Muse

Daniel Cooper is the Vice-President of the

University of London Union. Last week

Cooper, in his response to the Reverend

Stephen Williams, declined an invita-

tion to lay a wreath, as a representative

of the members of the University of

London Union, at UOL’s Remembrance

seservice.

‘Remeber the internationalists and socialists’ - tut, we’ve been at it again you know; getting it wrong. Cooper’s got the right idea; forget the dead soilders, its all about the socialists. Remebrance Service will have been and gone by the time this issue gets out, and you’ll all have wasted your valuable Sunday, crying and being stupid staring at a cenotaph, without a statue of Marx in sight. I hI however, informed by the enlightend Cooper, I will have been at home reading a good bit of Liebknecht - yeah, that’s what all those veterns really want, a bit of peace on a Sunday - they haven’t got that many left, you know.

You probably won’t remember voting for Daniel Cooper for the University of London Union Vice-President - that’ll be because you didn’t of course, unless you’re one of the tiny percentage who actually turned out to vote. But it turns out that Mr Cooper has been doing a great deal of things on ouron our ‘behalf’, despite few people paying attention, the most recent of which

Remains discovered at a site in Leicester will be interred in the city's cathedral if they are con-firmed to be those of Richard III, according to government officials.

The bones, which were found be-neath a car park by a team of ar-chaeologists in September, are currently undergoing DNA testing to compare them with those of Richard's descendants. Possible proposals for the remains were discussed by Leicester, York and Nottinghamshire MPs in a meet-ing on Friday, with a written answer from justice minister Helen Grant confirming the deci-sion to inter the skeleton in Leicester Cathedral.

The future of what could be the bones of the 15th-century king has been the subject of intense debate in recent weeks, with campaigners from both York and Leicester con-testing that the remains should be buried in those cities. Joe Ann RiccaRicca, founder of The Richard III Foundation, expressed disappoint-ment at the decision: "If his re-mains are really going to be buried in Leicester, we would hope he at least has a traditional Christian service. But it's kind of a monstrous act when you know that the former king of England had ex-pressed the desire and a wish to be buried at York Minster."

Joe Ann Ricca, founder and chief executive of The Richard III Foun-dation, which had argued the skel-eton should be interred in York, said she was disappointed at the decision.

The identity of the skeleton, which shows signs of a deformed spine, the head of a barbed iron arrow embedded in its back and a gashed skull, is not expected to be confirmed for several weeks. Al-though the project team remains cautiouscautious, the location of the re-mains in the choir area of the friary – where the monarch's body was taken following his defeat in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 – have added to speculation that they could be those of the king.

JAMES PRATT

dent politics. There’s nothing wrong with a socialist union, but ironically - it’s not very representative.

ClaiClaire Solomon was president before the previous incumbent, and a shocking excuse for a representative of students - or, at least, myself. From her claims that ‘the view that

Jews have been persecuted all throughout his-

tory is one that has been fabricated in the last

100 or so years’ to her explusion from the SocialistSocialist Worker’s Party for what was char-acterised as an ‘internal dispute’, Solomon was always controversial, but most worry-ingly - she was representing you - and, unless your so right wing the Socialst Work-er’s Party won’t have you, or an anti-semite, that’s a problem

editorial.

Salvatore Romeo exaplines why you should have voted in the ULU elections.

Daniel Cooper:Representing you?

student politics.

Bones.

It seems to me that the issues people are getting most worked up about can be boiled down to Daniel (and now Michael) being elected on a relatively small turn out - it's not Dan or Michael's fault that the students who bother to vote in these elections have voted for left-wing candidates. I for one am proud to have a ULU president that has taken a principled stand on an issue that other people so clearly find disagreeable. And before anyone blebleats on about politicising rememberance - rememberance is already political and a distasteful kind of political at that.

Winter

veterans - is just actually a rightist manipu-

lative construction, trying to justify a self-in-

terested war of the elite. Oh, and I purposly

haven’t mentioned the second world war

because any intelligent person knows that it

really had nothing to do with humanitarian

intervention, that was just a guise for obvious

imperialism - everyone knows that. You’re so

ignorant and co-ercable.’

Cooper might not have written ‘signed, Vice

President’, but the Rev.Williams knew who

he was - what his title is. Cooper didn’t bow

out of the offer graciously, he took the op-

portunity to teach the Reverend a lesson;

explain to him how his version of history

(with a little ‘h’, no doubt) is so superior, so

wwell sourced. Cooper’s response showed no

respect for the dead, just a contept for the

people who commemorate them, and the

rituals by which they do so. Finally, not con-

tent with his ‘lesson’ being limited to the

uneducated Reverand, he posted his re-

sponse on his blog, for all to see and learn

from.

Not once did Cooper suggest someone else

would take his place on our behalf, not once

did he mention the people he purports to

represent. No, Cooper’s response was

about one person only - Daniel Cooper, and

how much more intelligent he is than us.

Too busy giving the Reverend a history

lesson Cooper forgot to do his job - lesson Cooper forgot to do his job -

“We should instead remember the inter-nationalists and socialists. We should remember the...poets and satirists...”

Of course, this is our fault. I didn’t vote in

the elections - did you? No. Less than one

percent did. This years manifestos for ‘Presi-

dent’ were full of words like ‘liberation’,

‘anti-fascism’ and ‘constitutional reform’. The

root of this is that the only people who care

enough to run are so highly politicised they

don’t represent anyone other than their

left-wing friends, who vote for them and

canvas us outside Strand. Where were

words like ‘opening hours’, ‘librabries’,

‘r‘resources’, ‘exams’ or ‘teaching’?

Cooper must have thought that what he

doing was so cleverly informed; ‘What you

don’t get Rev is that all those countless cere-

monies you‘ve presided over all these years -

with all those crying widows and wounded

Internet Activism: What do

people online have to say?

ULU has the potential to be a voice for huge number of students -

and once again has been hijacked by a minority who seem to think

that the sacrifice made by millions of soldiers in conflicts for free-

dom should be trivialised, turned into publicity and sensationalised.

The view on this group is, at best, misguided and at worst a com-

plete inaccuracy. ULU you should be ashamed and to paraphrase

the ideology that you so worship "students of the University of

London unite" against this travesty.

The whole point of our outrage is not so much

your political stance, but the fact you refuse to lay

a wreath which represents an apolitical mark of

respect not a political statement of any kind. You

are the president of ULU the voting system of

which is dubious at best but lets not go there, you

are suppose to represent us all, and refusing to lay

a wa wreath I'd imagine alienates and fails to repre-

sent far more students than it succeeds in repre-

I see no justification of Dan's actions

other than to give maximum publicity to

his own bizarre views. Showing a com-

plete lack of respect to those who have

died and ignoring the opinions of the

majority of ULU members...

What I don't think is right - because it isn't fair - is to

start saying that Dan should resign for having a partic-

ular view and having acted on it. This is the nature of

holding a position in a union. As a ULU officer, you

don't have constant access to polling or referenda. You

have a Senate (one vote per College), and if you're

lucky you have one sabbatical colleague. Dan had no

susuch luck, and was on his own.

Nothing in the history of ULU

seems to have fired up as much

debate as Cooper’s letter, so what

did people have to say on Facebook

about Cooper’s reasoning?