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The Guardian view on Syriza’s Essex connection The Guardian view on Syriza’s Essex connection
(about 2 months later)
One consequence of Syriza’s victory in Greece has been a flurry of publicity for the alma mater of some of the new governing party’s most prominent leaders. Until Sunday, Rena Dourou MA (Essex) was Syriza’s highest-ranking elected official, as governor of the Attica region. On Tuesday, Yanis Varoufakis PhD (Essex) was named as Syriza’s economics minister, tasked with the daunting job of renegotiating Greece’s debt. Both are among nearly 4,000 Greeks who have graduated from Albert Sloman’s once famously non-deferential university in the past half-century. Publicity and Essex University are words which have not always sat happily together from the days when the future Lord Triesman BA (Essex) was suspended for trying to create the Free University of Essex there in 1968. All the above, though, are part of the rich social science tradition with which Essex has long been associated, from the time of the poverty guru Peter Townsend onwards. Today that tradition continues with Essex’s indispensable British Election Study and its authoritative Institute for Social and Economic Research. With exquisite timing, however, Essex’s new dominance in Greek radical politics coincides with the reign of a hierarchical new Essex university regime under the soldier turned vice-chancellor Anthony Forster which smacks more of the Greek colonels than Athenian democracy. First Greece, then Spain, they chant. But there may be a job to do in Colchester too. One consequence of Syriza’s victory in Greece has been a flurry of publicity for the alma mater of some of the new governing party’s most prominent leaders. Until Sunday, Rena Dourou MA (Essex) was Syriza’s highest-ranking elected official, as governor of the Attica region. On Tuesday, Yanis Varoufakis PhD (Essex) was named as Syriza’s economics minister, tasked with the daunting job of renegotiating Greece’s debt. Both are among nearly 4,000 Greeks who have graduated from Albert Sloman’s once famously non-deferential university in the past half-century. Publicity and Essex University are words which have not always sat happily together from the days when students declared the Free University of Essex there in 1968 after the future Lord Triesman BA (Essex) and two others were suspended over their part in a student protest. All the above, though, are part of the rich social science tradition with which Essex has long been associated, from the time of the poverty guru Peter Townsend onwards. Today that tradition continues with the authoritative Institute for Social and Economic Research. With exquisite timing, however, Essex’s new dominance in Greek radical politics coincides with the reign of a hierarchical new Essex university regime under the soldier turned vice-chancellor Anthony Forster which smacks more of the Greek colonels than Athenian democracy. First Greece, then Spain, they chant. But there may be a job to do in Colchester too.
• This article was amended on 28 January 2015. The assertion that the British Election Study is currently based at Essex has been removed. While the study has been run from there for periods of time since it began in 1964, most recently from 2001, it was handed over to the Universities of Manchester, Nottingham and Oxford in 2013. The article was amended further on 29 January 2015 to amend a sentence that said the future Lord Triesman was suspended for trying to create the Free University of Essex.