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THE EFFECT ON STUDENTS
In so far as the student movement had any agenda of its own to address, as distinct from constituting students into deferential allies of 'the working-class movement' on the basis of an anti-Tory, anti-monopoly, anti-Labour position, this agenda consisted of defending the autonomy of student unions, criticising bourgeois ideology in higher education curricula from the standpoint of Marxist 'science', denouncing both private and public business links with universities and colleges, and defending students against Tory 'attacks' on their living standards by campaigning for higher student grants.
The 'autonomy' of student unions came under 'attack' from the Heath government because student unions were misusing their funds by making grants to political causes which had nothing to do with student societies and clubs. The NUS under the CP's leadership defended the right of student unions to spend their money as they chose, and succeeded in engineering a massive mobilisation of students on this issue. In doing so, it determinedly ignored the fact that the 'autonomy' of student unions was entirely spurious in the financial sphere. If student unions raised their own funds, it would indeed have been an inadmissible attack on their autonomy for the government to dictate how they spent them. But since the student unions did not raise a penny of their funds, and depended entirely upon public money, the government had not merely a right but a duty to the public interest to see to it that this money was spent on the purposes for which it was made available. But there was no such thing as the public interest in post-war Britain in the CP's view. There was merely the interest of the monopolies, and the interest of the working-class movement. And the COP was the authoritative interpreter of the latter, and the authoritative arbiter of the distinction between the two.
The work of criticising bourgeois ideology and denouncing business links with higher education made sense on the grounds that the institutions of higher education merely served the interest of the ruling class in ensuring an enlarged supply of educated workers. It did not make sense from any other perspective. It was not based on a worked-out idea of what higher education would or should consist of in the context of a socialist society or a society in transition to socialism. Its purpose was to discredit and disrupt higher education, and promote the CPGB's version of Marxism. In encouraging this sort of thing, the CP deliberately encouraged an 'ivory tower' conception of higher education. It denounced business links on the grounds that these constituted an intolerable pressure and encroachment on 'academic freedom'. It did not have the honesty to admit that it did not believe in or care a fig for 'academic freedom', and that it was simply engaging in good old-fashioned class struggle in the ideological sphere. Like the Catholic Church, which always campaigns for 'religious freedom' in countries where it does not possess religious hegemony, the CP has always campaigned for abstract freedoms in countries where it does not hold power. But it was only through the student unionism of the 1970s that it managed at last to infect an entire generation of British students with its double-talk on the subject.
The NUS campaign for a higher student grant was about the only action undertaken by the 'student movement' that could reasonably be said to have been in the interest of British students. But its virtue from the point of view of the NUS's Communist leadership was that through this campaign student unionism might exhibit an economic aspect and so approximate to trade unionism. And the conduct of the campaign was characterised as much by the anti-Tory rhetoric that it employed as by the reasoned case it made to Tory governments on students' behalf.
The 'student movement' was not in the least about 'reclaiming student unions for students' so that students might be empowered to move of their own volition in defence of their own interests. It was about student unions being 'claimed' by a form of politics which envisaged students being moved to a vaguely indicated destination by a force external to them, with a political agenda of its own, which it never made explicit in student forums, and described in code in its own internal discussions, and scarcely ever really debated within its own ranks.