When we hear ‘Berkeley’ we think students and hippies. And who am I to argue? The memories are still there: People's Park, the Doors at the Fillmore Ballroom. And a young band playing for free on the sidewalk west of the campus. Their name? Greatful Dead ... hadn't heard of them, but they weren't bad...

People's park was a curious thing. The hippies wanted to turn a dirt carpark into the Garden of Eden, and the University insisted on its property rights. OK, that's capitalism. But did the cops really have to open up on demonstrators with buckshot? Did California Governor Ronald Reagan really have to declare martial law?

In the aftermath there were illegal demonstrations; if you've seen the "Berkeley in the Sixties" video, you've seen that helicopter belching tear gas from its guts. I watched it from a second story window.

Our most daring foray was an illegal march west of the campus, right past where the Greatful Dead had played. The National Guard surrounded us, bayonets and all. I took off my Vietcong badge and dashed into a department store. They arrested 400 demonstrators that day, and treated them pretty badly. Which was a mistake, because they picked up a reporter in the sweep, and the San Francisco Chronicle put the expose on page one.

I stepped out of a side entrance. Looked right, looked left ... and there was a row of national guards with fixed bayonets, marching straight down the alley. I flattened myself against the wall and they marched past. It turned out a lot of the National Guard were students and sympathised with us.

A peaceful, legal march followed on Sunday. It was far bigger, but the impact wasn't that great. The problem was that students on their own have limited social power.

So the Berkeley left also tried to build links to workers.

I had my first experience during the 1970 Teamster wildcat strike. Militants in LA sent a group of their toughest guys up to set up pickets in Oakland, and some of us went out to support them. They were the biggest guys I've every seen -- have a look at TV wrestling some time, that will give you an idea. Although I'm almost 6 feet tall, I felt dwarfed, and intimidated by their general muscular self-confidence. I tried to compensate and fit in by saying ‘fuck’ a lot, but to little effect.

Still, it was a very good experience, from which I should have drawn two conclusions. First that it's good for students to link up with workers; but second, that we're not the same -- I was a total flop at pretending to be like them. Maybe I didn't learn the second lesson because of a second experience around the same time.

The postal workers held a national wildcat strike. It began in the east, rolling westward, but by the time it hit the Pacific Coast it was losing momentum. A bunch of us, mostly members of the International Socialists, accompanied by I think one genuine postal worker (a Socialist Workers’ Party member from the Berkeley Post Office, which was on strike but of little strategic importance) went down one morning to the main Oakland mail sorting facility. And we shut it down for a shift!

How was this possible? The workers there lacked organisation. They wanted to strike, though, and when they turned up and saw a picket line, they seized the opportunity to turn around and go home. I still have the Oakland Tribune clipping -- which unfortunately calls us the ‘National Socialists’.

A great experience as well, but one that tempted us to draw mistaken conclusions. We could kid ourselves that students could substitute themselves for the working class.

Although the strike was officially defeated, in the aftermath the government did make major concessions. Of course the outcome was decided by the big batallions further east, and in the big scheme of things our efforts were only a token. But we were there.