Jeremy Hunt meets protesters - in the best LSE tradition
John Mair
is a journalism lecturer and former broadcast producer and director. Twitter: @johnmair100
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Student demos were all the rage when I was at the LSE in 1968. They are again today, thanks to the coalition government's hike in tuition fees.
As an LSE alum, and the producer of last night's Media Society/Polis event with Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, I guess I should have expected trouble.
It came in loud droves.
First, like distant drums. Was that just traffic noise, or was it muffled cries of "Tory scum" from outside the packed 400-seat theatre?
Hunt was doing his best to dodge questions, from Raymond Snoddy, on Rupert Murdoch and media plurality and was in full flow on his pet project - local television - when, with a crash, the doors beside the stage burst open and 30 chanters appeared.
"Tory scum, culture vulture." Hunt stayed calm as the School security tried to corrall them in one corner. They didn't get quieter - the bullhorn helped - with one demonstrator peeling off to hand out leaflets; another to harass the minister, who never blanched. The security men looked lost.
The LSE taught me - inside and outside the classroom - the importance of discussion and dialogue, so I took the bull by the horns and went to talk to a ringleader. I played the LSE alumni card heavily. The man was fairly open when I suggested they ask one question of the minister.
They did - about Murdoch and plurality. No answer for them, either. They were not happy and wanted to ask supplementaries, which they did. The audience of the broadcasting great and good, getting restless, started to barrack them in a fairly undemocratic fashion.
A stand-off, but one which nobody would win. So I asked the ringleader to put it to his team that they should leave. They agreed, with a couple of parting shots to me - one kind, one not so. With that, the protest snake made its way through the auditorium, chanting to the exit.
The Secretary of State offered to talk to the demonstrators on the way out, as he had on the way in.
A win for the right to demonstrate and the ultimate right to freedom of speech for all, however unpopular what was being said.
The place has a history. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the LSE founders in 1895, would have been proud.
Welcome to 2011, LSE.
The College of Journalism's video of the protest is here.
