Two minutes before the hour, and only a handful of friends had turned up. The student organisers looked at each other in dismay. Would their protest, pulled together in secrecy and haste, prove a flop? Then came a loud babble from inside the college. Boys and girls were flooding down the stairs towards the entrance. Many were jumping the turnstile. As they ran outside, teenage excitement – among the purest there is – filled the late-autumn sky. On an otherwise quiet Friday hundreds of students had defied their principal, charged out of lessons and massed outside their own college to make a little local history.
What brought so many out that morning on 17 November at Luton Sixth Form College, in Bedfordshire, was a jpeg passed from phone to phone. “School strike for Palestine” was the title, and it ended: “Over 10,000 Palestinians have been brutally massacred. It is time we stand on the right side of history and fight like hell for those who are still alive.” The entire rally ran off one low-res image, that simple sentiment and a borrowed mic, which didn’t always work. In the three weeks since that walkout, the student revolt has grown in size and scope so that it is now one of the most interesting and telling stories about how a war 2,500 miles away is reshaping politics and society here.
I have been following this particular story for weeks, and in all that time it has not been reported in any other big newspaper. Indeed, one of the most striking things about this season of demos is how incurious the press and politicians are about the crowds outside their windows. Why investigate, when you can pass judgment from a beautifully soundproofed podcast studio? So we hear that the hundreds of thousands protesting against an epic bloodbath are “hate marchers” or that, however peaceful, they chant the wrong phrases and shout rude things at Labour MPs. And if........