THE LSE

THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS (LSE), is making the news once more. Remember last year when this institution’s relationship with the Gadaffi’s was exposed? It was learnt that the colonel’s son Saif Gadaffi (now under arrest in Libya) was ‘helped’ – perhaps a better word would be guaranteed - to an academic advancement in exchange for £1.5 million of the old man’s money.

                Now some LSE student’s have also disgraced the name of the LSE. While on a ski trip to Val d’Isère, the students indulged themselves in playing a game called ‘Nazi Ring of Fire’.             According to the Daily Telegraph it includes getting drunk; arranging a pack of cards in the shape of a swastika, followed by saluting the Führer and singing Nazi songs.

                Apparently a merry time was had by all – or it would have been the case; had not a Jewish student the temerity to take offence, for which he received a broken nose.

                The LSE is now investigating the whole business. But what would the socialist founders of this university have made of it all? George Bernard Shaw, I would like to think, would have been outraged, but, then again, like the other pioneers, Sidney and Beatrice Webb; he was after all,  great fan of the Soviet Union.

                These fellow travellers may or may not have felt a measure of disappointment with the way the LSE’s students had behaved. But as far as their attitude to the ‘socialist’ Gadaffi was concerned, the colonel was almost a liberal in comparison to Stalin…so why not. I think that the LSE would have been supported by its founders over the Libyan issue.

                Today’s Fabian society, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish. They will, no doubt, as part of the modern pioneering spirit of political correctness, condemn whole heartedly, the students racist activities. After all, what is good for a football supporter should be equally applied to middle class students attending the LSE - we must wait and see.

DURING THE 1960s and the early 1970s, the LSE was remembered for two things. Firstly, the education of the Dark Continent’s future rulers following  much of Africa’s independence from British colonialism – some of whose leaders, however, advanced to become dictators through LSE tutelage. Secondly, the LSE’s  flirtation with Marxism in the late 60s and early 70s, when its students took the helm of student rebellion.

                The student protests at the time; primarily over the Vietnam war and America’s involvement, culminated in the Grosvenor Square confrontation outside the US Embassy in 1968. As a Marxist at the time; 1968 was a vintage year for rebellion and revolution worldwide.

                The LSE was then considered the main venue of Left-wing politics. Let us not forget (by this I of course mean my aging generation) that the father of the Milliband brothers, one of whom is now leader of the Labour Party, lectured, as a Marxist, at the LSE. Indeed, Ralph Milliband, at the time, was the intellectual force on the Marxist Left. He wrote for the Left Review and promoted capitalism’s evisceration from history; as any true Marxist should.

                The LSE was the creation of 19^th century socialism, and, it appears, has never managed to distance itself from it, until, it seems, with its current intake. Which brings us back to the ski slopes of  Val d’Isère and its student’s drunken flirtation with anti-Semitism.

                It is my view that the LSE, like many other of our academic establishments, are pro-Palestinian as far as their tutors are concerned. Indeed, in many such other so-called theatres of enlightenment other than the LSE, invitations to Jewish academics have been proscribed, not by the students, but by their lecturers.

                Anti-Semitism grows from the academic targeting Israel; and in the world of British academia, Jews have indeed been targeted by lecturers; and their students interpret this as being fair game if they themselves are taught to believe, not in a two state solution to the Middle East, but in a one state, Palestinian solution

                In vilifying the state of Israel, by their  prohibition of Israeli academics from visiting or lecturing at many of our universities; the academics’  actions can only encourage the behaviour exhibited by students of the LSE on the slopes of Val d’Isère.

                Students are influenced by their tutors and lecturers . They unfortunately see them as mentors, and from their stand on Middle East politics, is it little wonder that some students inherit a casual attitude toward anti-Semitism; an attitude that would not be tolerated if any other ethnic group were similarly treated by the likes of our fledgling bigots in Val d’Isère.