Goldsmiths occupation against new round of cuts

 Students at Goldsmiths University of London have occupied the college library in New Cross in protest against another round of cuts threatening the jobs of hundreds of staff (academic and professional services) and leaving the future of some courses in doubt.

As the occupiers have noted, 'Goldsmiths is a microcosm of the decimation of Higher Education, the arts and our collective society'. The funding crisis is only part of it - it feels that there is an attempt to fundamentally change the nature of the institution and shift it from being a place of critical thinking and experimentation. 

Follows freegoldsmiths for updates. There is a rally on Wednesday at noon

See also - a chronology of Goldsmiths occupations (updated)

'Freedom for Fatema' campaign at Goldsmiths

Staff and students at Goldsmiths University of London are campaigning for the release of a Goldsmiths student who has been in prison for over a year for alleged Palestine solidarity action. Fatema Zainab Rajwani, who also goes by Ray, is a 21-year-old film student and poet. They are currently being held as part of the Filton24, imprisoned without being convicted for alleged damage of weapons in an Israeli arms factory in England belonging to Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems, at Filton near Bristol.  Ray’s trial at Woolwich has just concluded, and they are now awaiting jury deliberation alongside five of their co-defendants. Fatema was meant to begin their final year as a Media and Communications student at Goldsmiths in September 2024, but they were remanded after being arrested at Filton in August 2024. Eight other prisoners have taken part in a hunger strike.

According to Goldsmiths UCU:

'Ray is proud of their Indian heritage and East African roots. They are a film student and a poet, and their writing is an attempt to mediate between the existence we are witnessing and the beautiful world we have the capacity to rebuild together.

Fatema’s interests include reading and writing poetry, history, and social theory; Bollywood films and songs; zines; BFI films; Chappell Roan; Buffy; We Are Lady Parts; Sweatshop Boys; and books by Kamila Shamsie. They love meeting new people and hearing about others.

As Fatema has said: “We reject the business of imperialist murder that Britain profits from. The slaughter of Black and Brown bodies that the British arms trade facilitates must end. Long live Palestine.”

 

Goldsmiths: Redundancies protests/Palestine occupation

A rally in the rain at Goldsmiths College last night (15 March 2024) brought together the fight against job cuts and the ongoing 'Goldsmiths for Palestine' occupation.

 

Job Cuts

The ongoing financial crisis at Goldsmiths seems to be reaching a critical point with senior management announcing on 28th February that as part of its 'Transformation Programme' it is planning compulsory redundancies for 130 full time equivalent posts (likely to affect many more than 130 people, as many are on part time contracts). Goldsmiths management certainly deserve the criticism it is getting but the bigger picture is inadequate national Government funding of higher education which is driven not just be economic considerations but by culture war hostility to arts, humanities and social sciences subjects. As stated on this poster, 'This attempt to erode our university represents a broader assault on critical, cultural and political education across academia': 

Goldsmiths for Palestine

Meanwhile the 'Goldsmiths for Palestine' occupation of the College's Stuart Hall building looks set to continue into its fifth week, having started on 19th February

See previously:

A history of student occupations at Goldsmiths

 

Goldsmiths Occupations: a chronology

Found at the awesome 56a Info Shop archive a copy of SHIP Network News (Southwark Homeless Information Project) reports an occupation at Goldsmiths College in Summer 1991, specifically of the  Outreach Unit at 32 Lewisham Way which had just been closed down. 'the occupiers have opened it up to anyone and everyone' and proclaimed a 'free university' with a planned democratic education summer school. Not sure how far this got, as they seemed to have quickly been served a court summons. I don't know if this was the same 1991 occupation at which there was talk of Spiral Tribe putting on a party in the Great Hall only to be blocked by nervous student union officials.

There have been quite a few occupations at Goldsmiths over the years, some of which we have covered here previously. But here's an attempt at a chronology - no doubt missing many so let us know if you have any others - or have memories/documentation of the one below.

1968: Perhaps surprizingly Goldsmiths does not seem to have been directly affected by the wave of student occupations of art schools in 1968, notably at Croydon and at Hornsey Colleges of Art. It is though recorded that ‘Sixty students from Goldsmiths’ College of Art, New Cross, SE, invaded Hornsey College of Art on the first day of its new term… They crowded into the corridors of Hornsey and chanted ‘We support you. We support you’. Hornsey college authorities called police, who dispersed the students and ejected them’ (Times, 5 November 1968).

1976: Students at Goldsmiths voted to occupy as a part of a wave of protests sweeping teacher training colleges prompted by the fact that at a time of education cuts many newly qualified teachers were leaving college and ending up unemployed.(Socialist Worker, 29 May 1976)

1984:  the Administration building (later the Whitehead building) was occupied for 8 days to protest against staff cuts in the Media and Communications team (more here)

1991: 'free university' occupation at 32 Lewisham Way (see above)

1999: as detailed by Past Tense, 'Part of Goldsmiths College, New Cross, was occupied 26th February – March 5th 1999. 300 students took over college admin building, after eight students were expelled because they couldn’t pay £1000 a year tuition fees that had been imposed on them. A court granted the college an eviction order, but the occupying students refused to leave till the eight reinstated. A few weeks previously, students had held a demonstration, blocking New Cross Road outside, over same issue'. Mark Brown told me on Twitter that during this occupation they received a message of support from Kevin Rowland (Dexys Midnight Runners) and that Rob Newman, Silver Sun and Mark Keds (Senseless Things) all played.

2009: a two day occupation of the Deptford Town Hall building  by 50 or so students as part of a national wave of protest against Israel's bombing of Gaza (plus ca change). The occupation did achieve one of its demands -  scholarships for students from Palestine's al-Quds university. The blog from the occupation is still online 

2009

2010 saw a huge movement linking together university students, school students and others in the front line of austerity in the aftermath of the financial crash.  In November 2010 around 40 students occupied the old Deptford Town Hall for two days in protest at education cuts and the proposed increase in students fees. Effigies of prime minister David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg were strung up on New Cross Road next to a banner saying 'Education for the Masses, not the Ruling Classes'. More here.

November 2010 occupation

Then in December 2010 there was a larger scale occupation of the library, with several hundred taking part at the beginning. This lasted for almost a week from 5 to 11 December (More here and here). I believe Kae Tempest (then known as Excentral Tempest) performed at the occupation. The radical anthropologist David Graeber, then working at the College, was heavily involved, going on the next year to play a significant role in the Occupy protest in New York.  I gave a talk in the library on the radical history of New Cross.

December 2010

In March 2011 there was a short occupation of the Town Hall in support of striking lecturers. More here

March 2011

A short occupation of the Whitehead building in November 2011 declared itself 'in solidarity with the UK-wide strike on November 30th and the global occupy movement. We are here because we reject the privatisation of the university, symptomatic of the neo-liberal agenda that permeates all aspects of life. For this reason we have strategically occupied the building housing Goldsmiths’ finance offices, responsible for executing the cuts and the privatisation agenda'. More here.

November 2011

In December 2013 around 100 people occupied the Town Hall building in support of striking staff. More here.

2013

March 2015 saw another occupation of the Town Hall with a wide range of demands and a focus on the marketisation of education. More here

2015

The Goldsmiths Anti- Racist Action occupation of 2019 took over part of the Town Hall and lasted for a mammoth 137 days between March and July. Arising as part of the global Black Lives Matter movement its demands focused on institutional racism at Goldsmiths. 

2019

Goldsmiths students occupied the Stuart Hall building on 20th February 2024 in solidarity with Palestine. The occupation finished after five weeks, with the University agreeing to create an additional Palestinian scholarship:

(2024 images from Gold4Palestine)

On 29 May 2024 there was a further Palestinian solidarity occupation of the College's gallery, the Centre for Contemporary Arts, prompted by allegations of it receiving sponsorship from Zac Gertler, a property magnate described last year as 'Netanyahu’s new favorite multimillionaire, the owner of the Carlton Hotel in Tel Aviv, where Bibi spent a tense election night last November'. The occupation continued until the end of term nearly a month later.

photo by not_crime_twinc

With Goldsmiths management threatening to make more than 130 lecturers redundant as part of a brutal programme of cuts, students occupied the Council Chamber in the old Deptford Town Hall on 4 June 2024 and remained there for over a week.

photo by @phellermann

Update April 2026:

In April 2026,  students occupied the library against the latest round of  funding and staff cuts. The occupiers reckoned that this was the 15th Goldsmiths occupation, and have built on what I wrote above to find out some more about this history: 

'Goldsmiths has an extraordinary history of student organising and activism, earning itself a reputation as the first to take action against injustice. Students at Goldsmiths have occupied at least 14 times since 1968, in 1976, 1984, 1999,  2009, twice in 2010, 2013, 2015, 2019, four times in 2024. And now in 2026 we have this returned to the potency of the occupation in our defence of knowledge and creativity. 

In honour of our predecessors and to sustain the collective memory of Goldsmiths as a place for action, we have filled our occupation with archival banners, placards and zines from pa'st student organisers, campaigns and occupations.  Please visit us so together we can investigate what can be learned from past organisers and occupations, and if you have any additional material from previous occupations, please drop them off, we’ll take good care of them! (Free Goldsmiths, April 2026)

New Cross Fire 1981 exhibition at Goldsmiths

The new exhibition at Goldsmiths on the New Cross Fire 1981 differs from previous events in that it has been put together by survivors, relatives and others directly affected by the tragic events which occurred just a few hundred metres down the road.

The exhibition includes poems, reflections, documents and personal artefacts relating to the fire and the subsequent movement of outrage at the racist response to it. It is very moving - a stark reminder of some of the individual lives cut short on 18 January 1981. For instance it includes roller skates belonging to Yvonne Ruddock, whose 16th birthday was being celebrated at the party (at the request of relatives this section of the exhibition is not to be photographed).

The exhibition continues until 27th May 2023, admission is free. To find it go into main building at Goldsmiths - which is open to the public - and follow corridor round to the right. Towards the back of the building you will see the exhibition space on your left.

A benefit concert for the victims held at Lewisham Concert Hall in May 1981, headlined by Sugar Minott.

See previously: New Cross Fire: the Bleakest Moment

Chinese protest posters in New Cross

A series of protest posters have appeared around New Cross with the hashtags #FreeChina #EndDxicatorship (referring to  Chinese leader Xi Jinping who has just had his position extended to a third term)

'No obedience, no patriarchy, no police violence'

Support for Peng Lifa, who was arrested after staging a one person banner protest in Beijing last week

'No more fear, we can do this'

These photos were taken on the streets of SE14, CNN has featured similar posters put up at Goldsmiths College

Update 8 December 2022 (all from Goldsmiths):

#thepostermovement

'we stand with Uyghurs; we stand with Iranian women'

'Stand with uyghurs, stand with tibet, stand with hong kong, stand with taiwan, stand with iranians, stand with ukraine, stand with all peoples resisting dictatorship oppression and violence'

'we want freedom, we want food on our tables, we want to breathe, we want art, we want democracy, we want to love, stand with chinese people'

 

Light Perpetual - remembering the New Cross V2 disaster

An eye catching, if slightly storm frayed billboard advert in New Cross Road announces the paperback publication of Francis Spufford's novel 'Light Perpetual'. Spufford has been teaching creative writing at Goldsmiths since 2008 and the novel is directly inspired by events in New Cross Road. As he explains in the book, 'for the last twelve years, I've been walking to work at Goldsmiths College past a plaque commemorating the 1944 V2 attack on the New Cross Road branch of Woolworths. Of the 168 people who died, fifteen were aged eleven or under. The novel is partly written in memory of those South London children, and their lost chance to experience the rest of the twentieth century'.

The premise of the novel is to imagine what might have been given some very slight alteration in circumstances - supposing a technical fault has caused the missile to fail during its journey, as many did, or it landed relatively harmlessly in a park rather than a crowded shop on a Saturday?

'That's time for you. It breaks things up. It scatters them. It cannot be run backwards, to summon the dust to rise, any more than you can stir milk back out of tea. Once sundered, forever sundered. Once

scattered, forever scattered. It's irreversible. But what has gone is not just the children's present existence [....]  It's all the futures they won't get, too. All the would-be's, might-be's, could-be's of the decades to come. How can that loss be measured, how can that loss be known, except by laying this

absence, now and onwards, against some other version of the reel of time, where might-be and could-be and would-be still may still be'.

And so Spufford imagines how the lives of some of the children who died might have played out in the decades to come, what they missed out on and what the world missed out by their absence. I really enjoyed the novel but admit to being puzzled why he set a story that is so clearly tied to a real New Cross event in the fictional south east London borough of Bexford. But as he recently explained, 'I wanted to find a way of remembering the event that was faithful but not literal, so had to invent a London borough and drop a V2 of my own on to it, not to trample on anybody’s real grief'.

Memorials

There are actually two memorial plaques at the site (where the Iceland store now stands)- the first put up by Deptford History Group in 1994...

...and the second sponsored by Lewisham Council unveiled in 2009, as reported here.

As I roved out on Deptford Broadway

The events are also referenced in a song from 2012 included on the compilation 'Deptford Day: Songs About SE8'. 'As I roved out on Deptford Broadway'  by Neil Gordon-Orr imagines somebody looking back on their youth in the pubs and cinemas of New Cross and Deptford and missing his friends lost in the Second World War, including in the V2 attack.

As I roved out on Deptford Broadway

As I roved out one summer Sunday

To take the air on Deptford Broadway

Fell in with Jo and Sam and Susie

Says I who'll share my wages with me?

We had a quick dram in the Dover

In the Royal Albert we sipped some porter

Sam left with Jo and Susie after

She caught the tram and I fell over

I saw Susie the next Friday

In the Odeon kissed through a movie

Next week we danced in the New Cross Palais

Next year in St Pauls we were married

Now I sit here in the Granby

And all those years have gone behind me

So have a drink and sit beside me

My old friends' stools are all long empty

Sam never came back from the army

Jo crossed the seas when she got married

And Susie died right here in New Cross

When the rocket blew up Woolworths

Now I go walking every Sunday

I dodge the cars on Deptford Broadway

I think of Sam and Jo and Susie

And all the other ghosts beside me

The sunlight perpetual reflects off the gold letters on the billboard

'Come, other future. Come, mercy not manifest in time; come

knowledge not obtainable in time. Come, other chances. Come,

unsounded deep. Come, undivided light. Come dust' (Frances Spufford)

 

Strike against job cuts at Goldsmiths

A good turn out at Goldsmiths College in New Cross today at a rally to mark the start of a three week strike by members of the University and College Union against threatened job cuts.

Goldsmiths UCU say: 'Goldsmiths Senior Management Team (SMT) is planning mass staff redundancies across departments this term, as part of a wider scheme of redundancies to be rolled out over two years. Management has informed us that it plans to cut 52 jobs this year: 20 academics in English & Creative Writing and History, and 32 professional services staff. The survival of courses in the departments of History and English and Creative Writing are in serious jeopardy, and the professional services cuts (to staff in timetabling, student support and other areas) risk causing chaos and harming student experience. 

This is part of what SMT terms ‘The Recovery Plan’: an attempt to use job cuts to improve the College’s finances. Goldsmiths UCU (GUCU) argues this is a bad plan, both in terms of the financial impacts and the injustice of the proposed job cuts themselves. Senior management also claims these cuts are required by the banks due to a deal that was struck with Lloyds Bank and Natwest bank, negotiated by the consultancy firm KPMG, committing to £4million of staff cuts this year followed by £2million next year'.

The strike will continue until December 13th 2021, with daily pickets and teach-out sessions (details here)