Lots of juicy bits from the February 1985 issue of Concourse. Here’s the first of them.
Annalisa de Mercur, bless her, was very concerned that the Student Union’s bar licence might get scuppered, which would indeed have been a near-existential problem for the union. The storm was very much of the teacup variety, I’d have thought, for the reasons described in the article.
How Pady Jalali and Hayward Burt ended up in an intra-article debate with the Vice-chancellor, Dr Harrison, is anybody’s guess. Methinks Annalisa might have been trying to big up her piece, as it were.
The health centre fee had been an ongoing issue, if the 1984 manifestos are anything to go by. John “Memory Man” White will hopefully chime in on the comments to describe in intricate detail the nature of the new-look campaign he planned. I don’t remember a thing about it, although welfare was my bailiwick.
As you say, Ian, very much teacup territory on the bar front.
As for the Health Centre charge – in all honesty I had forgotten that we were outraged, quite rightly, about this privatisation of our health service; a very early sign of things to come nationally. However I have very distinct memories of Hayward and I walking along the queue of students outside the Finance Office collecting cheques and then being told in no uncertain terms by the Head of Finance (I think he was bald) what he thought of us. He shut the two of us in an office and made us add up all the cheques on behalf of his overworked staff, the interests of whom he claimed he was protecting. We agreed, rather sheepishly, acknowledging the disruption this would cause to fellow members of the proletariat. However our point was well made and as usual absolutely nothing changed.
I managed to avoid the health centre charges myself by getting all of my nasty student illnesses out of the way before the charges were imposed. I’m not sure why I didn’t join your struggle on this one – perhaps I had mentally written it off as a lost cause, although that didn’t usually stop me from tub-thumping, non-violent resistance and civil disobedience in those days.