Monday was by far the worst day in what has otherwise been a great experience on the road. A breakdown on the way back from a weekend trip, couple with works on the GNER north east mainline meant that Wes wasn’t able to make it into London until mid morning, missing the Guys Campus raid with King’s College London SU, though this wasn’t the only disruption to the day.

On Sunday morning Gemma had received a phone call from the Guardian, alerting her to a leaked copy of a DfES consultation around extremism on campus, which had been reported on the front page of the Guardian that morning – complete with Gemma’s strong and scathing response to reports that universities were encouraged to ‘spy’ on ‘Asian looking students’ (see Gemma’s blog for her full response).

We were due to meet Bill Rammell later that day anyway for a regular bilateral meeting, but as a result of the seriousness of that report and the enormous press interest it had generated both the meeting with Bill Rammell and our planned roadshow were turned upside down by the day’s events.

Gemma had a campaign breakfast was some activists from King’s and Wes was substituted by the ever-reliable Richard Angell at short notice. So all was not lost!

Sadly, because of press interviews, she was unable to make it down to Oxford as planned. Wes and Ellie Russell didn’t do much better; due to the over-running of our meeting with Bill Rammell (for obvious reasons) the Oxford leg of our trip was somewhat scuppered. We managed to meet with Alan Strickland, president of Oxford University Students’ Union (our newest affiliate!) but were unable to go on to Oxford Brookes as Ellie had to get back and Wes had to prepare for a Plagiarism Conference the next day. Thanks very much to Tim for being so understanding and thanks also to Ama Uzowuru for agreeing to head up the following week to fill in where we missed out.

And so a disappointing day for the campaign ended, with Wes in Oxford and Gemma in London, but not a moment of it wasted in terms of defending our muslim members.

Gemma and Wes

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