This is a history from a peculiarly personal perspective, from somebody whose political consciousness was formed as a teenager in the Sixties in England. Not the non-existent England of Downton Abbey and Upstairs/Downstairs but from a country where the majority of the population were working class.

     My family were socialists of London origins. My Dad from Southwark in South London, worked as a Union printer on Fleet Street, and my Mum came from West Ham in the East End of London. My parents were Рgulp - pacifists. That had nothing to do with passivity. They were engaged politically through their unions in the issues of the day.

      My dad was a conscientious objector during the Second World War. Like Howard Zinn he believed that violence as a political tool was barbaric whether wielded by the State through the use of targeted assassinations or by so called terrorist groups.

     After the war my family were members of the See En Dee - Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a campaign that directly confronted the war machine of the British establishment and their complicit support of United States military dominance.

       In the early sixties Bertrand Russell organized an offshoot of CND called the Committee of Hundred. The tactics of the Committee were non-violent disobedience, based on the methods that Ghandi had effectively utilized against the British Occupation of India. Their most popular action was the Sit-in. The Committee led sit-ins in front of the Ministry of Defense in Whitehall, sit-ins in front of the embassies of the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. .

       To me at eleven years old disobedience was a powerful and liberating force. I had been trained in obedience from birth – to my family, to my school, to my country. At that time I was subject to the oppressive regime of my class teacher – Miss Pine. I longed to emulate the tactics of the Committee and openly flout the rules of the classroom – to sit in and tell Miss Pine NO NO I will not do that.

     I went on to the University of Nottingham. 18 years old and out of the family home to an institution of higher learning. An institution steeped in antediluvian traditions and culture. It was ripe to be brought into the modern world of democracy and transparency. I forget how it all started. We the students had no role in the administration, no channel for our voices. I had joined Soc Soc, that was the Socialist Society led by Nigel Harris and Mushstaq, a radical from Pakistan who spoke with an upper class English accent and had impeccable credentials as a rabble-rouser. Soc Soc was the leftist power on the campus. Beer and politics were inextricably linked in those days. Down in the Buttery, the cellar bar under the Student's union we gathered to drink prodigious quantities of beer and endlessly debate political issues. Mushstaq held court in the Buttery although he did not drink alcohol because of his Muslim upbringing. Recently my middle class University roommate Lawrence cynically explained what had happened. "Soc Soc at a poorly attended meeting of the Students union pushed through a vote authorizing a sit-in."

     The presence of a large body of students on a Friday night overpowered several bemused elderly porters guarding the offices. We began a sit-in, in Trent Hall, the bastion of the University administration. This was 1968 we were part of the international zeitgeist of student's ensuring their voices were heard in Paris, in London, in Berkeley and in San Francisco. We could not be stopped, the administration refused to bring police onto the campus. Within a week our demands were met.
     A couple of weeks ago I took my 17 year-old nephew to open day at the University, thousands of middle class parents jostling with each other, bringing their sons and daughters to see the campus. The sit-in was long forgotten, SocSoc no longer existed I heard that the most popular society at the university was Cock Soc, the Cocktail Society.

     Last November in 2011 on Black Friday – the day promoted by the mass media as the busiest shopping day of the year – we went in search of a flash mob demonstration against consumerism. We never found it. Instead we found a sit-in. Music blared from a portable sound system. Over a megaphone came the voice: "Everybody get on Twitter and Facebook from their phones, and spread the word we are occupying Union Square." We sat on the street in Union Square holding signs surrounded by the police. We shouted: "Whose Streets? Our streets!
Off the sidewalks into the streets.
Stand up. Sit down. There's an occupy movement in this town."
People clutching shopping bags crowded on the sidewalk, watching us. It was the sit-in brought to the 21st Century and I was glad to be part of it. Let's end the obedience to their rules.
"Stand up sit down. There's an occupy movement in this town.
Off the sidewalks into the streets."

Performed at Bird and Beckett, 15th July 2012 LaborFest


 

      
                                      

 © Keith David Cooley 2010