round the bend

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Wed Feb 16 09:43:06 PST 2000



> Check out the Mekons, folks, definitely a left band.
> Harvey Jordan

a little ditty related to me some years ago by Gang of Four's Jon King who, along with sidekick Andy Gill, coordinated a film group when they were students at the University of Leeds. King recalled:

'events surrounding the organized occupation of my old university administration offices, agreed [to] by the Students Union and the university, to protest cuts. It was a pathetic exercise guaranteed to give the semblance of action where there was only passivity. A bunch of us sabotaged this "demonstration" of "reasonable" students, spoiling the event in a variety of ways, which got out of hand, of course, and a lot of damage was done. This led to an extraordinary meeting on campus, where 6,000 students turned out and voted to withdraw funding, facilities, etc. to the university's anarchist society in a mass kangaroo court. No one from this unlucky bunch was allowed to speak, nor the guilty man, a friend of ours (who became the first manager of the Mekons), shouting that he had done it, but these "reasonable" students weren't interested. He was a mining engineer and didn't fit the troublemaking stereotype. Michael Hoover



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