IMGpapers 1968–75

Newspapers of the International Marxist Group and its forerunners, 1968–75

PORTSMOUTH POLY

· The Red Mole Vol. 3, No. 41, 1 May 1972 · p. 12 of the scan · 358 words

The scan: v03n41-may-01-1972.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 4-4 of 4; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 12 of the scan

area- by using "pictures taken on the day. most by newspaper photographers, and all available to the tribunal" 7. Gerald Donaghy was one of those shot dead in the Glenfada Park area. Four nail bombs were later 'found' in his pockets. Donaghy was wearing tight-fitting jeans, and nail bombs are rather bulky objects. Yet they were not noticed by either the Lincoln doctor or the Medicford-Stevenson was visibly livid when Roddy The recently ended occupation at Portsmouth Polytechnic, which lasted for five weeks, has implications for all students' struggles, particularly in the public sector, as the underlying problem at Portsmouth is the State's "expansion on the cheap" attitude to higher education. The struggle was sparked off by an accommodation shortage in one department which led the students to fight the proposed expansion of the Polytechnic from 4,200 to 7,500 by 1981. While in favour of more people entering higher education, the students argued that such rapid unplanned expansion merely to serve the needs of British capital could only result in gross overcrowding, in a city where because of students' ability to pay higher rents they are forcing the working class out of the city.

To prevent the college administration from submitting an expansion plan which failed to take into account the interests of the students and the working class of Portsmouth, the students raised a demand for a "democratic institution. The students realised the contradictions of this demand, in that even a "democratic" institution cannot escape the financing and regulations by which the State forces higher education into supplying the needs of British capital, rather than the needs of the stu dents and the working class.

This long term demand was never won although more immediate demands were. The occupation was ended by a court order against 10 named individuals and others, legal costs being awarded against the named individuals. Despite the end of the immediate struggle the students are still fighting for the rejection of the college administration's development plan. There has been no solution at Portsmouth. the same accommodation crises will occur again both here and elsewhere and will be fodght again.

Rich Palser

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