Nowhere is this more obvious than in education. In Higher Education (HE) Browne lopped 80% off teaching budgets of £4.2bn and £1bn off research, a cut called the “valley of death” by Steve Smith, Head of Universities UK.  And how is the consequential shortfall in funding to be paid for? By tuition fees paid by students of up to £9,000 for the “elite” universities. If these plans go through, students will leave university with debts of £40,000 to £50,000!

And the end result? The costs of education are transferred from the state to individual students and their families thereby penalising poor and working class families. In addition, there will be a narrowing of the curriculum with many subject areas like English or Philosophy under threat as they will not be funded, as well as many learning institutions at risk of closure and HE becoming even more a preserve of a privileged elite. This means a loss of choice, a loss of opportunity and a massive loss of jobs of up to 22,000. It is no wonder that the UCU trade union has labelled these plans all out war on higher education

In Further Education (FE) too the picture is just as bleak. FE educates and trains more post-16 students than Sixth Forms and universities put together. Two thirds of all 16 to 19 year olds who study do so in an FE College. They are often “second chance” institutions. And they are needed! Some 1 million 16 to 24 year olds are called NEETS – Not in Education, Employment nor Training! NIACE estimates that 5m adults lack the literacy skills for the 21^st century. 17m adults lack the basic numeracy skills for adult life such as calculating household budgets, understanding change from shopping, helping kids with homework or working out credit card interest rates.

How many times does it have to be proved that poor literacy and numeracy reinforces the cycle of unemployment, poor health and poverty from generation to generation?  People are excluded from full participation in ordinary life as citizens. And what is the Coalition response? Educations Maintenance Allowances (EMAs) of up to £30 per week for poor families are to be scrapped. Nationally 46% of FE students get EMAs. In poorer areas like Knowsley, Birmingham and Leicester the figure is 80%.

The National Union of Students (NUS) has shown that 91% of young people who are entitled to free school meals at Year 11 get an EMA, 83% of young people from single-parent households get it as well as 76% of the lowest achieving 16 year olds who carry on with education. The scrapping of EMAs will hit these people hard. The OECD says that the UK has one of the worst records for 15 – 19 year olds in education. It will be even worse if these plans go through.

These cuts will mean fewer students, lower attendances on courses, course closures as course income is dependent on student numbers and massive job losses of up to 20,000 lecturers. Since 2005 some 1.4m adult education places have already been lost. Now up to 800,000 more are under threat. In addition, the FE budget is to be cut by 25%, some £1,1bn. In reality war has been declared on education for working class people.

And what is happening in education is being repeated across all of the public sector. Over 4 years there will be cuts of 30% in local council spending where workers are slammed by the mass media as being on “gold plated pensions” yet the median pension paid to 900,000 retired local government workers is £3,048 per year or £58 per week. The 670,000 retired NHS workers pick up on average £4,087 per year or £78 per week while retired judges get on average £52,565 per year or £1,011 per week. And top bankers? They get £multimillion pensions and bonuses and these are considered acceptable by the Tories and their Lib Dem cronies!

The plans of the Coalition are clear. They are not driven by ideology as some claim. All ideologies reflect material interests. The Coalition contains the naked political representatives of a capitalist system that is in crisis. They are not content that over the past 30 years the share of national wealth, as measured by the GDP, which goes to wages has fallen from 65% to 53%. At the same time the share that goes to profits has risen from 13% to 21%. But this is not enough. The rich want more. They want to cut state spending so they pay lower taxes. They want the state to give the private sector even more contracts to provide services that will be cut. In effect they want taxpayers’ money to be used not for services but to subsidise so-called private enterprise, to bail them out yet again, to act as a milch cow. Without state handouts the capitalist system would be in even more of a crisis!

And it does not have to be like this. The UK is still the 6^th richest country in the world. We have a large government debt at the moment because of the economic fallout from the financial crisis of the banks. The banks loaned out money they did not have to people who could not pay it back. Bank debts became toxic. They were on the brink of collapse. They came cap in hand to the Labour government for handouts to save themselves. They got £850bn of our money.

And still they refused to lend so we had the “credit crunch”. Banks were awash with public money that remained in their vaults. Businesses have gone under as they could not borrow. And now we are “back to normal” with huge bonuses being paid to top bankers and the reappearance of banks offering “subprime” mortgages, the very practice that sparked the present financial and economic crisis.

Let us be in no doubt. Capitalism is in crisis and to save itself it wants to demolish all of the gains in social reforms that have been won through the struggle of working people over the past 60 years. Just imagine the scenario. In 4 years time local authorities will be providing 30% less services with 30% less staff! We need to say loud and clear that we did not cause this crisis so we will not pay for it. 

Yesterday we in UCU and NUS  demonstrated against cuts in education. But we are not alone. Public sector trade unions are gearing up for strikes and demonstrations. Even before the planned TUC action in March 2011 individual unions like PCS will be organising national action. So will Unison.

To defend what we have won, students and workers in education must link up with other workers locally and nationally. WE ARE ALL IN THIS FIGHT TOGETHER. Separately, we may be beaten but together we have a chance of success. So we will march, demonstrate and strike to defend what we have.

And as we do that we must remember that this is a crisis of the very economic system of capitalism. We will not pay the price of their failure so the fight is also political. And one of our demands must be the taking into public ownership of the banks and finance houses. This will be the first step in the transformation of society to one where wealth that is created by the labour of working people will be used for the benefit of all.

NO TO FEES!  NO TO CUTS!  MAKE THE BANKERS PAY!  NATIONALISE THE BANKS!

IF WE DO NOT END CAPITALISM, IT WILL END US AND TAKE BACK ALL WE HAVE WON

JOIN US IN THE FIGHT FOR A BETTER FUTURE. JOIN US IN THE FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM.