UK students

Student activism in the UK and the NUS. See also UCU.

All out on 25 February

Students: back the lecturers' pay fight! The successful vote by the lecturers' union AUT for strike action provides a massive opportunity in the fight against top-up fees. Joint student/lecturer action of this sort is even more unprecedented than co-ordinated action between different trade unions. As well as providing a perfect opportunity to mobilise students in the run up to the Higher Education Bill's third reading at the end of March, it is the perfect rebuttal to Government attempts to play students and staff off against each other. The battle over the Bill has seen Education Minister...

All out on 25 February! Tuition fees fight is not lost!

By Alan Clarke So close…- for this Labour government, with its huge majority and addiction to control-freakery, to come within five votes of being defeated on a flagship policy was indeed humiliating. The rousing of the normally comatose Parliamentary Labour Party to destroy Blair's 160-plus majority is a reflection of massive hostility to top-up fees among students, in the general public and throughout the labour movement; but in politics organisation is everything, and Blair's victory is impossible to understand in isolation from the weakness, both organisational and political, of the anti...

Debate & discussion: Fees headline - a catch

As a student supporter of Solidarity/Alliance for Workers' Liberty I was a little disappointed with the Solidarity headline, "Top-Up Fees: Resist the Market Principle" (3/43). That seemed to me to be inadequate on a number of levels, and was perhaps chosen for all the wrong reasons. The headline goes down exactly the same route as the NUS bureaucracy one, which lets those hacks off the hook easily. Even without top-up fees being introduced tuition fees remain. These are the market principle - resisting that principle cannot be phrased in terms of resistance to the new policy as the old one has...

There is an alternative to top-up fees: Tax the rich!

By Sally Murdock As the first House of Commons vote on the Higher Education Bill, scheduled for 27 January, draws near, it is becoming increasing clear that the Government's arguments for top-up fees are unbeatable in their own terms. For a government committed to low taxes for the rich, higher fees redistributed into maintenance grants for the poorest students isn't a totally unreasonable way to organise student support - in the same way that PFI isn't a totally unreasonable way to fund the Health Service. Variable fees for different universities aren't so good; but in the Blairite scheme of...

Scottish Socialist MSP to debate student militancy

Socialist MSP talks his way into Oxford IAN SWANSON SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR Edinburgh Evening News. 19th January, 2004. SCOTTISH socialist firebrand Colin Fox is preparing to take the bastions of privilege by storm after being invited to speak at the Oxford University Union. The world's most famous debating society - often seen as a testing ground for future Prime Ministers - has asked the Lothians list MSP to help propose a motion lamenting the decline of student militancy. And speaking on the same side will be disgraced former Tory minister Jonathan Aitken. The union is expecting a...

Scrap all fees! Tax the rich!

Alan Clarke, NUS National Executive (personal capacity) and Campaign for Free Education co-chair As Solidarity goes to press, the Government is preparing to publish a detailed final version of its plan for Higher Education student funding. Since Tony Blair and Charles Clarke have repeatedly refused to bow to disquiet among Labour MPs, the plans are almost certain to mirror the essentials of last year's White Paper: 'freedom' for some universities to set higher fees, with the pill sugared by the reintroduction of a tiny, heavily means-tested maintenance grant. By the end of 2003, more than 150...

Camden against Bush!

By Kate Ferguson As Bush was being shown the very best of British hospitality by Blair, students from across the capital took to the streets on 20 November in a demonstration against Bush and the invasion of Iraq. Students from Camden School were amongst those protesting, with approximately 100 members of the sixth form having defiantly walked out of lessons at midday. This translates into one in four students not returning to their afternoon lessons. It created a buzz of debate within the school. Protestors from Camden took to the streets, blocking traffic and ignoring police calls to stop as...

The labour movement can beat top-up fees

By Alan Clarke, NUS Executive, personal capacity With more than a third of Labour MPs now supporting an anti-top up fees motion in the House of Commons, the Government's plans for student funding are looking increasingly shaky. With public, labour movement and even Labour Party opinion overwhelmingly hostile to introducing a free market in higher education, there is every chance that the Blairites will finally be defeated on a major issue of government policy. However the rebels are not quite what they seem. To start with, the motion they are backing (proposed by Charles Clarke's fellow...

Sheffield sit-in over hall fees

Mickey Conn , University of Sheffield student Nearly two hundred students, including Alliance for Workers' Liberty members, occupied the University of Sheffield's cash office on 4 November in a protest over new and increased hall fees. Tapton Hall students had previously organised a general meeting to discuss the growing opposition to the fees, and built on that with the 24-hour action. The protest received widespread student attention as the students demanded the resignation of Pat McGrath, head of university accommodation and catering services, but at present there are no clear plans to...

After the demo: direct action can beat top-up fees

At least 15,000 students demonstrated in London on 26 October as part of the National Union of Students' campaign against top-up fees. Given that the NUS leadership had called the demonstration for a Sunday, the turn-out was surprisingly high - a reflection of growing anger at the Government's plans among wide layers of students - but the protest was not nearly as effective as it could have been. In the first place, the official publicity and materials for the demo completely ignored the new policy agreed at this year's NUS conference, with most of the placards featuring bland slogans like...

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