Lincoln Underground Collective

On Saturday 21st April, I attended an open day for the Social Science Centre (SSC) in Lincoln.

The SSC is a co-operative education initiative offering people the chance to study social science courses (politics, sociology, philosophy) in an autonomous and non-hierarchical environment, with students and staff having equal participation and input into designing how the courses are taught as well as how the Centre operates. All courses are taught by experienced academics and professors, many of whom have been recognised both nationally and internationally for the quality of their scholarship. SSC member Professor Mike Neary also ran a workshop on alternative methods of education at the LUC Skill Share last year and has registered an interested in doing so again at the 2012 Skill Share this summer.

The open day began with a short but detailed introductory talk from Professor Neary on the reasons for setting up the SSC and how it intends to be organised. He outlined how the Centre’s existence is a response to the increasing commercialisation of Higher Education, with increasing privatisation and rising tuition fees cutting off access to millions of potential students. He was quick to point out that the Centre is in no way opposed to ‘official’ universities, but that it intends to offer a more democratic education. He also stressed the point of equal involvement from both staff and students in a non-hierarchical setting, stating that rather than differentiate between the two groups, everyone involved on courses would be referred to as ‘scholars’, as the academics themselves have as much to learn from their students as the students do from them.

Following this, there were a variety of talks and workshops to choose between. I attended an interesting talk from writer John Andrews entitled ‘The Quest for Truth’, where he discussed, amongst other things, the Occupy movement, the dangers of corporate media influence, and Orwellian characteristics of contemporary society.

The SSC is of great interest to the LUC. As anti-authoritarians, we are huge proponents of autonomous education and non-hierarchical organising, and the Centre provides a fantastic opportunity for this in Lincoln. We ourselves ran a workshop on autonomous education on the 14th March student walkout and intend to host a further discussion on it in the near future. We look forward to getting involved in and working with the SSC in actively pursuing alternative forms of education.

The SSC has been developing for a while and is now at the stage where meetings are due to be held involving staff, potential students and others who wish to be involved so as to begin planning how courses will operate. Ten-week courses will start in October this year and then again the following January, and there is also the possibility of a summer school being run next year. For more information or to get involved yourself, visit the SSC website: http://socialsciencecentre.org.uk/

On Saturday 31st March, LUC activists took part in picketing workfare providers in Lincoln in conjunction with the National Day of Action Against Workfare called by the Solidarity Federation.

We assembled with other activists at the Stonebow at 1pm, flags and homemade placards in hand, before setting off to the first target, Holland & Barrett.

We quickly set up right outside the shop, with two activists on either end of the LUC banner in front of the window and others spread around the shop entrance with flags and placards, and began making noise and handing out leaflets, to the great annoyance of the manager.

It wasn’t long until we drew the attention of a couple of wandering coppers, who decided they would come over to harass us for a while. After particularly heavy and intimidating questioning of one or two activists, they realised we were clued up enough not to give them our names or move our protest away from the shop entrance, and radioed their sergeant for back-up and unlawfully threatened a couple of activists with arrest. It was at this point that we decided to move onto our next target, Primark, where we again set up outside the shop and carried on making noise and distributing leaflets.

Not long afterwards, the sergeant himself made an appearance, pretending to be on our side and making a couple of shameless attempts to get personal information out of us, before giving up and leaving a couple of constables and a few PCSOs to follow us for the rest of the day.

From there, we moved on up the High Street to Poundland where we had one person join our picket for a while and another refuse to cross the picket to go into the shop.

After a while, and with the police having backed off a bit, we returned to Holland & Barrett. The ever watchful bizzies had of course followed us back down the High Street and positioned themselves by the entrance to BHS to keep an eye on proceedings. One activist had a long and ultimately fruitless conversation with the manager at Holland & Barrett, who said she would be informing head office of our picket. Little did she realise that this is exactly the kind of thing we were aiming for. Given the other coordinated actions across the country, if head office receive similar reports from other branches, they are likely to pull out of workfare schemes to avoid such actions in future. Direct action gets the goods!

The day ended with a bit of fun at the coppers’ expense as we packed up and walked as a group into BHS, right past the coppers, who followed us inside only for us to walk straight out of the back entrance and split up to leave the City Centre by different routes, after which we reconvened in the pub to reflect on the day.

All in all, the day’s actions were fairly successful, although not well attended. Whilst we had enough people for the action to be effective, greater numbers would have been more useful, especially in the face of police intimidation.

The shops we targeted yesterday were not pre-determined (apart from Holland & Barrett). We had a vague idea of the places we would aim for and decided to make decisions as to where to go next on the day. In light of this we have decided that for future actions, planning a definite list of targets beforehand would be a good idea, as it would save us time and ensure greater efficiency.

Solidarity to all those out who were out across the country yesterday and to all those involved in actions across Europe for the European Day of Action Against Capitalism (M31).

For information on your legal rights and how to deal with police intimidation, check out the Legal Defence & Monitoring Group and the Green & Black Cross.

More reports of anti-workfare actions from across the country:

Brighton

Edinburgh

Liverpool

Halifax

Bristol

Wakefield

Bournemouth

Swindon

London (Catford)

London (Kilburn)

York

Glasgow

And here are pictures of our DIY placards we had on show in Lincoln!