Where next for the student movement?

Can the NUS leadership's tactics beat education cuts? Short Answer: No.

After the massive turnout of 52,000 students and lecturers on the NUS and UCU called “Demo-lition” demo in London (see the post below) there is a lot of momentum and potential for a mass student movement. However, as the Stop the War movement showed, massive demonstrations aren't enough to change Government policy. This begs the question then, what now?

The Current Genius NUS Plan to defeat

The Labour student's controlled National Union of Student's (NUS) answer is to mobilise students to “lobby” MPs who signed a pledge against the proposed raising of the cap. Currently, if every MP who signed the pledge before the election votes this way, then any attempts in Parliament will be voted down. Not a bad idea eh? Well yes, yes it is.

The problem with this tactic is that 1) it has failed on the two previous occasions it was tried, when fees were first introduced and then again when tuition fees. In both cases, they already had a parliamentary majority, its just that most of the MPs didn't stick to their promises. Not a good start. 2) Even more worryingly, this strategy fails to actually combat the massive cuts to lecturing staff and university and research funding. The NUS offers no real critique of the actual plans, offering such a narrow vision of "Fight the fees", that even if they do defeat the votes against raising the cap, university's are still screwed as the projected 40% cuts hit home (not to mention privatisation, cuts to EMA and attacks on teaching and researching standards). Funding to institutions has been cut effectively year on year for some time now and has been edging higher education towards the abyss. One of the reasons so many vice-chancellors have been calling to raise the cap is because they are desperate for the income, otherwise their institutions will be forced to make swinging cuts, merge with other institutions or simply go to the wall.  But judging by the NUS leadership's campaign, this is all hardly a footnote.

And if this fails? Well, the next step is to de-seat all the Liberal Democrats and show the voting power of students. But how do we do that I hear you cry? Well, we all go out and mobilise operation student vote/vote for Labour! And so then we beat the Tories and Lib Dems, get a Labour Government and then we've .... oh no wait, they're just as likely to cut funding and raise the cap. Maybe next time we should vote Lib Dems because they'll probably rediscover that free education is great idea once in opposition.

Why are they doing this?  Well, this is most likely down to the fact that the Labour Student's dominated NUS leadership aren't really against tuition fees, nor actually against the cuts to higher education. Aaron Porter, the current President of NUS and Labour Party member, before becoming President was one of the leading members of the right wing Organised Independents. He has previously condemned UCU strike action, was supportive of privatisation (it brought uni's more funding is his eyes) and as Higher Education officer he did nothing against the Labour Govt's cuts to university funding and brainchilded “graduate tax” to replace fees, a system which UCU has said will cost students up to £10,000 more than the current system (plus the fact its utterly unworkable, but that's another blog for another time). And recently, we have seen him falling over himself to condemn and sell out student's involved in the Milibank incident. Under his leadership, the student movement will not develop into the mass moment the we need to defeat the cuts.

Aaron Porter, President of the NUS, more concerned with condemning his 

own members than building an anti cuts movement

A genuine anti-cuts fightback

We need to be linking up students with lecturers and university workers (a process that's already starting on the ground, with or without student unions) to support them on picket lines and co-ordinate joint action. Occupations, student strikes, walkouts and marches are already being planned without the NUS official involvement, however much of this still remains isolated and with a definite lack of leadership. This inspirational movement of young people needs to be brought on board with the wider anti-cuts movement, to get them supporting other strikes and other workers in dispute, getting them to picket lines and helping to build the broader movement. People talk about how we should be more like Greece and France, well, in order to get to this point we need be developing these links. This obviously works both ways, and the union movement needs to approach students, offer their support, invite them to speak at branch meetings and make the links themselves.

This is important as another critical issue is that we just can't let students get involved, graduate and then see all this as a "phase". With so many young people questioning the political status quo, now is perfect to be educating them and bringing them into the trade union movement. We want young people to not just talking about tuition fees, but cuts to education, their public services, making the connection to attacks in their work places and on their terms and conditions. And most importantly, we need to show young people that they are not powerless, that united we can win and the best way to achieve this is through organised labour and mass movements. Finally, we have to bring up the issue of political representation. As I've stated before, if none of the mainstream parties are going to represent student demands, then we need to involve them to help build an alternative. This is a long game we're playing and we can't allow such an opportunity to be squandered by those who want to cripple the movement before it can grow. 

The planned day of action on Nov 24th, which should see waves of occupations, demos, walkouts and student strikes, should be seen as the perfect opportunity for workers and trade unions to get involved and offer their support, drawing together the arguments and uniting the anti-cuts campaign. This will be the real test of the movement, as right now much it is reliant on ordinary students in schools and colleges to co-ordinate, people who aren't normally political active.

Without this strategy, the student movement will either dissipate to nothingness as its focus becomes the “have a cup of tea with your MP” (the failed NUS tactic of the last 4 years) or we'll see more outbursts of anger in its purest form as reflected in the occupation of the Milibank tower.

On a final note, word is that the PCS (the militant public sector workers union) were blocked from speaking on the platform at the end of the demo, by the TUC and the NUS. Maybe it was because they would have proposed exactly the kind of tactics the movement needs....