Workers' Liberty Student Activities

As the National Union of Students has lost touch with its membership, the training it provides has become geared towards turning out efficient bureaucrats who would be at home in any management setting. This event will provide an alternative for union officers who also want to be activists, educating you on the Government's policies and what they'll mean in your colleges, and providing you with the alternative views of those who work in education. There will also be training on a range of campaigning skills to help you empower your students to put their demands on to the political agenda.

Speakers include prominent education researchers, theorists and journalists; trade unionists; Members of Parliament.

Tuition fees: Non-payment is the only way to win!

This year more students in still more universitys took up the banner of non-payment and organised students in active campaigns against fees. Those who couldn't pay or refused to pay were backed up by students who took action from demonstrations to occupations to defend the right to study.

Yet again the level of unpaid fees was in the millions, an indication that there are vast numbers of students who are unable to pay but are isolated and uninvolved in a political campaign. Wehave to reach out to those students to build a mass campaign of nonpayment.

In the student movement the Campaign for Free Education remains the central orgaisation pushing and organising for fees non-payment.

Workers' Liberty believes that a fee non-payment campaign, that models itself on the anti-poll tax campaign of the late '80s can make the fees system unworkable. The anti-poll tax campaign defeated not only the poll tax but Thatcher and the Tory government that introduced it.

This year, non-payment campaigns have existed at Oxford, Sussex, Reading, SOAS, UCL, Leeds and Queens Universities and many more have had individual non-payers. When non-payers have been threatened at these Universities students have taken action, going into occupation at Oxford, SOAS and UCL.

Next year is the third year of tuition fees, and it will be the first intakeafter the government suffered a serious defeat over fees in Scotland. By reintroducing a limited bursary for the poorest students accross the UK they have also conceded the failure of the loans system they introduced. We need to take the offensive now and organise students across Britain into active mass campaigns.

All activists should be preparing the ground now to build such a campaign. The National Non Payment Collective has produced a campaign pack that is available on the Campaign for Free Education website: http://members.xoom.com/nus_cfe or call Lee Sergent on 07958 556 756 for more details.

NUS Women's Campaign

NUS Women's Officer and AWL member Helen Russell is planning another active year for the NUS Women's campaign - working alongside women's groups and the labour movement to fight against sexism.

The focus for the first term will be the "Women's Health Matters" national protest in Leeds. A march will be held from the city centre to the NHS executive headquarters demanding the Government "Tax the rich to fund the NHS", an end to PFI in hospitals, better pay for nurses and more money for women's health projects such as breast and cervical cancer screening. The Women's Campaign is planning to work closely with local UNISON branches and trainee nurses. The demonstration will take place on Wednesday November1st.

This year the women's campaign will continue to organise high profile actions against sexism, from Life offices to a repeat of the demonstration outside the Miss World contest, scheduled to be held again in this country.

The Campaign will also continue to run the popular 'Women Making History roadshow' - a series of talks with a display about the history of women involved in struggle: from slavery to the suffrage.

To get involved in the NUS women's campaign contact Helen Russell on helen_r@nus.org.uk or call 0207 561 6503.

Blair's agenda for post 18 education

Amidst endless rhetoric about elitism and access the government have made further moves in recent months to exclude the working class form any meaningful university education and create a two tier system along the lines of that in the US. Report has followed report on why it is necessary and acceptable to increase charges on students. All orchestrated by the government and university chiefs to create a favourable environment for the introduction of huge top up fees after the next general election. This is not just about raising more money for education without having to tax business it is part of a drive to fundamentally change the nature of British Higher Education, to privatise it in the same way that the government is trying to privatise schools and the NHS.

This government has no notion that education can or should be about anything more than educating the population for their place in the job market and in society more generally. So we have talk about two year cheap fast track degrees and foundation degrees alongside rumours of massive tuition fee increases for academic courses at the "best" universities. Unless you are wealthy there will be no place for you in Blair's brave new world of elitist education. If you are very clever and very very lucky you may get a scholarship but if not it will be a short under resourced vocational course or nothing. From the point of view of Blair and business there is no point paying to educate people beyond the level that is strictly necessary for job they will take up. After all, too much education might give people funny ideas or aspirations this society can't meet!

The privatised US system Blair champions costs each student around $27,000 a year. If you are a black man you are four times more likely to go to prison than you are to ever go to university.

As socialists we believe education to be tremendously important, even the often narrow and stilted education available under capitalism. Education equips us with the tools to understand the world we live in, to ask questions and to be critical. Without education there can be no liberation. It is no coincidence that one of the first things the early British socialists and labour movement activists did was to form education groups, to read, think and discuss even though manyof them worked long days in exhausting jobs and had families to care for besides.

AWL students are active and central to the Campaign for Free Education. This is because we believe education is a right and like the CFE we believe only a system in which full grants are available to all and in which there are no loans and no fees will working class student be able to gain access to university. Obviously this has to be paid for. We think the rich should pay, the 10% in British society that control 90% of the wealth. These people have enough wealth between them to pay not only for university education for all but for pensions, health care and more.

For international working class solidarity and socialism

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty

CFE Reclaim our Education Conference

Tuition fees: Non-payment is the only way to win!

NUS Women's Campaign

Blair's agenda for post 18 education

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