Student reactionarices

As an at lender at last week's SRC, I could not help but be amazed at the reactionary attitudes displayed by the students present at it. With one or two exceptions such as the Middle East, students have traditionally been prepared to adopt a progressive stance on many issues presented to them for discussion, recognising injustice whenever they see it occuring around them. Students have opposed apartheid, foreign military bases in New Zealand, and the activities of such groups as the staff of the Malaysian High Commission in spying on students within our supposedly free universities. But now it seems that all that has gone by the board.

The attitude of students in declaring that they supported the use of injunctions in industrial disputes was to me, nothing less than repugnant. Experience throughout the world has shown that the use of legal battering rams in industrial matters, backed up by the use of legal sanctions, will, in general exacerbate and embitter industrial disputes rather than solving them. The use of injunctions, moreover, is tantamount to denying workers the right to strike, and is thus a gross injustice, since employers are capable of closing down their factories at any time. The attitude displayed by students, in their voting on this motion illustrates how many students are nothing but middle-class reactionaries who, where there own interests are concerned, forget any liberal, Christian ideas that they ever had.