Elizabeth Sommerville – what a lead balloon

A group of ULU college students met at SOAS in the afternoon on the day of the Miss London University competition to make banners. We discussed how the protest was going to go, who was going to be filming and printed off self-designed anti-sexism flyers.

Organised Independence member Elizabeth “we’re not political, we just support the best person, honest” Sommerville only joined the protest as we stormed passed a café she was sat in on Oxford Street. Elizabeth put down her coffee, gave chase and marched with us for the last 50 yards. Once on the corner of the street where the Miss University Contest was taking place Elizabeth immediately tried to take over, shouting “right, let’s have a mellow, peaceful protest. So if they don’t listen to us this year, we can come back and be more militant next year” – exactly with what authority she was saying this no one knew. As she hadn’t been at the activist meeting earlier at SOAS where we had decided what we were going to do, how did she know this wasn’t our intention anyway? Right away the crowd of feminist activists began to say “who exactly is this woman and why is she telling is what to do”?, “I’ve no clue who she is” said another.

2 of our group had Guestlist for the event and we had previously proposed 1 of them went inside to flyer the audience with our anti-sexism leaflets. This had already been decided by everyone earlier in the evening. Elizabeth immediately began to say that this shouldn’t happen in a very vocal, heavy handed way. Thankfully she was ignored and did not enforce her will onto the SOAS Womens Officer and the other student with Guestlist.

At SOAS earlier that evening 2 documentary students from Goldsmiths Womens Soc had been filming, one of them was the Womens Officer and had interviewed lots of different activists and had been present through out. As soon as Elizabeth saw them she immediately and indignantly shouted “who’s been asked if they are alright to be filmed”? A few hands raised next to hers (not many beyond the 2 people she was with), whilst most people laughed because had Elizabeth been with activists at SOAS all day actually building the demo, she would’ve seen the crew from the start and known they were as much a part of the event as anyone else.

Someone who was accompanying Elizabath (a tall ginger man) then started talking photos with his mobile. Without asking anyone’s permission. But Elizabeth didn’t seem to mind this.

Elizabeth than through out the protest repeatedly veto’d certain ‘chants’ she didn’t approve of, encouraging demonstrators to only sing songs she approved of. She then was the first person to leave the demo.

What a fantastic feminist activist. No building the event (apart from the 2 friends she brought), no banners, no signs, simply a lot of bossing everyone else around even though she’d had no involvement in the actual day at SOAS. I’d definitely vote her for NUS Womens Officer!