Monday, May 5, 2025
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Marine Le Pen Protest: Live Blog

Cherwell News
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Marine Le Pen Protest: Live Blog

21:10 Marine Le Pen has left the building

 

21:02 As students are moved down Cornmarket, there appears to be some sort of confrontation between activists and police

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20:56 Some speculation regarding the departure of Le Pen

 20:47 Human blockade of police. Activists being dragged off the road as they get in the way of police vans

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20:29 Protesters on Cornmarket showing no signs of moving. How will the Union get Le Pen safely out of the building?

20:23 With protest dissipating, students react to the content of Le Pen’s speech

 

20:21 Protesters still braving the cold on Cornmarket

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20:15 Picture appears to show protester scaling the fence of the Union

20:01 Protesters move to Purple Turtle 

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19:54 It was a big night out for the Oxford left 

19:43 Rumours abound that Le Pen was snuck into the Oxford Union through the Purple Turtle. This is unverified 

19:28 Tough times for Oxford students 

19:25 The protest still seems to be going strong outside. Latest update the SWP was apparently serenading OUCA with chants of ‘OUCA join us. We love you’ while OUSU kept their distance 

19:13 For the linguists among you, you can read Le Pen’s speech in French on her Twitter account 

19:02 Le Pen opens with discussion of freedom of speech, discussing the importance of being able to speak without fear, especially in light of the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks 

18:59 Le Pen has finally entered the chamber!

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18:58 Cherwell has heard reports Le Pen has entered the chamber

18:57 Emergency debate announced addressing events unfolding outside the chamber

18:52 Getting rowdy and impatient in the chamber as attendees told they must stay “for their safety”

18:44 BREAKING NEWS

18:42 @TheOxStu we are!

 

18:38 Reports surfacing that protesters managed to enter the Union 

 

18:35 Some students still resolute outside the Union, others not so patient

18:32 Protest still going strong 

18:20 Members of the Union stuck outside

18:18 Cherwell understands that nobody is being allowed to leave the chamber

18:14 Oxford Times release pictures of anarchists in balaclavas at the gates of the Union

18:10 As some Oxford students gather to protest, others have different priorities…

 

18:08 As protest heats up, there’s still no sign of police on site

18:04 More photos emerging of the attempt to breach the Union gates

18:03 Still no sign of Marine Le Pen in the chamber

17:58 Local councillors address the crowd

17:54 Watch events unfold from Rutply’s live stream outside the Union

 

17:48 “We are all migrants” banner unfurled

 

17:47 Cherwell has heard that some protestors are attempting to enter the Union

17:46 Students speak to Channel 4 about why they are coming to her Le Pen speak tonight

 

17:40 The entrance to the Union is being blocked by protesters holding anarchist flags

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17:33 A French deportee addresses the crowd 

17:28 Ex-OUSU President Tom Rutland champions the power of open debate

 

17:25 Crowd still growing on St.Michael’s Street

17:21 OUSU President Louis Trup tells Cherwell, “I don’t like Unite Against Fascism, but I don’t like Marine Le Pen either.”

17:19 Protest heating up as crowd begins to chant

17:17 Reports emerging that press are not being allowed in to tonight’s talk

17:11 Around 200 people currently outside the Union

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17:06 Crowds gathering and plenty of press on the scene

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17:00 A call to arms as the protest kicks off

16:53 Crowd begins to gather at the Union

16:47 Spiked Online already lamenting the absence of free speech on campus

16:35 With half an hour to go before the protests, the anticipation is building. Oxford protests have today drawn the attention of the national media, including The Guardian and The Independent

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Cherwell brings you its news, views and analysis throughout tonight’s contentious protests at the Union.

If you want to have your say, tweet us @Cherwell_Online or use the hashtag #marinelepen and we’ll publish the best of the bunch on here.

 

Preview: Music for Madagascar

Felix Klos
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Preview: Music for Madagascar

This Saturday, St. Hilda’s Jacqueline du Pré building will be hosting a charity concert that any Oxonian with a spare moment should attend. Combining the talents of the entire established Oxford jazz and funk scene, the concert will feature The Oxford Gargoyles, The New Men and Dot’s Funk Odyssey (DFO).

What can you expect, musically? The Gargoyles most recently advanced to the grand finals of the BBC’s Choir of the Year competition, which comes at no surprise given the group’s high energy, innovative a cappella has been a staple of the European scene since the late 1990s. The Gargoyles might be at their strongest when performing standards from the American songbook, from which they will undoubtedly draw upon, having partly built its fame with intricate 5-6 part arrangements of ‘How High the Moon’ and Glenn Miller’s swing classic ‘In the Mood’. The power of the Gargoyles’ music, however, lies in its effortless groove, infectious joy and tireless versatility. A cheeky jazz interpretation of the ‘Magnificat’ is easily juxtaposed with a hymn-like rendition of Billy Joel’s ballad ‘And So It Goes’.

The New Men are the only Oxford a cappella group that trumps The Oxford Gargoyles in pure musicianship. The ensemble of New College choral scholars is set to become a new a cappella powerhouse as they deepen their commitment to live performances. The group has a rare ability to introduce lush harmony to even the most mundane of compositions. Boasting a former Out of the Blue member, George Robarts, The New Men have turned their attention to poppy tunes that cannot fail to put a smile on your face. As Sasha Ockenden, a fourth year who has also sung with The Gargoyles admits, “the repertoire is a way for classical musicians to release their inner pop goddess.” For Saturday, be on the look-out for Tom Lowen’s bass solo on ‘What a Wonderful World’ and a fun rendition of Fountain of Wayne’s ‘Stacy’s Mom’.

Finally, Dot Funk’s Odyssey promise to brighten up your day with the best funk and soul in Oxford. If you were fortunate enough to see them break the house down in Cellar recently, you might want to enjoy this opportunity to see them without the byproducts of sweatiness and claustrophobia. With strong vocalists—Selali Fiamanya will steal you heart—and impeccable instrumental arrangements, DFO will give you your much-needed fix of happy music.

And the best part? Your £5 ticket will go straight towards saving lives in Madagascar. Doctors for Madagascar (DFM), founded in 2011 by a group of German doctors, sends doctors and equipment to the south of Madagascar, where the only surgical hospital in an area of about a million people is in dire need of funds. A life-saving surgery in terms of essential equipment and medication is approximately £50: there may have never been a better reason to jazz up your Saturday.

 

Buy tickets: www.tinyurl.com/madajazz

Facebook event: www.tinyurl.com/musicformada

Charity: www.doctorsformadagascar.com

Review: Potosí

Fergus Morgan
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Review: Potosí

★★★★☆

Four Stars

There is something undeniably refreshing about the originality of Potosí, the new student-written two-hander being performed at the BT Studio this week. Set entirely in an untidy bedroom, it presents the rambling pillow-talk of two young, gay lovers. This is not a covers-up, nighties-on comedy in the vein of Ayckbourn’s Bedroom Farce, however; it is an authentic portrayal of two strangers exploring each other, both mentally and physically.

Matthew (Tom Pease) and James (Shrai Popat), as eventually becomes clear, have just met on a night out and returned to Matthew’s flat in drunken desire. As they lounge around in post-coital lethargy, periodically dropping off and reawakening, they begin to talk. Their conversation meanders between the predictable and the unexpected, the banal and the poignant, until late in the play, when events elsewhere precipitate more ostensibly dramatic action.

Writer and co-director Jonathan Oakman deserves enormous credit for the evocative realism of his writing. In James and Matthew’s conversation, he captures that recognisable tone of young lovers simultaneously trying to impress and confide. There is a tangible atmosphere of hopeful excitement, of confused bliss that, far from being transcendent, is fundamentally relatable. It speaks of potential and, above all else, youthful innocence.

And it’s funny. Matthew’s dry remarks contrast well with James’ attempts at sincerity. Pease has wonderfully natural comic timing, and it has found its perfect platform in this cocoon of lazy chatter. Even when the play approaches more serious issues (homophobia, parents, identity), it does so with a frankness and an honesty that engages, rather than isolates.

Yet this play is not spoken in a language purely of words; physical interaction matters just as much as conversation and the playfulness Pease and Popat display is truly praiseworthy. They tousle each other’s hair and kiss each other’s noses, straddle each other and lay their heads on each other’s laps. This physicality compliments their conversation perfectly, reflecting their half-confessed interest in one another and proving an imaginative way to maintain the audience’s attention.

Perhaps Potosí would have less impact upon an older audience. The various musings on identity, parents, and relationships would perhaps touch poignancy more often for an audience of confused University students. Indeed, at times, the direction of the two lovers’ conversation seems contrived enough to provoke an unwelcome reactionary cynicism, but this happens only on occasion, and is soon swept away by the fluidity of Pease and Popat’s performances.

The play’s greatest asset is its intimacy. Surrounding a thrust stage on three sides, the audience intrudes, almost voyeuristically, into the extremely private moments of James and Matthew’s relationship. The technical direction emphasises this intrusion. Music is not played through speakers, but through Matthew’s phone; the lighting varies, reflecting the mood, as does Tom Stafford’s original score.

Potosí has no pretensions to grandeur. It makes no discernible social or political statement, but rather glories in the celebration of the seemingly ordinary. It thrusts the audience into the intimate moments of a cautiously burgeoning relationship, revealing something tender, quintessentially human, and not the slightest bit ordinary after all.

Cherwell TV visits the Liquid Deli

Niluka Kavanagh
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Cherwell TV visits the Liquid Deli

Preview: Plenty

Alex Sage
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Preview: Plenty

OMS Enda Brady Talk

Florence Hyde
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OMS Enda Brady Talk

Voices from the Past: Virginia Woolf

Cherwell Arts And Books
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Voices from the Past: Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is one of the most celebrated and intriguing writers of the 20th century. Her highly innovative works are the pinnacle of modernism, focusing inwards on subjectivity and the self, as well as exploring important contemporary issues such as gender, class and war. This recording of her voice is the only one in existence, and was made on 19th April 1937 as part of a BBC documentary called Words Fail Me, when Woolf was fifty-five years old. She lived a life plagued by mental illness and bipolar disorder, and committed suicide by drowning herself less than four years after it was made.   

In this fascinating broadcast, entitled Craftsmanship, Woolf argues that words possess endless potential for meaning, and are ‘the wildest, freest, most irresponsible, most un-teachable of all things.’ She argues that attempts to codify words or restrain them by rules of grammar are futile – words do not live in dictionaries, but, as she repeats twice in this short extract, ‘they live in the mind.’  This idea is central to Woolf’s work and its constant attempts to stretch the boundaries of what language and writing can achieve. She speaks clearly and with the perfect elocution of the upper-class 1930s Englishwoman, the confidence and polish of her voice belying the underlying anxiety with which she struggled throughout her lifetime. 

New recruitment platform with only ten-minute sign-up

Talentpool
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New recruitment platform with only ten-minute sign-up

Fed up of lengthy job applications? Not enough time to do applications, study, and have a social life? I may just have the perfect solution…

TalentPool is a new recruitment platform that allows students to complete a ten-minute sign up, for free, in return for exposure to hundreds of employers looking to hire. It speeds up the dreaded job-search by getting rid of the hours of endless searching and applying – which inevitably result in a fistful of rejections, anyway. Instead you have one quick application. Job seekers can then, quite literally, just sit back and wait for the opportunities to come knocking.

Many of the recruiting employers working with TalentPool are SMEs and startups. At these organisations, you have the opportunity to have a real impact and, of course, it’s experience that will look great on your CV. Some of them are so innovative and different that it is quite possible that, without TalentPool, you would never know they existed.

A bit more about this mystical ten minute application, you ask? Well, does it really take just ten minutes? Yes.  Through a series of drop down options and tick boxes you chart your work experience, education history, personal attributes, and characteristics.  It is this unique combination of information that guarantees you to be contacted only by companies that are genuinely interested in you, for roles that fit your talents and preferences. It’s so quick; it can easily be completed during a revision break, and has been found, in fact, to be a very worthy form of procrastination, as opposed to, say, Netflix, or that fifth water break.

To top it all off, TalentPool shares every pound they receive with one of their five partner charities – and each new sign up gets a say in which one to support. So by using TalentPool to expand your own opportunities, you also get to feel pretty good about yourself.

So, why on earth wouldn’t you sign up? You’ve got nothing to lose. Well, maybe ten minutes. But weren’t you just going to go on Facebook anyway?

Creaming Spires HT15 Week 2

Ava Gina
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Creaming Spires HT15 Week 2

I flirt with everything that moves. Exceptions include very creepy people and most animals. But if someone is into light innuendo and mojitos, our conversation will sooner or later enter the dimension of ‘flirty’. It’s inevitable. That’s my natural way of dealing with humanity, especially after a couple of cocktails, and as long as I manage to physically restrain myself in the presence of handsome tutors, all is well.

Except that sometimes it’s not. Occasionally I come across a person who takes my coquettish ways as a sign of genuine intent and the result is often very awkward. Of course, I’m not saying that I am the world’s most desirable woman and boys and girls fall at my feet whenever I flutter my eyelashes, but neither am I unappealing.

The problem I am trying to describe is unintentionally leading someone on, and then not knowing what to do about it. Like when you spend an entire crewdate pennying one pretty guy and laughing at his drunken stories because that’s just what you do, but then at Park End you realise that he’s buying you lots of drinks and all the girls are giggling about your conquest.

Or when you’re dancing with the man in a Batman costume at a bop because you fricking love Batman, and forget that sexy-dancing may send a message you don’t really want to send. Of course, no one should feel entitled to sex just because they bought someone a few vodkas. On the other hand, you can understand how it would make a guy feel like a girl’s into him. No one has ever been nasty or unpleasant to me when I rejected them after hours of apparently not-so-harmless flirting, but the awkwardness is tough.

I’m not going to lie and pretend that having someone’s (non-creepy!) attention isn’t a massive ego boost. Still, the oh-my-god-aren’t-I-the-greatest effect wears off pretty quickly, and you start feeling, as my grandmother would put it, like a tease. I’ve been used in this way before.

A sexy man, usually in a suit, usually from Christ Church, suddenly appears in whatever bar I’m in and after some heavy flirting and my raised expectations, he decides to leave my life forever. Maybe he doesn’t really fancy me. Maybe he just likes to tell women what he’d like to do to them later (it was relevant to the conversation).

Either way, I’ve boosted his ego, served my purpose, and now I’m dismissed. I was played, and didn’t even get to see him naked. Surely, after an experience like that, I should be more sensitive and flirt responsibly? Not constantly lead people on? Like any good resolution, I don’t expect it to last past the next crew date…

Bexistentialism HT15 Week 2

Bex Watson
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Bexistentialism HT15 Week 2

Somehow my self-conscious indulgences have spilled over from term to term without me being asked to leave and never return. For me personally, there is at least some amusement to being asked to get drunk on my own inadequacy on a weekly basis. But this week, it’s a bit different. I don’t want to talk about why I am incapable of going seven days without doing something fucking stupid.

Because though it’s funny, it sometimes gets a bit too much. This week I have an audition. Perhaps that sounds very mundane to you. It’s rather different for me. I find auditions rather similar to Oxford interviews; I walk in with a familiar sense of inadequacy. Within seconds I make my first assumption: they don’t like me.

My legs start shaking, my mouth is dry, and I feel the heat rise in my cheeks. Their faces give away nothing as the torture ensues. In my head a chant rises, lacing together kind words of failure. As the audition ends I run away as fast as casual walking can look, leaving the thrones of authority to laugh at my shrinking back.

This ‘torment’, means that auditions cease really to be a thing for me. I’m one of those bastards who doesn’t turn up. Sometimes I claim I’m ill, or I’ve forgotten a tute, and sometimes I don’t even email. Sometimes a friend forces me to go along. But beginning my fifth term at Oxford, I could count the number of auditions I have been to on one hand.

I got out of my worst audition, mentally blocking their email so I wouldn’t have to receive the official rejection. I squirmed at the thought that these two people, from whom I now flee in clubs and in Tesco, would forever define me as the worst actor their eyes had ever seen.

That is unless they were looking for someone who was exceptionally good at acting like they can’t act. At this point you lift your head from the page and say ‘man up’. Good timing.

Because this week something strange happened. I raise my hand to tick off the next, and I go along. And it feels awful. I feel the fear and once more I shrink.

But, just like my Oxford interview –somehow – it’s not rejection that gets handed to me. And I sit in the King’s Arms for my first meeting with the cast. And I think, maybe not everything has to go wrong all the time.

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