More information about the meeting and forum follows below the article The fight for education and the student movement in the UK Background Access to university was expanded significantly and the first state-funded maintenance grants introduced in the UK immediately after the Second World War. This system was extended during the 1960s; yet in 1979, when a radically right-wing Conservative government began to take revenge for decades of working-class confidence and militancy through a violent assault on all sections of the welfare state, less than 10% of young people went to university. The post-1979 Conservative governments faced contradictory pressures: on one hand, business was demanding an increasingly educated and skilled workforce; on the other hand, publicly-funded education represented an unacceptable drain on corporate profits and the fortunes of the rich. Their solution was to rapidly expand higher education, while cutting back funding, both to students and institutions, year-on-year. Students grants were slashed severely and ministers repeatedly threatened to introduce tuition fees. Meanwhile, further education colleges (catering mainly for 16-18 year olds and those who missed the chance of an education when they were young) were converted into privatised corporations and funding for schools severely restricted. Since its election in 1997, the "new" Labour government of Tony Blair has continued this neo-liberal programme of cuts and privatisation (both in the sphere of education and elsewhere). One of the Blair governments' first acts was to completely abolish student grants and introduce tuition fees of £1000 a year - policies which the Conservatives dreamed of but never thought they could get away with!! The average student now graduates with something like £12,000 of debt; as a result, applications to university have stagnated and drop-out rates soared, making a mockery of the Government's target of 50% of young people going to university by 2010 (the figure is currently just under 40%). Desperate for new funds, an increasing number of university Vice-Chancellors now call for the complete privatisation of higher education through a system of deregulated fees, something to which Blair & co. say they have no objection in principle. The government has already allowed private companies to take over schools for the first time and massively expanded the elitist system of academic selection at the age of eleven. Unsurprisingly, they are keen advocates of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and have no objection to the inclusion of higher education in its provisions. The student movement fights back - sort of Those from countrieswith healthier student movements will be astonished to learn that the Labour government's cuts provoked next to no resistance from the official representative body of British students. The UK National Union of Students is the best resourced national student union in Europe; virtually all of the UK's 3,000,000+ students are members of one of its hundreds of affiliated organisations and it commands a budget of millions of pounds. Unfortunately, it is also run by the same right-wing faction of the Labour Party which produced Blair and his friends. Until 1995, the NUS demanded free education for all: a massive increase in education spending to guarantee both an expansion of higher education and a living maintenance grant for every student. Rather than cause any trouble for an incoming Blairite government, the Labour Students moved to ditch this policy in time for the 1997 general election. They were resisted by the Campaign for Free Education (CFE), a grass-roots organisation of left-wing activists enjoying the support of dozens of student unions and thousands of students up and down the country. In 1997 and 1998, when the NUS actively campaigned for the abolition of student grants (no, this is not misprint!) and cancelled its annual national demonstration against the government, the CFE brought thousands of demonstrators onto the streets of London and Newcastle. This was accompanied by local demonstrations and occupations all over the UK, with particularly prominent campaigns at Oxford, Sussex and a number of London institutions. A united left slate made up of the CFE and socialist groups such as the Alliance for Workers' Liberty and the Socialist Workers' Student Society came within an inch of winning the presidency of NUS; five CFE supporters were elected to the NUS executive; and, finally, in late 1999, the NUS leadership accepted that student grants might be desirable and organised its first demonstration for two years. But the Labour Students had done their job by keeping student protest within limits tolerable to the government. Concerted action in 1997-8 could have swept the government's plans for higher education away; instead, progress has been very slow, with protests winning limited victories such as the reintroduction of limited maintenance grants in Scotland last year. It was only in April this year, after they were defeated on the floor of NUS conference by the CFE, that the NUS leaders accepted the need to campaign for such basic demands as increased taxation of the rich, no graduate tax and the withdrawal of GATS. The Government is currently conducting a review of student funding arrangements, one which Higher Education Minister Margaret Hodge says will consider 'all options'. In other words, whether things get better or worse will depend on what students do, now. What happens next Something like 7,000 students took part in the CFE's November demonstration in 1998; up to 10,000 in the NUS demo in November '99; 17,000 in November 2000. NUS postponed its 2001 demonstration until February this year (eliciting a protest meeting at the House of Commons at which veteran Labour MP Tony Benn told activists not to "believe a word" the NUS leaders said), with the result that only 5,000 took part. The next three months will see two major demonstrations around education funding - a lobby of Parliament sometime in October and a march through London in late November. Once again, unfortunately, NUS had to be pressured into calling these events and its leading officers have devoted more energy to extolling minor concessions by the Government than mobilising students against it. Nonetheless, we will be working to make them a success, and to link them to the upsurge in industrial action and labour movement protests around pay and privatisation that has occurred in recent months. (Eg, the CFE has proposed at the NUS executive that recently elected left-wing union leader Mark Serwotka and workers involved in the recent local government and rail strikes should be invited to speak at the lobby of Parliament.) The key remains to demand the expansion of education as a public service, a social right and an end in itself - something which is desirable because it allows individual development through universal access to the stock of human knowledge and culture, not because it boosts the ability of business to make money. The official student movement in the UK has tended to argue the case for free education purely in terms of economic efficiency - that is, when it argues it at all. We say: neo-liberalism capitalism should be made to pay for education, not the other way around. See you in Cologne and Florence! For the Campaign for Free Education and the Student Campaign Forum, Sacha Ismail Kath Owen Faz Velmi Education forum at the FH Köln 12.09.02 doors open at 18.00 h, you can sleep here if you register yourself in advance (limited space) 13.09.02 10.00 h central opening discussion 11.00 h Workshop-Round I 13.30 h lunch 14.30 h Workshop-Round II Round II are the same workshops as in round I so you can visit two workshops 17.00 h central discussion- presentation of the results of the discussions in the workshops 18.00 h stage discussion "Education in times of globalisation" with Karl-Heinz Heinemann, free Journalist Lars Hüning, media advisor of the CHE (neo-liberal think-tank) Thomas Fritz, free worker of WEED, Berlin, and active in Attac Torsten Bultmann, chairman of the BdWi (association of democratic scientists) Ulla Lötzer, member of parliament Markus Struben, coordinator of the ABS in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen (organised a lot of protests against study fees) 14.09.02 14.00 h education block at the mass demonstration against neo-liberalism at the rudolfsplatz in Cologne. Contact and registration for forum education: Asta FH Köln Max Breitzler 0049 (0)221-981670 0049 (0)171-2169182 (René Schuijlenburg) Email: ole@education-is-not-for-sale.org (A must if you need a place to sleep!) Adress where the forum takes place: FH Köln Standort Süd Claudiusstr. 1 50678 Köln More information: http://www.education-is-not-for-sale.org (You can download a flyer there as well) or Regular updates by mailinglist. Subscription, send an empty e-mail to: international-pupil-and-studentactions-subscribe@yahoogroups.com