Student protest should boost workers' confidence too

Submitted by AWL on 10 November, 2010 - 9:45

The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts says:

"The press is reporting that 50,000 people marched in London today (Wednesday 10 November); anyone who was on the demonstration will tell you that this is a plausible figure.

"The Free Education feeder march organised by the NCAFC, University of London Union and several London student unions had thousands on it. But the main demonstration which we joined also featured many banners, placards and chants condemning all cuts, advocating student-worker unity and demanding free education – and not just among organised left activists by any means. This despite NUS’s refusal to demand free education and the conservatism of the official publicity. We note that there were no placards calling for a graduate tax on the march!

"The size of the demonstration and its militant tone seem to have taken both NUS and the police by surprise. There were very big contingents from most universities, but also significant ones from many FE colleges and even schools – with school students organising walk outs to join the demo.

"NCAFC members participated in the protest at Conservative Party HQ, and we salute the great bulk of the demonstrators there for their militancy, courage and good sense. NUS President Aaron Porter’s comments condemning the action are utterly disgraceful – he should be condemning the Tories, not students for protesting against them – and we demand that he withdraws them. NUS should be using its resources and influence to demand that those arrested are released without charge.

"Fuller reports, pictures and more will be posted soon. Meanwhile, the national demonstration must be the beginning and not the end of the campaign: we urge activists to mobilise for the National Day of Action on 24 November – see www.anticuts.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/walkout.pdf and www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=134751449911080."

We hope that the burgeoning student fightback will give workers more confidence to fight back too! From what many AWL members and sympathisers report from their workplaces, that process is at least beginning.

***

Some pictures from the demo (more soon):

Comments

Submitted by AWL on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 01:10

... there was some stupid behaviour - the worst of which was someone throwing a fire extinguisher off the roof. We should be straightforward about condemning that (as were most of the protesters when we chanted "Stop throwing shit").

However, we need to do that in the context of defending the action and, yes, the "violence" - which was in fact "violence" against property, except in so far as the police violently intervened and forced a clash. (You might say that it's their job to defend buildings against protesters, but that doesn't interest me. I look at it from our side.)

Consider the history of successful mass struggles against exploitation and oppression. Do you think they were won through respect for the laws of property?

No demonstration will, by itself, stop the Tories' plans (which is why need an ongoing campaign - like the the NCAFC Day of Action on 24 November). But they will have been far more scared and demoralised by the assault on their HQ than they would have been by a polite, respectable A to B march - and our side much less boosted and encouraged. That is how class struggles are won - it's about fear and morale.

Sacha Ismail

Submitted by AWL on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 02:50

We need unity to break the Con-Dems’ attacks
Stand with the protesters against victimisation

Wednesday’s national NUS/UCU 50,000-strong national demonstration was a magnificent show of strength against the Con-Dems’ savage attacks on education. The Tories want to make swingeing cuts, introduce £9,000 tuition fees and cut EMA. These attacks will close the doors to higher education and further education for a generation of young people.

During the demonstration over 5,000 students showed their determination to defend the future of education by occupying the Tory party HQ and its courtyards for several hours. The mood was good-spirited, with chants, singing and flares.

Yet at least 32 people have now been arrested, and the police and media appear to be launching a witch-hunt condemning peaceful protesters as “criminals” and violent.

A great deal is being made of a few windows smashed during the protest, but the real vandals are those waging a war on our education system.

We reject any attempt to characterise the Millbank protest as small, “extremist” or unrepresentative of our movement.

We celebrate the fact that thousands of students were willing to send a message to the Tories that we will fight to win. Occupations are a long established tradition in the student movement that should be defended. It is this kind of action in France and Greece that has been an inspiration to many workers and students in Britain faced with such a huge assault on jobs, benefits, housing and the public sector.

We stand with the protesters, and anyone who is victimised as a result of the protest.

Initial signatories include (all in a personal capacity):
Mark Bergfeld, NUS NEC
Ashok Kumar, Vice-President Education LSE
Vicki Baars, NUS LGBT Officer women’s place
Sean Rillo Raczka, Birkbeck SU Chair and NUS NEC (Mature Students’ Rep)
Nathan Bolton, Campaigns Officer Essex SU
James Haywood, Campaigns Officer Goldsmiths College SU
Steve Hedley, London regional organiser RMT
Wanda Canton, Women’s Officer QMUL
Michael Chessum, Education and Campaigns Officer UCL SU
Jade Baker, Education Officer Westminster Uni SU
Dan Swain, Essex Uni SU Postgrad Officer

To add your name or organisation email teneleventen@gmail.com and see teneleventen.wordpress.com

Submitted by lynn f on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 12:23

On this occasion I think I agree with Sacha. We do not condone gratuitous dangerous behaviour. Hurling stuff from the roof was stupid and unnecessary. However the targetting of Millbank demonstrated the real depths of anger about these appalling changes to our HE system, changes which are not just about discriminatory and prohibative costs, but an ideological direction which downplays the value of education for its own sake.
Lynn Ferguson

Submitted by edwardm on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 13:24

I watched Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat MP and career hypocrite, on Newsnight, working himself up into a lather over how people smashed some windows etc. at the Tory Party HQ. His face turned purple (anger? or maybe it was just the gout...) and he said that he was very angry about 'the violence'.

I presume he wasn't talking about the violence of the government. Cuts mean violence. What Thatcher did was incredibly violent: not just the violence she used in implementing her cuts, closures and attacks - but what they meant. When the pits closed, crack cocaine and heroin arrived in former mining communities around South Yorkshire in a big way - they are still there twenty-odd years later. Under Thatcher, violent crime tripled, and has never fallen back to pre-1979 levels.

Austerity means disrupted lives, shattered mental health, despair, bitterness and the breakdown of communities and families. I read in the Evening Standard the other day that since 2008 (when the current economic crisis opened), the number of children (children!) admitted to hospitals in London suffering from alcohol poisoning has doubled. That's the kind of utter wretchedness that 'austerity' and capitalist crisis means for ordinary, blameless, people.

Simon Hughes is supporting the government that is cutting everything from education to housing benefit. He is responsible for all this crushing violence heaped upon millions of working-class people, knocking years off their life expectancies. And he's bothered about a few broken windows and ruined carpets? He can fuck off - he's lying or stupid or both.

Submitted by cathy n on Thu, 11/11/2010 - 14:52

Judging by the ceaseless whining from certain quarters at the 'violence' of yesterday's student protests, you could be forgiven for thinking we'd just witnessed a mass lynching, rather than a small amount of carefully targeted property damage at Tory HQ.

As protests go, the gathering of upwards of 50,000 students in central London was a resounding success - there was an impressive turnout; very little in the way of injuries; and a strong message was sent to those politicians who got into power on the back of misleading the student vote.

The narrative since the protest from some however, has been that anything beyond a quiet trot through central London, fitting within the narrow box of respectable dissent, is 'going too far'.

And it's perhaps of little surprise to hear that Aaron Porter, head of the National Union of Students, is calling for 'restraint' when confronting Tory and Lib-Dem destruction of higher-education - he also supports charging students for their education, via a large graduate tax on future earnings.

The argument put forward by proponents of an increased levy on students is that those who go to university will, as a rule, earn more in their lifetimes than those who do not and should therefore pay for the advantage. While the earnings argument holds water - on average graduates will earn more than those who do not attend university - it ignores the fact that many others will also earn more over the course of their lives - those who take over family businesses, inherit property, or just happen to live in more pleasant areas of the country - than those lacking these particular advantages yet who may have prospered in the albeit flawed yet at least partially democratic area of educational achievement.

Notwithstanding the increasingly outdated notion of education as a tool with which to learn about the world for its own sake (how radical is that!), those seeking to justify a huge tax on graduates almost universally got their own educations for free. Talk about kicking the ladder away once you've reached the top!

As for loose talk about the protests compromising democracy, perhaps if politics was not such a mass of lies, folly, and evasions then the windows of the political ruling class would still be intact.

Or maybe, like Aaron Porter, we should simply be satisfied with tokenism - showing the politicians we're not happy with what they are doing but going along with it anyway.

Answers on a postcard as to the effectiveness of that strategy.

James B

Submitted by Tim on Fri, 12/11/2010 - 12:49

This demo would have probably got a few seconds on the news if it wasn't for the occupation of Millbank. I remember going on lots of CND demos in the 8o's which were as big or bigger and peaceful and they got less and less coverage and the initial involvement and will of youth was sapped of its energy.
I agree dropping fire extinguishers etc is stupid, dangerous and counterproductive and should be condemned( learn the lesson of the dropping of a slab on a scab taxi in the miners strike of 84/5 and the way it was used against the miners who had endured massive police violence) but keep the focus on the murder of countless thousands of people by the ruling classes cuts.
In Nottingham it's estimated that more will die in our average sized city cos of the cuts than British soldiers in Afghanistan (dozens for example just from the cold in the next few months and that's without counting deaths from alcohol,drugs,suicide and other side effects of cuts and yet not one funeral will be shown of those fallen in this war with our own ruling class.
It's brilliant seeing young people at last on the demos now the task is to link up the general anti cuts movement to the students movement like in France.
In Nottingham we can do that at the big Notts Save our Services demo on Sat 20 Nov from the Forest rec
Tim C

Submitted by guenter on Fri, 12/11/2010 - 19:43

from the outside i can only say in general: never fall to the old tricks of the bourgeois state &media, to divide the demonstrants into good and bad ones, peacefully and violent ones. what is a smashed window, compared 2 the violence of capitalism &his state? nothing. the cuts are killing people! did any1 count the number of pensioners &other poor ones who died -since thatcher´s time- in their homes in winter, cause they cudnt pay the gas bills? dan sounds to me like an old socialdemocrat who cares more bout the "violence" of some students -who are simply militant- than about the violence of the state. only if real contraproductive violence will happen on a much larger scale, it cud still be talked to those into it, and/or figured out, how many of those smashing windows endlessly are provocateures of the police (what, in germany was proved in very many cases. i myself once tried to talk 2 window-smashing guys at a demo, and suddenly was threatened by 2 secret policemen!) otherwise: more militant action -as fighting back violent police-is very much needed. and: "capitalism kills- kill capitalism!"

Submitted by AWL on Mon, 15/11/2010 - 17:00

Yes, it should be free for everyone, regardless of wealth, but the rich should - minimally - be taxed much more heavily so that they pay for everyone. That's the option you don't list.

Sacha

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