see pretexts for invading the privileged world of the universities.
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