..That balance is what the art of managing a public institution is about." Interview with the Vice Chancellor of SOAS University.

Can you please introduce yourself?
My name is Adam Habib. I am the Vice Chancellor of SOAS, University of London. I have been in this position for three and a half years. For eight years prior I was the Vice Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. I've been an Higher Education Executive for close to 18 years.

What are some differences and similarities between the two systems?
In South Africa, the universities at least get a portion of their finances through subsidies from the government, and fees are only a part of the financing arrangement. In the UK, especially since the cut in 2010, the universities, are solely dependent on fees. But problems around politics of free education, the debates around civil disobedience, what are legitimate behaviour parameters, those kinds of things cross national and continental divides.

On the 12th of July, SOAS sent out a press release saying, the University of London approached the court for a possession order to remove the SOAS encampment. How long has this discussion been going on, and why is a possession order being put in place?
Firstly, it is not a SOAS possession order, it will be a University of London possession order. And that's because SOAS only owns the buildings. It's a peculiar arrangement. We're one of the only universities where we own the building, but not the ground it's on. The reason for the possession order is a very simple one. When the encampment happened at SOAS, we said we would allow the encampment on four main conditions. One, don't engage in violence. Two, no hate speech. Three, don't target individuals in our community. And four, don't disrupt our exams or the usual operation of the university. In the first five weeks, they broadly abided by those rules. But In the last three weeks, they've violated them. They've tried to occupy the buildings and in one case, assaulted a security staff member. They've targeted individuals, myself included. And, so when the executive committee reflected on this three weeks ago, they decided to open a conversation with the University of London to close the encampment.

Some individuals are already facing suspension for some of the violations you’ve mentioned - does the whole camp have to face disciplinary action too?
Initially, our approach was that we would direct the violations at the individuals, and not at the whole camp. That's how we managed it up until three weeks ago. Now, we have a situation where we don't even know which ones are our students and which ones aren't. Seventy per cent of the camp are no longer students, there are people there who are homeless, and there are people there who are family members of students. There's a person there who's on a watch list. We can't ordinarily suspend them because they have no association with the university, except being there. We have no authority, and so in that context, we have to look at, the closure of the encampment.

In that same press release, it says; “we recall Martin Luther King's argument that protests, even peaceful protests, have to make people uncomfortable and be administratively and institutionally Inconvenient. this is the price of living in a democracy” - here the press article from SOAS does accept that a level of inconvenience comes with protests. What is the line they've crossed for you?
The argument between Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael is an argument that takes place in every liberation struggle around the world. It was an argument in South Africa. It was an argument in the Indian civil rights struggle. It is the argument in Palestine. It is the argument in Israel. And that is about the value of a peaceful protest, and what are the parameters. As Martin Luther King said, It should make you uncomfortable, It must cost us money, and it will be administratively inconvenient. For example, several people have written to me saying, they feel uncomfortable coming to campus. And I said, I acknowledge you're uncomfortable and you shouldn't feel uncomfortable, but that's the price we have to pay in a democracy, we recognize that it is a fundamental right in many ways. However, the real question is when do you cross the divide between being uncomfortable to violating. Well, when you violate the rights of others, when you become violent, when you engage in hate speech. When you break the law. And in that context, it becomes more than a simple inconvenience. It becomes, frankly, the violation of the rights of others.

How can the students of SOAS University best make their case?
Some individuals have been involved in the negotiations have said they want to participate. They've been courteous, and they've engaged with a view of the issues. They put their views forward and heard why some of those views could not be implemented and they've looked for compromise. For example, the first demand was to disclose our finances and our investments. We've agreed to that. They also wanted scholarships for Palestinian students in Gaza who can't study, and SOAS has agreed to a minimum of 7 new scholarships for Palestinian students. The thing that has become difficult is - they say we mustn't invest in armaments companies. We don't invest in armaments companies. We have an ethical investment policy that doesn't allow us to invest in military companies. They say, well, you must stop investing in companies like Amazon, Microsoft or Barclays - because of financial ties with the Israeli government. I can’t do that - because firstly, Amazon is not a military company. Secondly, our endowment is not free money - all of our endowment is attached to companies and if we don't get a good return, it means we can't give scholarships to poor students. And so there will be a direct consequence of that. By the way, we’ve divested from Barclays and sold all of the Barclays shares on the 14th of June. We do have a banking relationship in which Barclays gives us an overdraft facility. I can't get rid of an overdraft facility because that's what we use to pay salaries.

Earlier you mentioned the “accumulation of resources" that the UK universities have - can't the universities manage on this?
The problem is, that we can manage but not in a manner that is fair to every student in the UK. So think about this. If you're a poor person from Tower Hamlet coming to pay a fee, and if you're a rich kid from the richest place? let's say Chelsea, coming to the university. You come in, and both of you inherit a debt because that's paid for by a loan system. The student from Chelsea, their parents help to pay off the debt. Whereas the child from Tower Hamlet, their parent can't pay off the debt. That's where things like grant support and scholarships come in. Earlier, I was comparing our system to South Africa, but if you compare ours to Germany, which is more equivalent to the UK, in Germany, the state funds higher education - In the UK, the state doesn't. And so, when you say we can manage, we can manage compared to South Africa.

Have you, yourself, been involved in protests or direct action in the past? As a student maybe..?
I grew up in South Africa. I was an activist from the age of 15. I was immersed in the anti-apartheid struggle. I spent time in prison. I participated in and led movements, anti-war movements around the Iraq war. I was deported from the United States in 2006. I suspect, because I participated in the anti-war movement. I took the Obama regime to court, and eventually, they withdrew the case and settled out of court. And so, yes, I've been involved in civic protest all my life.

Would you say that part of your youth was well spent..? and seeing as you have this background, can you empathise with the students?
Both, uh, are yes. So firstly, I think it was important what I did. I grew up in a particular political milieu of a society that was racialized and segregated and you had to object to it and fight it. Despite all of the challenges of South Africa today, it is a far better place than the South Africa of 30, and 40 years ago. And that's something that would not have happened, without millions of people, mine being a very small contribution among millions. The second is I have an enormous sympathy for social struggles. And it is important to remember this. I want to read you a line from my book because it speaks to your question. I start this book on Rebels and Rage with the following words. We are haunted executives at the University. Haunted. Haunted by the fear that we will not rise to the strategic challenges of our era. We do not have the ideological comfort of those at the barricades where there is a certainty in their critique. But neither do we have the emotional serenity of the mainstream corporate executive who is comfortable with the world as it is. We occupy a lonely netherworld. Where we recognize that things can and yet must change, yet know that we have to operate within the financial and political constraints of the present. When I manage a university, I'm haunted, because I know that the world is not fair and that we need a better and fairer world. And I need to use my position to make it a better and fairer world. But at the same time, I have to operate within a framework that would allow the university to survive, getting the balance between paying the salaries I have to pay - and changing the world for the better. That balance is what the art of managing a public institution is about.

Context

Dr Ruth's research is in the area of environmental crime and harm, with a particular focus on climate change countermovements.

Her book called "The Climate Change Counter Movement: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Sought to Delay Climate Action” - chronicles the emergence of a global counter-movement against climate change between 1980 and the early 2000s. In my interview with Dr Ruth, she mentions the role that climate obstruction plays in making climate action more difficult. Climate Obstruction are actions taken by certain groups to stop us from making progress on climate change. "It includes the actions of corporations, media organisations, research institutes and think tanks.” Climate obstruction can be the result of years of dependency on fossil fuels followed by a general reluctance by industries to adapt their business model to more renewable options. It becomes more of a purposeful obstruction when new government policies and actions begin to build on this reluctance. For example, the Rosebank Field development project is meant to reduce the UK’s dependence on imported energy by increasing domestic energy production. However, the method being used by groups - Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion - to combat this obstruction has come under a tightening response by the government and its law enforcement. In a Freedom of Information Act from the Metropolitan Police it showed between 2019 and 2022 - over 4000 protesters from the group Extinction Rebellion, were arrested at demonstrations around the country, followed by 1000 and more protesters from Just Stop Oil. Their demands in broad terms are - for the UK government to put an end to new fossil fuel licencing and production in the UK, for a systematic transition to renewable energy, and for the construction of citizen's assembly to guide the transition towards a fossil-free future. And for these demands, they will employ some peaceful protests and some disruptive ones, in a bid to escalate their demands. Some popular methods include; road blockades, slow matches, mass-sit-ins, chaining oneself to a gate, and pouring soup on public art which amounts to damage to property. More recently, [June 28th] over 20 Just Stop Oil organisers and members were arrested by police for conspiracy to disrupt national infrastructure. According to Dr Ruth; “Part of the climate obstruction we are witnessing today is with the new laws - the new public order act Public Order Act 2023 has slowly brought about the criminalisation of climate protesters”

Can protesters who feel their rights have been infringed on - bring a claim against the government?
Absolutely. So if you're organizing a protest and the police say that it can't take place then you absolutely can sue the police for Interfering with your right to protest.

But why don't most people just do that?
So, I mean it's very difficult because what usually happens is the police will tell you at the very last minute like, we're going to put these conditions on your protest. It can't go ahead for these reasons. So often it's very last minute, which makes it very difficult to do anything. I have been involved in a lot of cases where you're sending very last minute letters to the police saying, let this protest go ahead.

There's this phrase that keeps on coming up every time. It's the phrase “serious disruption” How would you define something that amounts to serious disruption, that would then need the police, to intervene?
There is a list of examples included in the act [The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022], which include things like a serious delay to essential goods and services or anything that amounts to the disruption to the life of the community - which could mean, closing down an area for a whole day. I think it is quite subjective. The important thing to know is that it does have to be serious.

Okay. So less on the word, disruption, and more on the word serious, what would amount to something serious? Does it have to involve some time of harm?
That is a question for the police - and it's going to be fact-specific on each case. I can't define what a seriously disruptive protest would be, but the law says, serious. I think it is to be interpreted by protesters and by the police.

Do you agree with the following statements from Judge Leonard Hoffman; “Civil disobedience has a long and honourable history in this country, people who break the law to affirm their belief in the injustice of a law or government action are sometimes vindicated by history. But there are conventions which are generally accepted; that the protesters behave with a sense of proportion and vouch for the sincerity of their beliefs by accepting the penalty, and that the prosecutor behaves with restraint to impose sentences which take the conscientious motives of the protesters into account.” First, do you agree that civil disobedience has an honourable history in the UK, and should the court take the conscientious motives of the protesters into consideration when sentencing?
The example that we always give is the suffragettes, who at the time, used methods of direct action. They used methods, which today, we would think were quite extreme. And yet now we look back and we say, That was legitimate, they were asking for votes for women. So, yh I think direct action and civil disobedience, is a tactics which has been used in the UK, in the past. As to whether the courts should exercise restraint, I agree with that. What we're seeing at the moment is that judges are not acting with restraint and I'm not taking the fact that these are protest cases into account.

Have you ever attended a protest in the past, where your demands were met, and what methods of protest did you employ?
The first protest that I attended was the march against the Iraq war in 2003 when I was a student. Um, and so, no, the demands for that protest were not met. It was just millions of us marching through the streets of London. I continue to attend protests.

Interview with Lawyer Katy Watts

Can you please introduce yourself?
I'm Katy Watts. I'm a solicitor at Liberty. We are a campaigning organization which tries to safeguard and promote human rights through a mix of campaigning work, policy work, lobbying, and strategic litigation. Protecting the right to protest has been a big focus of our work over the last four years.

Why is this an area of focus?
In the last three years, we've seen a huge swathe of anti-protest legislation. Until a couple of years ago, the main piece of legislation was the 1986 Public Order Act, which gave the police powers to control and limit protests in certain circumstances. It served as the main source of protest-related criminal offences. In the last three we've seen, the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which was immediately followed by the Public Order Act 2023 - and both have handed the police, vast new powers to, place limits and controls on protests.

The Public Order Act 2023 introduced two new offences - called locking-on and tunnelling. What amounts to an offence of locking-on or tunnelling?
Essentially, locking-on amounts to attaching yourself to an object or land. It's an offence designed, I think to target the kind of increasingly creative methods that environmental protesters use. to draw attention to their cause. So it's an incredibly broad offence, which is designed to target people using what are very legitimate protest tactics, like attaching yourself to buildings. We'd seen those tactics used by suffragettes, locking yourself to something is an established means of direct action. Tunnelling similarly, was targeted at the kinds of methods being used by environmental protesters to like tunnel under construction works, including HS2. I think probably we have fewer concerns about that as a method of protest.

In 2023 the government sought to expand the definition of “serious disruption” as mentioned in the Public Order Act of 1986, but the amendment was not pursued and the House of Lords rejected it - what would have been the impact of this amendment?
We know what the impact was. The amendment would have lowered the threshold for when the police can interfere. in a protest. For example, limiting the number of people, dictating the location, the route of a march, the time of a protest, and the overall impact of a protest - previously this sort of authority could only happen if the police reasonably believed that there would be serious disruption. The Lords voted it down, partly because they didn't have time to adequately scrutinise it, so it fell away from the bill. What happened next was that the government, having failed to change that definition the first time - brought in secondary legislation to amend the Act - using its executive powers which by itself is not primary legislation. So, we know what the impact is because they brought it in. The amendment which has been enforced for a year now, lowers the threshold from serious to more than minor disruption. Meaning any protest likely to have a more than minor impact on the local area, could be subject to limits by the police.

Liberty has brought a case against the government - on what basis exactly? Well, we’ve challenged that decision on the basis that the government did not have the power to use secondary legislation in that way. The executive power they used, granted them the right to kind of clarify the meaning of serious disruption, and to provide examples of what serious might mean, but it didn't allow them the power to lower the threshold. The court in May of this year agreed with us, said the government had gone too far, and so found that the decision was unlawful. However, the regulations remain in force and the court is hearing the government's appeal on Tuesday [23rd July 2024].

As UK citizens do we have an inalienable right to protest, or is it subject to law and change? The right to protest is guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, articles 11 and 12, which is incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act. It guarantees us the right to free expression and to meet and to gather. Under the European convention, the right to free expression doesn't just include speech, it goes further and includes expressive acts - like acts of protest. They are not absolute, they can be subject to limitations. So if there is going to be serious disruption arising from a protest, then, it's open to the government to place some kind of limit. But it has to fall under the category of serious disruption, not just more than minor. It gets more complicated when, we're talking about direct action and what might, potentially amount to a violent protest - but what's happening, currently, is police have been given the powers to act broadly and more preemptively, and situations were drawing attention to issues like climate change by blocking roads or interfering with motorways, would lead to the criminalization of protesters - when on a balance, that is the nature of the protest, for it to be a bit disruptive, otherwise, nobody notices it.

A Retrospective

The earliest report of a civilian riot in a democratically elected system was Shays' rebellion In america. Rural farmers in Massachusetts demanded lower taxes and better economic policies in the face of high taxes and aggressive debt collection. The result was year-long armed combat with the military, the loss of civilian life and the demands were never met. A riot is by far the most violent and poses a clearer threat to health and safety. Also, the response is by far the most predictable. Since the rioters have passed the realm of peaceful protests and passed the realm of being communicated with - the state feels justified to respond with immediate and direct force. By this critique, it's hard for a protest movement to sustain itself on riots alone. And here comes the unenviable role of a figurehead or figureheads - in the life of a protest movement. Shay’s rebellion is named after Shay Daniel, a wealthy army man, turned farmer.

Article 1.2 Interview with Jamila Bolton Gordon.

Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Jamila Bolton Gordon. I'm the daughter of Rodan Gordon who found himself as part of the Mangrove Nine in 1970.

Growing up how did you learn about the trial that your father was involved in?
Um, internally from my mum. Not from my dad. Um, I equate my dad to, uh, a soldier who came back from war and didn't talk about his, challenges to do with the police, and the system of brutality he faced. So, we carried on as normal, as father and daughter, because he had businesses that I was helping him to run. I noticed he was popular. I knew he was a community developer. But I didn't know much about the Mangrove Nine, per se. It's only really once I moved away, finished my studies, and started having children, that I started to revisit the history of my dad. But by that time my dad wasn’t as active anymore. He had some health challenges around his mid-50s, and closed down all his charitable businesses - so I refocused myself on helping to sort out the family business back home. We didn't get into the Mangrove Nine, unfortunately, until he passed away. Growing up I always noticed the love that other people had for him but it was foreign to me. It was a filmmaker and a historian in the grove called Ishmael, who understood the significance of his story more so than I did. So because of Ishmael, to some extent, and others, I thought, well, let me start digging into the story after he had passed.

What did you find, while revisiting?
He was already part of a revolution in Grenada. In 1954, the workers took strike action against the plantation owners. Back then my dad had his own paper called Backyard and used to cover the stories.

So he was a publisher?
Uhh, my dad was something of an orator - a connector. A community development worker, so he could see that there was a need for something, and then he would find out what people could he gather to match that need. In other words an activist. My grandmother had sent him to Trinidad to study theology - then it was either you beacme where a farmer or a priest. But Dad skipped taking his vows because he said it because he liked women too much! [She breaks into laughter]. So he definitely wasn't going to be a priest. But he [00:13:00] learned through the uprising of the plantation workers. And how his brothers dealt with, um, the ideology of, um, uplifting the workers, giving them a salary that's decent, but also health and safety. So he was very, um, aware of those issues. My dad turned 32 tight around the mangrove trial - myself I had turned,... by the time I started researching about him.

Did learning about his story change how you saw him?
I was very proud of him, but also, um, a bit disappointed - because people will make up their versions of what they think he did or didn't do - I had wanted to hear about it clearly from him, why did certain people in the community dislike my him because of his stance and his principles. It's an area where you feel like a fetus, in a womb, where so much is going on around you, but you don't understand it. But then the point of pride I have now is because I feel what he and the others developed was, and is generational. It kind of pacified the side of me that didn't have my dad - because he gave so much to the community.

What do you think the lasting impact was, of the mangrove trial?
Our parents went to war with the state and the impact on their families was generational. For the broader community, the trial set a legal precedent. The judge confirmed that what our parents knew already was true, that there were elements of racial discrimination in the policing system. But we knew that already. In a way, the impact was less grand than you'd expect. It just cleared their faces in the eyes of people who never gave them the benefit of the doubt. The real impact for me wasn't the trial, but the community they built. They contributed all their time and effort to developing black neighbourhoods in the Notting Hill area. Around that time between 1968 and 1970, we had a lot of housing issues, we had employment issues, we had social services issues, we had educational issues and financial issues - and then you had places like the Kensington Law Center, the Harrow Road Law Center, and BPIC [Black People's Information Centre] which my dad and members from the nine help run. It was an information hub essentially so you knew where to go, what rights to have, who to talk to about a loan and the rest. The restaurant was an extension of that.

What do you think protest movements today - groups like Black Lives Matter - can learn from your dad's story?
If your going to spend a lot of time fighting pick your adversaries well but more importantly your community of supporters well. The nine of them stuck together merely out of survival, but they also knew the community they were fighting for, more importantly, they had helped to build that community. Also, you need to know the law and study the rules they are charging you under - if you know it well they can't use it against you. It's no coincidence that some of the mangroves took the option to defend themselves in court.