Anti-cuts, public services

Students at the Camden School for Girls have gone into occupation, following an anti-cuts teach-in last night. Their demands, listed on their website , are: 1. That the school make a public statement condeming the increase in fees and the abolishment of EMA. 2. That the school does not penalise anyone for taking part in the sit in 3. That the school continues to support students in protests. They are tweeting from @camdensitin. They have called in particular for support from education workers; any NUT and UCU activists should get in touch. The sit-in's email address is camdenaction@gmail.com.

The struggles in response to the Con-Dem tuition fee increase and abolition of the EMA have inspired us all. Together, we’ve mobilised hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom have never been involved in political action before. School students and sixth-formers have been at the forefront. Many actions have been organised and led by women. Our protests have been ethnically diverse. We’ve dared to do more than just polite A to B marches or lobbies of councillors and MPs; we’ve organised walk-outs, sit-downs and occupations. We have, in short, sent a message to the rest of our class; we do...

The Scottish UNISON Council, made up of delegates from all branches in Scotland, has voted for a call that the Scottish Parliament and local councils should defy Tory cuts and set “needs budgets”. The vote was against the platform but by a clear majority. The meeting on 3 December also voted, unanimously, to raise with the other public sector trade unions the call for a one-day Scottish public sector strike against the cuts. This is the first time in the current anti-cuts agitation that a large body in the labour movement has raised the call for councils to defy the cuts. Solidarity has been...

Wes Strong is a member of Solidarity , a revolutionary socialist organisation in America. He spoke to us about student struggles in the USA. In the debate around HE funding in Britain there's a lot of talk about “the American model”. People are aware that this means higher fees, but what else does it mean? How are universities funded, and how is student finance administered? What sort of fees do students have to pay, and who decides the level of fees? The “American Model” they are referring to must mean the model of the corporate university. An overwhelming shift in public educaiton has been...

Daniel Lemberger-Cooper is a founder-member of the Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts Alliance . He spoke to Solidarity about their campaign. How did Royal Holloway Anti-Cuts Alliance begin? A handful of students in early June of this year felt it important to organise around the issues of impending public sector and tertiary education cuts, and the possibility(now very real) of tuition fee’ rises. We spoke to different societies and clubs across the campus, bringing people together to coordinate and organise. We held our first meeting, of about 25 students, in early September. We wrote a charter...

Assemble at Malet St, London WC1E 7HY, march to Parliament Square Called by the NCAFC, London student assembly, UCU Higher Education conference, Coalition of Resistance, Right to Work, Education Activist Network, and more... Click here for more . Click here for NCAFC . The National Union of Students and the University and College Union are calling for a lobby of MPs, to be followed by a rally on Victoria Embankment from 15:00. UCU call NUS call .

The SNP minority government in Holyrood has announced its proposed budget for 2011-12 (although current opinion polls suggest that the SNP will be voted out of office only four weeks into that financial year). The Westminster grant to the Scottish government for 2011-12 will be cut by £1.2 billions. Over the next three years the Westminster grant is to be reduced by a total of £3.3 billions — an overall cut of 11% in real terms. In the 1980s and early 1990s the SNP used to mock the Labour Party for failing to stand up to the then Tory government despite having control of most Scottish councils...

On 29 November Lewisham Anti Cuts Alliance organised a peaceful protest outside the Town Hall against a first wave of cuts (around £20 million, with a possible £78 million coming over the next three years). The protest involved local unions and users of public services. Students from Goldsmiths College marched through Lewisham to the protest. Already the council has announced the closure of five libraries, the Amersham Children’s Centre and the Opening Doors employment centres. It has made 466 council workers redundant. Around 150-200 people gathered from 5.30pm onwards in the freezing cold...

On 27 November over a thousand people attended the Coalition of Resistance conference in London, and responded enthusiastically to speeches calling for militancy against the cuts. The platform called for support for the TUC anti-cuts march on 26 March 2011, and for a week of action from 14 February (around the “Housing Emergency” lobby of Parliament on 16 February). AWL members attended the conference, calling for anti-cuts unity and for a political orientation to making the labour movement fight against the cuts and for a workers’ government. We advocated that COR (run by the SWP splinter...

In the last weeks students, including many school students, have organised strikes, walk-outs, sit-downs, occupations and mass demonstrations. These protests, the like of which we haven’t seen for many years, have been an inspiration to all of us. The students’ energy and innovation could, if the movement goes on for any length of time, help the labour movement to rediscover tactics and forms of struggle we once knew but have for the most part long since forgotten. In the course of student struggles socialists often raise the slogan “students and workers unite!” But why do we say that? In the...