Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Strike and occupation at Goldsmiths

Lecturers at Goldsmiths College in New Cross have been on strike today as part of a national strike against changes to their pension scheme. Last night students occupied the Deptford Town Hall building, where Goldsmiths management offices are based. The occupation is in support of the striking lecturers, as well as to build momentum for this Saturday's anti-cuts demonstration in London.





Nelson looks down on David Cameron - everyone to Trafalgar Square this Saturday!



Some lecturers who didn't joint the strike attempted to hold tutorials in the nearby Cafe Crema instead. They were asked to desist by the Cafe, who wanted to show their support for the strike.
More on the dispute, including photos of the picket line, at the Goldsmiths UCU site.

The redecoration of Deptford Town Hall put me in mind of my late friend Paul Hendrich, who researched the links between Deptford and slavery, as represented in the Town Hall statues.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Occupying Deptford Town Hall is the lamest form of political protest.
Goldsmiths is a liberal institution, the management dislike this Government's policies towards HE as much as anyone in the country. Should they really be a priority target for civil action, or is it just that occupying is incredibly easy, comfortable and with low-level retributive consequences. It's not like occupying an actual arm of the state is it? The immediate effect that it has is do make study more difficult for the occupier's fellow students, who have classes and assessment disrupted. Secondly, it creates much more work for the very staff who were striking, as they have to find solutions to the problems caused as well as manage their normal workloads. And then the ancillary staff (admin, security, cleaners) have to do loads more to try to fulfill the university's responsibility to students.
I strongly suspect that those involved don't have a clue what they are doing: they just muddy the waters and make it more difficult to achieve anything meaningful.