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GEORGE FOX SIX APPEAL SPECIAL ISSUE 21 March 2006 ***************************************************** 'Truth: lies open to all' ***************************************************** All editorial correspondence to: subtext-editors [at] lancaster.ac.uk Please download and print or delete as soon as possible after receipt. Back issues and subscription details can be found at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext. The editors welcome letters, comments, suggestions, and opinions from readers. subtext reserves the right to edit submissions. ***************************************************** After five days of evidence and legal argument at Preston Crown Court last week, Judge Stuart Baker rejected the appeal by six students and ex-students of the University against their conviction for aggravated trespass for protesting at a corporate venturing conference in the George Fox Building on 10 September 2004. The six were found guilty of two out of three of the 'qualifying criteria' for aggravated trespass, obstruction and disruption of a lawful activity. During the appeal a rota of staff acting as subtext correspondents ensured that we could keep a full record of court proceedings. You can read the resulting court report on the subtext website (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/subtext/archive/gf6appealreport.htm). In his summing up, the judge rejected the protesters' claim that Lancaster
University had not made provision for them to exercise their freedom of
speech and that, since the conference itself was unlawful, it was the
delegates who were the trespassers. He insisted that the university's
Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/acadreg/calendar/rulesd.htm)
In a statement after the judgement the Six said, 'We are currently considering taking this case further. The verdict failed to take into account the full text of Lancaster University's Code of Practice on Freedom of Speech, and we maintain this code has been consistently and blatantly flouted'. No statement was forthcoming from the university. Each of the Six received a conditional discharge for two years, and had the costs awarded against them doubled to £600 each. ***************************************************** EDITORIAL So this term ends as it began, with subtext revisiting one of the issues that prompted its creation in the first place: the criminal prosecution of six Lancaster students and ex-students for a few minutes of noisy but peaceful protest and the episode continues to reflect badly on the university. And it may not be over yet: a further appeal is being considered, to the High Court, which would bring yet more publicity to the case and the issues it raises. In many ways the University has been caught up in wider forces and social dynamics rather beyond its control and competence. Sections of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, under which the Six were convicted, were devised by the then Conservative Government in order to stifle a range of 'alternative' phenomena, such as rave parties, new age travellers and anti-roads protests, that at the time were seen to be fusing into a perceived new and dangerous countercultural force. Since then the Act - along with more recent legal instruments with even lower burdens of proof such as Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) - have been used widely to criminalise protest and break up protest networks. Given its strong local traditions of green politics and subcultural networks, it should perhaps not surprise us if Lancaster has become a focus of attention for police operations in this vein, and thus if prosecutions occur which seem opaque and disproportionate. More broadly, protests like that which occurred in the George Fox Building reveal tensions in the relationship between knowledge production and wealth creation. Increasing globalised competition has led states and corporations to adopt economic strategies requiring perpetual innovation. And universities, with their public funding and communal sharing of knowledge, are powerful generators of the new ideas of which such strategies will have a continual demand. It is perhaps easy for universities to be flattered by the growing interest paid in them by the rich and powerful; it seems harder for universities to reflect on the radical effect these changes might have on the academy, and so to wield their new bargaining power both more shrewdly and more imaginatively. The experience in the United States – where whole departments have been bought by corporations – strongly suggests that we need urgently to be developing alternative models of the academy's role in the knowledge economy, models more suited to European societies. In the absence of such reflection and debate, it should not surprise us if protest continues to erupt at faultlines across this and other campuses. Where does the University go from here? For our senior management, conspicuously absent from the trial either as witness or spectator, the temptation will be to keep its head down and hope it will blow over. (Although we invited the University for a statement on the trial outcome, no comment was forthcoming.) And this means that staff and students will have to work even harder to turn this episode around, by responding in a way that is to the University's credit. Here there seems to be an unhealthy disconnect between the deliberation of the management and their consultants on the one hand, and reflection by staff and students on the other. Following the original trial, official working groups on ethics, protest, and commercialisation of research were set up (see subtext 6), but the signs so far do not greatly encourage us that the results will really help the University navigate the rough waters ahead. Task-driven working groups, however well meaning, are not necessarily the best forum for the kind of work needed at this time. Wider resources and ways of working at the university have their part to play, including academic research, institutional memory, and, dare we say it, political action. Next term subtext will contribute to this task by exploring the history of protest at the university; we welcome contributions from readers on this. For example, we recall the 'die-in' staged by anti-nuclear protestors on the stage in the Great Hall, as Conservative Minister William Waldegrave was about to address an energy conference in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. As the court heard last week from a senior member of the University, 20 or 30 years ago such protest was commonplace; we are 'out of practice' in how to understand and accommodate it. subtext is not alone in thinking that the pursuit of the George Fox Six has been disproportionate. A university is just that - a realm of intellectual conviviality that thrives on dissent and that is not afraid to confront and recognise the 'other'. It also has a duty of care to its students and to its moral and intellectual commonwealth. It would have been more dignified of the University to have withdrawn its support for the prosecution and offered reconciliation. A pluralistic and multicultural society should embrace the energy of counterculture and protest. Even the time honoured tradition of justice being seen to be done was absent from the trial: the long awaited hearing was switched at such short notice from Lancaster Castle to Preston Crown Court that even the defendants and defence counsel began the week in the wrong place. We find it very strange that key players in the trial, let alone their supporters who had planned to stage a vigil outside the court, were left to arrive at Lancaster to be told by office staff their case had been moved. And on the day of the judgement once again staff reported that University House was locked down, reflecting the drawbridge mentality and myopia that underpinned the prosecution itself. ***************************************************** The wider issues raised by the trial will be discussed tomorrow evening at an event involving members of the George Fox Six: When Corporations Come to Campus: Can Academic Freedom Survive in a Corporate
World? Speakers include academics from the UK and the US, among them Dr Ignacio
Chapela of Berkeley University, Thanos Mergoupis of Bath University, Matthew
Wilson of the George Fox Six and Colwyn Williamson of the Campaign for
Academic Freedom and Academic Standards (http://www.cafas.org.uk).
The editorial collective of subtext currently consists (in alphabetical
order) of: Lenny Baer, Steve Fleetwood, Patrick Hagopian, Gavin Hyman,
John Law, Maggie Mort, Rhona O'Brien, Ian Reader and Bronislaw Szerszynski. |