The Project

When I came to UEA I did not really want to get involved in Student journalism, but ended up not only writing for a student "newspaper" (and I use the term "newspaper" in the loosest sense,) but producing one. To the extent that I’ve spent hours watching the photocopier push out the words "The Great Commotion." As that was the title of UEA’s only DIY Anarchist Newspaper.

The Great commotion rapidly turned into (and still is) a monthly diatribe which any one can chip into, I don’t know how good it is but we always get feed back and manage to shift as many copies as we print. There is something about the DIY format that seems to keep dragging people into independent media. For me I think it was two main things (unique to) The Great Commotion which managed from time to time, to pull me away from the normal distractions of life as a first year.

The first thing was its history, which I found out about from one of the previous anarchist writers . He told me that The Great Commotion had been banned in its first carnation for encouraging students to throw rocks at pimps. Not unsurprisingly the anarchists did not obey the ban, but in future Soc Marts they did take a more consolatory tone. The ex student anarchist, who we’d meet on a Gaza protest, offered to help us if we want to carry on where he’d left off making the whole thing a lot easier. However, knowing the papers history did raise the first real internal debate among the writers of The Great Commotion – had the pimp stoning campaign been a success?

It was soon after hearing this that a group of friends decide to reincarnate The Great Commotion, and because I knew how to use the photocopier I was imminently involved. It was about then that the second main thing that interested me in The Great Commotion kicked in, that was, the fact that we had complete immunity. We were in a journalists dream land, we could say whatever we wanted, no articles were ever tied to any one person and printing rumours or allegations didn’t bother us. We had the best of both worlds, being too small to be important (only print about 700 copies a month) but big enough to annoy people. I personally had it even better, being shrouded in the amenity of The Great Commotion but effectively being its public face. This meant that I got to watch union officials squirm as they try to explain to me that not only was The Great Commotion wrong but that we live in this, the best of all possible unions. It also meant that I saw the arsey emails sent to The Great Commotion by a county councillor. Basically the Great Commotion was fundamentally existed to annoy people, something which DIY unofficial student newspapers have the most freedom to do.

I think another great thing about the GC was the lack of hassle there was in producing it, in fact it is amazing really that The Great Commotion came together at all really. The only time given over for planning was the last few minutes of Norwich Anarchist meetings, where we would decided who would write what and go are different ways. There was never any discussion of what the issue would look like as a whole, it wasn’t until the end of the year that we realised that certain sections would always appeared in the paper. We simple all wrote our articles, emailed them to every one and waited till the computer nerd provided me with a paper copy. At which point we would go to the pub and laugh at how funny/ insulting we’d been. I have to admit I didn’t always bother reading every one else before they want to "press", but they all ended up in my inbox ready for me decided if I wanted joint responsibility for them.

Only once did I fear for The Great Commotion’s future. That was when a writer wanted to pull an article in which some one had described Nick Griffin and the BNP as "Scum" and "shit". The objection came because "we can’t label people, that’s what fascists do." In the end the objections were rejected, on a majority vote. It wasn’t the objection its self which was important but what it hi lighted that was. It showed how different The Great Commotion writers where, as it had been privately suggested that we name and shame a BNP student who had been to the red white and blue festival and who came to UEA.

However the totally decentralised nature of the paper, the fact that no articles where ever accredited, and the fact that most of the time people where allowed complete individual freedom within there own articles, meant that no one was left defending ideas in other peoples articles that they did not really believe in. Some people (those who could quite get the idea that Anarchists did have a leader,) had decided that I was the public face of The Great Commotion and complained to me, but to be honest the sadist in me quite enjoyed it. So, we were lucky, the structure of The Great Commotion was strong enough to survive the different political views of its contributors.

The other thing which kept The Great Commotion together, and gave it a sense of coherence (it never felt like it was just a load of randomly throwing together articles,) was the fact that every one involved liked each other. There was no attempts to turn the paper into some ones ego project and no one was unnecessary obstreperous. In fact even when we got people of other political colours involved there was no serious arguments. Of course every one involved was on the far left and to one degree or another were friends with each other, but that wasn’t always helpful. I know for a fact that arguments among left-wingers are a lot more passionate then arguments between the left and the Tories and that mixing the personal and the political isn’t always smart. But arguments about the actual politics tended to be quickly separated form the paper, and to go one in the pub until late at night.

So I guess that if you want to start an unofficial student DIY "newspaper" then you have to find some on who’s done it before, if you can try to recreate something that used to exist, then you’ll know at least to a degree what it is you want to do, and may even have access to templates. Make it fun, make no attempt at being "fair and balanced" (that’s what the other papers are for) and find some one who knows how to use the photocopier.

SAM HILTON
WRITER