It’s going on all over the country. Across FE and HE, “unpopular” – meaning “unprofitable” – courses are being cut, campuses closed and facilities restricted without a thought to student needs or welfare. University and college bosses have enthusiastically assisted the Blair government in its project to essentially dismantle and sell-off Further and Higher Education piece by piece. It’s because of that project that we have to pay fees, that our lecturers go on strike, that we can’t get into our libraries when we need to, that our halls of residence are owned by private companies and that services like catering, cleaning and security are outsourced to anti-union agencies.

But student unions are fighting back. Earlier this year, the University of Plymouth’s Exmouth campus provided an inspiring example of how to run an anti-closure campaign, and now vibrant, activist-led campaigns at the University of Sussex and Lambeth College are continuing to show that students will not take the destruction of their education lying down.

In early March, students at Sussex occupied their library in protest at a recently announced raft of cuts from the Vice Chancellor, including the proposed abolition of the chemistry department. A demonstration on March 14th mobilised several hundred students, and USSU has so far been successful in channelling students’ anger at the bosses’ plan into their ‘Sort US Out’ campaign: essentially a comprehensive declaration of war on the university management. I was honoured to be invited to speak at the March 14th demonstration, and following a meeting with management on Friday 17th, activists have been successful in forcing the bosses to postpone their plans. Check out http://www.ussu.net/sortUSout for more.

At Lambeth, the students’ union has already organised an exemplary campaign against canteen price hikes and privatisation, which succeeded in getting prices reduced after only a few days of campaigning and ultimately aims to get the private company kicked off campus and the running of the canteen taken back in-house. Now, the college’s principal has announced a £2,600,000 cuts plan that would see several courses – and therefore jobs – go, as well as the destruction of the college’s historic garden at its Clapham site.

A demonstration on March 22nd mobilised almost 150 students (an impressive feat at a multi-site FE college) and several members of staff. Both NATFHE and Unison representatives said that their members would be prepared to take strike action over the cuts. Again, I was privileged to be asked to speak at the demonstration and spoke about how the campaigns at Lambeth and elsewhere show how students can build grassroots, rank-and-file resistance to college bosses’ plans.

Over the river in North London, students at London Metropolitan held a demonstration later that afternoon that I was unable to attend. They’re protesting at the imposition of a constitution on their union by university management – a clear breach of SU autonomy and evidence of how education sector bosses are seeking to carve out the student voice and undermine students’ ability to resist their plans. Undoubtedly, London Met SU’s support for the heroic NATFHE dispute that took place there last year did not endear them to management, so these outrageously anti-union moves are depressing but not entirely surprising.

The government and the education sector bosses think they have won the battle on fees, and what we’re seeing in terms of cuts, closures, privatisations and clampdowns on union autonomy and democracy are the next stages in their war. But the grassroots resistance provided by unions at Sussex, Lambeth, London Met and elsewhere are showing that students will not let belligerent bosses trample all over them.

A healthy national union would act as a co-ordinating body to link campaigns like these together and make the political links between the issues they’re fighting on. A healthy national union would facilitate skills sharing between unions to help campaigns like these start up elsewhere. For the NUS to become that union, we need to arrest our descent into business-unionist service-provision and start taking our lead from grassroots, activist campaigns like these ones. Maybe we’re not quite ready to occupy whole universities or launch general strikes, but we don’t always have to go across the channel for proof that another, better, activist-focused student movement is possible.

In solidarity –

Daniel Randall

PS: NUS EQUIVOCATION ON KEY POLITICAL ISSUES: END IT TODAY!

UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR NATFHE/AUT!

The National Union of Students fully supports the current NATFHE/AUT pay dispute, including the boycott of assessment. Apparently. So it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect that, on the sections of our website devoted to the issue, you’d find slogans such as “Solidarity with NATFHE/AUT” or “Support your lecturers”. But no. The slogan – the main, headline, banner slogan that people will see first if they look for evidence of NUS’s position on the issue – is “End it today!”

(Check out this article to see what I’m talking about.)

If you read it hard enough, you can actually tell that NUS supports the dispute, but only just. It’s a funny way of supporting a strike to simply demand its immediate cessation. The website explains that the demand is really aimed at university bosses who have so far refused to negotiate, but a slogan such as “bosses: pay up now!” would be a much more radical way of expressing this same sentiment, and wouldn’t leave anyone in any doubt whose side we were on.

Vice Chancellors all over the country have already tried to drive a wedge between students and workers on campus by threatening dire consequences if SUs come out in support of their lecturers’ dispute. NUS’s equivocation and attempt to bury its actual position under as much ambiguous and misleading language as possible plays right into their hands.

Gemma Tumelty told me recently that she was “worried that we’re losing the arguments” on the issue of the strike, with big HE unions such as Leeds coming out against the strikers. I believe that Gemma and her political co-thinkers on the NEC do genuinely support the dispute, but if they’re worried about losing the arguments then they should use their positions to make sure NUS’s propaganda on the matter is a bit sharper.

Ironically, the aforementioned section of the website also includes an article complaining that NUS’s position has been “misrepresented in the press”. Maybe actually being up-front – and, fuck it, proud – of our position of support for striking workers would help us avoid being misrepresented in the future.

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