I was studying for my finals exams at Hull University when it started to happen. Thousands of students on the streets of Paris — then the workers on strike too. Law and order was breaking down. That's what the newspapers and the radio told us, and we saw bits of it on our black and white TV screens.
Then it came over here. Or sort of. Demonstrations and sit-ins at colleges and universities all over the country. What sparked the one at Hull — if it wasn't just the Paris events — was the authorities dragging their feet over student representation on university committees. Before most of us knew it, general meetings were being called and resolutions passed. The administration building was occupied.
A hundred students sat in. Then two hundred, then five or six hundred. The administration was at a standstill. I was involved too. I'd never been a "militant", but I'd always supported the Labour Party and had a gut feeling for the underdog. What actually drove me in there more than anything else was seeing a silly detestable bugger of a student on my course standing outside the administration block wearing a large badge with the words "I'm backing Brynmor" (Brynmor Jones was the university's vice- chancellor). I called him a rat and walked into the occupation.
Once you were in there, you became more and more convinced your cause was a just one. Student "leaders" addressed meetings. and spoke persuasively. We were determined to see it through. There was an atmosphere of . . . what was it? — freedom? . . . community? that made you heady. It was what the activists called "radicalisation" and you put your case with conviction and enthusiasm to other students you met outside.
How long was it going to last? On campus there were rumours about goings-on in the sit-in. The local press picked it up. Offices were being vandalised, so they said, student records carried away, orgies held. I never saw any of it — and at the time wondered what I'd missed. But I did see people's resolve gradually slipping away and the sitters-in become fewer and fewer until only a few die-hards were left. The University weren't using a heavy hand. They were playing a waiting game, which they knew they would eventually win. And as they played the game, a group of "moderate" students used the students' union constitution to call an emergency general meeting with the proposition that the occupation cease forthwith.
It was the biggest gathering of students I'd ever seen — about 1.200. Those in favour of the motion spoke first and were frankly pathetic. The speakers on our side were cool and logical, and some of them brilliant. If there was any justice, we should have won. But we didn't. The vice-chancellor was allowed to address the students and showed himself, contrary to reputation, to be an extremely clever man. He was conciliatory. He said he sympathised with the demands for change, promised that reforms would be made to give the students more say in the running of the university but that in the meantime, in the name of moderation and responsibility, we should go back to our books so that the reforms could start to be discussed. We filed through division doors. Our side had 400 votes. The opposition had 700 plus. We'd lost. Or had we? For procedural reasons another vote was needed to finalise the matter. The left-wing "agitators" whom many people said had fomented the whole thing in the first place — maybe they had — tried to prolong the debate as much as possible in the hope that enough "moderates" would drift off for the vote to swing the other way. But. though a few people left, when the final vote was taken at six o'clock, there was still a decisive majority against the occupation.
It was the same story up and down the country. The various demonstrations and sit-ins came to an end. It was the same in France too. When the agitators died away. De Gaulle called an election and won hands-down. As for Hull. I left that year so I don't know whether they ever got the reforms.
I never really understood at the time what had gone on — either here or in France. People said that we'd been close to a socialist revolution. I only started to understand two or three years later when I came into contact with The Socialist Party. I asked the members I met what they thought of the events of '68 and was shown a copy of the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard with the cover "How close was France to a socialist revolution?". The answer it gave was a revelation to me and. if you can still get hold of a copy, it's just as much worth reading now as it was then.
Howard Moss
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