Let’s re-occupy Warwick

When the Occupy tents started to pop up near the Arts Centre beside the gravelly path that bends towards our Student Union, there were whispers of delight and mistrust circulating through Warwick. What do these people want? What do they have to say?

This exhortation may be slightly lost on the ears of freshers, but we should be reminded that last year, Warwick saw its own Occupy movement appear in the heart of campus. From nowhere there were tents, and then the next day more, the day after more still. For most Warwick students at the time, the tents were the only things that registered. Pointed pockets of tarpaulin decked with anti-capitalist slogans, and speeches damning exchange value. A few leftist students shivered in the rain while everyone else got on with more immediately important things.

> Many would argue that the political shocks of the 70s and 80s have made us, as a culture, jaded by political activism. ‘Fuck’ is now a cleaner word than ‘Marx’

In some ways the prospect of tents encroaching upon a familiar space is like an imposition. Perhaps many mistrusted Occupy Warwick for precisely this reason. The act of forcing politics into the public eye has never enjoyed the sexy notoriety that many of our parents saw in
the 60s. Many would argue that the political shocks of the 70s and 80s have made us, as a culture, jaded by political activism. ‘Fuck’ is now a cleaner word than ‘Marx’.

But I think people’s mistrust of political activism actually stems from a romantic notion of the 60s themselves: the naive ideal that we, as a bunch of acid-tripping dropouts, can stick it to the man and take an exploitative system down. This blind belief is then destroyed by a distorted vision of cause and effect: “People like you already tried to even things out, and you got Stalinism, yeah?” What starts out rooted in the rhetoric of equality quickly becomes corrupted, we’re told. A few tents can’t replace a global economy, after all.

However, when walking around and getting involved with Occupy Warwick last year, one could see
little trace of the violence we like to think of as synonymous with political activism. Protestors at the help desk smiled and were easy to talk to. They cleaned up their rubbish
and made sure to drink away from the campsite. Lecturers from the Humanities departments dropped in to give them their thoughts on where the movement was going, and what new questions should be asked. Small concerts were played, writing workshops organised.

During the course of Occupy’s two weeks, I learnt a lot from the lecturers giving talks, and attending the camp’s general meetings (which were free for everyone) to see how the protest slotted together. In the case of the latter, I learnt very quickly that the Occupy movement worked around the idea of a modified consensus democracy — that is, for each action put forward, there would have to be above 80-90 percent approval.

As you can imagine, Occupy Warwick didn’t get much accomplished. The form of their organisation
held them back from progression. They refused to send delegates to Nigel Thrift because it was in the rulebook that the group had to be considered as a whole. It is clear that any practical objectives had to be sacrificed to greater ideals of agreement and unity.

But this is precisely why I view the Occupy Movement as necessary and important. The tents, far
from being an imposition, carved out a space from within and provided a platform for debate and
contestation. There was a moment last year when it was easier than ever to discuss political and economic issues loudly, but compassionately. There was no grand trot at the barricades or a riot in the Tory Party HQ, just a calm interrogation of why we partake in the systems we do, and why these systems affect us.

Now, more than ever, this is crucial. For the briefest of moments, the undergraduate population of Warwick University is split between people paying £3k and £9k per year. This commodification of higher education was discussed last year, and needs to be discussed now, as do many other things. The Occupy Movement was not an isolated protest, it was a physical
way of thinking; a way of bringing macro issues into a micro space. In short, the conversation needs to go beyond last year’s tents. It is up to all of us to decide the next form it
will take.