... It's a cold and impossibly wet Thursday afternoon in Bloomsbury, central London, and not for the first time, it's all kicking off. A pack of police minibuses has just sped into Russell Square, and scores of Met personnel are now spilling on to the streets. Behind the gates of the University of London's administrative offices, other officers wield metal batons, sporadically lashing out at a crowd of student protesters who have marched here from nearby Malet Street. Within minutes, the line along which the students and police face off has been established, and a succession of chants fills the air: "Cops out! Students in! … Whose streets? Our streets! … You killed Mark Duggan!"
Such is the spectacle that has erupted around a Cops Off Campus demonstration, organised anonymously via tumblr. After a torrential downpour and an ad hoc occupation of the westbound side of Marylebone Road at the peak of rush hour, the centre of events soon shifts to Gower Street, and the entrance to Euston Square tube station. Close by, 20 or so protesters have apparently been kettled. A police helicopter thrums overhead. Every few minutes, there is a flash of renewed confrontation. "We just want to say we don't want cops on our campus," one student tells me. "But the police want a fight."...
... On Thursday, my day begins at the back of Holborn police station, in the company of around 20 student activists. Most are from London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, here because they know two Soas students are being held inside – and because of their own role in this week's convulsive events on campus. The previous day, at around 2.30pm, around 60 students occupied the first floor of Senate House, the art deco leviathan that contains the administrative base of the University of London and the offices of its senior management. Their action was based on a 10-point agenda, covering everything from the pay and conditions of outsourced cleaners, through the structures of the University of London Union, to a demand that "the pay ratio between the lowest paid and the highest paid staff in the university should be reduced to a maximum of 10:1"...
... "What we have to remind people of is that we're going to be the generation who are going to get fucked over: completely and utterly, in a way no generation has in the past," says Hashmi. "Until we realise that we actually have nothing to lose, we're not going to put enough energy into this. But that's what people here have done. Because we literally have nothing to lose."...
/... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/06/university-of-strife-john-harris
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