Iranian bus drivers defy dictatorship
Following their solid strike last Sunday, 25 December, widely supported by various sections of the workers and people of the Iranian capital, Tehran's bus workers have warned that they will take further strike action on Saturday, New Year's Eve, unless their seven colleagues who are still in detention, including union leader Mansoor Ossanlou, are released immediately.
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The Case For Free Higher Education
by Angus Hebenton, graduate student, Oxford University.
A major part of the reason why free higher education remains a basic socialist principle is the same reason why the 1945 Labour government introduced it: so that potential students, especially from working class backgrounds, are not deterred from applying.
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NUS Conference 2005: the facts
ENS activists have produced a briefing pack on the events of and issues raised at NUS Conference 2005. Click here to dispel the myths!
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THREE WORDS NO-ONE WANTS YOU TO SAY: TAX THE RICH!
By Daniel Randall, NUS National Executive
Peter Leary, a supporter of the Student Broad Left/Socialist Action group who sits on NUS National Executive Committee, has posted a report of the NEC's 1 December meeting on the SBL website. While a welcome change from Pete's failure to post updates on his activity on the NUS blog facility or indeed anywhere else over the last two years, the political analysis contained in this report is misleading in the extreme.
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Motion to NUS Conference 2006: An alliance to win for the future of free education (Julian Nicholds)
Proposed: Julian Nicholds
Conference believes:
1. Top up fees will come into England in 2006 and Wales in 2007
2. NUS policy is opposed to the introduction of fees and means testing and remains opposed to all forms of tuition fees
3. During the debates that led to the introduction of the Higher Education Act 2004 vice chancellors lobbied for a higher cap than £3000
4. In November a report in the Times Higher stated that debt is already an issue and will continue to be so under the new funding system from 2006.
5. Students' Unions are having to make decisions about how the extra funding gained through top up fees should be spent
6. Last year NUS priority campaign called for a coalition to keep the £3000 cap
Conference Further Believes:
1. NUS must remain opposed to all forms of tuition fees
2. In the year where marketisation is introduced to education NUS must make education funding a priority
3. Vice Chancellors are lobbying the Secretary of State for Education to lift the £3000 cap on top up fees now
4. If the cap is lifted yet more prospective students will be deterred from entering higher education
5. A stream of the priority Campaign was to initiate a Coalition against removing the cap- this must remain one of NUS' priorities for the future
6. NUS' officers have met with trade unions and developed a campaign strategy for the future of the coalition and campaign to keep the cap
Conference Resolves:
1. Reaffirm NUS policy that education should be free and funded through progressive taxation and organised under democratic control.
2. Continue to oppose tuition fees and means testing in all forms.
3. Deliver an education funding priority campaign
4. Hold a national demonstration in the first term.
5. Meet the Minister and Secretary of State for Education demanding that any decision to lift the cap will not pre-empt the review
6. Continue to keep the 2010 coalition as an integral part of the priority campaign
7. VP Education to convene a new steering group in order to roll out the coalition strategy for the year ahead
8. VP Education to hold 2010 Coalition training for union officers and activists.
9. Update and utilise effectively the 2020 vision document to campaign and lobby for a quality education system.
10. Make Trade Unions both nationally and on campus our greatest allies in our struggle for free education.
Motion to NUS Conference 2006: An active campaign to defend our education (Peter Leary)
Proposed: Peter Leary
NUS conference believes
1. Student debt is at record levels and will soar with the introduction of top-up fees next year.
2. Debt is an enormous barrier to attending university and access has narrowed.
3. Students are increasingly forced to take on jobs, to the detriment of their studies, with the poorest students most affected.
4. Debts disproportionately affect women and Black people because of pay discrimination in later life, and those who later work in the public sector.
5. Student debt has rocketed because of government attempts to fund higher education on the cheap by transferring university costs away from the state and onto individuals and their families.
6. This has been a disaster. As well as record debt, decades of government under-funding of universities has led to course and departmental closures, international students facing increasing charges and the selling off of halls of residences - putting private profit before students' welfare.
7. Only proper government investment in education can end student debt, ensure access based on ability to learn not pay, fund adequate resources for all institutions and the much needed expansion of FE and HE.
NUS Conference further believes:
1. Despite most courses planning to charge full £3,000 top-up fees, additional top-up revenue will not solve the university funding gap meaning further attacks on students are likely.
2. Already some universities are lobbying to scrap the £3,000 cap on top-up fees.
3. To best defend against future attacks, NUS must give a lead to students with an active inclusive campaign that opposes student debt, wins the argument for increased government - not student - investment and builds alliances with supportive politicians, trade unions and others.
NUS Conference resolves to:
1. Re-affirm NUS' policy against all methods of charging students for their education - either before or after graduation - and for a grant that covers living costs in FE and HE and for proper state funding for FE and HE.
2. Launch an active campaign to ‘defend our education' in line with the policy above, and opposing student debt, course closures, attempts to remove the £3,000 cap on fees and excessive international students charges. It should seek to win the argument on how the government could progressively fund the expansion of higher education.
3. For this campaign to include a London based national demonstration, to gain maximum political and media attention, and a national campus day of action.
4. Oppose full or part-privatisation of university accommodation, with a national ‘Our Halls are Not for Sale’ campaign.
NUS NEC votes to give a strong lead on defending our education
Peter Leary, NUS NEC
On December 1st, the NUS NEC backed a motion for NUS Conference, which I put forward, calling for an active NUS campaign to defend our education.
This is hopefully an important statement of intent. Stepping up our campaigning is necessary with top-up fees a reality for students from next September and further government attacks already being lined up.
Opponents of the governments ‘market in education' now need to ensure that this motion becomes national policy at NUS Conference in March - and the basis for NUS's future campaigning.
The next year will be crucial in creating the powerful campaigns needed to defeat the next stages of the government's project. The government has been trying to expand higher education on the cheap, by transferring the costs of university investment onto individual students and their families.
NUS is going to have to give much more of a lead in opposing student debt and winning proper grants. Not only because next year's new students will be wanting to oppose their annual fees of £3,000 and debts of up to £30,000. These students will also be the future student union activists and officers who need to be at the forefront of campaigning to stop even higher fees.
The government is considering raising the current £3,000 cap on fees in a review concluding in 2009. Vice chancellors and Principals are already pressing for much higher fees, with some advocating the cap's total abolition and a US-style ‘free market' for fees. Active student opposition must begin now.
The root cause of ongoing attempts to burden students with even more debt is ecades of university under-funding by successive governments. Even though nearly every course will charge the full top-up fee of £3,000, severe under-funding will remain. That is why the lobby to make students pay more will intensify.
NUS needs to be winning the arguments for an alternative.
Only properly state-funded free further and higher education can end student debt, whilst providing institutions with the resources they need to end the scandal of course closures, woefully inadequate resources, and the increased sell-off of university accommodation.
Halting further attacks requires mass active campaigning. NUS must give the lead in maximising student involvement and harnessing support from politicians, trade unionists and all who oppose the government market in education. This is the strategy set out in the motion voted for by the NUS NEC.
Unfortunately, some NUS NEC members supported an alternative motion that did not recognise the need to step up our campaigning over the next few years. Bizarrely, Daniel Randall of Education Not for Sale supported this alternative, which appeared to be just a refusal to vote for anything I put forward.
Whatever views are held on any other matters, all those who oppose the governments' attacks on education, the creeping role of the market in education, and spiralling student debt, must ensure NUS Conference adopts the policy supported by the NUS NEC, and then help to build the campaigns students need.
15TH DECEMBER NUS NEC MEETING
In which I find out what you get when you put Hugo Chavez, City Academies, the Iraqi workers' movement and a load of other stuff in a meeting together.
A motions only NUS NEC meeting. Whoever heard of such a thing? It was a veritable Christmas miracle. And what unbridled, joyous fun it was. And I'm not actually joking.
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14TH DECEMBER NUS NEC MEETING
In which there are some rather shocking revelations and I'm left wondering what General Managers and sabbs have got against flares, Led Zeppelin and the rest of the 1970s.
The NUS Santa, in his immeasurable generosity, had granted us a motions only NEC on the 15th, so that meant that the meeting on the 14th was business only. I'm in favour of discussing business but usually it's still dry as a bone. This meeting, however, contained some pretty interesting stuff.
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Workers win collective bargaining in Haitian free trade zone
(December 2005)
One of the campaigns on which ENS has worked with No Sweat and Students Against Sweatshops has been in support of the Haitian trade union SOCOWA/Batay Ouvriye’s attempts to unionise the factory producing goods for Levi Strauss in the Ouanaminthe Free Trade Zone. We have just received news that this campaign has taken a big step forward, with the union winning collective bargaining rights for the first time.
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ENS Winter Gathering - Report
Report on discussion and decisions made
12-6pm, Saturday 10 December
Leeds University Union
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Stickers
ENS has produced campaign stickers in a variety of colours. Slogans include ‘Education not for sale!’, ‘Living grants for all’, ‘Students against sweatshops’ and ‘Tax the rich’. “We will producing new stickers for the new academic year; our current stock is left over from NUS conference and includes some ENS NUS election campaign stickers. We will therefore provide stickers at the discounted price of £5 for twenty sheets (240 stickers) or £9 for 40 sheets (480 stickers).
ENS Logo
The ENS logo is available here.
Affiliate your student union or campaigning group to Education Not for Sale!
Model motion for affiliation
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Iran and the left
From an article in Tribune, 18 November 2005
Peter Tatchell urges solidarity with the Iranian people's struggle against clerical tyranny
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Students with jobs lose out in exams.
By Rebecca Smithers, Guardian education editor, 24 November 2005
Private firms poised to run state schools after reform
Christian groups in talks to take over from local education authorities. Matthew Taylor, the Guardian.
Dare they do it?
At last ministers show signs of wanting to reform secondary school admissions. In The Guardian, John Crace assesses the chances of them introducing a fairer, simpler system.
We’re teachers, not terrorists
Trying to stop academics from teaching certain topics under new anti-terrorism legislation is only going to make us do it more, argues Gargi Bhattacharyya in The Guardian .
How To Post
This text guide has an accompanying picture guide for those with faster connections.
1. Go to http://www.free-education.org.uk/login.php
2. Enter the username “activist” and the password “blogger”
3. Click Login
4. The next page is the Dashboard. Ignore it and click the “Write” Tab under the title.
5. Fill in your post title and body in the form. Please include name, uni/college and email at the bottom of the post.
6. Add the text Read more
Iraqi gays face abuse and murder
No to Shariah law - For a democratic, secular Iraq
London - 16 August 2005
“Iraqi gay and lesbian people face blackmail, torture, rape and murder, according to our contacts inside the country. We urge solidarity with our queer brothers and sisters in Iraq. It is time for an international queer movement to defend the victims of Islamist terror in Iraq,” said gay Muslim Ramzi Isalam of the LGBT human rights group OutRage!.
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ENS statement on top-up fees, student poverty and education funding
The following statement on education funding was agreed as a basis for campaigning at the ENS winter gathering on 10 December.
ENS founding statement
Agreed upon at the first ENS Gathering, September 3 2005
Activist Blog Launch
An experiment in activist communication, this page facilitates the posting of reports and blogs from any student engaged in free education struggles across the country. The aim is to gain a better understanding of what others are doing, and how we can help each other.
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NUS CONFERENCE 2006 - VOTE EDUCATION NOT FOR SALE!
At its winter gathering, held on December 10 at Leeds University Union, Education Not for Sale decided its candidates for the NUS National Executive Committee elections which will take place at NUS’s Annual Conference on 28-30 March 2006.
Vote Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq for Mama Cash prize
From the Mama Cash website: “Mama Cash is a women’s foundation which supports groundbreaking and innovative projects conceived by women for women all over the world. The women she supports are strong women who set an example for others, and know firsthand that it is possible to turn the tide.”
This year’s prize is €20,000. One of the nominees is the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which ENS has consistently supported.
As of 07/12/05, OWFI was narrowly in second place, so our votes can make a real difference!
- To cast your vote, visit the Mama Cash website
- For more information on OWFI, visit their website
Stirling Uni bans socialists
By Donnie Nicolson, Scottish Socialist Voice
Socialists at Stirling University have been prevented from holding any meetings or public activity, following a controversial ban set in place by the Stirling University Students' Association (SUSA).
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Abortion Rights call to student movement
The Abortion Rights campaign has issued a call to the student movement to help defend a woman’s right to choose. ENS Women are also active on this issue, campaigning for access to abortion on request and a properly funded health service in which abortion rights are a reality for all those who need them. For a copy of our leaflet on abortion rights click here. For more information on ENS Women email Mary Partington.
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FEM 05 conference: a wasted opportunity
Laura Schwartz, University of East London
On 5 November, activists from Education Not for Sale Women attended FEM 05, the second ‘FEM' conference and pretty much the only large-scale event on feminist politics to have been organised in the last few years.
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MARY PARTINGTON FOR NUS WOMEN’S OFFICER
ENS supporter Mary Partington is standing for National Union of Students National Women’s Officer. More on her campaign and the issues involved will appear here soon.
Click here for Mary’s first leaflet.
Recent ENS Women Materials
- ENS Women leaflet on defending abortion rights
- ENS Women bulletin produced for FEM 05 conference (Sheffield, November 5), with articles on rebuilding the women’s movement, women workers’ rights, socialist feminism, abortion rights, Iraq, immigration controls and more
Motions to NUS NEC, December 15
Motions I’m submitting to the NUS NEC on December 15th - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
A living wage for campus workers
Iraq Union Solidarity affiliation
7TH DECEMBER WMANUS WINTER CONFERENCE
In which there are steps in the right direction.
A while back, I was talking to someone who'd been on the NUS NEC in the late 1980s. Before that, he'd been an NUS Area Convenor. Misty-eyed and nostalgic, he told me how NUS Areas used to be key political units in the student movement. He explained how political factions in NUS would win first the loyalty and then the leadership of students in an Area. He talked about some of the campaigns he'd been involved in (the anti-government ‘Beat the Blues' mobilisation at the Tory Party conference sounded particularly enthusing), and explained how NUS Areas had been the basic building blocks of mobilisation for such campaigns.
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THE NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS?
In which we need to get bigger.
On Tuesday 6th December, I spoke at a demonstration at a comprehensive school in North London. A student at the school's sixth-form and his family are facing deportation to Iran where they face torture and potentially execution. The sixth-formers have mounted an impressive campaign against this, and several dozen of them gave up their lunch break to demonstrate in the school's car-park.
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2ND DECEMBER NUS ENVIRONMENTAL AND ETHICAL CONFERENCE REPORT
In which there’s potential.
The E&E campaign hasn't really had much of a life so far this year. That's not really anyone's fault but for various reasons, it hasn't really had a chance to get going.
It was good, therefore, to see around 60 delegates (mostly E&E officers) attend its 2005 conference at ULU. And generally, the whole thing was pretty encouraging.
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1ST DECEMBER NEC DELEGATION MEETING REPORT
In which there are fun, games, a daft photo and the season of goodwill begins in earnest.
The NEC delegation meeting is the meeting at which the NEC decides which motions it's going to submit to National Conference - one for each of NUS's four policy “zones. ” Each zone had at least two submissions in it, so for each we had the choice of either simply voting-off between all submitted motions, or breaking out into compositing groups to try and amalgamate the submissions.
Compositing is a frustrating process at the best of times, so to try and write a detailed report of what took place would be like reliving the tedium and frustration of the meeting minute by minutes. So I'll avoid that and try and give a succinct summary instead.
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20-23RD NOVEMBER FE ESSENTIALS TRAINING (SCARBOROUGH) AND 5-7th SEPTEMBER NSLP TRAINING (YORK)
In which I experience the two faces of NUS training, and it's necessary to draw a comparison.
I never blogged about the National Student Learner Programme training I went on in early September. I was one of two allocated NEC members and, to tell the truth, didn't really do that much during the three days. I didn't really think it was worth writing a blog about.
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16TH NOVEMBER NATFHE RALLY AND AOC CONFERENCE
In which students and workers unite (a bit) and I got into the belly of the beast.
Unity between students and workers means a lot more than turning up on demonstrations or picket-lines when teaching staff go on strike. But that's a useful starting point, and if I'm being honest then the student turnout for NATFHE's rally outside the Association of Colleges conference in Birmingham (part of NATFHE's national strike for the implementation of a pay deal they had struck to win last year) was disappointing. However, I know there are plenty of people around working to turn NUS into an organisation that takes labour movement solidarity seriously and mobilises properly for events like this (a couple of such people are working for West Midlands Area NUS at the moment so it was good to see them there).
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14th November National Council Report
In which history repeats itself.
June’s National Council was one of the first constitutional events I went to as a member of the NUS NEC-elect. At that event, I made a number of conclusions.
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9TH NOVEMBER EDUCATION PRIORITY CAMPAIGN PLANNING MEETING & 11TH NOVEMBER ANTI-CLOSURE RALLY, PLYMOUTH
In which one battle is lost but the fight goes on.
If you take a broad view, it's pretty obvious what “On Course…for a fair future? ” (NUS's Education Priority Campaign) is. It's the confused attempt of a union atrophied and shell-shocked after decades of misleadership and two crushing defeats over education funding to get back on its feet and reinvigorate the thing that is (or should be) at the very heart of its entire existence; free education activism. As such it contains both the kernels of a more positive future as well as tonnes of baggage that that misleadership, those defeats and all the demoralisation that's come out of it all has created.
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8TH NOVEMBER NEC MEETING REPORT
In which it's back to the bad old days, our numbers dwindle and I get it wrong.
October's NEC meeting was, as far as discussing motions go, the zenith of my time on the NEC thus far. After its heady heights (in which all but one of the tabled motions was discussed) it was a depressing shame to come crashing back down to earth with November's meeting; a genuine return to the bad old days of August. (If this all sounds a bit ridiculous, it's because having NEC meetings divided by one and a half months of intensive activism does tend to make them take on a slightly mystical and melodramatic character. Or maybe it's just because I'm trying to make this blog sound slightly more exciting than the meeting it's a report of. I think I've failed.)
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THE INJUSTICE OF RELATIVISM
A reply to Jamal El-Shayyal.
In a recent blog entitled ‘The relativism of justice???' (read it here) my fellow NEC member Jamal El-Shayyal attempted to excuse recent comments by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about Israel - namely that it should be “wiped off the map. ”
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31ST OCTOBER SOUTH EAST REGIONAL CONFERENCE REPORT
In which we all just keep digging.
During breaks at NUS events, I occasionally occupy myself by trying to think of metaphors to describe the event I'm at. At this year's South East Regional Conference, I think I came up with a pretty good one.
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Motions to NUS NEC, November 8
Motions I’m submitting to the NUS NEC on November 8th - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
Against the Iranian regime, against war
A living wage for campus workers
Affiliation to Iraq Union Solidarity
Students are workers too
In these columns, I've talked a lot about why students should unite with workers, primarily those on their campuses such as lecturers, cleaners, librarians or catering staff.
But a decade of huge attacks on education funding have meant that more and more students are forced to enter the labour market themselves and working for increasingly long hours for increasingly poorer pay. Government propaganda about how much more university graduates can expect to earn is not much consolation during an eight-hour shift behind a bar or stacking shelves in a supermarket.
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6TH OCTOBER EDUCATION PRIORITY CAMPAIGN PLANNING MEETING
In which there are traffic lights.
In his “Inside NUS” column in London Student, my fellow NEC member Jamal El-Shayyal attacked myself and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty for what he saw as our hypocritical approach to politics. Why, he wondered, are we so happy to attack Kat Fletcher for alleged “sell outs” even though I had never attended an Education Priority Campaign Planning Meeting and attempted to actually influence the direction of NUS’s free education campaigning?
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3RD OCTOBER NEC MEETING REPORT
In which there are gains and losses.
My accounts of NEC meetings are usually misery reports telling of meetings in which politics are pushed off the agenda in preference to some pointless bureaucratic dalliance. At 4:15, it looked like this meeting would turn out like that too. It was scheduled to finish at 5:00, and no motions had been discussed.
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Motions to NUS NEC, October 3
Motions I put to NUS NEC on October 3 - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
Affiliation to Iraq Union Solidarity
An anti-sweatshop week of action on campuses
Solidarity with sacked Gate Gourmet workers - as submitted
Solidarity with sacked Gate Gourmet workers - as passed
24TH SEPTEMBER ANTI-CLOSURE DEMO, ROLLE COLLEGE (UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH)
In which one union at one tiny college in rural Devonshire puts the National Union of Students to shame.
I went to the seaside last weekend. I'd made plans to go several days in advance and, after the miserable and disappointing affair that was the last NEC (and after a mad week spent rushing around Freshers' Fairs talking to various social justice and anti-capitalist activists about NUS's commitment to organising an anti-sweatshop week of action on campuses this year), I was massively looking forward to it.
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19TH SEPTEMBER EMERGENCY NEC REPORT
In which there are two reviews, and I'll put you out your misery now: we're not having a national demo.
Good things, they say, come in twos. Or something. September 19th brought two Emergency NEC meetings but unfortunately, the saying did not hold true. Neither was very good.
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IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL - IT’S JUST BUSINESS
In which it’s important to get some things sorted out…
The quote that provides the title of this blog, as some people will undoubtedly have noticed, is from Francis Ford Coppolla’s epic movie The Godfather. Before anyone asks, I am definitely not comparing gang warfare and organised crime to student politics. The world of gang warfare is a world in which vain people bound together by little more than their common devotion to self-interest and the accumulation of power pursue petty personal vendettas against people possessed of similarly fragile egos. As everyone knows, student politics is nothing like that.
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1st September Priority Campaigns Launch Report
In which the NUS gets its priorities badly wrong.
It has come to my attention that I spend a lot of time in these blogs being critical and denunciatory. To remedy this, I would like to begin this report with some words of praise.
The 2005/2006 Priority Campaigns Launch - consisting of a daytime event and then an evening reception, held at the TUC's Congress Centre - was a slick, well-managed and very well put-together event. Logistically it was very impressive; speakers, by and large, began and finished on time and the whole thing ticked over very nicely. The food was also of an exceptionally high quality, with breaded tiger-prawns, thai fish cakes with sweet chilli sauce, barbecue chicken-wings and filo-pastry parcels of Mediterranean vegetables all in abundant evidence. It certainly made a welcome change from the shite I usually eat.
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22nd August NEC Report
In which the NEC demonstrates…something, and I wish I was joking.
The days immediately preceding this meeting had been pretty hectic for me. I got back from a week in Ireland on Wednesday, got my A-Level results on Thursday and then had to immediately pack up all my stuff to move to London. I managed to nick a weekend in Cornwall in the midst of all of that and didn't pack any sun block, so I turned up to the NEC on Monday totally shattered and closely resembling a hairy tomato. It wasn't the best preparation for a meeting in which over half of the 10+ motions submitted were from me and over which I anticipated a pretty serious debate. I am, however, a big fan of a good argument so I was looking forward to the whole thing. Sadly I was to be disappointed.
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Motions to NUS NEC, August 22
Motions I plan to submit to the NUS NEC meeting on August 22 - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
An anti-sweatshop week of action on campuses
Gate Gourmet solidarity - emergency motion
Our extremism against theirs
In which it's important to call things by their proper names…
Following the 7/7 bombings in London, the media has been full of righteous denunciations of “extremists ” of all stripes. Fair enough, you might think. The belief that blowing hundreds of public transport users up is a good way to get a political point across is pretty “extreme, ” so why not denounce it as such?
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11th July NEC Report
In which the NEC is against terrorism, against racism, against war.
The terrorist atrocities carried out in London the previous Thursday cast a pretty long shadow over my first NEC-proper. In the discussion about how the NUS should respond, some of the live debates surrounding the events were replicated on a smaller scale, as arguments took place on how much emphasis should be placed on the way in which UK and US foreign policy has nurtured terrorism and “made us a target.”
My own view is that it’s a question largely of emphasis. It’s wrong and in fact reactionary to suggest that Blairite foreign policy is solely or mainly to blame for the bombings; this carries with it an implicit suggestion that all those who died are also somehow to blame for not stopping Blair from carrying out his plans or for voting his government back in. It also sees the politics of the terrorists and solely reactive, when in fact they have their own political dynamic and logic. The movement to which they belong has its own ideas and agenda - it doesn’t only exist as a reaction to the crimes of imperialism.
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1st-5th July G8 Mobilisations and 6th July Emergency NEC Report
In which there were no run-ins with the police, no compromises and No Sweat.
For five days prior to the NEC on the 6th, I had been in Scotland at the G8 protests. I spent most of my time building the profile of No Sweat and its recently-launched student wing, Students Against Sweatshops.
I’m not really into the sort of nonsense that people like Geldof spout about how it’s necessary to be part of mobilisations like this for their so-called “historic” nature, as if building up a bank of stories to tell the grandkids is the most important thing. The best activists in Scotland were the ones who went for explicitly political reasons, not just “to be part of it.”
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1st June National Council Report
In which the NOLSies are unfairly attacked, James Lloyd is censured and some right-wingers talk about the pressing need to save loads of money, preferably by hacking NUS’ campaigning ability to pieces and literally taking food out of the mouths of key activists…
It is a sad reflection of the culture in NUS these days that the issue that aroused the most passion at today’s National Council was started by one delegate making a broadside attack on NOLS for… supporting the Labour Party.
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13 May NEC Report
In which the NEC continues to eat itself, and I realise I’m going to have to start looking for a job pretty quickly…
The meeting was a stultifying and depressing affair, with 99% of its time dedicated towards a group exercise in which NEC members were told to find ways of cutting NEC expenditure in order to aid the NUS’ apparently apocalyptic financial crisis.
Kat Fletcher announced that she had received 3 requests from affiliated unions for an Extraordinary Conference on finance (still 17 short of the 20 required), and that if we didn’t find sufficient cuts to make then we’d be pushed to an Extraordinary Conference and probably lose the Block of 12. Whether this is the case or not is highly dubious - Kat is resorting to scare-mongering tactics to get the NEC to approve cuts that she’s probably already cooked up with management. There was certainly no suggestion at the meeting that getting rid of some of the £50,000 p/a Managing Directors (or whatever their title is) might be a better way of saving money that impoverishing Block of 12 members in 2005/6.
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The case for a new student activist network
Education in the UK is increasingly geared towards the job market. By introducing variable top-up fees, the 2004 Higher Education Act established a market within the state-funded Higher Education system, forcing universities to sacrifice quality and choice and implement increases in class sizes and cuts in teaching posts in the name of “efficiency”. This trend has been mirrored in schools and colleges across the country, where cuts in courses, Private Finance Initiatives and privately owned City Academies subordinate the provision of quality education to the demands of business. The curriculum is being reshaped to introduce children as young as five to “entrepreneurship”. Meanwhile, communities are divided along religious, sectarian and ethnic lines by the promotion of faith schools.
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SECOND ENS GATHERING: SATURDAY 10TH DECEMBER
12-6pm, Leeds University
We will be discussing ENS’s campaigns including on education funding and workers’ rights, as well as our intervention into next year’s NUS conference. For more information email daniel.randall@nus.org.uk
Democratic structure
This is a draft document to set down organising principles and an operating procedure for Education Not for Sale, which will be discussed at the Leeds gathering on December 10th
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First Starbucks strikes in the world
It was bound to happen eventually - and it happened in New Zealand, on November 23. Low-paid Starbucks workers walked off the job and formed a picket line. They were joined by workers from other low paid, fast-food restaurants such as KFC and Pizza Hut.
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College lecturers vote to strike
Support NATFHE's campaign for decent pay and funding!
The National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), which organises lecturers in further education colleges and in the ‘new' universities, is set to strike on November 16 after its members in FE voted by 71% to 29% for action on pay.
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A LIVING WAGE FOR CAMPUS WORKERS!
London Citizens - a group of trade unionists and community activists - has been running a campaign at Queen Mary’s, University of London to win a living wage for cleaning workers on campus.
The workers are not employed directly by QMU, which makes it easy for university management to attempt to wash their hands of the issue, claiming it’s “not under their jurisdiction.”
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NUS BACKS GATE GOURMET WORKERS
At the 3rd October NUS National Executive Committee meeting, a motion proposed by ENS member Daniel Randall arguing for solidarity with the Gate Gourmet workers was passed unanimously. The NUS issued the following press release on its website:
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ENS conference report
Bert Russell, Leeds University and Laura Schwartz, University of East London
Around 70 student union officers and student activists attended “Putting political activism back into the student movement”, a one day conference to launch Education Not for Sale as a fully-fledged activist network.
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Private firms poised to run state schools after reform
Christian groups in talks to take over from local education authorities
Private education companies and Christian groups are lining up to enter the education market created by yesterday’s pivotal reforms of the state school system, writes Matthew Taylor in the Guardian
ENS statement on the suspension of Middlesex University Students’ Union president Keith Shilson
Defend student union independence!
Oppose Hizb ut-Tahrir!
Following recent Government pledges to clamp down on Islamist extremists on British campuses, the administration at Middlesex University has suspended its student union president, Keith Shilson, for organising a meeting at which Hizb ut-Tahrir would present its case.
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ENS Women launch call to rebuild student women’s movement
Women activists in ENS are supporting the following statement, which calls for a reinvigorated NUS Women’s Campaign and student women’s movement.
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Latest Kat Fletcher shocker
NUS President backs Tory to build “united and effective opposition to the student left”
Activists who thought that NUS President Kat Fletcher could sink no lower than equivocating on top-up fees and feting Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell received a shock today when it emerged that Fletcher is endorsing a candidate in the executive elections for Conservative Future, youth wing of the Conservative Party - and calling for more Tories in NUS.
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Kat Fletcher “sells” top-up fees - don’t let her sell us out! Sign the online petition!
The NUS leadership, and above all NUS National President Kat Fletcher, have spent the last month preparing for what looks like a massive betrayal in the fight for free education. Fletcher has committed NUS to supporting a Government campaign explaining and justifying the new student funding system, based on variable top-up fees, due to come into effect in 2006.
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Petition against sell-out on top-up-fees
Click here to sign a petition deploring NUS President Kat Fletcher’s participation in the Government’s campaign to explain and justify its higher education funding policy, and her equivocation on opposition to top-up fees and support for free education over the recent period
Support demonstration against Plymouth campus closure
By Daniel Randall, NUS National Executive
Plymouth University is planning to shut its Rolle Campus, in Exmouth, in 2008 - despite the fact that it is home to 4000 students and recently received an excellent report from Ofsted. Plymouth Students’ Union is opposing the closure as disastrous for both students and the local community.
Please support their struggle!
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The George Fox Six are on trial from the 26th September!
Join them at court on Monday to show solidarity and support Free Speech and “Education not Exploitation”!
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Support floods in for sacked AUT members at Brunel University
Click here for the mass petition to support the two Association of University Teachers activists sacked by Brunel University
(August 2005)
Interview with a sacked TGWU shop steward at Gate Gourmet, August 11.
What are the conditions like at Gate Gourmet?
They are the very worst conditions - they really are treating them like slaves. But we are not asking them for anything - for any money or anything - we are just asking them for dignity at work, respect - that’s what we want, and it doesn’t cost them anything. That is what we’re looking for.
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Build student solidarity with sacked Gate Gourmet workers!
Earlier this month, Gate Gourmet, a catering firm producing food for airlines including British Airways, sacked 670 mostly Asian women workers at Heathrow Airport in West London after they staged a strike to protest at planned job losses. When they did, hundreds of baggage handlers, flight crew and check-in staff also walked out in an illegal but magnificent show of solidarity.
These workers are now back at work, but the Gate Gourmet workers’ struggle for their jobs and their rights is continuing.
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IRAQ: Boys trapped in commercial sex trade
by IRIN News Service
BAGHDAD,
8 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - Hassan Feiraz, a 16-year-old boy, has started a desperate new life since being forced into the sex trade in Baghdad, joining a growing number of adolescents soliciting in Iraq under the threat of street gangs or the force of poverty.
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Supporting the struggle for gay, women’s and democratic rights in Iraq
As the deadlock over the new Iraqi constitution continues, ENS is supporting those Iraqis fighting for a democratic, secular state which guarantees the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people, women and national minorities. We believe that that is the real, progressive alternative to the US-UK occupation, which we oppose.
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Putting political activism back in the student movement
The Education Not for Sale conference, organised jointly with Students Against Sweatshops and University of East London SU, takes place in London on September 3. 12-7pm, University of East London Docklands campus, University Way, E16 (DLR: Cyprus).
(September 2005)
Protest against execution of gay teenagers in iran!
ENS is backing Outrage’s protest against the execution of two teenage boys in Iran.
Mahmoud Asgari (16) and Ayaz Marhoni (18) were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, in north east Iran.
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Back union campaign in support of Tesco workers!
On Thursday 4th of July, members of the Transport and General Workers Union joined solidarity protests outside Tesco stores in support of two sacked Polish agency workers. Radek Sawicki and Zbyszek Bukala were employed by the agency Grafton as warehouse operatives working for Tesco’s Greenhills Road distribution centre in Dublin, and were sacked after a series of protest actions. There was a picket at Teaco on Baggot Street (Dublin) and solidarity protests in Liverpool, London, Glasgow and Oxford.
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NUS executive member: international solidarity can beat war and terrorism
Response to the aftermath of the London bombings, written by NUS national executive member Dan Randall in a personal capacity.
“The left must unreservedly condemn the 7/7 bombings and subsequent attempts to replicate them. These atrocities, committed not against the powerful of the world but against ordinary Londoners of all backgrounds, many of them on their way to work, are expressions of a right-wing ideology that acts in the name of medievalist tyranny.”
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Democracy and human rights are for everyone! A call for a secular, progressive student movement, Against the rise of the Religious Right!
As students and academics from a Muslim background or who are ex-Muslims,we want to protest at the rise of the religious right in the student movement.
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Students at Lancaster University face fines and imprisonment for protesting against corporate greed! Pass this model motion in your Union!
Motion in support of the George Fox Six, for the right to peaceful protest
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From a student uprising in Basra to a student congress in Baghdad to create a progressive student organization in Iraq
Appeal to all organizations and individuals for financial and political support for the first student congress in Iraq since the US-led invasion!
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NUS says no to boycott of Israel, yes to Palestinian rights
At a meeting on Friday 20th May 2005, NUS national executive voted to oppose the boycott of Israeli universities and support Palestinian rights. The motion they passed (see below) can be adapted for use in student unions and campaigning groups. Tomorrow night, in the run-up to the AUT special council discussing this issue, there will be a meeting of activists committed to opposing the boycott.
Basra students strike for an end to harassment by fundamentalist thugs
Kate Ferguson, Oxford University
Support the student protests in Iraq!
The Education Not for Sale network is calling on student unions, student movement activists and trade unionists to support the appeal issued yesterday by the Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq in support of the student strike currently taking place in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Since March 15th, students at Basra and Shatt al-Arab have been joined by hundreds of pupils at the city's secondary schools in an open-ended strike in protest at an attack carried by thugs from Moqtada al-Sadr's “Army of the Mahdi ” and members of the Iranian security services - leaving a number of students injured and one dead. The attack was carried out because the students, from the university's engineering faculty, were enjoying an outing in one of Basra's parks, with students of both sexes and various different backgrounds and religions mixing freely.
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Further Education - NUS, stop taking the piss!
Daniel Randall, New College Nottingham
Virtually everyone in NUS pays constant lip service to Further Education - and virtually everyone in NUS then forgets what they said and takes the piss. From a leadership who think Education Maintenance Allowances are all that we need to factions submitting motions from FE unions without those unions' permission, no one really seems to take FE seriously. This is reflected in NUS's campaigns on FE, which to the extent that they exist at all focus almost entirely on tinkering at the edges. Our national union's pronouncements on FE seem to come from a bizarre dream world, in which dire situation facing students in the FE sector simply doesn't exist.
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Northern Irish top-up fees - Government shows contempt for students and democracy
Robin Sivapalan, Cambridge University
The Government has used the suspension of Northern Ireland's assembly to push through the introduction of top-up fees in Northern Ireland - despite the fact that all the major Northern Irish parties are united in their opposition to the plans and that Parliament's Northern Irish Grand Committee recently voted 11-10 to oppose them.
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Defend FE rights - defend NUS democracy!
Dear Colleague,
We are writing to inform you of a serious attempt to undermine democracy in NUS.
In January, Dudley College Student Union learnt that six amendments had been submitted to NUS conference without our knowledge or consent. These amendments were included in the original version of CD6. The same text was also submitted to conference in the names of Redbridge College and Keighley College, without their consent. Indeed Keighley College doesn't even have a functioning Student Union.
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Defend NUS democracy - reverse the cuts!
Having forced through a huge raft of our attacks on our democracy at the tiny “extraordinary conferences” last year, the NUS leadership is now preparing a new wave of cuts, including charging for NUS cards. This will not only our poorest members in Further Education most, but undermine the collective strength of our national union by moving towards voluntary, individual membership. This threatens NUS with collapse. At the same time, the NEC wants to pay an external consultant up to £80,000 to review NUS campaigns! This is an outrageous waste of our members’ money and an affront to the sovereignty of National Conference.
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Oxford University SU Alternative White Paper
The Oxford University SU Alternative White Paper presents alternative proposals for funding Higher Education through progressive taxation.
Public buildings and private finance? That’s a formula for tomorrow’s slums
Larry Elliott, The Guardian, August 2005
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Materials produced by ENS for NUS Conference 2005
Society and citizenship debate bulletin
Special bulletin in response to walkout when Iraqi socialist feminist Houzan Mahmoud spoke
Speaker Tour leaflet
40 Reasons why Tariq Ramadan is a reactionary bigot
“40 reasons why Tariq Ramadan is a reactionary bigot ” was written by the French Marxist, Yves Coleman and has been reproduced by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL). The text presents factual information about the politics of Tariq Ramadan.
There are many issues the Left must address.
First is the question of honest polemic.
Useful political debate requires clearly presented political positions and an attempt to honestly engage with opponents. And yet Yves Coleman believes that it almost impossible to either ‘catch' or ‘corner' Tariq Ramadan. He is difficult to pin down. The reason is simple: Tariq Ramadan often says one thing to one group, and something different, or contradictory, elsewhere.
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