Aftermath Of The EGM: What The Staff Thought, What The Papers Said & A Regular Union General Meeting, 26 to 31 October 1984

Hayward Burt, Melissa Oliveck, Me (resting my eyes), Andy Crawford, Kate (now Susan) Fricker, Pete Wild, Jo Gadian, UGM 29 October 1984

The conduct at…and result of…the Tommy & Ralph EGM did not go down well with the Students’ Union staff.

My diary notes:

Friday, 26 October 1984 – Overslept. Rose late – staff troubles – spent most of day trying to sort them out. Early night.

If I recall correctly, the staff went on strike that day and/but we managed to persuade them to restrict their formal action to that single day. We (Union Committee) thought we got off quite lightly, as some of the student behaviour at the EGM had shocked us on the staff’s behalf. I think it was the fact that we genuinely shared the staff’s objection to the meeting that persuaded them to limit their action.

Meanwhile Concourse covered the EGM, in a rapidly-issued freebie that following day, thusly:

The “Don’t Pay, delay” column on the front page reminds me of the rent strike we led that year in the wake of some pretty poor performance by the University Estates department in getting accommodation ready for enough students. I’ll return to that topic in my next piece. It actually came to a head on 31 October, although you wouldn’t tell from my diary entry from that day:

Saturday, 27 October 1984 – Rose quite late – went shopping – then after lunch went office – Annalisa [de Mercur] came back for dinner and stayed late.

Sunday, 28 October 1984 – Spent a busy day in the office – went over to Kate’s -> on to Sneyd -> Union in eve with Annalisa and Ali [Dabbs] too.

Monday 29 October 1984 – Hard day in office plus UGM in evening – had a late night.

Tuesday, 30 October 1984 – Busy day in the office – working hard etc. Worked late – UC, McDonald’s. Earlyish night.

Wednesday, 31 October 1984 – busy day – office/PSD [Policy, Staffing & Development Committee] etc. Did Union disco [with John White] in the evening.

The late October UGM was covered in some detail in the November issue of Concourse. I’ll write that up along with the November material.

the other matter that came to a head around that time was a controversy over Jo Gadian remaining on the Union Committee while suspended.

I’m trying to remember how that played out, because I thought we appealed that decision by the University quite vociferously. Why david Cohen wrote to me rather than the President, Kate Fricker, is a mystery to me. Perhaps I was fronting the bolshie protest against the decision to prevent Jo from serving.

One of the others might remember, although all seem to be protesting early onset memory loss whenever I bung questions of this kind over to them.

I can’t even remember what I had for dinner yesterday…

…was Pady’s most recent response. 🤪