Millbank tendency: The strengths and limitations of mediated protest ‘events’ in UK student activism cycles
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: UK students’ desire to create disruptive, media-friendly ‘events’ during the 2010–11 protests against fees and cuts is reflective of wider cycles and processes in student activism history. First, constant cohort turnover restricts students’ ability to convert campaigns into durable movements, necessitating that they must periodically ‘start from scratch’. This informs a second process, namely the need to gain the attention of mainstream media, as this can potentially amplify students’ grievances far beyond their own organizational capacities. Both have shaped student activism over the past 50 years, compelling contemporary students to create protest events that live up to their radical history. These processes were evident in autumn 2010, when an NUS demonstration saw students attack and briefly occupy Conservative Party headquarters at 30 Millbank. The protest’s mass mediation was central to activists’ ‘eventing’ processes, and provided the spark for the radical UK-wide campaign that followed. Yet once the fees bill was passed by Parliament, students’ dependency on mainstream media cycles was quickly exposed. With ‘mediatization’ tendencies having dogged student activism since the 1960s, this article argues that creating ‘events’ epitomizes students’ longstanding strengths and limitations as society’s ‘incipient intelligentsia’.
Source: Current Sociology
Author: Alexander Hensby
Institution: University of Kent
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2973043213