UK students

Nico Dessaux reports from the 1/2 April meeting of the National Co-ordination against the CPE. THE meeting of the National Student Co-ordination against CPE gathered more than 300 delegates from 110 universities and colleges. As a delegate from the “Cross-Struggle General Assembly”, the labour movement liaison committee in Lille, I was allowed to stay as an observer for the whole debate. It began at 2pm and I left at 8am the following morning, at which point there were several votes still to take. Our delegation (from the “Cross-Struggle General Assembly”) met beforehand to prepare our speech...

Yves Coleman and Nico Dessaux report on the 28 March day of action against the CPE [Contrat Première Embauche, the French government’s plan to cut job security]. As we go to press, the latest day of action in France against the government’s plans to cut job security for young workers on 4 April has seen an even bigger turnout than the huge protests of 28 March, which saw millions of workers and students demonstrate and take industrial action across the country. Across the country, between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 workers and students took part in activity on the 28th. As on 18 March, the first...

In the New Zealand city of Auckland, more than 1,000 secondary school students walked out of classes in protest at low pay for young workers, explicitly linking their protest to events in France. A rally demanding equal pay with adults ended in scuffles with the police and two arrests after “Radical Youth” student representatives attempted to protect the demonstrators’ safety during a sit down at a major road junction. One of those arrested, 17 year old Omar Hamed, said: “I was going to move from the road as soon as I had accounted for the safety of the other demonstrators. But the officers at...

Solidarity spoke to Nico Dessaux, an activist in Lille. How did the anti-CPE movement begin? The student unions attempted to launch a movement against it a few months ago, but with little success. The left parties in the National Assembly also launched a parliamentary guerrilla war, with thousands of amendments. As a result, our prime minister, De Villepin, used article 49.3 of the constitution, a vote of confidence in the government, to push the full text through without discussion. This is what sparked the strike movement in the universities. The 18 March demonstration in Paris seemed to be...

Yves Coleman, a revolutionary socialist based in Paris gave Solidarity some thoughts on the anti-CPE revolt. Is France facing a new May ’68 [when student protests eventually sparked a ten million strong general strike]? Today (20 March), I would say no — but everything can change if the working class (and especially the private sector workers) starts to move. Tonight the unions rejected a general strike in favour of a “day of action” in a week’s time — a perfect technique to bury the movement. There are a number of differences with 1968. Students are divided about their methods of action. Not...

By Tammy Love When Education Not For Sale Women was coming together in August 2005, we discussed whether describing ourselves as “socialist feminists” was too radical and might alienate the feminist left. Seven months later, both candidates in the NUS women’s officer elections were describing themselves as “socialist feminists”, proof that in a relatively short amount of time we have been able to influence the direction of the student women’s movement. Our main objective at conference was to use ENS to repoliticise the Women’s Campaign. This year’s conference was the smallest liberation...

By Daniel Randall, NUS NEC (personal capacity) 2005/6 will not go down as a proud year in the history of the National Union of Student. NUS’s campaigning has detoriorated to the extent that its national demonstration was actually cancelled. Meanwhile the union continues to cosy up to both Blairite ministers and education sector bosses. The union’s democracy and the engagement of its members with its structures continue to diminish. Hundreds of thousands of pounds have gone to waste on needless fripperies while right-wing bureaucrats on the NEC told the membership that there was no money...

Mike Wood reports on the People and Planet annual forum held over the weekend of 4-5 March at Leeds University. People and Planet’s trade justice campaign is drawing to a close, and the forum, attended by around 70 student activists, was initially intended to take a discussion on the direction for a new campaign. Instead a representative of the central office merely announced that a new campaign was not economically viable. This ruled out the possibility of a new anti-sweatshops campaign being launched. Instead, the Trade Justice campaign discussion focussed on ways to expand this existing...