A report on the demonstration for free education in London this week...

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday February 22, 2002 18:19 by Sacha Ismail

Between 5,000 and 10,000 students gathered in London this week for the UK National Union of Students annual demonstration for reform of education funding.

Sacha Ismail
Campaign for Free Education Steering Committee

Between 5,000 and 10,000 students gathered in London this week for the UK
National Union of Students annual demonstration for reform of education
funding. Although the event received excellent media coverage, it was
significantly smaller than both last year’s demonstration (15,000-20,000)
and the NUS’s predictions. It seems likely, moreover, that this is how the
NUS leaders wanted it to be.

When Tony Blair’s Labour government introduced tuition fees of £1,000 (about
1,700 Euro) and abolished student maintenance grants in 1998, the
Labour-dominated leadership of NUS effectively accepted these attacks, and
it was left to the Campaign for Free Education and local student unions to
organise students in opposition to the government. Mass demonstrations,
non-payment campaigns and countless local protests and lobbies finally paid
off last year, when the government floated the idea of restoring maintenance
grants and announced a comprehensive review of student funding. (This
followed the decision of the autonomous assemblies of Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland to partially reverse the government’s cuts.)

Under pressure from activists on the ground, and CFE members of the NUS’s
national executive, the leadership has begun organising demonstrations again
and shifted its policy on student funding marginally to the left. But it
still refuses to demand really free education (it supports only means-tested
grants and calls for the introduction of a graduate tax to replace tuition
fees), and it is still unwilling to do anything which might really embarrass
its friends in the government. Hence the comparatively small size of this
year’s demonstration; terrified at what 20,000+ students marching past
Parliament might mean, the NUS leadership made an absolutely deliberate
decision to organise the demonstration in the second term of the year –
despite the fact that far fewer students would be able to attend at this
time – and failed to send our publicity until a few weeks beforehand.

Not content with sabotaging the organisation of the march, NUS President
Owain James and Vice-President (Education) Brookes Duke – both ‘independent’
fellow travellers of the Labour Students faction on the NUS national
executive – refused to support University of East London and CFE students
trying to organise marchers for a sit-down protest outside Tony Blair’s
Downing Street residence. As it turned out, even rhetorical daring was too
much for the so-called leaders of the British student movement. When the
march reached Trafalgar Square for its final rally, they dismissed the calls
of trade union speakers – trade union speakers that they themselves had
invited! – for increased progressive taxation to fund free education for
all, and filled their speeches with references to the need for ‘targeting’
and means-testing.

This rather pathetic attitude was not reflected by the mass of students on
the demonstration, however - a large number of placards and banners
expressed marchers' opposition to a graduate tax, and the phrase 'free
education' was heard far more than it has been in the recent past.

The NUS leadership's strategy is almost identical to that which allowed
Labour to get away with introducing tuition fees in the first place. With
the government retreating on education funding, British students need to
make sure it is their agenda, and not that of big business, which is heard.
But they will only be able to do that if NUS starts doing what a union is
supposed to – fighting not for its leaders' careers but its members'
interests. The CFE will be campaigning inside NUS to make sure that
happens.

- For more information on the demo, visit www.nus.org.uk (but treat the
figures with extreme scepticism) and www.educationet.org

- To contact the Campaign for Free Education write to PO Box 22615, London
N4 1WT, UK or e-mail [email protected]