In which one battle may be lost but the fight goes on.

If you take a broad view, it’s pretty obvious what “On Course…for a fair future?” (NUS’s Education Priority Campaign) is. It’s the confused attempt of a union atrophied and shell-shocked after decades of misleadership and two crushing defeats over education funding to get back on its feet and reinvigorate the thing that is (or should be) at the very heart of its entire existence; free education activism. As such it contains both the kernels of a more positive future as well as tonnes of baggage that that misleadership, those defeats and all the demoralisation that’s come out of it all has created.

The meeting on the 9th consisted entirely of reports and discussion on the progress of the only three elements to concretely emerge from the campaign so far: the “Activism in Focus” training events, the “20:20 Vision” pamphlet and the project that is currently ambiguously referred to as “The Coalition.”

The dual character of the campaign itself (containing positive aspects while simultaneously being a less-than-militant and rather tentative product of years of defeat) is replicated within each of these things.

Take, for example, the “Activism in Focus” days, organised to re-equip (and in many cases, equip for the first time) student officers and activists with the basic arguments for free education and the campaigning skills with which to fight for it. But why has it taken the NUS so long to organise these events? When Education Not for Sale organised an event that was in many ways similar, officers who attended said it was a shame that the union itself wasn’t doing stuff like that. Now, at least, it’s having a go, but a politically healthier union would have made such activist training events a central focus right at the beginning of term. Junking the ultra-expensive campaigns launch to pay for them would have been a good idea, especially because practical, activist-focused training is a million times more effective at engaging people with a campaign than having them sit through some speeches and slide-shows delivered by NEC members, no matter how smart their clothes are.

Three hastily organised training events aren’t going to re-galvanise a layer of free education activists or mobilise a new one. But if they’re part of a shift in perspective – away from drinking white whine with Blairite ministers (yeah, I know I keep going on about that but it does say rather a lot about where we’re at) and towards organising and training our members on how to fight – then they’ve got an important role to play.

(I’m going to the third of the three days, by the way, in Birmingham on 17th November. It’s the day after a NATFHE rally outside the Association of Colleges conference – also in Birmingham - that coincides with NATFHE’s national strike, so if you’re a student unionist in the West Midlands who thinks that students and workers should unite and that NUS should get its act together when it comes to free education campaigning, I expect to see you at both events

As I said in my report of the previous Planning Meeting, the decision to produce “20:20 Vision” is a step forward. NUS going on the offensive to make propaganda about how we believe education should be organised is definitely a good thing. But free education is not a pipe-dream to be implemented 15 years down the line. It’s something to be fought for now.

The current proposal on the table for the format of the pamphlet is a series of questions, sub-divided by category. The categories include “what will the role of education be?” and “how will institutions be funded?” They’re the central, basic questions. Potentially, they allow the union to make devastating propaganda against every aspect of the privatisation of education. If it was being produced by a healthier NUS in a healthier time, “20:20 Vision” could be both a flame-thrower and an organising tool; something that could simultaneously be used to demolish the arguments against free education and whip rank-and-file students up into activity. But produced by this NUS in this time, it is doubtful whether it will be possible to use the pamphlet in this way. As ever with this sort of prediction, I will be delighted to be proved wrong.

It’s the same story with “The Coalition.” It’s a grand idea and within it there are kernels of immense potential. The basic plan is to create a campaigning alliance comprised of NUS and trade unions representing workers in the education sector (principally the teaching unions NUT, NATFHE, AUT, NASUWT and the general unions Unison, GMB and TGWU) to lobby the government over the review of the £3,000 top-up fees cap in 2008.

Top-up fees are less than a year away from introduction; simplistically limiting ourselves to saying “no to fees” would be suicidal. NUS needs to adopt an “umbrella” approach to free education campaigning; the overarching “umbrella” is a resolute opposition to all fees and a total commitment to universal free education funded by progressive taxation, but under the umbrella are a number of transitional “hooks” that campaigning can be hung on. I’m talking about course cuts, campus closures (more on that later) students’ rights at work, debt, campus workers’ rights, and a whole host of other issues around which it’s possible to build immediately winnable campaigns. The review of the cap is another one of those issues. If NUS build a successful campaigning alliance with the labour movement around any or all of these issues, then not only can we win some victories but also develop a new generation of free education activists whose momentum can be used to challenge and ultimately abolish fees altogether.

On top of all of this, genuine campaigning unity between the NUS and the labour movement could create an activist conveyor-belt between the student movement and the trade unions, and the trade unions are in dire need of some new, young members and activists. So, for all kinds of reasons, “The Coalition” could be exactly what’s needed. (Although Julian Nicholds’ first attempt at coming up with a name for it – ‘Keep Your Cap On’ – clearly needs some work.)

But again, the proposal as it currently stands is infected with the political confusion borne out of demoralisation and misleadership. For example, the Liberal Democrats (crap politics on pretty much everything and even their education policy isn’t that good anymore) are suggested as potential “partners.” I’m in favour of lobbying MPs of all parties and pressing them to vote in line with NUS’s demands, but a weird kind of business unionism that ties us into “Coalitions” with parties that have no connection whatsoever (ideological or structural) to the labour movement is the wrong approach, especially when linking NUS into the broader labour movement is an integral part of what Julian himself states that “The Coalition” is about. Again, a politically healthier NUS wouldn’t be chasing down such blind allies.

I’m doing my best to not be cynical about things this year – Priority Campaigns included. I want to keep going to these Planning Meetings because I want to do what I can to make sure that the Campaign’s positive elements are built upon and its weaknesses are properly challenged. Being faced with a situation like this is both encouraging and depressing: encouraging because you can see the potential that can be developed, but depressing because you can also see the clear danger that the potential will simply be strangled and buried beneath the baggage that the Campaign’s carrying. So on that front, the fight goes on.

And, speaking of the fight going on…

It’s not very often that you get to go from talking about how to develop the struggle against the privatisation of education to actually standing on the frontline of that struggle and fighting it within 48 hours. But we did that last week and a cold Friday morning saw myself and four other NEC members in Plymouth. For anyone who doesn’t know, the University of Plymouth has historically had a number of campuses at various locations around Devon, one of which is Rolle College in Exmouth, over fifty miles away. Plymouth’s Vice Chancellor Roland Lavinsky came into his job with a calculated ideological project of closing all of these external campuses and relocating everything to a central location in Plymouth itself. Despite only being a campus of a thousand or so students, the Rolle College branch of the University of Plymouth Students’ Union has organised an inspiring campaign against this closure (you can read about it here: )

Friday 11th was the date of the Board of Governors’ meeting at which the fate of Rolle College was finally to be decided. Over 100 students braved the rain, wind and the shockingly early start to make the hour-plus journey from Exmouth into Plymouth to rally outside the meeting. Two hours of shouting left everyone present hoarse, and Rolle’s fighting spirit that I’d experienced when I visited in September was in abundant evidence again.

At one point, I had the megaphone thrust into my hands to lead some chanting. I should have taken that opportunity to express my thoughts about the campaign – I didn’t. I’ll try and do it here, so I hope that some Exmouth students might be reading this.

Regardless of the result, the campaign the Rolle College Students’ Union organised was an inspiration to the entire student movement. It’s been a textbook example of what a union that engages its members in its campaigns and fights relentlessly for their rights looks like. It’s shown what’s possible when students and workers unite. It’s shown how local communities can be mobilised. It’s shown how to incorporate campaign against immediate issues (in this case campus closures, obviously) into a general fight for free education. It’s been incredible, and it’s reminded the NUS of the type of spirit that’s needed at a national level.

I lead some nice-sounding chants when I got handed the megaphone, but that’s what I should have said. If those words would have meant anything at the time, they will definitely be cold comfort now – because the governors were unmoving. Rolle College will close in 2008 and “relocate” to what is currently a car park at Plymouth University.

The university management said that the financial benefit of saving £500,000 each year (which is apparently what closing Rolle College will achieve) was too great to ignore – so at least they didn’t try to sugar the pill. They were open and honest about the fact that it was the needs of capital and the needs of profit that came first, not the needs of students and their education.

I know I wasn’t the only person in the room who was thinking that slashing the salaries of Roland Lavinsky and some of the other his anti-free education, anti-union bureaucrats on his board of governors would be a much more reasonable way of saving some cash.

This defeat is dangerous. Not only does it set a precedent for ruthless Vice Chancellors to behave like cowboys with students’ lives all over the country, it could have a massively demoralising effect. Like I said, this campaign was pretty much textbook. So a lot of people will probably be saying, “if the perfect, textbook campaign can’t win, nothing can. So what’s the point?” The defeat may also have broken the back of the Rolle College union – it will be difficult for it to maintain its impressive fighting spirit and campaigning perspective now that each executive for the next two years will be occupied with making provisions for the “relocation”.

But there is a point to fighting, for all sorts of reasons. If Rolle College hadn’t fought, the precedent set would have been even worse. It would have meant saying to cutback-happy VCs everywhere “go ahead, do what you want – the student movement won’t fight you.”

I don’t have a readymade analysis as to what went wrong, and I can’t say that if this or that tactic had been changed then we would have won. It’s certainly the case that a stronger, healthier national union would have improved the situation, but I’m not so naïve as to assert that if the NUS had organised a first-term national demo for free education then Rolle College would definitely be staying open. But it might have helped.

This defeat isn’t just a disaster for the people of Exmouth. It’s not just a disaster for those students whose degrees will be disrupted by the closure. For the NUS, it’s a disaster because the defeat amounts to the smashing of a part of one of our Constituent Member unions that genuinely knew what a union was for. In these times, our movement is in desperate need of those.

Rolle’s fighting spirit means, I’m sure, that it won’t take this defeat lying down. 2008 is still three years away. There is still time to organise a continued fight back against this appalling decision. Rolle College must continue to work with affected trade unions to make sure that the campaigning unity between workers and students that was developed throughout the course of the campaign is maintained.

The campaign is not over, but it’s necessary to face reality squarely: this may be a battle lost. But even if it is a battle lost, the struggle goes on. The NUS owes it to the students of Rolle College and their union to ensure that other campuses and other unions across the country do not meet the same fate. The NUS owes it to Rolle College to ensure that it organises a real, bottom-up campaign that will fight the privatisation of education and the cuts and closures it brings. The NUS owes it to Rolle College to ensure that it never wavers in its commitment to free education. The NUS owes it to the students of Rolle College and their union to ensure that we do as they did, and fight.

In solidarity –

Daniel Randall

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