 First of all, I'm really solid out here, and I've been solid out here at Jeremy Corbyn MP as well, these Palestinian leaders at the moment. I just want to congratulate you on what you've done. I think it's brilliant, and it's happening all over the country. And the messages that are coming in from university and colleges, right there across the country, is absolute solidarity. And I think whatever you're seeing on the TV or whatever what's happening along Whitehall, what's the real world, and the real world what's happening is large numbers of students are actually saying we've had enough, and we're not willing to take it anymore. And it is about the basic freedom of education. We thought of a generation of people like me who fought for the rights of free education, and these bastards are going to take it off us. And what this is all about is making sure that they don't. And I think you're having the effect. You're having the effect. That was John McDonnell all the way back in 2010 addressing the UCL occupation. And I know that that's a kind of shaky and unfocused mobile phone video, but being a completely sentimental cornball, I thought we'd kick off with that because really, if it wasn't for that wave of university occupations between 2010 and 2011, I don't think the viral media would exist. I would never have met Aaron Bassani or James Butler. I would probably be richer, happier in a more secure form of employment. So you wrote a book. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a real pleasure to have you here. Thank you for having me. So this book, Student Revolt, Voices of the Asterity Generation, I can't recommend it highly enough. And I'm not just like gassing you because you're in front of me like a little shit, I would probably say. But one of the things that felt like a real joy to read was these memories which had kind of gotten a bit fuzzy around the edges for me but just sort of called back with so much clarity and emotional texture and richness and these voices of people who I love dearly or maybe there's some friendships which maybe slipped off, they were suddenly called back with this wonderful clarity and you could just kind of hear these voices ringing in your ear. So I guess my first question is just how did this book come together and what was that process like of gathering all this testimony? Well, it's normal history. So I wanted to create a history of the movement told to the voices of the people who made it. So I did about 60 interviews over a two-year period. Quite an emotional, really creative process in which telling the historical story is no longer, you know, the historian is not in the archives, you're talking to real people with real memories and the movement, because it was defeated, left for many, I think, the experience of defeat was very difficult to deal with and so coming five years after, seven years after, these interviews I think allowed people to come to terms with the movement and hopefully by constructing this historical story future generations can learn from the experience of the movement and I don't think the 2010 generation had a space in which they could argue out what happened in 2010. There was no space, there was no space to create a balance sheet of sorts and hopefully this historical story of the 2010 student movement, this book, is their collective property. I mean, I'm not asking you to give away the best bits for free, but what did happen in 2010? Why did the student movement fail to secure a victory? If you had to give the kind of, you know, elevator version of the summary? Why they lost, well I would say, what, government intransigence and his wonderful George Osborne quote from the book when she says that we expected this, we expected resistance against the first round of austerity and if we don't defeat the students then the whole of our austerity regime is going to be called into question. They saw this as a fundamental battle that they had to win. The government wasn't prepared to let the students get their way. The Liberal Democrats, many of whom like Vince Cable would never reconcile with the fees policy anyway, chose to side with the government and it was faced with a student movement divided between official and unofficial movements between an NUS that was focused on parliamentary action and winning over one or two Liberal Democrat MPs versus a movement in the streets which was in no mood to make any deals with any politicians but felt betrayed totally by the political system. Also a student body that was actively demobilised, we hadn't had movements for decades, especially not as radical as the one that Milberg set off, mixed I think with tactical mistakes and no space, political space anyway to argue out possible tactical changes, mixed also with huge police repression. The police actively crushing the movement in the streets and the students being brought through the courts and I think we'll all remember Alfie Meadows who was nearly killed by a police baton. So I think it's a mix of all these reasons. I mean one of the things that I think you discussed quite well in the book is that there is a assumed antagonism towards hierarchy and hierarchical forms of organisation and there's a great deal of disagreement in terms of the voices that you interview in terms of should there have been more of an embrace of leadership. It's kind of funny that one of the results of 2010, 2011 is actually a revival of institutional forms of political organisation i.e. the Labour Party has made a big comeback. So one is do you think that this kind of return to institutional politics represents a failure of non-hierarchical organising? And two, do you think that Corbyn would be possible without that kind of mass mobilisation first in 2010, 2011? Well I do think in 2010 there was this proliferation of non-hierarchical organising. Some of us are still repping hard for it by the way. But I think it was this generalisable experience and it made sense to people at the time because you had a political class, all political parties seemed totally out of touch with what students were. Students in 2010 had put their faith in the Liberal Democrats who had framed themselves as a party alternative to new labour. They didn't vote for the Iraq war, they had promised free education. Students felt totally betrayed by the breaking of their promise. That really undergirds the moral economy of the student protests. They also had the Labour Party who had commissioned the Browner view, but brought in tuition fees twice who invaded Iraq and you have a Conservative party that students generally don't support. When the Liberal Democrats portrayed the students, the bottom fell out of politics and they were in no mood to make any accord with these politicians who had sold their future down the drain. I think as the movements progressed and the social movements, it wasn't just the Chinese stand movement that was interested in non-hierarchal organising. You had UK uncut, you had a number of different social movements in the streets. None of them seemed to break through. I don't think it's any surprise that people felt in 2015 that they had put all of this effort over the past five years to very little result of the editorial government that was coming in with a larger majority than the coalition. I think people were desperate for change and that, I think, laid the basis for this shift in many people. This returned to the institutions and many of the 2010 generation have now found themselves in the Corbyn project. I don't think there's... I think there is this narrative arc between the 2010 student movement and the present but I think in the movement's defeat that it created the conditions in which people have started to think, well, maybe Jeremy Corbyn can break through where we couldn't. I don't know about nothing to show for it because I had six months of chest infections, Mr and that is something to show for occupying various cold floors in winter. I mean, I guess this isn't necessarily a question you can answer decisively but maybe it's something that you can tease out and answer from is that in the book you talk about this kind of upsurge and insurrectionist energy and I do want to show a video in just a second but that actually coded within that was a kind of appeal to power which is almost look how angry we are, look at what you've riled up, something has to change and people weren't prepared for disappointment, right? Not just defeat but actually that demonstration of real politic and just how unaccountable their institutions are. Do you think that we have emerged from that tougher, smart and more resilient or, inshelaw, this won't happen but should the Corbyn project fail, are we headed towards another similarly irreparable kind of political disappointment only perhaps a lot more catastrophic in terms of the mood that might engender? Well, I think there is that possibility that I would say that the structural, economic drivers that created the conditions for the movement by 2010 are still there, still present. This generational cleavage which is riffing open British politics, 2010 was simply the first, it was the market, it was a political touchstone that signified this new political subjectivity which was expressed in 2010 when young people took to the streets and in 2017 when they took to the ballot box it's the experience of young people today living under austerity, living with futures which are looking like they're going to be far worse than their parents with paying almost half their income on rent, with the job market, with precarious work, huge student debts with 6% interest rates. This is creating the conditions for social movements in the streets but also movements of the ballot box and I think we need to continue the student movements going forward. We can't let up the social movements in the streets if Corbyn is going to succeed. I think there's got to be this relationship between the two. I mean just before we wrap up I do want to show you this great clip which you discussed in the book. Can we show it? We're from the slums of London, yeah? How do they expect us to pay 9,000 for uni fees? And EMA, EMA with university keeping us in college was stopping us from doing drug build on the streets anymore, nothing. Because there's not just one 2010-2011 generation, there was kind of one surge of interaction and synergy on the streets and that was for students, but then the kind of coder to this and it's kind of in conversation in the book is the riots of 2011. Do you think that that energy has been coordinated and appealed to in the same way by Corbyn's project as it has kind of courted the remnants of that student movement or is that still something that's kind of pulsing and waiting to blow? Well, I think that the 2010-2011, that's very much a political conjuncture, the 2010 student movement and the 2011 riots, I think the spirit of many of those involved, I mean the spirit of both were very much implicated in each other, this rebellion total against the system itself, no politicians represented, students, no politicians represented anyone in the streets in 2011. But I do think the current conjuncture is slightly different. Obviously there are multiple 2010s. There are the 2010s of the Russell group, university students who are occupying, there's the 2010 of those people you saw in the video. Also within the 2010 generation there's multiple 2010s going forward, there's those of radical social media, people who have made careers in radical media, there's those 2010 people who have gone into the radical independence campaign, into the Corbyn campaign, it's the Green Party into UK and CUT, they've taken their experiences forward. I do think that the 2010-2011 period is, I just get the sense that that was a very, very specific conjuncture coming out of the 2008 financial crisis with a total rebellion against the system. And I do think the conditions are still there for some explosion like that to emerge again, but I think we are in a new conjunction now. I think the horizon has shifted on questions like free education, on questions like gentrification, on rent controls, on building new houses, on defending the welfare state. I think Corbyn has shifted the political debate and I think those movements in 2010-2011 I think paved the way for that to occur. So that's I think why we need to return to the experience of 2010-2011. I think it really did lay the basis for the changes we're currently seeing. I mean, I will really encourage people to cop this book. I'm not just saying that because the mate wrote it, it's actually really sick. And so, because we love a good competition at Navara, I got my first suggestion for a competition question rejected, which was guest map star sign. So if you tweet at Navara media with, oh what was the question, who admit is to spineless dithering over supporting the protest in 2010? If you tweet with your answer, one of you will win a copy of this excellent book. I don't have one with me, so Matt won't sign it, but I'll just write fuck you or something in it. So we'll post it to you. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. All right, same time, same place next week. Bye.