Communal Life – page 3

(continued from previous post)

So it was only me who turned up at 6am when it was cold and not yet daylight to wait outside the other college’s minibus. And waited. And waited. After 30-45 minutes it became obvious to me that they were either not showing up or if they were they were going to be so late they would miss the beginning of the demo, so I made an executive decision to hotfoot it to the train station and make my own way up. When I got to the starting point in central London I passed on the name of the college I was representing to the organisers. One of the proudest moments of my college career was when it was our turn to have our college’s name announced over the tannoy and there followed an ear-splitting roar of approval. It was like the opening ceremony of the Olympics when you see a tiny country has sent one lone competitor and you can see them swelling with pride as they clutch the placard stating their country as they do their lap around the stadium. I did that too, sort of, as I was given a placard to carry on which was written “Full Grants for All” as we made our way from central London to the Oval cricket ground. The atmosphere on the march was something you feel lucky to experience; the intention was deadly serious but there was laughing and joking and singing in our unanimous protest by thousands of undergraduates. When we got to the cricket ground a number of notable politicians spoke. I cannot remember which of them it was who said it but there was one who warned that if establishments of education were being turned into businesses and admitting students not on their ability to subject themselves to the rigours of learning but instead on their ability to pay then that was a recipe for disaster, and as far as a student loan scheme which was to replace the maintenance grant system goes then that was a ticking time bomb which may not detonate for 30 years but when it does the blast will prove catastrophic for graduates saddled with debt for the rest of their working life. As I had a make-or-break assessment at 10am the following day I had to make my way back almost as soon as the march ended but I was satisfied that I had played my small part and if I had averted the prospect of the students coming after me having to pay for their tuition fees then I would count it a success. “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” In the end our march proved as efficacious as another march that took place in London less than a decade later with a much bigger turnout – some say as many as 2,000,000 – to protest against a course of foreign policy that the government seemed hellbent on taking, the same government who implemented tuition fees for undergraduates the year after I left college. A few days after the student rally I discovered what happened to the retinue of students from our neighbouring college who were supposed to go to the protest. They had all overslept and were late setting off which resulted in them having, in their haste, to park illegally in central London and joining the march en route. When they got back to their minibus they found that it had been clamped and so they were forced to spend the night in the clamped vehicle, which sounds like either a memorable and unique bonding experience or an unbearably claustrophobic nightmare – an intense ten hour-shot of communal life.

Thank you to Mark Rosenbohm and Rick Geary for providing me with this complete three-page story. I am honoured to be its current custodian.