I was at this lecture and the cry of "fuck you you fascist cunt" seems difficult to reconcile with your assertion that you "still got our message out effectively - war is not something that is natural, normal or inevitable, it is an artificial process that is deliberately created by men like Air Marshal Peach, and it can and will be resisted."


Still not really sure what it was all about?

Dear Rozza, all.
I think that the slogan that you said you heard at the lecture demo, namely - "fuck you you fascist cunt", was probably a nice way of saying to the Airforce warmonger and ALL other nasty minded, misguided warmongers the world over that "We don't want or need your nasty, selfish, evil and sick war machines and military industrial complex and we will RESIST YOU, relentlessly, completely and utterly wherever and whenever you show your ugly and UNWANTED selves.

Hope that you NOW or SOON understand what it was all about.

THANKYOU RESISTERS - For resisting.

Give them a medal! A perfectly apt comment I think many would agree. Really nice and inspiring to see some militancy among anti-war students.

Respect...

Again, I find it hard to understand how it was an 'effective' means of protest.

I'm not challenging your point of view. What I am trying to understand is why once you had gained entry to the hall you made no attempt to either engage the air marshall in some kind of discourse or communicate to the audience what you were doing there because we simply had no idea & still wouldn't if I hadn't trawled google

Is making churlish remarks, letting off fart bombs and then vanishing really a serious means of protest?

...it's a good thing campus security can't run very fast.

I understand Rozza's point. The problem being that people who denounce the ineffectiveness of any kind of protest really should come up with viable alternatives if they want to be taken seriously.

Otherwise it appears they are just opposed to doing anything.

Rozza,

I think you have missed the point of the action. This was a No Platform protest. The reason we did not stay to "engage" with the Air Marshall is that it is this exact process which we oppose. It gives him a prestige and normality he is not entitled to. We objected to the very idea of a man who oversees the death of innocent people being given a pedastol in OUR university to propagate his ideas on how to kill further innocent people. the lecture needed to be stopped, full stop.

Your position also exposes a naivete that frankly isn't even worth engaging in. Union security (or the cops for that matter) would not have allowed us to stay and engage in a reasoned and open debate with this man. We already suffered one arrest there was no call for any further. And tbh I couldn't give a s**t how reasonable the people attending the lecture thought we were. The vast majority were military. Students and workers at the university have no involvement in the universities relationship with the military, these are the only people that concern us - we have and will make our cause known to them. I have no interest in high-minded fluffies who think they can change the world by proselytizing to very nasty men.

In terms of alternatives, this is just the first step in a long campaign against the role of the military on campus. We certainly don't expect people to "get it" immediately and this is why our actions are backed by press releases and (an impending) leaflet, info packs etc. I do however expect people to be supportive of our cause as I believe this is clear enough.

Solidarity,

An excellent action, well done for risking it with the cops and security about. It looks like they realised asking a man to talk about dropping bombs on people at a time when the UK government is actually dropping bombs on people, was a tad more controversial than a physics lecture!

To terry and Rozzer: i don't think this was a 'protest'. This was an attempt to take militarism and normalised murder off the agenda. We all suffer from war. We are well within our rights to oppose and stop it.

'what are your alternatives'? To what, invading countries at random using the british army?
Here's my crrrrrazy alternative - don't.

that was hard.

A few years ago you might have talked up the terrorist threat or the WMD's but that's all gone down the swanney now.