Frustrated by a High Court injunction that prohibits protestors from occupying University buildings in Cambridge so as to block a degree ceremony on 1 March, ‘Palestine Action’ has resorted to violence (for that is what it is) to make its point.
The fifteenth-century gateway to the Old Schools, the administrative headquarters of the University, has been sprayed with red paint, and the slogan ‘Divest’ has been written in red on the adjoining walls.
The very fact that these activists campaign to ‘divest’ illustrates their hypocrisy
One might have thought that they would want to stand back, even celebrate, the fact that the judge only granted an injunction for a single degree ceremony, since (oddly) he wanted to go away and think about the University’s request for a five-year ban on the occupation of its premises by protesters. But at least proud parents have been saved from the disappointment of missing the traditional degree ceremony, conducted with unique solemnity and style in the Senate House.
The very fact that these activists campaign to ‘divest’ illustrates their hypocrisy. This isn’t simply about divesting in the armaments industry. It’s about Israel, full stop. It’s about a country they wish to wipe off the map, and whose citizens – very many, paradoxically, of refugee descent – they would like to disappear.
Sometimes the University’s links to investment in armaments are rather tenuous. But the University cravenly decided to set up a working group that would include representatives of the activists to look into the question.
Arguments erupted about how many of them should be included, and trouble has been simmering for several weeks. This willingness to involve individuals who – whether or not members of Palestine Action – had been involved in earlier disruption of the University premises showed a complete failure of nerve, a preference for appeasement that, as we all know, can only result in ever greater demands being made by those who had caused the trouble in the first place.
The Grade I-listed buildings of the Old Schools, along with the Senate House close by, are the beating heart of the University. The ornate gateway is one of the most interesting but also most ignored medieval monuments in the city. Its intricate Gothic details will make it far more difficult to clean than the classical Senate House which was attacked previously.
Originally constructed as the gatehouse of King’s College, founded by King Henry VI in 1441, it led into a small courtyard that was the original site of the college. King Henry then decided to replace his small foundation with the enormous and grandiose college buildings of which only part of the chapel was completed in his lifetime, but, since money ran out, the original buildings remained in use until the 1820s, when William Wilkins completed the King’s project in neo-Gothic style.
Lacking a sense of pietas, the college sold the gatehouse and the accompanying buildings to the University, which demolished all but the gatehouse (even that was hacked about), only to rebuild the courtyard in much the same style as before.
Destroying a painting and daubing ancient buildings in Cambridge University with red paint, while glorying in having done so in the name of ‘Palestine’ is, surely, a low-level form of terrorism.
Criminal damage of this sort requires investigation and arrest; it cannot be difficult to identify the perpetrators, especially when they filmed themselves for social media and when they hold public demonstrations boasting of their achievements.
If the police or the security services do not have a list of names of members of ‘Palestine Action’ they have failed in their duty to probe this nasty and arrogant organisation. As for Cambridge University, any of the perpetrators who are students clearly cannot remain members of the University and must be expelled.
So one might think. But I have raised this matter in letters to the Vice-Chancellor, Deborah Prentice (or ‘Debbie’ as she likes to sign herself) several times since August 2024, and have yet to received a reply from her. Friends have raised the matter of the painting of Lord Balfour in Trinity College, slashed by a protestor many months ago, with the Master of Trinity; at least they have received a reply, but it has been an anodyne answer that the matter is being looked into.
In one letter I asked ‘Debbie’ to excuse the discourtesy of my writing again. Admittedly, that could be read as a sarcastic comment on her own discourtesy in not replying, but one tries to be polite. I no longer see any reason to remain polite. The failure of the Cambridge authorities to identify the culprits, and their willingness to parley with them about divestment, reveals the complacency and hypocrisy at the centre of the government of what was once (in my view) our greatest university.
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