26.02.2004

Movement to resist

Education

The ‘week of action’ against top-up fees called by the National Union of Students to coincide with the lecturers’ strike is, of course, welcome - it is rare nowadays that one sees student protests or sit-ins on anything like the scale of the past.

In reality however, we have not seen a ‘week of action’, but for the most part small numbers of students - mainly organised by the various left groups - appearing symbolically alongside AUT members. A mass student walkout occurred on Wednesday, which is usually allotted for sports activity anyway. Most campuses, far from being alight with revolutionary foment, have been quite quiet. Students either stayed at home in bed, or just carried on as usual with their scheduled timetables.

Nevertheless, it is possible that the issue of top-up fees could breathe some life into student politics, which has been relatively passive for quite some time, in spite of the objective conditions for campus-based change - the continuous attacks on student finances, forcing many more into long hours of low paid work, and, alongside that, the radicalisation brought about by last year’s mass anti-war upsurge.

The “Stop fees now” headline on the NUS website initially strikes you as energetic and radical, but a quick glance at the various subheadings - “email your MP”, “visit your local surgery” - soon disabuses you of the notion. It would be useful, then, if the left groups were to offer a viable alternative to this official dead end. Economism, however, rears its ugly head even in student politics - with the ‘Fuck fees’ (or more precisely ‘F**k fees’) banners flying high and mighty.

Is this the true state of higher education? The inadequacy of mass-mailing MPs, or enjoying tea with a sycophantic Labour MP (who will probably not be there anyway), is not dealt with by the student left. Rather than looking at why such individual protests are unlikely to be successful and attempting to put forward concrete, collective alternative actions, we get caught up in pseudo-revolutionary posing.

What is needed is a student movement that is not only well organised and militant, but encourages democratic debate in the search for genuine solutions to the problems that students face every day. Such a movement must not simply be a vehicle to recruit to this or that left sect, gagging independent voices in the name of creating mere paper-sellers, but a means to united and effective student action.

Then and only then will we be able to fight back with the ferocity of the Blairites and resist their assault on student conditions.