The trial of Konstancja Duff, the student arrested for chalking ‘sick pay, holidays, pensions now’ outside ULU last July has been adjourned. The 24-year-old Univer- sity of London student was charged with one count of criminal damage and two of assaulting a police officer. She has been granted unconditional bail until next February, when the trial should finally go ahead.
The University of London crackdown on protest continued as one student was threatened with arrest whilst in Senate House. Former UCLU Education and Campaigns Officer Edwin Clifford- Coupe was handing out leaflets in sup- port of Duff when two security guards approached him. As they brandished scrunched-up copies of the leaflet, they told him to leave and threatened him with arrest. Clifford-Coupe stayed put, asserting his right as a student to hand out materials in university buildings, but was told that the police would arrive immi- nently. Panicked by the threat, he handed out the rest of the stack in the manner of a market trader, yelling: “What I’m do- ing is apparently illegal - have the leaflet they tried to ban!” He commented: “The whole episode was stressful, so much so that I was worried about going to my lec- ture the next day in Senate House, in case the security guards wouldn’t let me in to my own university!” A representative of the University of London security team insisted that Clifford-Coupe was not moved on for political reasons but be- cause he was “causing disruption to nor- mal people” and becoming a fire hazard.
Despite Duff ’s show-trial hanging over them, students have continued to defy the ban on protest (see CG39) to further the 3Cosas campaign. A demo outside Senate House was held on Thurs- day 24 October, where students and cleaners scaled the locked gates of the li- brary and barricaded themselves against the security staff and police who had been called. Senate House were said to be film- ing the demonstration, so despite the lack of arrests on the day it remains to be seen whether there will be future recrimina- tions for those caught on camera.