National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts
A coalition of students and workers fighting against tuition fees and education cuts
Comment by Ioana Cerasella Chis, a Romanian student studying in the UK
On the 26th of March thirty students at the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj occupied a lecture theatre in response to the government not implementing their promised education policies and the declining quality of education. Meanwhile, other students at the University of Bucharest occupied their History Building in solidarity, making similar demands.
Campaign Against Fees & Cuts Cymru
Four hundred anti-fascists faced down fewer than sixty supporters of the neo-fascist, extreme-right National Front on Saturday March 10th as the NF gathered in the cosmopolitan port city to celebrate “White Pride World Wide”, in a demonstration and counter-demonstration both contained by a strongly-biased South Wales Police. [Read more...]
The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts is encouraging students to get involved in the national strike of PCS Trade Union members on Wednesday 20th March (Budget Day), as hundreds of thousands of Civil Service members take action against Government attacks.
Civil Servants in PCS who are overwhelmingly low paid, have had their pay frozen for the past four years, which is the equivalent of a 20% pay cut over that time. In addition, pension contributions have increased, the pensionable age has been raised to 68, and recruitment freezes in many Departments has meant huge understaffing and resulting pressure on existing workers.
The Government is also attempting to remove or erode a raft of terms and conditions for civil service workers (those who work in services such as Tax Offices, Jobcentres, the Home Office, the courts, and many more) that have been fought for and won by the unions over the years, including leave entitlements, sick pay, ability to job share, childcare provision, promotions, and attendance management (i.e. disciplinary procedures over sick absence). For more information on the campaign, please see the PCS website.
The NCAFC supports the PCS strike and the plans it has for upcoming further action including a walkout on the 5th April. NCAFC is encouraging its members to organise solidarity visits from universities, schools and colleges to local picket lines. If you aren’t sure where your local picket line might be, please post a comment below or on our Facebook event and we’ll do our best to find out for you.
There are also Budget Day rallies in many towns and cities. Find out about your local rally here.
We are asking NCAFC activists to sign this statement to show their support. Write your name below and we’ll add you in.
Next Wednesday members of the PCS union which represents 250,000 civil servants and commercial sector workers will be taking industrial action.
They are demanding a 5% pay rise to compensate for the real-term pay cut of the same amount over the past 5 years of civil service pay freezes, an end to the attacks on public-sector pensions and Terms & Conditions and for increased investment in the welfare state.
The government claim they have to continue to cut civil servants’ salaries and pensions in the same way they’re cutting welfare, healthcare and education to pay for the deficit. As student activists we’ve heard this story before and we won’t fall for it.
When they make tax cuts for millionaires, refuse to clamp down on corporate tax evasion and relish in making the top richest people in the country richer to the tune of billions of pounds a year then it’s clear to us that there is the money, but that their priority is to make sure the wrong people get it!
As with previous disputes, the NCAFC extends its solidarity to the strikers on Wednesday and supports the continued campaign PCS members plan to wage against the government’s austerity agenda. We believe that the this agenda, under the guise of ‘tough choices’, represents an attack on working-class people and students the likes of which we have not seen before for a long time. Part of the reason they can get away with what they are doing is down to the fractious and weak reality of the workers movement, and the unambitious and sometimes cynical nature of labour and student movement leaders.
We urge local students anti-cuts groups to visit their local picket-lines (Jobcentres, tax offices, local DVLA sites etc.) and if you are a student in or around London to attend the strike rally 12 noon–2pm at Old Palace Yard, opposite the Houses of Parliament. Bring banners, placards and noise.
Michael Chessum, President of University of London Union, NCAFC NC and NUS NEC
Rosie Huzzard, Sheffield College, PCS DWP Sheffield Branch Young Members Officer and NCAFC NC
Matthew Reuben, Royal Hollway, NCAFC NC
Thais Yanez, Birkbeck, NCAFC NC LGBTQ Officer, Trans* Place
Hannah Webb UCLU Community Officer, UCLU External Affairs and Campaigns Officer elect
Max Crema, Edinburgh University Students’ Association Vice President Services
Edmund Schluessel, NUS Wales NEC
James McAsh Edinburgh University Students’ Association President
Beth Redmond, Liverpool John Moores University, NCAFC NC
Arianna Tassinari, NUS International Students Committee
Liam McNulty, Unison Higher Education, London Young Labour Campaigns Organiser (pc)
The general meeting of Royal Holloway University of London’s student union passed this motion (proposed by NCAFC supporters) unanimously on 5 February. Please adapt it to put to your student union. [Read more...]
Sussex University students have today occupied the Bramber conference centre! The occupation is in opposition to the University selling off services. [Read more...]
University of London Union and Goldsmiths Students’ Union organised a very successful ‘student bloc’ on the 25,000-strong Save Lewisham A&E demonstration on Saturday 26th January. [Read more...]
NCAFC – Schools and Colleges has been set up to help school and college students get more organised. Get involved! [Read more...]
The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts welcomes NUS’s announcement of a national demo in autumn, called for November 21st. NCAFC will be lending its full support to this demonstration, and activists all over the country will be building for maximum possible mobilisation in London on the day. However, we know that this will not be enough to stop the government’s onslaught against students, education workers and young people.
It is important that the student movement moves off the defensive and sets out its vision of an alternative to Tory class war – free education, funded by taxing the rich. We want to see a democratic education system – this means an end to privatisation, to attacks on free speech on campus and to the harassment, monitoring and deportation of international students. We expect to see a reinvigoration of localised anti-cuts groups on campuses. Students will campaign nationally, but will also hold their Vice Chancellors and local MPs to account – with direct action and campus occupations.
NCAFC will be pushing for a radical and democratic message for the autumn, in line with the motions passed at NUS’s national conference in April. Michael Chessum, NCAFC co-founder and a member of the NUS’s national executive, commented: “It’s vital that the student movement mobilises in a way that can capture the public imagination. ‘Tax the rich to fund education’ will be a core slogan, and we will be organising walkouts and localised direct action across the autumn and into the new year, aimed at triggering a broader fight to save the welfare state from the Tories.”
We will also be using the Wednesday date as an opportunity to organise walkouts among students, especially in schools and FE. Gordon Maloney, NCAFC Scotland rep and the NUS Scotland Vice President for Community, said: “FE and school students are being hit hardest by cuts to EMA and college place, and now with the widespread introduction of fees. School students were at the heart of fighting against the fee rise in 2010. We want to see a living grant for every student in education, and a fees-free FE sector.”
International and postgraduate students are also mobilising. Arianna Tassinari is NCAFC International rep and a student officer at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She said: The fight on postgraduate funding and for fair working conditions for all postgraduate research students must be a central component of the NUS mobilisation. Meanwhile, international students have are increasingly being treated as criminals and cash-cows – ripped off through an unregulated fees market, and subject to xenophobic, draconian visa regulations.”
NCAFC will organise and support direct action, and will put serious energy into backing strike action by workers. Alex Peters-Day, General Secretary at the London School of Economic Students’ Union said, “In 2010 and 2011, we learned that if we are willing to disrupt the ordinary running of education, and unite with workers and academics, we are impossible to ignore. When democracy fails ordinary people, we will have no qualms about using other non-violent means.”
By Chris Page, Cambridge University SU Welfare and Rights Officer-elect
Yesterday, around 400 students and academics of Cambridge University marched on Old Schools, the centre of the University administration, protesting against the victimisation of Owen Holland, a Cambridge Defend Education activist. [Read more...]
