A report from anti-fascist students in Liverpool
BNP Thugs Take to the Streets of Liverpool and Assault Local Anti-Fascists
Yesterday, April 23rd, saw fifteen members of Liverpool BNP members take to the streets of our city again. As word got around that they were leafleting on Church Street, around 12.30pm, local anti-fascists did what they could to mobilise people (not the easiest thing to do mid-week, mid afternoon!). By 1pm there was around twenty anti-fascists leafleting in and around the BNP, making it loud and clear what the BNP stood for, and why people shouldn’t tolerate their presence. This was met by the standard bellowing of ‘get a wash’ and ‘get a job’ from the BNP only serving to further alienate members of the public, from whom they were already getting short shrift.
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May 1: March for a living wage at London universities and colleges!
May Day, May Day… Low pay – No way!
Victory for Living Wage protesters at Birkbeck College!
Staff and students to demonstrate to end poverty pay for cleaners + caterers across Bloomsbury!
March, stunt + rally this May Day!
The recently-formed Bloomsbury Living Wage campaign has called a demonstration for this May Day (1st May.) The protest will include a stunt to make visible the contribution that low-paid and mainly-migrant cleaners and caterers make to our city; and will call for the introduction of the London Living Wage (LLW) across the many educational centres in Bloomsbury.
The LLW is a minimum wage and conditions package established by the GLA, which takes into account the higher costs of living in London. Its rate (currently £7.45 an hour) has been calculated carefully through adapting the national minimum wage to local conditions. It also includes a series of other basic rights (including sick pay and union rights.)
Recently, after a long campaign by Birkbeck staff and student unions, which was supported by public figures such as Ken Loach and MP John McDonnell, management at the university agreed to pay all cleaning and catering staff the Living Wage rate. This followed a similarly successful campaign at SOAS, and the decision by 27 other employers across London to implement the Living Wage. Now Birkbeck and SOAS activists have joined forces with other Bloomsbury college campaigners to organise a May Day protest.
Some Bloomsbury universities still pay wages as low as the minimum wage of £5.73. This means that to make ends meet cleaners and other staff often end up doing several jobs (sometimes on top of organising childcare) and working unsociable early morning and weekend shifts. Further, there even have been cases of unscrupulous subcontractors not paying employees for months.
We say that the people who prepare our food and make our buildings fit for purpose are essential to making universities function properly. They deserve to be treated with dignity!
We have chosen international workers’ day (May Day) to demand this, as too often low-paid migrant workers are treated as ‘invisible’ and their contribution to the work and society, ignored.
Our 1st May action will begin with a rally (including MPs and other public figures) at 12 pm midday at the main steps, SOAS, 10 Thornhaugh St.
The Bloomsbury Living Wage Campaign is supported by activists from UCL, SOAS, Birkbeck, LSHTM, Senate House, and Institute of Education.
For more information contact Camilla on 07789 680 115 or c.royle@ucl.ac.uk
Everyone deserves a Living Wage!
After the occupations: report from 18th April activist coordination
By Sacha Ismail, SOAS and Daniel Randall, University of Sheffield (pc)
On April 18, those involved in the wave of university occupations over Gaza, and other left-wing student activists, met at a “coordination” conference to discuss the way forward for the student left. About 90 took part, including members of Workers’ Liberty, Education Not for Sale, Workers Power and the CPGB, with the SWP sending a long a contingent to keep an eye on things, though the clear majority was unaffiliated, with a large number of anarchists.
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Save London Met! March on 23 May for jobs and education!
The government has cut £18 million from London Metropolitan University’s annual teaching budget and demanded that the university pay back £38 million in past funding. 550 posts are due to go, which means 8-900 job losses - 25 percent of the workforce! London Met management are making deep cuts, seeking to make staff and the university’s mostly working-class students pay for their incompetence and for the capitalist economic crisis.
This is a massive deal. The existence of the institution is at stake. And it is test case for what the bosses want to do to our education system.
UCU members are London Met are balloting for action; and there is a march on Saturday 23 May “For jobs and education”. See you there!
March for Jobs and Education
Called by LMU UCU, LMU Unison, CIC UCU, Islington PCS
Meet 11am, Saturday 23 May, LMU Tower Building, Holloway Road
The campaign blog is here savelondonmetuni.blogspot.com
UCU pay dispute: more scabbing from NUS
Join the Facebook group to support UCU and oppose NUS’s shit position! here.
“Given the effects of the current economic climate on the graduate jobs market, students need industrial action by university staff like a hole in the head.” - NUS President Wes Streeting.
Having refused to support the crucial AUT-NATFHE dispute in 2005-6, NUS is now scabbing on our brothers and sisters in UCU. UCU intends to ballot its members over pay; but instead of supporting them, our national union is putting out statements undermining their struggle. A position of neutrality between workers and the employers who are attacking their pay means, in effect, supporting the bosses.
It is roughly the equivalent of UCU arguing against free education in order to free up more money for lecturers’ salaries. And it undermines students’ struggles against cuts in education too. This is a disgrace.
Send your messages of protest to wes.streeting@nus.org.uk
For NUS’s full statement, see here or see below.
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Occupations against school closures
After the occupation of a number of Glasgow schools to stop them being closed comes an occupation in Lewisham. The idea of direct action, and occupations in particular, is catching on.
By Vicky Thompson
At about 7 this morning, parents struggled past security to occupy the roof of Lewisham Bridge Primary School in protest at Lewisham Council’s absurd decision to decant all the children and pupils 1.5 miles away. They are still on the roof, despite an enormous police presence. Lewisham Council has effectively been thwarted in its attempts to knock down the primary school that has been at the heart of the community for decades, after the school building recently received a Grade II listing. But this has not stopped the council going ahead with a plan that has made parents extremely angry.
In preparation for the move to another building, children have already been forced to take a four week Easter break, rather than the usual two. As you can imagine, this places an enormous extra burden on the shoulders of working families who are forced to pay childcare for the extra two weeks.
If you’re in the Lewisham area, come and show solidarity with the occupiers! If you can’t do that, please join the facebook group “Hands Off Lewisham Bridge Primary School” and invite your friends.
Facebook group here
We will post a full report from the Glasgow occupations shortly
NUS conference 2009: bureaucrats in the ascendant; what the student left needs to do
By Ed Maltby, Education Not for Sale national secretary, and Chris Marks, Hull University Union VP Education-elect (pc)
The 2009 National Union of Students conference (31 March-2 April) saw the union’s right-wing leadership in the ascendant. At the same time it made clear what the student left needs to do.
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