There are now UNDER TWO WEEKS to go until the Take Back Your Campus demo at the University of Birmingham. We are calling on students to come from all over the country on February 15th to defend the right to protest and fight for the democratisation of higher education.

The National Union of Students has also pledged its support to the demonstration. For the facebook event, click here.

Last November following a peaceful sit-in in an unused gate house at the University of Birmingham, university managed acquired a draconian injunction banning all “occupational protest action” for twelve months. The injunction was condemned by Amnesty International and others as “aggressive and censorious”.

We are campaigning to get this injunction lifted and call on all concerned peoples to rally at 1pm at the Guild of students on the 15th of February to increase pressure on the university to drop this flagrant attack on democratic rights.

Simon Furse, a 2nd year student at the University of Birmingham, took part in a peaceful sit in to try and raise awareness and dialogue about the effects of the white paper. The University of Birmingham in response has singled him out with the help of the student union president. On the 15th he is being taken to a full misconduct committee, at which he faces expulsion. We want the proceedings against Simon Furse to be dropped and for Simon to be allowed to carry on with his studies.

So: book your tickets to Birmingham for Feb 15th!

Press contact: 07964791663

The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts is calling for a National Student Strike this March, in support of a nationwide strike on pensions by the lecturers’ union, UCU, and coinciding with an official walk-out called by the National Union of Students. A date will be announced later this week, along with dates for a lobby of parliament in early March and another week of action in the runup to the walk-out.

In an almost unprecedented move, NUS looks set to call for a national walk-out in mid-late March as part of a strategy to defeat the government’s higher education reforms. NCAFC welcomes this move, and we will now look to build a National Student Strike, with demos, occupations and direct action across the country. We will also be calling a demonstration on the same day as the parliamentary lobby, and put together resources for students to organise strikes and pickets.

In an email sent to student union heads across the country, Liam Burns, NUS President, wrote:

Students’ unions will be able to develop a range of actions that their students want to take, but the aim is clear: let’s clear out the lecture theatres, the seminar rooms, the ITC suites and the libraries and demonstrate clearly that without students, Universities are just empty buildings. Let’s work hard together to show that students care and make the National Walk-Out count.

 

The National Union of Students (NUS), which represents 7 million students across the UK, has voted to officially support the national demonstration on November 9th. At its national executive meeting on Thursday 22nd September, the NUS adopted support for the demonstration almost unanimously, and pledged resources to help the NCAFC to mobilise.

The same meeting also adopted support for public sector strike action on November 30th, likely to be Britain’s biggest strike since the 1926 General Strike.

For comment and updates call 07964791663

We now have the first batch of publicity for the national demonstration on November 9th. It’s free, good and easy to use.

Click here to download the full leaflet as a text file: National-Demo-9-Nov-Word

N.B. the images in the document are PNGs, and can be used flexibly once the document has downloaded. The front page can also be used as a poster.

In the meantime, why not donate your profile picture to this:

The NCAFC alternative training took place in Birmingham, with around 60 activists in attendance in total. Some of the best bits of the anonymous feedback we recieved were:

“I’ve never been to such a large event with such a high level of participation”

“For once, I did not feel alienated by the activist community!”

“Proper time and respect given to liberation campaigns – HUGELY appreciated…”

“Non-sectarian, inclusive and supportive.”

It was a great success! Several of the sabbs there were new to the anti-cuts movement, and people learned a lot of tricks and ideas for re-making their Students’ Union, standing up to right-wing pressure from SU staff and general managers, organising occupations, linking up with trade unionists, and running better Women’s, LGBT, BME and disabled students’ liberation campaigns.

As if to illustrate the desperate need for a radical overhaul of student union democracy, due to some minor piece of paperwork being out of joint, the Birmingham SU management told the NCAFC (and the NCAFC supporters on the Birmingham SU Executive) we couldn’t use the SU building on the Sunday – so we went and used a squatted social space down the road!

One feature of the event was that liberation caucuses were not jammed in at lunchtimes, but were put as sessions in their own right – half an hour long each, with nothing clashing (they were not, for example, all run at the same time). The caucuses elected provisional liberation officers to sit on the National Committee: Aimee Kent-Payne from Hull Uni and Women of Hull Against Cuts was elected Women’s officer; Matt Bond from the NUS Disabled Students’ campaign was elected Disabled Students officer; Alusine Alpha from Bradford Uni was elected Black Students’ officer and Michael Chessum and Steph Newton were elected joint LGBTQ officers (with one vote on committee shared between them).

The movement took political steps forward. Sabbatical officers and activists were convinced of the need for a united, democratic campaign to co-ordinate the student left, rather than a shallow front for this or that left group or a clique of leftwing student union officers. Activists discussed the need to radically reform students’ unions from the bottom up and transform them back into the fighting bodies that they often were before the mid-1990s. The event showed that there will be wide support for direct action against the government’s cuts plans; and for the 9 November demonstration.

The training event also discussed the need for a united, democratic approach to NUS elections. We will ensure that there is maximum leftwing representation at NUS Zone Conferences and elections,  and that discussions over presenting united anti-cuts candidates will be conducted in an open, democratic manner.