Search Results

The far left were an important force on English University and Polytechnic campuses in the 1970s and 1980s but they did not control or direct student politics. By exploring the debates within the far left about students and the role of student activism this chapter sheds new light on the functioning of the far left within the student milieu. It also examines student politics in this period which, to date, have been under-researched. Many student political leaders in this period went on to important roles in mainstream politics. In exploring student politics we can, therefore, gain a greater understanding of British politics, society and culture in this period when Higher Education was changing rapidly and becoming increasingly open to the ‘masses’.

This chapter by Nadeem Farooq Paracha brings oral history and memoir to the fore. Paracha interweaves national, social and personal histories in an extraordinary analysis of how alcohol, its sale and consumption, became intrinsic to Karachi’s leftist political culture in the euphoria of the post-Zia years; how political rebellion involving alcohol fueled violence on Karachi’s student campuses; and shaped Paracha’s personal nemesis and life trajectory into journalism rather than militancy. The adage that the ‘personal is political’ acquires enriched meaning in these unfoldings of a simultaneously painful, exhilarating, and destructive era that shaped one radical element of the city’s political commentariat. The politics surrounding alcohol from 1970-90 offer a perfect lens, Paracha shows us, onto transformations of religion, morality, and revolution within student support for the Pakistan People’s Party in a saturnalian urban setting.

Chapter 5 examines the Fédération des étudiants nationalistes (FEN). For this important and very visible far-right wing student group founded in 1960, Europe and its defence were central terms of reference, even obsession. The group was active in French student politics, producing and distributing journals, contesting student representative positions, organising political meetings and demonstrations, and revelling in street fights. The FEN concerned itself with a whole range of subjects from trivial issues of student life to grand theories of hierarchy in world politics. Its brand of nationalism was located within a vision of an integral Europe. Indeed, a nation was reckoned to be a European privilege and the notion of non-European nationalisms was as outrageous as it was dangerous. As such, Europe was only of value to the group to the extent that it extended to the non-European world. Should decolonisation be carried to its conclusion and Europe reduced to its European geographical limits, Europe would be worth very little at all.