1968 and all that.....

In May 1968 French students followed the example set in American Universities and protested against the encroaching powers of the universities and authorities. They were shortly joined by over ten million workers who bought France to a standstill.

The Sorbonne, one of Europe's greatest universities, was occupied and declared a "people's university", a state of emergency was declared and a 35% increase in the minimum wage was won by striking unions. As quickly as it arose, the strike dissapated, but anarchism has been born and a residual fear of the left was left in the minds of the authorites.

How tame we are now. The universities are in the grip of business societies, Pepsi-sponsored student unions and over-zealous administrators clambering for League Table success. Students have been rendered apathetic by a culture of individualism, the failure of their own institutions and the burden of debt which forces them to pursue "sensible" options.

Lecturers and researchers, for their part, lost all radical intent through the rise of postmodernism, the redirection of funding to business schools and the horrific effects of political correctness. Where there was once a vocabulary of exploitation, capitalism and alientation, now academics fall over themselves to describe the discourses by which all opinion is constructed as equally valid.

During the same period, our rights have been eroded, the world sits on the brink of environmental catastrophe and industry directs our politicians, universities and media stations. Both students and lecturers would do well to take note of the banner held on one of the 1968 marches which read:

"We want nothing of a world in which the certainty of not dying from hunger comes in exchange for the risk of dying from boredom".