The high jinks of student unions, whilst interesting to other students, are of little import to the supposedly more cut-and-thrust world outside. And yet last summer, one particular student bunfight, centred on the hallowed halls of Malet Street, WC1, and of Surrey Street, WC2, made its way into the real, professional mass media. Not just the EducationGuardian website – which covers all SU events, not least UCL’s, quite obsequiously – but The Guardian’s student print edition, The Daily Telegraph (twice) and The Times Higher Education Supplement.
And it all happened when a UCL student wrote an article in with the word ‘fuck’ in it quite a lot. How could it matter? And why does it still matter?
Herein lies a story not just about what our lords and masters do on the fourth floor of the ULU building, but about how student unions do and don’t work, and whether we have any hope of freedom in a little world fraught with divisions, alliances and the enemy, bureaucracy…
The ban
Here’s what everyone knows. On 25 May, the last issue of London Student for the year was published by ULU. The executive committee, commonly known as ULU Exec, simultaneously issued a statement distancing themselves from its content. “Specifically,” it said, “we wish to apologise to any one who is offended by the language or the quality of the article on the left-hand column of page 8 of the current edition.” The column in question was the regular opinion piece penned by Stephen Fingleton of UCL (Exhibit A). As you can see, it contains the word ‘fuck’ 77 times, excluding the title. Why they objected to it is anyone’s guess, but on the same day, David Dunne, president of King’s College Students’ Union (KCLSU) e-mailed ULU Council, telling them he was banning London Student – for that one article. “May I register my disgust at this irresponsible and despicable article,” Dunne spluttered. “Any article which gratuitously and unnecessarily uses the word f**k (75 times) [sic] and treats issues such as HIV so glibly and irresponsibly should not be allowed to appear in any Newspaper, let alone one which is paid for by the students of the University of London”. He went on, to then LS editor Lila Allen: “please do not send any copies to King’s, we do not wish to stock this issue thank you and any received will be duly recycled”.
The issue became widely discussed – at least on student message boards. Events came to a head at the last meeting of ULU Council of 2003/04 on June 1st. A motion of censure had been brought against Allen. It was defeated. Another motion, brought by her and defending her position, was carried, by 17 votes to 15. The second motion was itself signed by dozens of supporters, including 18 officers from the University’s many colleges as well as LS contributors.
Why were all these people expressing such strong views over one article which, had it been overlooked, could have been dismissed as meaningless? Had such passions - enough to keep thirty-eight dedicated people voting in the dining hall at Imperial College Union for over two hours that night – arisen from nowhere?
A little history
Stephen Fingleton is someone most people who dip their toe into student politics at UCL eventually comes up against. In his second year, the hirsute Ulsterman both wrote a column (“The Column”) in LS and edited the opinion page. Fingleton is an opinionated man (‘he’s a fuckin’ cock’ is a favourite character appraisal), he dabbles in many art forms, from electronic music to film, and his attitude is often decidedly sphinx- like.
Unsurprisingly then, the content of The Column defied convention and acceptance. When his meaning was clear, it was clearly brutal. After attacking the Irish, UCL Union coffee (and all those who served it) and abortion without pausing for breath, he built up a healthy chorus of disapprovers who read and hated his column all over London. The letters flowed in. They did not like his views on the Irish, nor his proclivity for talking about masturbation. And when he wrote about being charged with murder, some people got really worried. “Eventually,” Fingleton reflected, “a question was raised at ULU Council about the article over the possibility of libel. Editor Lila Allen noted the article could not be ‘libellous’ as the girl did not exist.”
And there’s the point: much of what Fingleton wrote was a big joke, a grotesque jab at his critics to preserve the momentum of what he’d started and a Baudrillardesque subversion of reported truth. This has, of course, been done in newspapers before: when Dom Joly wrote a column in the London Evening Standard, he successfully persuaded many people that he was married to Shania Twain. But Joly did not have students’ union officers to contend with. Nemesis was on its way.
How not to censor a newspaper
London Student enjoys effective editorial independence – the content does not necessarily represent, blah blah – but the editor is a ULU sabbatical officer, and is answerable to ULU Council. And so it seems that, when people over the course of the year had a complaint to make about LS, they complained not to the editor, but to ULU.
Fine; but that shouldn’t have stopped the complaints from being passed on to the editor. And so it was that, when ULU Exec met on May 4th this year, they had some issues with the paper. Well, with Fingleton’s column, actually. According to the distinctly vague Exec minutes, it was agreed by the eight officers there that ULU is harmed when LS offends people, and ULU should be able to intervene. The article where Fingleton purported to have cut his arm open at NUS Conference – a fabrication – was said to have “undermined ULU’s educational work with mental health charities”.
Yet no letter had been sent to the paper. Were these eight people representing the views of students across London, or merely their own? Chris Piper, then president of ULU, told The Cheese Grater: “Of course they express the concerns of the people at the executive there. They are elected officers; they do represent students across the University of London”. Trouble is, do elected officers seek out and then represent the views of the student body as a whole? Do ours? ULU Exec made the incredible assertion that “LS should not print any more articles from this columnist”. Also, “it was suggested that the Editor may be intimidated by the columnist in question”. Finally, it was agreed that the union general manager and incoming editor Alexi Duggins would prepare a strategy paper for London Student. What does the strategy paper have to do with the complaints? Lila Allen was not told of either and, not being on Exec, had no particular way of finding out. If Exec appears to agree to something in its minutes, that usually amounts to policy. But Exec has no right to pronounce editorial policy at London Student! Piper admitted as much later, but why didn’t he clear it up at the meeting? So, nearly a month before the offending issue was banned by King’s, the majority of ULU Exec wanted Fingleton out, and were happy to discuss this, along with other issues relating to the paper, behind Allen’s back. Subsequent to this meeting, Lila Allen met the general manager and Chris Piper for a routine meeting. In an interview for The Cheese Grater in June, Piper told us that Allen brought up the subject of Fingleton’s mental health. But according to Allen, the first question she was asked was if she was afraid of Fingleton. This she denied. Nor did she have much time for the idea that the tales of self- harm and masturbation were a “clear cry for help”. Piper apologised for any misunderstanding.
Who’s lying so far? If Allen, she may have been trying to cover up for secretly thinking Fingleton off his head. But if Piper lied, a more sinister picture emerges: of an agenda being slowly advanced, an agenda to discredit his fellow sabb. Fingleton wrote his momentarily famous ‘fuck you’ article on 17 May. As per usual, ULU Exec saw an advance copy of the paper, on Friday 21 May. At this stage, of course, no-one outside Malet Street had seen the finished paper, and hardly anyone had had a chance to read The Column. Piper immediately objected to the article (Exhibit B). Lila claims that Piper asked her to remove all the swearwords. This wouldn’t have left much (Exhibit A again), except the ensuing thank-yous. Piper denies he said this. Exhibit B, however, suggests otherwise. By the end of Friday, it would have been clear that the article was going in.
The King’s Sieve
At least three members or ex- members of KCLSU, including president Piper himself, sat on ULU Exec in the 2003/04 season. Everyone, including then KCLSU student affairs vice-president Toby Boon, agrees that one of the Exec members decided to leak London Student to their lord and master, KCLSU president David Dunne.
Why was it leaked, and why to Dunne? The events are explained if we hypothesise that Chris Piper wanted to hit back at London Student. After alienating ULU Council by stubbornly opposing a top-up fees demo, Piper probably couldn’t rely on many people in Council to help him out, unless he had rewarded them in some way. And it so happened that, earlier in May, Piper had done just that: he’d bestowed the prestigious President’s Award of honorary life membership of ULU, for outstanding contribution thereto, on…his successor as KCLSU president, David Dunne. For what? According to fellow ULU Exec member and then medical students’ officer Johann Malawana, for “doing nothing”. It was not until the ULU Exec meeting of May 24th that Lila Allen found out about the statement prepared by Exec. The statement said, inter alia: “We…accept that as a consequence of this [editorial independence] sometimes what is published will be critical of elected officers and SUs or of poor quality in our opinion.” Not only did ULU Exec feel that the disclaimer about ULU printed in every issue was not enough, but they felt able to speak on behalf of the entire union; a remarkable feat for eight people. The next day, David Dunne took president’s action to ban the paper. As Dunne said at the time and Toby Boon later told us, the article was considered in breach of KCLSU’s equal opportunities policy: “I felt there was a breach of the equal opportunities, because of the blatant dismissal of people’s core values and belief systems, in a way that it was very, very difficult to have any kind of right to reply ”.
The sheer meaninglessness of such statements as “fuck gay marriage rights” in the context of the article appeared to have passed him by. Dunne claimed in the EducationGuardian that “we had complaints from students who felt uncomfortable because of this article”. That would have meant students wandering into his office and reading the advance copy, which is exactly what Boon told The Cheese Grater they did do; but there can’t have been that many of King’s 18,000 population trooping in and out of the sabbatical office in Surrey Street that day. The newspaper was threatened with being pulped, just as UCL had done with London Student in 2001, and Dunne directed his minions to draft a motion of censure against Lila Allen, to be submitted to the next ULU Council on 1 June, even though it was only a week away on 25 May and the deadline for motions had passed.
The Fight Back
If Chris Piper and David Dunne could be seen as part of a faction, then it inevitably follows that Lila Allen had one of her own. Fingleton and friends immediately rallied to the cause, vowing to put their own motion (vide UCL Union message board). Between 25 May and 1 June, Allen drafted her own (emergency) motion for ULU Council, “Freedom of the Press”.
It is probably at this time that she also alerted her contacts in the national press to the unfolding story. Someone even managed to ring up John Peel and get him to condemn the King’s censorship; and (no doubt through Allen’s chum Simon Hogg at Canary Wharf) the story eventually made its way onto The Daily Telegraph. Whether we believe Fingleton, who said someone tried to get a statement from Terry Wogan, is another matter. It may just be one of his Irish jokes.
The Reckoning
David Dunne was not present at ULU Council when it convened in the Beit Quad on Prince Consort Road on the evening of Tuesday 1 June. Toby Boon was there to represent him, and to deliver a motion of censure he insists it gave him no pleasure to propose. Though late, it was introduced as an emergency measure, and its validity is debatable. In the opposite corner was Olivier Usher, UCL Union councillor and LS features editor, wielding a motion for Lila Allen, who was herself present. But the motions had to wait. By all accounts it was a lively meeting: “Lila Allen didn’t put her bloody delegate card down once,” a King’s observer later wrote. Both advocates and critics of Allen and friends agree that the meeting was endlessly delayed by a barrage of procedural motions, apparently brought by both sides in an attempt to make each other’s supporters give up and go home.
Only after hours of bobbing up and down were the key motions arrived at. Matt Cooke, then ULU officer and current president, made a speech in favour of not putting the motion of censure, and instead proposing a review of London Student. But by then, both sides were too far gone. The motion of censure crawled over a barbed wire fence of five procedural motions, one guillotine vote (a vote to extend the maximum running time of the meeting) and even a quorum count, only to be defeated by 18 votes to 12. Then came the return punch. The motion on freedom of the press was tied the first time round; on a revote, it was passed by one. Boon and Piper expressed their disappointment at the conduct of the meeting; in response, Allen said: “Not sure whether Chris is disappointed that the censure against me didn’t go through or that I won my motion? Who knows?”
So What?
The old guard are gone. Perhaps Chris Piper will land his plum job at UNISON; perhaps Lila Allen will get on Channel 4 News like she so dearly wants to. But this episode was crucially important. Firstly, had Allen been censured, it would have set a remarkable precedent for the regulation of LS; namely that it is subject to the whim of college student unions. The paper’s relationship with student officers and staff is sticky enough as it is; it needs more independence, not less. Only an independent adjudicator can offer both safety for the paper’s editor and credible regulation for its readership; but this seems impossible to fulfil under students’ union conditions.
If, however, ULU’s constituent bodies had behaved themselves, London Student might never have been banned in the first place. At best, the activities of Piper, Dunne and co. are typical of the officiousness of student officers, so often more eager to run lofty-sounding campaigns and search for breaches in their protocols than to make students feel part of something big. At worst, they amount to a connivance to discredit both Lila Allen and Stephen Fingleton. Rob Park, now a ULU sabbatical officer, expressed at the time his “sneaking suspicion” that there was a “witch- hunt” going on. Students do not fund their unions to engage in such petty point- scoring as occurred at ULU in the summer. More importantly, they deserve not to have their activities and channels of expression choked and tied up by distant sabbaticals with dubious motives and no idea of how journalism works, even in reduced, student form. London Student, as has been pointed out, is an amenity, a facility for London students to use and read. It is not a ULU newsletter, and however much ULU’s masters may agree with that, it has not stopped them from illogically, stealthily and unacceptably interfering with the freedom of the press. These were our elected officers; and if we get the student officers we deserve, we all have something to answer for.