Students who did try to work during occupations were bullied, while non-Marxist university speakers found their lectures picketed or broken up. He made his first appearance as director designate through a window as students had barricaded the door. Before Miller arrived, militant students staged an occupation of the polytechnic demanding that his appointment be rescinded (the fact that he had worked in Rhodesia was held against him and he was accused of “racism”, even “fascism”). Even before Miller took up his appointment, the group had issued a statement promising “the most serious disturbances this country has yet seen in a polytechnic”. At the time the polytechnic’s branch of the National Union of Students was in the grip of the International Socialists, a Trotskyist group for whom militancy for its own sake was a guiding principle. The new institution had been formed from a shotgun marriage between two unwilling partners (the Northern and Northwestern Polytechnics), with an academic structure involving an unusually high level of student representation. Two years later he was appointed director of the newly formed Polytechnic of North London and found that he had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.
