"We're very lucky, and I couldn't face the idea of that changing"

"This is not the end – it’s just the end of the beginning," insists 23-year-old Bean Reoch who stands smiling, her back turned to the building that has become a second home in the last seven months. Chants still echo along University Avenue as almost three dozen demonstrators pour out into the afternoon air, the door now permanently pinned shut for the first time since February.

“I have a daughter so I couldn’t stay overnight most nights. But she is in nursery during the day so I would come down and do what I can," said the University of Glasgow Politics student outside a recently-emptied Hetherington, now awash with a pack of press photographers.

“She is one-and-a-half years old and too young to understand but one of my main reasons for getting involved was that when she reaches university age, if she chooses to go, I want it to be what it has been for me and my contemporaries. We’re very lucky and I couldn’t face the idea of that changing."

Neither could her fellow occupiers, a minimum of three opting to stay behind each night to ensure entry remained open the following morning amid fears a second strike to oust the Free Hetherington Group could be on the cards.

Despite a clear division of opinion within the fourth oldest university in the UK on the movement and its means, many watched in awe as police poured in on the morning of March 22 ready to retain the former research club. Failure to do so, it would appear, did little but inspire others.

“The dynamic definitely did change as time went on," added Cairsti Russell, 24, who is preparing for a return to Glasgow after leaving Strathclyde with a Masters.

"With the eviction, that brought in a lot of new people. The first week after it was almost like the very first week all over again with new people coming in. They brought a new energy to the place which it needed."

By August, protestors were celebrating a series of "significant concessions" including the opening of a new postgraduate club at the university. However, as the final person to leave the building admits, a negotiated end could not have come sooner.

Third-year Politics student, Stuart Rodger, 22, concludes: “From May onwards I think there was a sluggish atmosphere in the air… and I think people were acknowledging that it was not politically useful any more.

"Activists wield political power by making a public impact and getting headlines in newspapers. And we couldn’t do that anymore because we lack novelty factor."