“Students never before motivated to take action have been brought onto the streets and onto their campuses, standing against the genocide in Gaza.”
By Alex Wulfert, Aston for Palestine
By now, it is hard not to have heard of the student encampments popping up on university campuses around the UK, reported by the BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, and even GB News, who aired a clip of Suella Braverman being disregarded by student protesters at Cambridge, her alma mater. Encampments have been set up across 36 universities in 29 cities and towns, from Aberdeen to Falmouth.
Inspired by comrades across the globe, University of Warwick students set up the first British encampment on the 27th April, shortly followed by Bristol, Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Swansea, and UCL on the 1st May. Since then, students have set up encampments at 28 other universities as of the 13th June. Since that first camp in Warwick, there have been both challenges and wins for the movement.
While activists at both the University of Nottingham and the University of Birmingham have been taken to court by their respective universities, various encampments have led to negotiations with university management, with campers at the University of Aberdeen and Aston University dismantling their camp and publishing a victory statement after substantially changing policies within their university.
The student movement is strong, especially when united, and the wave of encampments has lit a spark in an already frustrated student body, hit hard by 14 years of Conservative austerity, students never before motivated to take action have been brought onto the streets and onto their campuses, standing against the genocide in Gaza. Anyone who has stepped foot in an encampment since April, and talked to the students involved, would be unable to deny that they are genuinely diverse groups with people from all backgrounds coming together for a common cause. One camper told me how apart from rallies and lectures about Palestine, they had not previously been involved with any political actions at all, but “the bravery of the Palestinians in Gaza” and how “so many students across the world were all doing their part” encouraged them to “contribute with their efforts”. These are not the usual suspects, serial activists, or seasoned leftwing agitators, but a genuine grassroots coalition of students fighting for what they believe is right, and doing so in a radical way, and it is hard to overstate the significance of that, or the opportunity this offers us for building. All too often we see grassroots campaigns rise, before crashing down with a lack of momentum, this cannot be allowed to happen now, not while there is an angry student population rallying around the flag, with a new government on the way, it is time to show them that students will not be sidelined or silenced.
Reading circles and libraries or book swaps have been a regular sight at encampments, accompanying teach-ins and educational movie screenings, educating students about various issues. Socialist groups and academics have led the charge to shout the loudest about the intersectionality that should underpin the pro-Palestine student movement, against colonialism and injustice in all forms, and uniting with local trade union branches, especially in the UCU, Unite, and Unison, who have at several universities thrown their support behind the students.
Trade union support is vital, not only to show that the staff stand with students against imperialism and genocide, but to push our movement beyond campuses, and beyond Palestine, fighting the cost of living and austerity crises that have hit both students and workers, bringing a new generation of student activists into the trade union movement.
This, I believe, is where more must be done, especially at universities without the long radical traditions boasted by Oxford, Manchester, or Sheffield, universities such as Aston and Liverpool John Moores, which are also often those universities ranking highly for social mobility, with high proportions of working-class students. At these universities, where actions have begun, the newly mobilised student body is starting to recognise their power to fight for better, whether in pushing universities and public bodies to distance themselves from the State of Israel, pushing for more support for students struggling in a country dominated by austerity politics, or in fighting against precarious zero-hour contracts that many students find themselves in their workplaces.
Regardless of whether new activists stay to fight beyond the encampments, and beyond Palestine, there is one clear message – We are the students, and we will not be silenced.
- Alex Wulfert is a student involved in the University of Aston Palestine Camp. You can follow them on Twitter here. Aston for Palestine is a coalition of student and staff organising for Palestine at the University of Aston- you can follow them on Instagram here.
