Students occupy universities across Britain in solidarity with the people of Gaza

By Katt Cremer: [Britain] 2009 brought in a wave of occupations at Universities for the people of Gaza across our country. Spurred into action following the barbaric scenes of Israeli aggression in Gaza at the start of the year, thousands of students throughout Britain took a stand in solidarity with Palestine and demanded their universities do the same.

On 13th January the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London was the first to initiate an occupation by taking control of a Ministry of Defence exhibition on campus that was promoting the armed forces.

Occupations in LSE, Essex, King's College, Birmingham and Sussex universities were quick to follow and within two weeks over 15 universities had staged occupations. To date there have been 28 occupations in universities throughout Britain, including Warwick Manchester Met, Oxford, Leeds, Cambridge, Sheffield Hallam, Bradford, Nottingham, Queen Mary, Strathclyde, Glasgow, Goldsmiths, Edinburgh, UEA, UWE, UEL, St Andrews, Plymouth, UAL, Cardiff which have all now been finished while Manchester Uni and Byam Shaw are ongoing.

The level of communication between the occupations was phenomenal; each university set up individual blogspots and Facebook groups spreading the message of the occupations and the victories won inspired other universities to follow suite. Indeed the word has spread far and wide from the 28 university occupations in Britain; to two successful occupations of American universities at New York University and Rochester.

The majority of the occupations achieved success with a significant number of demands agreed to by the respective universities. Demands included statements by the university condemning Israel's actions; disinvestment from the arms trade; provision of scholarships for Palestinian students; support for fund-raising for Gaza on campus and pledges to send unused computers and other equipment to Palestine.

All the occupations have been peaceful, except for some instances of the university security forcing an end to the occupation by physically removing the occupiers. However, the majority of occupations were respected by the university authority and the Vice Chancellors entered into negotiations with the occupiers.

John Rose, one of the original LSE student occupiers stated, "What's interesting is the nervousness of vice chancellors and their willingness to concede demands; it indicates this is something that could well turn into [another] '68. Students are revolting: The spirit of '68 is reawakening."-The Independent, 8 February 2009

During all of the occupations the students utilised their occupied space to increase the awareness of the situation in Palestine. By holding public meetings, creating displays of information, showing films, making banners to highlight the demands of the occupations the students built up a mass of support for their campaign and promoted discussion within the student population.

Katt is from Bristol and has been involved in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign for the past eight years and the Stop the War coalition since its inception. Katt is studying part time at the University of the West of England and is a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)