Waiting for the revolution

The British far left from 1956

Evan Smith

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781526113689
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A companion piece to 2014's Against the grain, this collection of essays explores trajectories in the British far left from 1956 to the present day.

1
Revolutionary vanguard or agent provocateur

Students and the far left on English university campuses, c.1970–90

Jodi Burkett

Students are left wing and student politics are dominated by the far left. That is a widely popular view of students within the press and popular discourse.¹ This view dominates current debates and has been at the forefront of popular understandings for nearly fifty years. This chapter will explore these popular understandings in the period after 1968 when the National Union of Students (NUS) in the UK was at its most active. This chapter counters existing arguments that student activism reached its pinnacle in 1968 showing instead that the 1970s and 1980s were the decades of most widespread and revolutionary student activities in England. This chapter argues that the far left had a presence on most university and college campuses across the UK and within the NUS, but did not define student politics or student movement activity.

Some of the key terms within this study are problematic as they refer to different groups, or different amalgamations of groups, at different times. For ease and consistency the term ‘far left’ in this chapter refers to all political groups to the left of the Labour Party. In the main, in this period and milieu, this means the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), the International Socialists who became the Socialist Workers Party in 1977 (IS/SWP), and the International Marxist Group (IMG). Other, smaller, groups do make brief appearances within student politics in this period, but these three are the largest and most influential groups.

Despite the growth in higher and further education in this period and the increasing importance of the NUS there are, as yet, no published accounts of the NUS, student politics or students themselves in this period. Rectifying this gap is, in itself, one goal of this chapter. However, this chapter aims to do significantly more. In focusing on the interactions of national and local political formations this chapter adds to a nascent discussion of the impact of local networks on national debates and discussions.² For those interested in political manoeuvrings, the ways in which political cultures are created and maintained, and how linguistic choices inform and create political parameters, a focus on student politics in this period is particularly fruitful. This chapter also adds to the increasing historical interest in the 1970s and 1980s. Amid dominant narratives of decline, crisis and disintegration about the 1970s and neoconservative triumphalism of the 1980s this chapter suggests a new way of looking at the politics of the era through the lens of highly politically committed young people.³ Many of those who were actively involved in their local students’ unions or the NUS in this period went on to political careers. This chapter will, therefore, shed light on the political training of a significant minority of British political leaders. Many of those involved in the activities of local and national students’ unions in this period also went on to work in the third sector. The activities and politics of these organisations are an important addition to the literature on the professionalisation of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) in this period.⁴

This chapter will first explore the existing literature about students, student activism and the far left in Britain in this period. The depiction of student politics and the link between students and the far left within the British mainstream press will then be discussed before moving on to explore the attitudes within the three main far-left organisations, previously identified, to students and the student movement. Finally, this chapter will examine the politics of the student movement, focusing on the leadership of the NUS and debates within and around students’ unions showing that the far left was an important influence on student politics but did not determine the policies of the NUS or local students’ unions.

Students and the far left in literature and the press

Nineteen sixty-eight was a key year for student politics and activism around the world.⁵ Until recently, the actions and activities of British students have been overlooked or side-lined for being ‘less radical’ or insufficiently revolutionary.⁶ In the last few years this view has begun to change as scholars have taken a closer look at the actions and activities of students in the UK.⁷ These studies have shown that a considerable degree of activity was taking place on university campuses across England (and in Scotland and Wales) during 1968 which questioned many of the basic tenets of university administration and British society.

While significant events did take place on university campuses in 1968, this year has become mythologised, both by contemporaries and subsequent scholars, which has a detrimental impact on our understanding of events and has worked to obscure our vision of the period both before and after 1968, pulling it out of context. The mythologisation of 1968 has also served to distance activism from the more mundane and regular experiences of the majority of students. It bolsters the view that student activism was the work of a small minority, was not supported by most students, and was separate from activism taking place in working-class trade unions, international solidarity groups (such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement), and ethnic or minority activism.⁸ Some contemporaries argued that student activism was the result of ‘agent provocateurs’ rather than organically emerging from students themselves.⁹ Who exactly these ‘agent provocateurs’ were, however, was never clear and ranged from ‘foreign students’ (usually American as seen by university officials and politicians), to the CIA (from the perspective of some students) and, perhaps most often named, members of far-left groups, particularly the IS/SWP and IMG. Caroline Hoefferle claims that ‘by the early seventies, the International Marxist Group and International Socialists had replaced the New Left as the most powerful student activist groups at Oxford’ and that one of their key goals was to get students ‘to think more like the working class’.¹⁰ The IMG were said to be working strenuously to ‘actively recruit students’.¹¹

There is scant literature about student activism and student politics during the 1970s and 1980s. This lack of attention to students themselves has been lamented from a variety of disciplinary orientations.¹² One recent work which focuses on stud...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The continuing importance of the history of the British far left
• 1 Revolutionary vanguard or agent provocateur Students and the far left on English university campuses, c.1970–90
• 2 Not that serious? The investigation and trial of the Angry Brigade, 1967–72
• 3 Protest and survive The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Labour Party and civil defence in the 1980s
• 4 Anti-apartheid solidarity in the perspectives and practices of the British far left in the 1970s and 1980s
• 5 ‘The merits of Brother Worth’ The International Socialists and life in a Coventry car factory, 1968–75
• 6 Making miners militant? The Communist Party of Great Britain in the National Union of Mineworkers, 1956–85
• 7 Networks of solidarity The London left and the 1984–85 miners’ strike
• 8 ‘You have to start where you’re at’ Politics and reputation in 1980s Sheffield
• 9 Origins of the present crisis? The emergence of ‘left-wing’ Scottish nationalism, 1956–81
• 10 A miner cause? The persistence of left-nationalism in post-war Wales
• 11 The British radical left and Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’
• 12 The point is to change it A short account of the Revolutionary Communist Party
• 13 The Militant Tendency and entrism in the Labour Party
• 14 Understanding the formation of the Communist Party of Britain
• Index