At 12pm on Tuesday 18th October, hundreds of students gathered at the main gate of the University of Glasgow in a walkout and protest march in solidarity with the people of Gaza, who as I write are being brutally murdered by an illegal and genocidal bombing campaign. Students marched through the back of the campus, behind a Stop the War Coalition Scotland banner, reading: End the siege on Gaza. The march grew as it went, reflecting the anger many students feel about the situation in Palestine.
“Viva, Viva Palestina” was shouted out in front of the main building, and throughout the campus while the students moved round to the top of Byers road. At the main junction, the student protestors sat down and brought traffic to a stand still. It showed much promise of what the students at Glasgow an at other universities may achieve with more time and more planning. The momentum is there, and more action is sure to take place.
Angela McCormik, an activist and organiser from the Glasgow Stop the War Coalition pointed spoke at the end of the demo:
“If we were here today, just one or two of us, we would be brave and we would be right. …if we were here today, tens of us, we would be brave and we would be right. But you are here in many, many numbers, knowing that more could come – so you are brave and you are right and you also have the power to connect, to build, to develop and ultimately to make a difference.”
Many students after the speeches which took place on a little patch of green grass outside Glasgow’s library and reading room stayed on after the protest had finished, to do exactly that: build connections, organise and make plans for the future. While some at the demonstration may have been new to the Palestinian cause, there were also many student activists there who had been campaigning against war and against arms investments from the university for quite some time.
This demonstration was a quick response to the genocide of the Palestinians. But it was clear that it was also part of a larger effort within student communities at the University of Glasgow, to further persuade the students of this university and beyond, that an anti-war and anti-imperialist stance is the only one to take if we wish to see a sustainable and just future for us and future generations.
One Glasgow university student activist and member of Glasgow Against Arms and Fossil Fuels, also noted how our actions as students are not happening in total isolation within the university campus:
“In May 2021 Italian dock workers refused to load arms to Israel. This campaign spread to south Africa and it spread to southern California in Oakland. One of the workers in California declared that and injury to one, is an injury to all.
“So how can we as students learn from this? Where does our power lie? Well our power lies in this university, it lies in the ties that this university has with the immoral arms companies, the money that they invest in these companies, the research ties that they have to those companies. They use our student loans to construct these weapons of mass destruction. How can we let this stand?”
Aside from this sentiment, there was also space at the demonstration for outrage and grief.
One of the speakers was a 20-year old student from a Palestinian family, who expressed the deep pain within her own family, at the fact that even 75 years later after the Nakba, she was still having to campaign against the same things her grandfather protested, when he was forced to leave Palestine at the age of 11.
“In our thousands in our millions – we are all Palestinians” was chanted by the crowd of students once the speeches had finished, confirming that yes, on the Glasgow University campus, students are unequivocally against apartheid, against war, against the bias of the media, and against the horrific genocide that is being carried out with full support of our own government.
