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From the 4th-9th of February, Cambridge University students voted in a
referendum on whether to remain affiliated to the National Union of
Students (NUS). The referendum was held due to a motion, passed earlier in the
term, in which a small group of students proposed that the Cambridge
University Students Union (CUSU) disaffiliate, claiming the the NUS had
irreversibly degenerated into a bureaucratic travesty and that we were
wasting our time (and money) by remaining affiliated to such an
organisation.
January 26th saw ‘Glasgow Uni Left Society’ hold a successful first
meeting of the year. More than twenty people came to hear Scottish
Socialist Party National Spokesperson Colin Fox and Sherry Shamasi of
The Struggle, the Pakistani section of the International Marxist
Tendency, speak about the war in Afghanistan.
On January 4th a consultation meeting at
Ashington Leisure Centre in Northumberland was held by the Lib/Dem leadership
of the County Council to "discuss" the question of its closure. The council has to find £33m worth of cuts
this year and amongst the many services being targeted is the town’s very
popular and highly used leisure centre.
When New Labour came to power in 1997, Tony Blair stated that his top
three priorities were “education, education, education”. 13 years
later, and figures from a recent poll
show that over two-thirds of people in England believe that the
government has failed to deliver the improvement in education that it
promised.
The current recession has given people a thirst for knowledge;
a desire to understand what is happening. People no longer need to be convinced
of the failure of Capitalism – they can see and experience it for themselves.
The public look to the bourgeois economists and reformist politicians for
answers and they get no explanation other than some muttering about “greedy
bankers”. This article published by a Cambridge student magazine explains what the Cambridge Marxists have to say about this.
Supporters of Socialist Appeal in Glasgow joined
Greek students in a picket of the Greek Consulate to mark the one year
anniversary of the police murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in Athens.
The murder set off a revolt of working class youth throughout Greece
that was met with huge police repression.
The situation at the University of Arts London is part of the bigger picture of course cuts,
redundancies and deficits across the whole of the public sector in
Britain. Why should students and staff pay for the economic crisis with
their jobs and education? UAL Marxists have organised a meeting for Tuesday 24th (6pm at the student
hub, 65 Davies Street) to discuss the course cuts and redundancies that
are taking place in UAL. A serious situation is emerging, which
ultimately could affect all the students and staff at the university.
Your education, your job, the quality of your work, all are under
threat.
Here is a short report on John McDonnell's lecture at the ULU Marxists Meeting in London last week
As the current economic
climate worsens the government and county councils are targeting education as a
means of saving money. Privatisation, redundancies and funding cuts are
tarnishing the education system that so many other countries strive for. Now, with tuition fees on
the increase - the yearly cap of £3,200 soon to be lifted - competition to get
into what remains of higher education is becoming progressively biased towards
only the more privileged members of society.
Nowhere is the chasm between leadership and rank and file more seemingly unbridgeable than in
the student movement. In 2009, students in the UK have spontaneously occupied
universities to protest at Israel’s
war on Gaza, to
fight against deportations of university cleaning staff, and against massive
cuts in teaching staff. At the same time, they face the worst attacks on their conditions
in living memory in the form of increasing fees, the end of grants, and the
vanishing jobs market. This is clearly an explosive combination.
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