...just some bits and pieces we picked up about the London School of Economics and University of London Union occupations in I969... bit gossippy really... more to come we hope...

Robin Blackburn (big noise trotskyist lecturer of the time) , in 'Days in the Life': "I was a lecturer at the LSE from 1967. Partly because of the occupation of the college in '67 the authorities decided that college shouldn't be used to assist things like the VSC and should never again be open to things like being seized by the students. They put steel gates and grilles in strategic places throughout the corridors and staircases of the university. The Students Union decided to ask the authorities to take them down, which of course they refused to do. Eventually the radical group in the Students Union got a vote that the students themselves should directly tear down the gates, which they did, with the help of some building workers who were building the Barbican and with whom they had been involved. There had been a strike and people from the Socialist Society had been helping them picket and leaflet and so forth. So when the gates had to be taken down they were able to get a couple of building workers in who had the right equipment. I had actually had nothing to do with the decision to remove the gates but I did come out in public, and the papers quoted me afterwards, saying that they'd done the right thing. So the university authorities
decided to give me the sack. That caused more reaction from the students and actually by this time the LSE had been closed down ‑ there was a lockout of the students and the staff.
During these occupations I did try to keep teaching. We did courses on the sociology of revolution, that type of thing."

Amongst those answering the radical call to occupy the LSE and then ULU, were the pro-Situationist group King Mob, and Malcolm Edwards/McLaren, later manager of the Sex Pistols:

Dave Robins (quotes the Black Hand Gang in IT#47): "The director, Pall Dahrenclorf had these security gates built so you couldn't get into the library. They'd just been installed and the Trotskyists were talking about sitting down in front of the gates and standing in pickets and walking around saying 'No gates' and the anarchs listened to this meeting
which was going on and on. Robin Blackburn of the International Millionaires Group: 'We think, comrades, that what we should do is blah,bIah, blah... Then Duffy Power got up, pissed out of his mind, and shouted, 'We're the International Mine s a Pint Committee and this over here is my friend from the Black Hand Gang and we think we should fuck the gates and take them away and burn them.
'And they got screwdrivers and they went up and stole the gates."

According to Vermorel, King Mob's Dave and Stewart Wise' supplied the muscle (and two sledge‑hammers) to despatch the infamous LSE 'gates' which the authorities had erected throughout the college to restrict access.' King Mob and The Black Hand Gang (Chris Gray and the wise brothers) subsequently put out 'Comrades Stop Buggering About' LSE poster mag (KING MOB 49) including:'THIS IS YOUR BUILDING. GO WHERE YOU WANT. TELL YOUR SECURITY GUARD TO FUCK OFF!'; 'furtively taken down by the security guards... The LSE, like all other occupations so far, was a mere introjection of the bourgeois order. What do we want: all the shit of bourgeois society?'

After students were locked out of the LSE, some joined with other students to occupy the University of London Student Union building (ULU):

JANUARY 27 1969: University of London Union Malet Street occupied.

'University of London Union is now liberated territory occupied by revolutionaries The buildings are yours to use as you want. It can be turned into a permanent base for agitation in the London area.
The facilities can be used by anyone joining us. We are using the duplication facilities in the Union office on the ground floor, and they can be used by anyone wishes to circulate any kind of document. There is no control over free expression. This goes for the rest of the building ‑ so far only partly explored. The only thing which needs to be organ.ised in common is defence and basic survival ‑ food and sleep. Inside the building, we are all
responsible for resisting any bureaucratic organisation of activities: discussion, decoration, planning for agitation, music.
Remember there is a swimming pool. If anyone tells you what to do, report them to the security committee. IT IS FORBIDDEN TO FORBID. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED. The Security Committee'

"When we took over the ULU building, Chris Gray and the Situationist mob decided that the only interesting part of the student union was the kitchen, which they took over immediately and rifled the fridge. He just thought it was fantastic that he could fry all these steaks simultaneously 1 remember them all cooking and thinking this was brilliant. They could have started their own restaurant right there down in the basement of the student union building."

Dick Pountain, in 'Days in the Life': "When King Mob was going at full blast, after the LSE sit~in there was a sit‑in at the University of London Union and we got involved in that. It lasted several days Everyone was sleeping on the floor and all that. The New Left crowd tried to run it. We gave Robin Blackburn a really bad time, howled him down, told him he was a wanker. They were very worried this, we might damage things ‑ don't scratch the paintwork ‑ so a bunch of people went and bust open the swimming pool and had this huge swimming party. The whole thing was very fraught because you'd got this mass of students, the New Left people telling them to be serious and responsible, and King Mob telling them to get their rocks off, let it all hang out, etc. It was very iffy, because the great mass in the middle were swaying both ways. Only a minority supported us; the majority wanted to be quiet and respectable, but these two guys came out of the crowd and joined in with us and said, 'We're with you.'They were a couple of art students from Goldsmith's and one was called Fred Vermorel and the other was called Malcolm Edwards. They both had long, dirty khaki macs, a couple of impoverished an students. And of course Malcolm went on to finer things and became Malcolm McLaren, and in a lot of ways the whole Sex Pistols scam was the putting into practice of a lot of Situationist theories. It was a betrayal of it in the sense that it became part of the 'Spectacle', but he did really shock the bourgeoisie of the whole country, which is something that King Mob never did."

Fred Vermorel, in 'Fashion & Perversity: A Life Of Vivienne Westwood and the Sixties Laid Bare'
(Bloornsbury): "I'm in a pub with members of King Mob. We've been assisting in an occupation of the LSE. Over a lunchtime pint we are devising projects to unsettle the revolutionary consensus. Someone suggests setting fire to some rare maps in the library. Destroying culture, that should break their student hearts, Suddenly Malcolm turns up. He is breathless, gushing. Ignoring the King Mobbers (this is the first time they meet him), he chatters at me that he's just come from the National Gallery. He went to reassess Van Gogh... My revolutionary colleagues gaze at this red‑
haired aesthete bemusedly. There is a rather prolonged pause while Malcolm notices and takes them all in, looking them up and down.
They return the inspection. Could he perhaps be a police informer? Then someone asks: "Fancy a pint? Malcolm settles for an orange juice.'