In 1825, four years before Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police, the Cambridge University Constabulary was founded. Thanks to the Universities Act of 1825 which essentially enabled vice-chancellors to create their own police force, university constables could police not only students, but the town itself. For the next 70 years, this police force terrorised local people - especially women, imprisoning suspected sex-workers and “small offenders”, in the Spinning House, a university-owned workhouse. Proctor street-patrols continued until the 1960’s, although - despite still possessing the power to incarcerate students - the University Constabulary have since ceded most of their power to the Cambridge Constabulary, who have upheld their predecessor’s history of violence and harassment.

“The academic work which happens inside the university is not morally-neutral”

This often-forgotten part of the university’s history is instructive in three ways. Firstly, it demonstrates that the academic work which happens inside the university is not morally-neutral, and is often sustained by violence occurring “outside” the institution. The beautiful colleges we know so well are essentially fortifications, their iconic architecture evidencing the hostile relationship the early university fostered with the local community, buying up or enclosing vast tracts of land and forcing local bailiffs to swear an oath to uphold the privileges of the university.

Secondly, these stories illustrate the gendered dynamic of this violence - as well as policing more generally - which would be most visible at the turn of the century, as the university establishment fought tooth and nail to prevent women from being full members of the university. Perhaps, most of all, the existence of Cambridge University Constabulary suggests that these violences are not simply a byproduct of a university embroiled in patriarchy and colonialism, but fundamental to the university’s conception of itself.

That the university has a police force implies an entitlement to police. Cambridge positions itself as a paternalistic authority figure, which maintains the legal right to police due to its status as an intellectual authority. The university’s mission statement asserts a one-way process of knowledge-production, gesturing to the ‘the place of the University within the broader academic and local community’ but never recognising the agency of this community.

Entitlement is the privileging of one side of a two-way relationship. It’s the essence of the landlord university we’ve encountered in previous columns. The university sees its financial interests as a priori more important than those of people living in its property, or, indeed, the city at large. Midsummer Common, one of the largest pieces of common land in the city, is a good example of this principle in action. In the 16th century, the university sent proctors to patrol the annual Traveller’s Midsummer Fayre on the Common.

“The consequences of policing and landownership in the city are by no means identical, but the similarities are striking”

500 years later, this year, Jesus College deployed private security on Victoria Avenue for the duration of the Fayre ‘to protect college assets’. Such consistent antagonism towards the GRT community not only illustrates the pervasive anti-Traveller discrimination in the city, but also the way in which the university’s paternalistic understanding of itself has always enabled it it to surveil and dispossess those it deems to be obstructing its enlightened interests. This understanding has been maintained by the power to police, and the power which comes with being one of the city’s largest landowners.

The consequences of policing and landownership in the city are by no means identical, but the similarities are striking. Landownership, like a police force, provides a ‘legal’ entitlement on top of a preexisting philosophical entitlement with devastating results. And, terrifyingly, this principle reproduces itself. Think about the Oxbridge-educated politicians, businesspeople, police-commissioners that you know. Cressida Dick, Jacob Rhys-Mogg, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair. Imagine your first experience of adulthood takes place in an institution which deems itself an unquestionable force for intellectual good - an owner, rather than a participant in a community.

When you find yourself in a position of authority, wouldn’t it be easy to act in the same way, create the laws that make such authoritarian governance possible? This is exactly what Oxford-graduate Robert Jenkinson did in his term as Prime Minister with the introduction of the Universities Act that gave Oxbridge police powers.

So we’ve come full circle. Even if the university no longer controls workhouses, it still controls land. The university’s annual report in 2020 boasted that ‘the university’s estates strategy is reshaping the city’. Nothing new there. This city has been strangled into shape by centuries of Cambridge University’s entitlement. It’s hard to imagine it any other way. As local historian Anthony Carpen notes, we’re dealing with ‘a very large institution with opaque systems of public accountability’. Step one, then, is accountability. Land ownership entitles institutions to all sorts of arbitrary power - from rent hikes to evictions - so joining tenant unions and forming community networks is crucial to building the kind of collective power which can resist and hold this power accountable.

Secondly, we need to make the university’s land ownership public. Redistributing power requires understanding its distribution. Land registry documents are inaccessible, and college records are patchy. There’s a lot of work to be done here - but some exciting projects are underway, so get in touch to get involved.

Finally, and most importantly, we need to challenge the narrative which the university still clings to: its entitlement to power, to police. Systems of domination, abolitionists remind us, exist in our heads too, and our conception of the university creates the conditions necessary for its power to continue to be exercised unchecked.