In 1992 I started at Leeds University studying Geography, Sociology and Politics. Whilst interesting and offering an excellent chance to learn about the world, the hours were not onerous. This left me with a lot of time to pursue photography which I did so as photographer and, later, also photo-editor of ‘Leeds Student’ the newspaper which served Leeds Uni and the then Leeds Polytechnic. It was a formative time and strong in my mind are the demonstrations against the reduction in grants and the introduction of loans that took place fairly frequently in Yorkshire and in London. This shot below from 1994 is one of very many I took at such demos.

Jim Murphy headed this demo in Leeds while he was President of the NUS. I think it was the following year he dropped the NUS’ policy opposing the abolition of the student grant. The year after his Presidency ended he was chosen by labour to contest a seat in the General Election (hmm). I always rather hoped he would be made Eduction Secretary but I guess that made too much sense with his experience of the system so I was never able to sell this image for £££ when he may possibly have denied supporting grants over loans.

The slogans of ‘Living Grants Now and ‘Grants not loans’ seems a distant dream given the escalation of loans and tuition fees taking the cost of a university education to about £50k now. What will happen to universities after this crisis remains to be seen. I suspect a large number will struggle as students decide to take vocational courses instead of expensive, socially distanced university courses.

Anyway, with the highest print run of any student paper at 35,000 weekly Leeds Student was an excellent forum and I was amazed given the number of people taking photography at the poly and the experience that could be gleaned that none of them wanted to shoot for the paper so I found myself, with one or two others, covering about a dozen stories weekly.

When there was a demo, I would go on a bus to London (or other city) with other students, photograph the demo all afternoon, take a bus back to arrive at about 10pm, process the film and print a few of the best, then scan the prints ready for inclusion when the paper went to print on Thursday morning.

Most of the images were shot in monochrome but during my final year the paper excitingly became the first in the country to print with colour covers. I shot mundane student stories but also sportsmen, politicians, royalty and even Richard Whiteley who gave me a tie from his legendary collection. I still have all of the negatives neatly filed but much ignored.