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In Living Memory

Factual: History

In Living Memory: Series 12

In Living Memory: Series 12: Episode 2

Episode 2

Series 12

BBC Radio 4 - In Living Memory, Series 12, Episode 2

Jolyon Jenkins recalls the university sit-ins of 1970, when revolution was in the air.

Jolyon Jenkins recalls the university sit-ins of 1970, when Liverpool's students flew the red flag from the Senate House and Keele's tried to levitate the vice-chancellor's house.

In the early 1970s Britain's universities were swept by a wave of student protest and sit-ins. They wanted cheaper meals in their refectories, the right to have visitors of the opposite sex in their rooms after 10pm, and world revolution. Jolyon Jenkins looks at three of the protests that occurred in 1970. At Keele, students tried to levitate the vice-chancellor's residence. At Warwick, they occupied the registry and discovered what appeared to be files monitoring their political activities. And at Liverpool they took over the Senate House, calling for the sacking of the Chancellor, Lord Salisbury, because of his alleged pro-apartheid sympathies. Forty years on, Jolyon Jenkins talks to the veterans of the protests, on both sides, and finds that the resentments still run deep. Among those involved in the Liverpool protest was broadcaster Jon Snow, who says "we were united in our determination to grind the nose of the university into the dust".

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