The re-publication of Warwick University Ltd marks an important milestone for the UK student movement. Written amidst the backdrop of student surveillance, the subordination of education to consumer capitalism and the suppression of academic freedom, E.P. Thompson's account of the genesis of Warwick University and the growth of an autonomous student movement in the late 1960s offers timely lessons for student activists today. Faced with intransigent university management and the absence of a union where students could congregate, Thompson and his students describe how a meeting in 1970 changed the face of Warwick. “Never in the history of the university had so many of its members gathered together in one place, and only then did they realise that the university provided nowhere suitable for such meetings of over a thousand of its members. If ever there was a moment of birth of Warwick university, it was at that meeting. A university is not born when the Privy Council grants it a charter; it is born when its members come to realise that they have common interests and a common identity. At that meeting students and staff, who were present in great numbers, began to realise just that.” The privatisation and marketisation of our education by successive governments in this country means that today we are all exposed to Public Education Ltd. Thompson's book presciently anticipates the destruction of free, public higher education and the dominance of the Business University, concerned more with employment know-how than the advancement of learning. Next Monday, the publisher of Warwick University Ltd will hold a launch event for the reissue at LSE. As former and current Warwick students, however, we do not feel the current panel members, David Davis MP and journalist Heather Brooke, are critical enough of the ongoing neo-liberal restructuring of higher education to grasp the continued relevance of the book today. We feel that the decision to invite Davis and Brooke is more to do with the fact they are notable Warwick graduates, rather than their knowledge or understanding of UK higher education. We believe a launch event of Warwick University Ltd should attract debate strongly informed by today's struggles within and increasingly against our universities, a debate more in the spirit of the 1970 Warwick student assembly. Despite our dissatisfaction with the scheduled speakers, we invite you to join us on the steps of the Old Building at LSE before the event so that we can attend the launch together, as an ensemble of students and workers fiercely critical of the current trajectory of the university. It is our hope that by attending in great number, we can ensure the event considers thoroughly how Warwick University Ltd can inform our understanding of the Business University today and our collective refusal of it. Join us on the steps of the LSE Old Building at 6pm where we shall go join the official event.
