'Apartheid' protest by London students
' C.H. ' REPORTER
CARRYING banners and led by a jazz band, more than 1,000 students of the London School of Economics marched through the streets of London last Friday to protest against University apartheid in South Africa.
All colours, races, creeds, and ideologies were represented: black marched with white, Catholic with Protestant, Christian with non-Christian. There were even three Communists somewhere, I was told.
Although students in this country, unlike their continental counterparts are usually associated with a frivolous and light-hearted approach to life, this was a serious affair taken seriously by those taking part in it. In fact, by its composition the protest march showed the alternative to apartheid which students over here enjoy and which they would like to see maintained in South Africa.
SUPPORT
The demonstration had the support of all the political and religious societies at the L.S.E. The specific occasion for the march was the South African Government's decision to reintroduce into Parliament for the third time the Separate Universities Bill, which would mean closing to coloured students the Universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand, the only two Universities in the Union now remaining open to all whatever their colour.
Less spectacularly. students of the L.S.E. are also raising funds to provide scholarships for South African students, both so that they can study over here and so that they can enter Cape Town and Witwatersrand before apartheid prevents them.
As the House of Commons was
sitting, the students could not march on South Africa House in Trafalgar Square. Instead, they marched via Gray's Inn Road and Euston Road to Russell Square, and seven other colleges of the University of London had promised to join them. But a delegation of three, including a student from Ghana, went to South Africa House to present a formal written protest to the High Commissioner.