Abstract
Initially admitted to the United Kingdom on a short-term visa, the disabled German student activist Rudi Dutschke applied for a student visa in the United Kingdom in 1970. His application was rejected on grounds of national security. Dutschke was one of the first aliens who made use of his right to appeal, but the closed material procedure applied in his case meant that critical evidence remained undisclosed. Far from being ‘simply a historical curiosity’, the Dutschke case powerfully illustrates how two social dynamics at the centre of the moral panic in the late 1960s – immigration and student protest – were linked and framed as a threat to the nation.
Highlights
Rudi Dutschke is widely recognised as an icon of the German student movement
Admitted to the United Kingdom on a short-term visa, the disabled German student activist Rudi Dutschke applied for a student visa in the United Kingdom in 1970
He had been admitted to the United Kingdom on a short-term basis to recover from the attack, and his visa was renewed several times on condition that he would not engage in political activity, study for a postgraduate degree at a British university or write for publication
Summary
Admitted to the United Kingdom on a short-term visa, the disabled German student activist Rudi Dutschke applied for a student visa in the United Kingdom in 1970. As I have shown, there is another reason why Dutschke’s life still deserves attention: after an assassination attempt in 1968 he was severely disabled and was no longer able to conform to the public image of the fearless (able-bodied) student leader He continued to be politically relevant.[8] This article draws on a transnational approach to analyse events during Dutschke’s exile in the United Kingdom in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The assassination attempt in April 1968 had left him with severe brain injuries and he suffered from panic attacks and social anxiety He had been admitted to the United Kingdom on a short-term basis to recover from the attack, and his visa was renewed several times on condition that he would not engage in political activity, study for a postgraduate degree at a British university or write for publication. There was considerable protest against the decision to expel Dutschke from the United Kingdom, his supporters were not able to challenge the new cross-party consensus to ‘clean up’ Britain and to (re)establish law and order that shaped the decade.[12]
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