It took an informal chat between two PCs to bring into the open what everyone must already know: the University owns Oxford. From shop-owners to senior Councilors, people who might easily go from one week to the next without stepping foot inside a quad have to tiptoe around our college authorities.
What this leaked transcript illuminates is the extent to which we treat Oxford like a campus rather than a city. And that collective ‘we’ often tries hard to blind itself to dissent, when it should be open to possibility. Most members of the University are happy to conduct medical research on animals, or at least not to think too hard about it. They should certainly be forced to.
The problem is that Speak is its own worst enemy, targeting students and their beloved sports grounds rather than asking for our support. The second thing they would be wise to consider is a formal denunciation of the ALF – their more radical colleagues in the fight for animal rights.
Instead, the group persists in its aggressive and unreasonable tactics. But Speak fought for and won its right to be unreasonable last term when the University failed to prosecute its famous activist leaders Mel Broughton and Robert Cogswell. Ever since, counter-organizations like the student-run Pro-Test, as well as further attempts by the University itself, have failed to stop their demonstrations, and the antagonism rumbles on day after day in the Science area.
Until now, Speak seemed to be fighting a slowly losing battle. Provocative tactics were being met with less and less indulgence. As a passer-by, it’s easy to let ‘Stop the Oxford Animal Labs’ fade into background noise.
But this week’s embarrassing revelations by the police will prove to be their best chance yet. The bullies have suddenly become bullied, and added to the unreasonably forceful language of the police is the undemocratic clout of the University’s name. The police seemed eager to please only the University and Oxford’s ‘impressed’ response to the arrests is both highly embarrassing and damaging. We heard of the police’s ‘draconian’ policies and their aggressive desire to ‘take bodies’: a product of Blair’s target-lust to which the University is also notoriously prey. But it seems that the University have ultimately failed in their mission to steamroller over those who dare to speak out. If Speak is wise – and for reason’s sake we can only hope they aren’t – the group will play the victim now, and court rather than challenge the student body.
But a warning must also be extended to Pro-Test tag-alongs and the rest of the student onlookers. This tape provided an unusual and strangely satisfying insight into two police officers’ attitudes. But in general, we can’t know what goes on behind the closed doors of Wellington Square or St Aldates Police Station. What we can do is re-evaluate our attitude towards ‘townies’ and learn to think as individuals towards other individuals, whatever the official line from the all-powerful University. Otherwise, we can hardly be surprised at Town’s blatant antagonism towards Gown, in a situation where power falls so heavily on one side.
Willa Brown and James Rogers
