06.07.2011

Southampton: All in it together

Callum Williamson witnessed an encouraging appetite to fight on

On June 30 I was at Peter Symonds College in Winchester, where 600 students walked out on the day of action against tuition fees and cuts to the education maintenance allowance last November.

The strike there last Thursday was pretty solid and forced the college to close for the day. The vast majority of the NUT members voted for action and the teachers on the picket lines said that most of those colleagues were solid. The staff I talked to were indignant at having 10% of their pay going towards a pension that they are having to wait longer and longer to receive. There was also a general feeling that this was about more than pensions and was not your average industrial action.

The pickets did not see what they were doing as simply an act of self-preservation (they were not the spoilt and self-serving workers depicted in the Daily Mail). There was a belief that there is an alternative to austerity and that this is what the fight is about. What I heard from them sounded very much like old Labour - progressive taxation, public investment and welfare provision.

The idea that the capitalists can be made to pay their ‘fair share’ within capitalism is one that we as communists see as misguided (tax avoidance figures speak for themselves). However, it can only be welcomed that people are rejecting the ideas of neoliberalism and looking for alternatives.

Furthermore, I witnessed an encouraging appetite to fight on, as union members prepare for the likely follow-up strikes in the autumn. For those taking part there was no doubt as to the worthiness of their cause. My former economics teacher, whom I was glad to see on the picket line, was saying, “Most people will be made worse off by this sustained ideological attack on the public sector”.

In other words we, our class, are all in it together.