Workers' Liberty

These are bad times for the Socialist Action group. Not only did the defeat of Ken Livingstone mean the loss of their sinecures at City Hall, their front group “Student Broad Left” has now almost disappeared. In an attempt to shore up their position, SA have hit out at their erstwhile allies in the SWP.

Education Not for Sale, an anti-capitalist student alliance in which Workers' Liberty students are involved, held the first meetings of its new steering committee on 8 June. It was attended by activists and student union officers from institutions around the country, and was characterised by lively discussion on a variety of issues.

Despite the exam season, about 75 activists attended "Reclaim the Campus", a conference sponsored by Education Not for Sale on 17 May.

About 400 students and academics protested today, May 28th at Nottingham University against the attempts currently under way to deport Hicham Yezza, a former university student now employed on the

Five members of Sheffield University student union’s delegation to the 2008 National Union of Student’s conference (including myself) face disciplinary action following their refusal to vote in line with a “mandate” imposed on them by their union’s Council in favour of the NUS Governance Review.

See the Education Not for Sale website.

Numa Andrés Paredes Betancourt, a member of the National Executive Committee of the ACEU (one of Colombia’s main student union federations), visited Britain recently as part of a trip organised by

On 15 April, Behrooz Karimizadeh, one of the founding activists in the Iranian socialist group Freedom and Equality-Seeking Students, paid 300,000 toman (roughly £16,000) to be released.

This year’s National Union of Students conference passed a motion from UCL Union calling for NUS to lobby the government to ban the fascist website Redwatch.

Come to the Reclaim the Campus conference on 17 May to discuss the way forward for the student movement!

On 1 April, the National Union of Students conference in Blackpool narrowly voted to reject the NUS leadership’s “Governance Review”, which would have abolished what little democracy remains in our union and institutionalised its conversion into a pro-government lobbying organisation.

At the National Union of Students conference in Blackpool (1-3 April), the left succeeded in denying the NUS leadership the two-thirds majority it needed to push through its anti-democratic "Governance Review".

Mehdi Kazemi is a 19 year old gay man being threatened with deportation to Iran.

A large teachers’ strike has been called for Tuesday 18 March in France, with teachers in many schools voting to strike indefinitely. As the preparations for this are underway, the JCR (the LCR’s youth wing) has been mobilising to get word out to lycée (roughly equivalent to post-16/FE college) students, at a time when the organisation has identified expansion into that age group as a priority.

It has been some time since there was any meaningful link between the real struggles faced by the working class majority of students and the debates that took place at the annual conference of what is, officially, their union – the NUS. This year that disconnection will be as acute as ever, and (more significantly) we may see the end of the potential to ever reconcile it.

The success of ENS Women at this year’s NUS Women’s Conference (13-15 March) in passing radical left-wing policy and mobilising a significant number of conference delegates around socialist feminist politics, is testimony to the hard work of our activists both within NUS and outside it with Feminist Fightback over the last two and a half years. So is the result of the election held at the conference for NUS National Women’s Officer.

There have been interesting election results in a number of university student unions over the last couple of months.

The SWP/Student Respect have lost control of their two strongholds, Manchester University and SOAS in London.

On 5 March, a 300-plus strong general meeting of UCL Union passed a motion proposed by socialist activist Sham Rajyaguru, president of UCL’s Stop the War Society, to ban the Officer Training Corps, University Royal Navy Units, University of London Air Squadron and all other military organisations from freshers’ events and other union-sponsored events, union premises, and student-run media. Now the right of the union has responded by suspending left-wing General Secretary Sam Godwin.

(This is a reply to an article in 'Communist Student', the newspaper of the student group linked to the CPGB/Weekly Worker.

The success of the ENS Women group (linked to Education Not for Sale) at this year's NUS Women’s Conf

From Education Not For Sale

On 5 March, a 300-plus strong general meeting of UCL Union passed a motion proposed by socialist activist Sham Rajyaguru, president of UCL's Stop the War Society, to ban the Officer Training Corps, University Royal Navy Units, University of London Air Squadron and all other military organisations from freshers' events and other union-sponsored events, union premises, and student-run media. Now the right of the union has responded by suspending left-wing General Secretary Sam Godwin.

The National Union of Students conference is taking place on 1-3 April, with the right wing threatening to close down all of the union’s remaining democratic structures with their ‘Governance Review’. The Education Not for Sale network, which has played a prominent role in the fight for a democratic union, is standing candidates for four positions in the full-time elections as well as one for the part-time ‘Block of 12’ posts.

In the last month, Sussex University (in Brighton) has seen hundreds-strong meetings of students and education workers to oppose the anti-democratic, pro-business “reforms” being pushed by the university’s management team. The first mass assembly of the Sussex Education Not for Sale campaign was attended by over 160 people; the second, by more than 300.

On 21 February, around 100 students from the University of Nottingham and the local area took to the campus grounds in a demonstration demanding their basic democratic right to free speech.

The demonstration followed a number of recent protests at the University where this right had been denied. One of these involved the arrest of a member of the Palestinian Society for “breach of the peace”. The University authorities had called the police while he was protesting peacefully against the abuse of human rights in Palestine.

Although this year has seen no defeats for the abortion rights movement, we cannot afford to be complacent. The government has indicated it won’t seek to reduce the time limit at the moment but this is predicated on scientific evidence of foetal viability – basing time limits on this means any medical advances could threaten abortion rights. At the same time, David Cameron has spoken about the need to reduce the time limit, after leaders of all three parties came out for a reduction during the last election.

It’s time to challenge Labour Students for control of the NUS women’s campaign. For Sofie’s manifesto, supporters’ list and more on the campaign, see the ENS Women website — socialistfeminist.org.uk

Since the takeover of the NUS Women’s Campaign by Labour Students four years ago, the potential for student women’s organising to lead an active, political regeneration of the women’s movement has been squandered.

The last two years have seen an upsurge of the Iranian student movement — and a sharp turn to the left, as more and more student radicals become influenced by Marxism.

Activists in Education Not for Sale have organised to nominate jailed Iranian socialist student activist Anoosheh Azaadbar as NUS Honorary Vice-President. Below is the text of her manifesto.

Students at King’s College London staged two “read-ins” in a cafeteria last month in protest at regulations which bar students from reading, writing or using laptops while eating their lunch.