My college is facing £2.5 million worth of cuts, which would critically damage our capacity to provide decent education for our community. Now the UCU (University and College Union) branch has voted unanimously to ballot for strike action in the event of compulsory redundancies.
I’m Branch Secretary of the UCU at our college where the local MP is David Lammy, Minister for Higher Education. He embodies the complete failure of the Labour Party to represent ordinary people, in education and across public services, and so as part of our campaign I’m standing against him in the General Election on a platform of save education, jobs and public services.
Anti-cuts campaigns in the post-16 education sector are fairly well connected. London Region UCU meetings are well-attended by activists from across the capital, and so can respond collectively to the cuts. London Region UCU are organising a march on Downing Street on Saturday March 20 (meet 12 noon, Kings College, the Strand), and are organising an aggregated ballot for strike action across the 16 (so far) FE colleges that have announced significant cuts and cannot guarantee no compulsory redundancies. We expect to be taking coordinated strike action from the week beginning 19 April, and will be working hard to support each other.
Public expenditure is political choice. This government chooses to sustain illegal war and occupation while cutting education, health and public services. They found £500 billion of public money to bail out the banks. RBS, now 84% owned by the taxpayer, has set aside £1.3 billion for bonus payments this year despite a £5 billion loss! There are more millionaires in the UK than ever before, and the PCS union estimate that £120 billion would be raised if all corporations and individuals paid the correct tax — but MPs, who should be ensuring a fair distribution of wealth, are more concerned with fiddling their own expenses than reigning in the fat cats.
This is why we need an alternative. We have to reclaim education, jobs and public services for ordinary people!
I’m standing as a Trade Union and Socialist Coalition candidate in the elections. TUSC is not a party, but is a platform for a clear electoral alternative to public sector cuts, privatisation, militarism and environmental degradation.
Clearly the unions should represent the interests of their members, fighting unequivocally for jobs, decent pay and conditions, and public services. Some, like the UCU, RMT and PCS are doing so. Other unions are being held back by their ties to the Labour Party — when Labour is attacking the working class, you can’t defend both the working class and Labour!
However, I don’t think a working-class voice is expressed solely through the unions. Many of the most exploited workers have to fight for the right to belong to a union at all. There are a multitude of groups and individuals fighting against racism, fighting for rights for refugees and asylum seekers, fighting in solidarity with workers and liberation movements in the global south, fighting for rights for people with disabilities, fighting against the closures of local hospitals, nurseries and factories… and so on.
All these people have a part to play in the movement, and as socialists we should be focusing on what unites us rather than what divides.
