A U S T R A L I A N
U N I V E R S I T I E S ’
fascists and other like groups attempting to field their speakers at universities and other venues let alone their thinking. Is the author enforcing a printed version of ‘no platforming’, I wonder? He doesn’t say so and there must be ways to convey the gist of their behaviours while avoiding advertising their wares. Another question I have is whether the right-wing student clubs ever tried to ‘no platform’ left-leaning speakers? The absence of any mention of people in the 50s and 60s trying to muzzle Communists seems strange when anti-Communism was at its height in those years. Did Communism’s many opponents consider that the raging anti-Communism of the mainstream media was sufficient suppression? Another gap in the book’s reportage is that it says very little about what the public thought of the ‘no platform’ tactic and policy and the associated political action.
R E V I E W
All in all, though, the work is a most interesting contribution to our knowledge of progressive action. I wonder what the world would be like now without those efforts? Neil Mudford is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the University of Queensland. He is also a member of the Australian Universities’ Review editorial board. Contact: neil.mudford@bigpond.com
Reference Ahmed, S. (2015, February 15). You’re Oppressing Us! Retrieved from Feminist Killjoys: https://feministkilljoys.com/2015/02/15/you-areoppressing-us/
And the students are revolting, too Berkeley: The Student Revolt by Hal Draper (Author), Mario Savio (Introduction) ISBN 978-1-64259-125-5. Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL, USA, 298 pp., 2020. Reviewed by Neil Mudford
Introduction This is a book written 55 years ago and yet the lessons it can teach us are just as relevant and the stories it tells are just as riveting as when the type bar last hit the ribbon for the original manuscript. So many things have changed since then but the need to campaign and protest to retain, establish or recover political and other human rights never ends. Primary author Hal Draper, contributor and foremost student leader Mario Savio and others provide us here with eye-witness accounts and incisive analyses of the Free Speech Movement (FSM) struggle by university students at the University of California Berkeley to assert their right to engage in political action. They fought an intelligent, noble and, on their side at least, non-violent fight for the right of students to organise, campaign, work and collect donations on campus for causes such as the Civil Rights movement that was in full swing back then. Well, almost non-violent; Draper notes that ‘Savio was charged with biting a policeman in the leg during the October 1 [1964] scuffle around the Sproul [Hall] doors – an act which he admitted to be ‘excessive’ and informally explained as due to momentary irritation at having his head trampled by policemen’s heels.’ (p. 109).
78
And the students are revolting, too Reviewed by Neil Mudford
The huge and dramatic actions profoundly affected the nature of student protest in the USA and around the world and have been said to have largely defined student protest in the 1960s. Besides the huge scale of the actions, the mass student involvement, the arrests and trials and the associated police violence, much of their actions’ significance consists in the students’ use of the non-violent protest techniques learned during participation by some of their number in the Civil Rights Movement itself. It is timely that this work is being republished, especially with the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement the rise of which emphasises the fact that African-Americans are still denied the rights and social standing of Euro-Americans even where such rights are theirs on paper. On top of that, there seems to me to be a surge in public protest action over other issues such as climate change and refugees. Extinction Rebellion (XR), for example, is an active and determined group whose techniques bear more than a passing resemblance to those used at Berkeley. The techniques and strategies of the Berkeley struggles are still powerful tools for change and this book is a rather rare chance for us to learn about them and be inspired by them. vol. 63, no. 1, 2021
