This week,30 years ago, saw the areas first ever direct action taken by students
against college authorities, when Keele University students stormed and occupied
the University Registry. Dr. Malcolm Clarke, who was President of the Keele
Students Union at the time and later became Newcastle's youngest ever Mayor,
recalls those momentous events. 
In 1968, along with students in Paris and elsewhere, we believed that we were going to change the world. It wasn't a question of 'if' we could but only how long it would take us. Our own University was a suitable place to start. We had justifiable local grievances about the hours rule, which forbade students of the opposite sex in halls after 10pm, and the University's insistence on approving students' off-campus lodgings. Above all, we wanted representation on the governing bodies of the University, particularly the Senate.
Tension had been building up throughout my year as President when I had to negotiate these issues with Campbell Stewart, the Vice-Chancellor. At a personal level, Campbell and I got on well. We were both essentially moderate people who preferred compromise to confrontation. Left to ourselves we could probably have cut a deal, but we were both prisoners of some of those behind us - in my case idealists impatient for radical change to a new order, in his reactionary professors who saw even minor concessions as the end of civilisation as they knew it.
I had to attend the Senate meeting to present our case, the first ever student to do so. I did well but it wasn't enough. They gave me practically nothing which I could take back to my members. I knew that a decision to take direct action was inevitable at the Union meeting 4 days later, even though I thought it would be the wrong course because the University could ride out the two weeks to the end of term and we would have played our strongest card to no effect.
I was devastated by the experience. I felt I had failed and the following day I could feel my mind cracking under the pressure. Fortunately, Keele's support systems were there to help. I literally ran in tears to Audrey Newsome, Head of the counselling service. She drove me round the Shropshire countryside for a couple of hours to calm me before arranging for me to move in with Professor Eugene Lampert, the left wing Professor of Russian, and his wife Katia to take the pressure off until the Union meeting, which I was determined not to "bottle". I shall always be grateful to those three wonderful people for saving me from a nervous breakdown.
The union meeting was one of the largest ever known at Keele. With a heavy heart I spoke against direct action but the outcome was never in doubt. The Registry was occupied in one of the earliest pieces of student direct action in the country. I resigned as President, not as some Professors presented it as a principled protest against direct action but because, having opposed it, I was not the right person to negotiate the terms on which it would end.
In some ways the sit-in turned out to a bizarrely civilised affair. On the first evening the outgoing and new Union committees were due at a sherry reception at the Vice-Chancellor's house. There was an impassioned debate about whether it would be hypocritical to attend following which it was decided to do so, even to the point of changing into suits and long dresses! One of the committee members was a lad called Chris Welby, who was a bit wild. I will always remember the bemused response by John Hodgkinson, the Registrar, when he saw Chris, decked out like a penguin and politely sipping from his sherry glass - "Good evening Mr.Welby, the last time I saw you, you were on my roof!".
The sit-in ended peacefully after 3 days without the University having given any further concessions. The students left the offices in a cleaner state than when it started with David Cohen, the Senior Tutor (later to become Registrar) commenting that the sherry in the decanter in his office had been left untouched. This was in marked contrast to the violence, even extending to arson, noise and nudity of the student protests at Keele in the years which followed. The class of 68 did it in style!
Looking back after 30 years, it seems remarkable that, on both sides, we all took the issues so seriously. At the time, within the hothouse atmosphere of Keele, they seemed like matters of national, even international, significance. It is salutory to reflect that the specific demands we made have long since been met without the University falling apart, but the socialist utopia we thought we were creating seems father away than ever.
