Past and Present: Student activism at LSE

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There is a long and rich history of student campaigning at LSE.  

Between 1966 and 1969, campaigns organised by LSE students brought teaching to a halt for months at a time during a period now referred to as the ‘LSE Troubles’. 

The catalyst for this extended period of student activism was the School’s selection of Walter Adams—a professor with connections to the colonial and white minority regime in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe—for the LSE presidency. Students were deeply unhappy about the selection and reacted by organising mass protests and meetings on campus over the coming months. 

Since then, students have run creative and effective campaigns against a range of issues including the Vietnam War, the Apartheid regime in South Africa, the introduction of fees, the closure of LSE’s nursery, and the Quaddaffi Regime.   

 

2024, was, of course, no different!  

In May 2024, a large group of students occupied the Marshall building and established a student encampment. Inspired by the student campaigning of 1966-67, LSE students renamed the building after LSE student and activist Marshall Bloom.  

The Encampment was part of the broader student campaign calling for an end to genocide and apartheid in Gaza and the Occupied Territories' and, specifically, for LSE’s immediate divestment from companies and banks implicated in crimes against the Palestinian people. In the end, LSE brought these students to court and won the right to evict the students and end the Encampment. 

LSE students’ capacity to effectively organise and campaign using a range of tactics against injustice is a clear throughline between 1966 and now. There are, however, many differences between then and now.  

One particularly significant difference is that of the role played by the Students’ Union in these campaigns. 

 

In the campaigns of the 1960s and 70s, the Students’ Union played a crucial role.  

In January 1967, due to LSE’s lack of action on the issue of Walter Adam’s selection, the SU called a meeting of over 800 students and started a sit-in that lasted for 8 days. SU President, David Adelstein, was at the forefront of this campaign and was subject to disciplinary action by the School.  

Broader changes have also played a part in shifting the campaigning capacity of LSESU specifically and Student’s Unions in general. This includes the Education Act of 1994 which specified the role of SUs as supporting  ‘students as students’, and thus, limiting their ability to campaign on national and international issues such as the miners' strike or apartheid.  

 

We believe the Union can once again play a key role in supporting powerful student campaigns at LSE.