1968 and all that...

“The spirit of ’68 is still alive, man! Dude, man the barricades – we’re having a sit-in!”

200 students at Manchester University recently held a retro protest, barricading themselves in a university building, 1968 style.

They wanted a few things, of course: to end tuition fees, stop the university laying off staff, increase contact time with teachers and increase university accountability, etc. etc. Their aims were simple, their name revolutionary: “Reclaim the Uni!”

After a few hours of sitting about, the police broke up the protest, a fire alarm went off, and everyone went home. Radical! The university released a statement blaming the government for cutbacks, and all was well in the North West.

Daniel Lee, one of the organisers of the protest, however, was still not a happy chappy: “This is just the first step in a long line of steps… We’ve done this, and we can do it again, and do other things, until our demands are met.” Students of the world, unite!

Lee’s proclamation would have brought a bout of misty-eyed nostalgia to many of a certain generation. ‘Ah, those were the good old days,’ the 1968er would mutter, wiping a tear from his eye. ‘Things mattered then. 1968 changed the world’.

But it didn’t. And no matter how many sit-ins are staged today, they won’t make a difference either.

In Paris ’68, students staged sit-ins throughout the Sorbonne’s campus and triggered similar protests in universities across Europe. But things were a little different back then.

It was not a case of a couple of hundred students, sitting down until the police told them to get lost. Rather, it was a few thousand rushing into the street, hurling paving slabs at the police and setting fire to cars.

Not only this, but vast swathes of the French workforce also went on strike to show solidarity with the student body (but mainly because they were French, the weather was nice, and they fancied a day or so off).

It was bedlam. Society was in a state of flux. Revolution really was in the air. And what changed? Nothing. Zip. Nada. The right-wing Charles De Gaulle (certainly not one of history’s progressives) was re-elected the same year with a considerable majority.

France went back to work (until the next strike) and the ‘revolutionary’ students went on to become a mixture of doctors, lawyers and, in the case of their leader, a Green MEP.

The protests did achieve very minor gains for students. University administrations make some concessions, but these were basic at best. Prior to the protests, for example, male and female students were just about banned from visiting each other’s dormitories. This rule was subsequently abolished

Basically, after 1968 universities in France became a bit less authoritarian and stuffy.

So, what was the result of weeks of strikes, riots and sit-ins? The students had earned the right to stay the night at their partners’, and gowns were no longer worn at graduations. What, then, could 200 students in Manchester achieve in three hours? Considerably less, I’d wager.

The NUS recently endorsed the idea of university occupations in the event of an invasion of Iran. I doubt very much, however, that 500 students occupying the humanities building would force Gordon Brown into calling off any air strikes.

Even if every student in the country handcuffed themselves to radiators in the university buildings nothing would change. Why? Because we’re students.

We’re meant to disagree with whatever policy the current government employs. We’re meant to want everything for free and be a bit lefty. We’re meant to be idealistic, oppose wars and hope for peace.

And we’ll do this for three years before becoming an accountant, complaining about taxes and moaning about the next generation of ‘bloody students’.

In other words, we’re entirely predictable. And until we stop being so unoriginal no one will listen – no matter how we protest.