Students
Direct Action Debriefing
Rhodes Boyson, MP
The public has got so used to the nonsense of the taxpayer-and-ratepayer-financed NUS that even the direct threat to law and order of their recent circular, Direct Action Briefing, is treated as normal. Gilbert and Sullivan could not write their comic operas if they were alive today because the whole of our life is rapidly becoming one huge comic opera. The trouble is that comedy soon shades into tragedy.
This Direct Action Briefing issued to 700 college and university branches is a detailed and carefully drawn up plan for the occupation of university buildings for politcal purposes, such as the increase in student grants. It advises students that if staff attempt to lock doors, files and drawers they should "stand in their way". It is a "good idea" to open confidential files because they often contain interesting "dirt" which can be used by students who should take photocopies. Doors are then to be barricaded with tables and chairs or with padlocks and chains. It is a fascinating insight into the immorality of the left that those who screamed loudest about the Watergate 'plumbers' should be the first to recommend such methods for their own purposes. The report of Lord Justice Scarman on the Red Lion Square riots is also a reminder of how confrontations escalate to violence.
The Brief catalogues methods which many student unions have already used. In 1970 there were the break-ins to the confidential files at Warwick University. More recently at Essex University, offices were broken into and selected comments on staff and students read over the university radio, applications for entry of 900 students were held up and thousands of pounds worth of damage done. Another university campus was recently occupied in a demand for creches for student babies — suitable commentary on our irresponsible age.
The behaviour of the NUS is a typical example of the damage which will be done by the compulsory closed shop arising from Mr Foot's legislation. It is no good writers in our daily papers recommending the responsible students to attend the interminable union meetings. Most still go to university to study and broaden their minds and while I pay tribute to the thousands of Conservative students who fight the left-wing-dominated NUS I certainly would not blame the tens of thousands of others who are not prepared to waste their time attending endless unpleasant meetings.
A stand will have to be made against the nonsense of the NUS. Leading members of the Labour Government are to be congratulated on the way they stood up to the April 1974 NUS embargo on 'extreme' right-wing speakers and refused to visit universities until the ban was withdrawn. The 1970-74 Conservative government, after promising to deal with student union finances, left the issue on one side and did nothing. Mrs Thatcher could then do no more than the state of opinion in the Heath cabinet would allow.
The NUS has more than 610,000 members. It has a post-entry compulsory closed shop paid for by ratepayers and taxpayers and the student has no option but to join. Some individual union officers are elected by polls as low as 3 per cent. yet there are sabbatical officers at most unions paid for a full year to pretend that student agitation has anything to do with learning. The battle-torn North London Polytechnic has six full-time student sabbatical officers presumably looking for confrontations.
The immediate answer to the Direct Action Briefing is for the Labour Government to rule that there will be no negotiations on increased student grants until the circular is withdrawn and preferably burnt, otherwise the NUS will claim that any increase is because of its direct action. Mr Prentice is a man of great courage and such a statement could have considerable consequence.
Meanwhile the Conservative Party must show that it has stopped pussyfooting in its defence of the free society and that it has resolved to deal directly with 'Jack Straw's castle' and blow it down.
Membership of student unions must be made completely voluntary and must be paid for out of a student's disposable grant. Increase grants by E20 and let the individual student decide whether it is best spent on joining a student union. Paid sabbaticals for the 600-plus full-time student union officers must end — it is not the job of a student to be a professional bar-tender, cheer leader or revolutionary. I should be very surprised if there were 30,000 members of student unions if they were made voluntary. With only one in twenty students enrolled their fees would have to be reduced and their political slant ended if they were to survive. Their leaders know this and like all far-leftists they fear free discussion as against mass meetings.
Only in February this year the Treasurer of the Oxford University Students' Union (not to be confused with the Oxford Union) resigned and said, "The average student doesn't give a damn about the union." He certainly doesn't and it is time that the Labour Government and the Conservative Party didn't either. A decision to stand no more nonsense from the NUS would bring any party into closer contact with public opinion and even the ordinary student. It would be a sign of the turn of the tide and of a return to reality. It is badly needed if the free society is to survive and if we are to stop building our own funeral pyres.
Dr Rhodes Boyson, Conservative MP for Brent North, was formerly headmaster of Highbury Grove School
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