Student Militancy and the Collapse of Reformism

Abstract

Over the past few years the activities of students have provided the world's press with an unprecedented number of headlines. Often this has been due essentially to the dramatic or picturesque character of those activities rather than to their intrinsic importance; for while the significance of a college occupation or sit-in is not to be crudely measured by its immediate effects, it would be rash to rate the "average" event of this kind as more important than, let us say, a private lunch between the chairmen of ICI and Courtaulds, or Prime Minister Wilson's phone conversations with Chancellor Brandt. The significant difference is that the students, unlike, for much of the time, our de facto and de jure rulers, conduct their politics in public, and so are available to the press.