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of the University of Madrid, a student speaker declared that the establishment of a free students' union was only the first step. He said that the freedom of the students was linked with that of the working class and he called on those present to fight for the rights of Spanish woxkers. When one of the speakers read a greeting from a " d e m o c r a t i c workers' committee", the audience responded by chanting " W o r k e r s - - s t u d e n t s ! W o r k e r s - - s t u d e n t s ! " On 27 April, 800 students blocked ~traffic in the centre of Barcelona. They shouted " Democracy yes, dictatorship n o ! " and " E u z k a d i " ~ t h e latter as a sign of their solidari.ty with Basque students in Bilbao. The pofice intervened to break ~p the demonstration; numerous arrests were made. On the same day, about 1,500 students demonstrated on the campus of the University of Madrid against American policy in Vietnam. They burned three American flags and a picture of President Johnson. Before the demonstration, there was a meeting in the faculty of economics and political science where four North Vietnamese flags were displayed. A message from Lord Bertrand Russell was read in which he denounced American rocket bases in Spain. One sludent ~ead a speech by H o Chi-Minh. U N I O N OF S O V I E T S O C I A L I S T R E P U B L I C S The Soviet Government announced on 20 March the expulsion of two Chinese diplomats, Miao Chun, first secretary and press officer of the embassy, and Hsun Lin, third secretary. They were charged with having organised the Chinese students' demonstration in the Red Square on 25 January is which led to violent encounters with Soviet militiamen.

Volker Schaffhauser, a 25-year old West G e r m a n student who had been a student of Slavonic language and literature at Heidelberg University, was arrested on 5 January in the act of handing to a Russian a dressing case containing a microfilm reproduction of an anti-Soviet periodical published by the N.T.S. (Naradno Trudovoy Soyuz or Popular Labour Alliance), a Russian 6migr6 organisation. Schaffhauser was sentenced to four years' imprisonment by a Soviet court. The accused declared that he had undertaken the mission for a sum which covered the cost of his tour of the Soviet Union. He refused to appeal against the decision of the court, although the Federal G e r m a n consul, who was allowed to see him, discussed that possibility with him. UNITED KINGDOM I N C R E A S E D FEES F O R OVERSEAS S T U D E N T S II 19 On 14 February, the Secretary of State for Education and Science, Mr. Crosland, announced in a written parliamentary answer that the government intended to set up a fund to assist overseas students, particularly those from underdeveloped countries, to meet the increase in fees in cases where hardship could reasonably be claimed. This measure would ensure that " t h o s e overseas students already here will not be prevented from completing their courses ". In the House of Lords on the same day, Lord Gladwyn asked whether the government would reconsider its decision. He said it was symptomatic of the way in which people in Britain were turning their backs on the world. is Cf. Minerva, V, 3 (Spring, 1967), pp. 436-437. 19 Cf. " Increased Fees for Overseas Students ", ibid., pp. 458--462.

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Lord Fulton said that there was a need to provide postgraduate courses in Britain to help form the Asian and African staffs of the Asian and African universities. The universities wanted an assurance that obstacles would not be erected to stop the free flow of ideas between students of different countries. Lord Robbins favoured raising fees in general and also giving overseas aid through education by a system of overt grants so that Britain would be credited for what it did. But he was opposed to the blatant discrimination of the measure just taken by the government. It was a sort of financial apartheid. It was alien to the spirit in which higher education should take place. Lord Annan, provost of University College, London, spoke of the strong feeling among teachers and students in his college and of the hardships which the government's decision would undoubtedly cause. He went on to say that if it proved impossible to alter the decision, the government should then state when it would raise fees for home students, so that discrimination would be eliminated. Secondly, would the Department of Education and Science set up a fund to deal with cases of h a r d s h i p - - a n d could the fund be administered by the universities themselves? The universities should not be asked to do this at their own cost. Thirdly, he asked that special provision for the School of Oriental and African Studies and the School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene should be made. He said also that it was important to consider the other side of the case. There must be a rise in fees but was it necessary that the proportion of overseas students to the total remain constant regardless of its expansion? '~ The universities cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that they are against any kind of major increase in fees and at the same time say that they are against any kind of limitation on the student number." Expenditures on higher education could not go on rising indefinitely and there was need for an enormous expenditure on primary schools which had for so long been neglected. In the primary schools, there was in effect a discrimination against the children of immigrants in " g h e t t o " schools. " I f I have to choose between subsidising overseas students from the developing countries and subsidising a crash programme to do something about these s c h o o l s . . . I think that the school programme has the priority . . . . I respectfully suggest that if we have to surrender over this particular matter of overseas students, then the savings should be applied in this particular way." H e then concluded by referring to Mr. Crosland's statement in the House of Commons in which the hardships which would be caused were acknowledged and stated that the government would set up a fund which would enable grants to be made in cases where hardship could be reasonably claimed. The aim of these grants " w i l l be to ensure that those overseas students who are already here will not be prevented from completing their courses because they are unable to pay the increased fees." Lord Longford, Lord Privy Seal, replying for the government, said that some economies had to be made. Fees were at present 10 per cent. of the cost of higher education. The number of overseas students had risen by 25 per cent.; the cost had risen by about 80 per cent. If these trends continued, the concealed subsidy would rise to s million by 1967-68 and to s million by 1970-71. Something had to be done to hold the concealed subsidy down to its present level of s million. Mr. Crosland's announcement was critically received. Dr. H. D. Hughes of Ruskin College said on 15 F e b r u a r y that: " I f the government is not prepared to give way on the principle of discrimination, and if a hardship fund is to be set up, then it must be a continuing fund for as long as the principle of discrimination exists."

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Professor P. M. S. Blackett, president of the Royal Society, addressing the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee on 16 February on the situation of British scientific and technological research, said: " I am deeply concerned at the recent increase of fees for overseas students. Many of my scientific colleagues have eloquently criticised this action. I agree with this criticism. In particular, I am deeply worried at the possible damage to the postgraduate schools of our universities and at the possible long-term harm to our nation." The Prime Minister informed the Committee ~of Vice-Chancellors and Principals on 16 February that it would not be helpful for him to intervene in the matter and he could not therefore receive a delegation. He suggested that they should seek an interview with Mr. Crosland. In Glasgow, students of Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities marched through the city on 17 February to attend a meeting addressed by three MPs from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Parties, who spoke against the increase in fees for overseas students. Four hundred students attended. The vice-chancellor of Sheffield University criticised the measure as "very i/ljudged ". At Oxford, of 300 teachers who were asked by the Radical Students' Alliance to abstain from lecturing on 22 February, only five agreed. At Bristol University, where the vice-chancellor, Professor John Harris, opposed the government's decision but disapproved of a strike, it was planned to present a petition with 4,000 signatures to the Prime Minister but not to conduct a strike on 22 February as student bodies of a number of universities were planning to do. At certain universities, such as Oxford, Newcastle and Hull, it was decided that no strike should be held. The National Union of Students, who were planning " a day of student action ", wrote to all union presidents asking them not to strike or to do anything "which will weaken our chances of gaining further support" On 22 February, Lord Annan, provost of University College, London, told a meeting of 300 students called by the National Union of Students that the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals would try to persuade Mr. Crosland to abrogate his decision or at least to specify a date when the discrimination against foreign students would end. " A date must be given by which this highly morally distasteful action is stopped. The choice between increased fees for overseas students and increased expenditure on the 'ghetto schools' which was recommended by the Plowden Report would not have to be made if the government would only revise its priorities in other forms of spending." There were actions of protest at many other higher educational institutions throughout the country. At Oxford, pickets at the main lecture hails collected 2,000 signatures for a petition to be presented to the government. Students attempted to persuade teachers to begin their lectures half an hour late as a protest but were unsuccessful. At Cambridge, a strike which had been plarmed was called off because senior and junior members of the university opposed it. Instead, more than 100 undergraduates went to the House of Commons to inform Members of Parliament of their disapproval of the decision. In Leeds, more than half of the 7,200 students absented themselves from classes. At Southampton, a third of the 3,500 students did the same. In Edinburgh, half the lectures were cancelled. At Manchester, 2,000 students attended a meeting at which the vicechancellor, Sir William Mansfield Cooper, said that he was filled with apprehension by the government's policy. Lord Bowden, former Minister of State in the Ministry of Technology and principal of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, charged that the government had acted in " a very stupid way ". It was estimated that 96 per cent. of the

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student body of the University of Manchester stayed away from classes. In Sheffield, a protest meeting addressed a telegram to the Prime Minister. The vice-chancellor, Professor Hugh Robson, called the government decision " a retrograde step ". At Birmingham, 2,000 students attended a protest meeting which was said to be the largest ever held at the university. The v i c e chancellor, Sir Robert Aitken, said that the government's failure to consult the universi~ties was an insult to them. Several thousand students of the colleges of the University of Wales wrote letters of protest which were brought to the House of Commons by the presidents of the respective student unions, who did not succeed in delivering them to M.P.s. In Leicester, the students held a torchlight meeting in the city square. At York University, 60 per cent. of the 1,250 students participated in a one-day strike; they also distributed handbills in the centre of the city. There were student processions at Norwich, Reading, Newcastle, Bristol and Liverpool. At a number of universities, students decided not to boycott leclures. In London, 2,000 Students from north London colleges marched with banners to the Department of Education and Science in the morning; in the afternoon, a similar procession of students from south London colleges took place. Both demonstrations ended in interviews with senior civil servants of the department. One petition, signed by 40,000 persons and delivered to 10 Downing Street, said that the discriminatory increase in fees would jeopardise the goodwill of the Commonwealth and overseas countries. In the House of Commons on 23 February, a censure debate ~0 on the government's decision was opened by Mr. Reginald Maudling, Conservative. He moved : That this House, while recognising the urgent need for economy in public expenditure, regrets the methods adopted by . . . [the] Government in advising universities and local education authorities to increase fees for overseas students. Mr. Maudling said that he very much doubted that savings from this measure would start at s million and rise to s million, as the government had stated. It was for a " v e r y small gain i n d e e d " that the government had taken this action which had " c a u s e d a sense of outrage throughout academic circles, not only in this country but in many parts of the world ". He continued: We accept the need for economy in Government expenditure, and we have accepted that in the development of oar social services more attention should be paid to concentrating aid from the taxpayer to where it is most needed . . . . [But] the Government have gone about it on this occasion in a cackhanded way. They have shown an incredible lack of a sense of priority. . possibly the most deserving of all the students who come to this country are those who come as a result of their own families scraping the money together over a long period to ensure that the bright boy of the family can get the education they want him to have in Britain. Those are the students who will suffer the most, those are precisely the people who, so far as I can see, will get no help at all and who will have to bear the full burden of this increase . . . . .

.

I believe that there can be no more valuable a form of overseas aid than the provision of education . . . . It is far better to train people to do their own jobs than to send out machinery or highly sophisticated modern equipment at enormous expense. Education is . , . the type of aid which should be given top priority . . . . 20 Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), House o/Commons Official Report, Vol. 741, No. 150, Thursday, 23 February, 1967, columns 1981-2044.

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In reply, Mr. Crosland said the decision had aroused a large amount of controversy. Some of the language used by eminent academics had bordered on the hysterical. Successive governments had rightly pursued an open-door policy towards overseas students. Their aaumbers had greatly increased. Ten years ago there were 9,000, five years ago 13,000, and last year more than 16,000. There had been a comparable rise in further education and the total in both sections was now over 32,000. The result had been a large increase in the amount of the subsidy. The university subsidy to overseas students rose from s million 10 years ago to s million five years ago and to s million last year. In further education the increase was from s million five years ago to s million last year. On a plausible estimate, the total subsidy would have risen to s million next year and perhaps s million by the end of the decade. It was a wholly indiscriminate subsidy. About 7,000 of the overseas students who had nine tenths of their fees subsidised from British public funds came from countries with at least as high a national income as Britain's? 1 Certainly not all the students from the Middle East, India, and Pakistan came from poor families. Mr. Crosland did not think it was seriously suggested that the government should have done nothing to bring this open-ended, indiscriminate subsidy under control. They had rejected an all-round increase in fees, but decided something must be done to limit the rate of increase in the subsidy to overseas students. One of the major criticisms made against the government was that they had put up overseas students' fees without putting up British students' fees at the same time. There would be slightly less amity between the students and the vice-chancellors if students realised that this was what the vice-chancellors had wanted. Another criticism, Mr. Crosland said, was that the increase was discriminatory. Whatever the discrimination was, it did not involve nationality, 21 The Secretary of State for Education and Science on 23 February gave the following figures for " the number and percentage of full-time overseas students in the various categories at British universities in 1965-66 ": 1--GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS

W. Europe

Commonwealth

United States

Other

of America

Total

Number Per cent. Number Per cent. Number Per cent. Number Per cent. Number Per cent. 1,873 11.5 9,081 56 1,643 10 3,659 22"5 16,256 100 2----COMMONWEALTH ANALYSIS

Advanced Commonwealth countries

Developing Commonwealth countries

All Commonwealth countries

N u m b e r Per cent. N u m b e r Per cent. N u m b e r Per cent. 1,289 14 7,792 86 9,081 100 These are estimated figures. 3 - - I N 1965-66, 10,890 OVERSEAS STUDENTS AT BRITISH UNIVERSITIES (67 PER CENT.) CAME FROM DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 4---ANALYSlS BY METHOD OF SUPPORT

U.K. public funds

Number .. Percentage ..

2,189 13.5

Other U.K. funds including university awards

970 6.0

Governments of developing countries

2,415 14.8

Other overseas governments and sources

1,906 11.7

Privately financed (No award or otherwise sponsored)

8,776 54.0

Total

16,256 100

5 - - N o FIGURES ARE AVAILABLEOF OVERSEAS STUDENTS WHO HOLD NO AWARDS. THE NUMBER OF OVERSEAS STUDENTS PRIVATt~LY FINANCED AS DEFINED ABOVE WERE: Commonwealth . . . . 4,855 ~30 per cent. of all overseas students) D e v e l o p i n g countries 'incinclmg C o m m o n " 5,416 t 33 per cent. of all overseas students) w e a l t h developing countries. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), House of Commons 01~clal Report, Vol. 741, No. 150, Thursday, 23 F e b r u a r y , 1967, c o l u m n s 1943-1944.

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race, birth, or origin and those who suggested that it did were doing a profound disservice. The increases would apply to all overseas students from Asia or Europe, Africa or N o r t h America. There was already discrimination between overseas students and British students. British students, for the most part, did not pay their own fees. They were paid out of public funds. Overseas students, for the most part, did pay their own fees. Britain's role, Mr. Crosland said, should increasingly be to provide postgraduate facilities, and that was precisely what they were doing and would continue to do. Of the overseas students now in Britain, some 5,000 were postgraduate and they were the ones less likely to suffer from higher fees. H e would ask the critics if they regarded the present level of overseas students' fees as sacrosanct. Was there any point at which they would have brought this open-ended subsidy under control? In the debate which followed, Mr. Philip Noel-Baker (Labour) said that of all Britain's re-exports the most significant and valuable over the last 50 years had been those men and women who came here and went back with the incomparable training which the universities had given them. The value of their training here had repaid itself in various ways--political, economic, cultural and financial. The cutting of this form of aid was a supreme example of the unwisdom of trying to save a halfpenny worth of tar. Winding up the debate, Mr. Goronwy Roberts, Minister of State, Education and Science, called for a sense of proportion and perspective. There had been growing urgency over these fees for some time. He promised that all the criticisms and suggestions to assist students would be carefully considered. The government wanted these measures to be as effective and fair as was possible. Some universities would exercise a sense of priority in charging fees. All students on British Government or British Council grants would have the higher fees paid by the British Government out of the increased British overseas aid funds. N o student who had embarked on a course would pay more than s extra and all financed by their own government would have the extra s paid for them to that government. A fund would be created to enable grants to be made towards the increased fees where hardship could be claimed, Mr. Roberts continued. It would be discriminatory to confine this fund to the developing or Commonwealth countries. Of the 71,000 overseas students here about 16,000 from the developing countries were self-financed. Special help would be provided for those with limited means. The general principle might be that those who had started a course or sequence of courses should not have to curtail their studies because of increased fees. The government was determined that no existing student should have to give up his studies because he could not find the extra s The opposition motion of censure was rejected by a vote of 276 to 222, with between 30 and 40 Labour M.P.s abstaining. Six representatives of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, led by Sir Charles Wilson of the University of Glasgow, met with Mr. Crosland on 28 February. The vice-chancellors declared their disapproval of the discriminatory character of the proposed increase; they would have preferred an increase for all students. Mr. Crosland reaffirmed his decision. A t the University of Edinburgh, the principal and vice-chancellor, Professor Michael Swann, announced on 28 March that even though the university was forced reluctantly and out of economic necessity to comply with the government's decision, it would start an overseas students aid fund. The university court would try to ensure, by remitting where necessary the increase of s a year for those already enrolled, that no student would have to abandon his

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studies or suffer severe hardships. (Ten per cent. of the Edinburgh students are from overseas; it would cost the university s if it did not agree to abide b y t h e government's decision.) Dr. J. B. Birks of the department of physics of the University of Manchester wrote in a letter to T h e Guardian on 4 April: Sir,--The Department of Education and Science has invested, through the Science Research Council and the University Grants Committee, about s per research physicist in this university department, and it supports their activities at an annual rate of about s per capita. About 20 per cent. of these physicists are overseas postgraduate students, who make an important contribution to the counfry's scientific manpower. Every such student who is prevented from coming here next Session by the recent fee increase will entail a wastage of about s (about s p.a. over three years) due to the under-utilisation of research facilities, since there are no British students of equivalent calibre available to replace them. The saving on the student subsidy, the nominal reason for the fee increase is small compared with this wastage. Most overseas research students in the department are supported by grants, which include payment of fees, from the university. Since the funds for this purpose are limited by UGC and SRC, the fee increase means a reduction in the number of such grants available next session. Thus a reduction in the number of overseas research students and the consequent wastage of scientific resources (and of the taxpayers' money), appears inevitable, unless there is an immediate change in policy. Overseas postgraduate science students (like all British students) should be specifically excluded from the fee increase. These students, the cream of their own universities, provide a steady flow of qualified scientists into Britain, which does much to offset the more publicised "braindrain" from this country to North America. It is in the national interest that these scientists be attracted, not repelled . . . . On 20 April, Mr. Anthony Crosland, Secretary of State for Education and Science, in r e p l y to a question by Mr. van Straubenzee, a Conservative Member of Parliament, told the House of Commons that the government would provide a fund of s to deal with cases of hardship among overseas studems arising from the increase of their fees during the academic session 1967-68. *

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THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS: STUDENT POWER AND I N D I S C I P L I N E 22 On 27 February, the board of discipline of the London School of Economics (LSE) met to consider the case of six students cited in connection with the disturbances at the school on 31 January. The committee met again on 3 March. On 6 March, a deputation of seven students met with Professor J. S, A. Wheatcroft, a member of the board, to complain against the prolongation of the hearing, on grounds that the extended deliberations were causing excessive strain. On 9 March, four of the six accused students were absolved by the board; the charges against Mr. David Adelstein and Mr. Marshall Bloom had still to be decided. On the same day, an " a c t i o n g r o u p " claiming a membership of 100 students declared that " a l l possibilities of negotiations have been exhausted and . . . direct action is the only way victimisation can be prevented.', It discussed plans to disrupt the main centres of administration of the school. 22 C]. " Dr. Adams and the London School of Economics ", Minerva, V, 2 (Winter,

1967), pp. 312-314, and V, 3 (Spring, 1967), pp. 455--458.