Sussex University Occupation & Excessive Force
Update: University of Sussex management have gotten an injunction which will make any occupation a criminal offence. This essentially means that, with the UCU strike looming and further demonstrations inevitable, management will be able to have people arrested for “unauthorised” use of university buildings.
On Wednesday 3 March, students occupied Sussex House. When I got there at 1pm, they were already inside, and the police had been called.
Things started off amicably enough; obviously security and police weren’t going to let anyone else inside, but they weren’t aggressive at first.
We found out at one point that Sussex UCU voted in favour of strike action, and a cheer went up.
There was music and people in amusing costumes, so it seemed fine, although it was cold.
Some of the police were perfectly civil and spoke to us as if we were human beings.
There was one sergeant, however, who was completely nasty to everyone. I’ve heard that the personality type that goes into police work is the same personality type that goes into crime– I believe it.
Did you know that it’s apparently illegal to swear in front of the police?
As the afternoon wore on, riot police showed up with the tools of their trade– weapons and dogs. The atmosphere became a lot less pleasant. The riot police were clearly there to escalate the situation and frighten everyone.
At one point, students tried to rush into the building. Bad idea. The police responded as police do: with violence.
I stood ten feet away and watched the police brutally shove and beat two students who had not struck them. I’d never witnessed police brutality firsthand before, and it’s not something I’m keen to experience again. It was deeply disturbing.
One officer with a dog essentially threatened another photographer with being bitten if she didn’t stay back.
The police kept pushing and pushing. There’s a technique called “kettling” which they use at the SmashEDO protests– you trap the protesters in a small area and essentially do what you can to infuriate them.
It was pretty grim at that point, getting colder and colder as the sun set. I worried that the police would wait for nightfall and drag the occupiers out one by one. We tried to keep ourselves warm with dancing. Lots of people were taking video, which will come in handy for complaints about the police brutality.
Eventually at about 6pm the occupiers left of their own volition with arms linked. The crowd welcomed them with cheers and chanting. We danced around to some more music, and then people started to go their separate ways.
This experience has left me shaken. I’ve come from it with a greater respect for people who do this sort of thing on a regular basis and a much greater distrust of the police. Their behaviour, and the craven behaviour of management, is an illustration of what people with power will do to maintain it: anything.
Management have failed to do a lot of things properly, but what they failed to do yesterday is prove to me that they’re not precisely the sort of rapacious, evil, and incompetent tin dictators that people have been saying they are. They called riot police on their own students, riot police which then brutalised said students, and they blatantly attempted to use their own refusal to leave the building as an escalation tactic. Shame on all of them.
The campaign will continue. We will occupy again. We will support UCU in strike action. This is OUR university.
