On the 22nd May the University of London’s Trustee Board is meeting to decide on the future of ULU. This will be the last point at which the University can voluntarily reverse its decision to get rid of ULU; whatever the outcome, we will refuse to be abolished.

ULU has called a demonstration to fight for the future of ULU and defend student unionism on that date.

We invite students, staff and alumni from London and across the country to come to ULU, and take the fight to the University.

We will assemble at 2pm outside ULU on Malet Street

In the meantime, sign and share the petition to save the University of London Union:https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-university-of-london-save-the-university-of-london-union-3

Below is the letter which we have sent to student unions across the country.

–

Dear student activists, officers and education staff,

We write to you for support. The University of London is threatening to close its students union, ULU, which represents more than 120,000 students across the city and been at the heart of student life in London for many decades. In the recent period it has revived as a focus for pan – London campaigning. This proposal is to close ULU from summer 2014 and replace it with a management-run student services centre.

The proposal is the culmination of a review, on which no student sat. Students’ union responses to the Review were largely positive. ULU submitted a wide-ranging response to the Review to increase its representative capacity (which was cut almost entirely in 2007) and form the nucleus of a pan-London union.

ULU has made progress in the last year. It has transformed and opened up its democracy; more than tripled the number of officers; introduced a full-time Women’s Officer and autonomous Liberation Campaigns; and put in place measures that could increase its elections turnout tenfold in the coming year. This year alone it has been central to defending international students, set up a London-wide tenants union to fight astronomical rents and dodgy landlords, overhauled its clubs and societies work, been key to the fight of university cleaners campaigning for better rights, called major anti-fees demonstrations, and developed lobbying channels and relationships with the Greater London Authority (GLA) and Major’s office.

We believe the attack on ULU is important for the whole of the student movement. ULU’s federal position is unique amongst students’ unions but that if a precedent is set that university management can unilaterally shut down a union and remove its sole building this could have very serious consequences in the medium- to long-term. We believe student activities, representation and services are best when they are run by students’ unions, under democratic student leadership.

There are many reasons why ULU is an easier target than most but we believe that the situation here today could be the situation tomorrow for many. We can see some key trends:

1. The marketization of education is leading some universities to try to expand their student numbers rapidly. This requires additional space. We do not want to create a precedent where institutions can expand into valuable student union space.

2. Some universities are not expanding but are trying desperately to cut costs. Again, the student union is an easy target for this – particularly services considered ‘non-essential’ like bars, gig venues, and society and activity space.

3. Students’ unions can provide commercial services for cheaper through NUSSL. Universities increasingly run their own commercial services which compete with the students’ union, but without this cost advantage. Senior managers may struggle to understand or why the University should encourage or allow competing commercial ventures.

4. University management may think that university-run services are necessarily better than those run by the students’ union. This completely ignores the important benefits that SU-run services provide: generating turnover for the union, creating goodwill towards the union, providing a safe democratically-run space, pushing the campaigns and messages of the union.

Across the board the marketization of education poses risks to students’ unions. Principals and Vice-Chancellors are increasingly coming from the private sector where the principles of student unionism are not so well understood or valued. Private providers coming into the higher education sector are creating weaker shallow unions with no commercial services, little autonomy and far poorer funding. Marketisation Moreover, a marketised higher education system lleads to considerations of cost and price over value: the undermining of students’ ability to decide on their own Union’s affairs could be a green light to other Universities – in your college or in your university – that want to either reduce spending on the SU, regain control of services or take back buildings.

The combined salaries of the Vice Chancellors of the University of London – the people who have the power to attack ULU and take away its resources – is £4.1m. ULU’s block grant is under £800k, most of which goes back to the University in rent.

We believe that what is happening at ULU right now could be used as a blueprint for the future elsewhere in the country: removal of democratic student oversight of services, curtailing of student autonomy, massive funding cuts.

On the 22nd May the University of London’s Trustee Board is meeting to decide on the future of ULU. We are calling a national mobilisation to fight for the future of ULU – but also to defend students’ unionism – on that date. We invite students, staff and alumni from London and across the country to come to ULU, and take the fight to the University.

In the meantime, sign the petition to save ULU: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-university-of-london-save-the-university-of-london-union-3

The National Union of Students has voted to demand expropriation of the banks, but won’t fight fees, cuts and student debt. What’s going on? [Read more...]

For Press contact, call 07761767875 or 07964791663

For the statement by Birmingham Defend Education see: http://www.defendeducationbrum.org/management-gives-in-to-pressure/

Management at the University of Birmingham have withdrawn plans for a large scale restructuring of support staff, after students threatened to call a national demonstration on their open day. The plans, abandoned under pressure, would have attacked the job security and conditions of the University’s most underpaid staff.

Birmingham Defend Education, a student group at the university, sent a letter to Birmingham Vice Chancellor David Eastwood on April the 5th, stating “You have until Wednesday the 15th of May to guarantee: no compulsory redundancies, no forced shift work, and no loss of pay for the 114 workers under threat. Otherwise we will call for, and mobilise, a national demonstration and days of action at your open days on the 20th, 21st and 22nd of June.”

Yesterday the group released another statement saying that “the University have, at the time of writing, made substantial concessions. The staff union will now be taking the dispute forward through negotiations and, recognising this, we are not going to call action on the university’s open days.”

For many it is seen as a victory for militant tactics in the student movement. Hattie Craig Vice President Education elect at the University of Birmingham has said: “this victory would not have happened without three years of student mobilisation and protest at Birmingham and nationally. The recent national demonstration at Sussex has shown university managers that when the student movement mobilizes it will really harm them.”

The victory comes not long after University College London abandoned plans to demolish and redevelop Carpenters’, an estate in East London, in order to make way for a new campus. Across the country, we are seeing management plans shelved: the fight against marketisation and corporatisation on our campuses is winnable if we fight hard enough. That collective campaign is what NCAFC exists to build.

This article is part of a series in the lead up to NCAFC’s extraordinary conference, on the 8th of June https://www.facebook.com/events/181586881997951/. In the run up to this conference we are looking for people to write articles on what they think an alternative to the NUS would look like. If you want to add to the debate please send in an article to [email protected], and we will put it on the website.

by Tim, Bristol

1) Two issues are at stake here: how the more “militant” students unions can work together, outside of the NUS, and how/if militant student activists should work together nationally
1.1) Second point could also be divided into the different things we struggle over: it might well be that the fight against education cuts should happen outside the NUS, but that liberation campaigns should stay inside it. (I’m not going to discuss liberation campaigns here – these issues need to be decided by people in the liberation groups themselves)
1.2) The fight against education cuts and privatisation clearly needs to move outside of the NUS [Read more...]

This article is part of a series in the lead up to NCAFC’s extraordinary conference, on the 8th of June https://www.facebook.com/events/181586881997951/. In the run up to this conference we are looking for people to write articles on what they think an alternative to the NUS would look like. If you want to add to the debate please send in an article to [email protected], and we will put it on the website.   

by Simon Furse, VP Education at Birmingham Guild of Students, NCAFC National Committee

While the NUS is a bureaucratic, energy-sapping, depressing nightmare, clearly unfit to do anything about the onslaught being unleashed on Higher Education; the solution of what to do about this is not clear. Before we can talk about practical ways forward we need to think a bit about the structures we currently have in the student movement and the issues in creating better ones. Any national organisation necessarily has to be made up of local organisations; and so to create an alternative to the NUS, we need to look at its own structures, local students unions, and what kind of organisations could form the basis for something different. [Read more...]

To the members of BAE, Córdoba, and the Spanish student movement

This is a message of solidarity from the members of NCAFC in the UK to yourselves.

The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts – NCAFC was founded in 2010, at the height of this wave of student struggles in the UK. Since then, it has fought on the streets, in our Students’ Unions, and in the national student union for the right to free education for all students. We have found that the more radical our actions, the more successful they are. We have organised demonstrations, protests, strikes, and occupations, much like yourselves, but across the UK.

We believe strongly in a national movement, one that unites students from different institutions and in different levels of education against the cuts to our resources, funding, and teaching staff (as well as wider cuts), and fights for free education, believing that to be something that is a right for everyone.

This is in line with your demand that students should not be expelled from university if they cannot afford to pay for their course, and that money should not be a factor in accessing education.

The Wert reforms are a regressive set of reforms that aim to take Spain back to a Francoist political era, by forcing teaching in Castellano, rather than regional languages. They also support gender segregation, put students through more external tests which they must pass to progress to the next educational level, reduce optional subjects, and entire syllabi, such as the Bachelor of Arts (BA), and move towards an increase in tuition fees.

In NCAFC we fight against anything that might damage equal access to education, for example the requirement to sit these tests, and a reduction in humanities subjects, and recognise that people should have the right to study what they wish. We were founded in the fight against a rise in tuition fees and support you strongly in that.

The cuts are hitting hard across Europe, not simply in the UK and not simply in Spain, and the fight against austerity is everyone’s fight, because united we stand, but divided we fall.

Solidarity

The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts

Estimados MEMBERS de BAE Córdoba y el movimiento estudiantil de España,

Eso es un mensaje de solidaridad de la NCAFC en el Reino Unido en Inglaterra, a vosotros.

NCAFC – La campaña nacional contra de las tasas y los recortes (Un movimiento estudiantil de todo el Reino Unido contra los recortes) fue fundado en 2010 a la altura de esta ola de luchas estudiantil en el Reino Unido. Después de ese tiempo, se ha luchado en las calles, en nuestros sindicatos de estudiantes y en nuestro sindicato nacional de estudiantes por el derecho a la educación libre para todos. Hemos encontrado que el más radical que sea, más éxito tiene. Hemos organizado manifestaciones, protestas, huelgas y ocupaciones, como ustedes, pero a través del reino unido.

Creemos en un movimiento nacional, uno que unen a los estudiantes de instituciones diferentes, y de niveles diferentes de educación, contra de los recortes de nuestros recursos, la financiación y el personal docente (así como recortes más generales), y un movimiento que lucha por la educación libre, con la creencia que eso es un derecho para todos.
Esto está en consonancia con vuestra exigencia que estudiantes no deberían ser expulsado de universidad si no pueden pagar por sus cursos, y que el dinero no deberían ser un factor en el acceso a la educación.

Los reformes de Wert son unos reformes regresivas que prueban a llevar a España a una época de las políticas franquistas, forzando a la enseñanza en Castellano, antes que lenguas regionales. También ellos apoyan segregación por género, poner a los estudiantes a través de más exámenes extérnales, que tienen que aprobar antes de progresar a la próxima nivel de educación, reducen a sujetos opcionales, y sílaba entera como el licenciado en letras, y avanzar hacia hasta una ampliación en las tasas de matrícula.

En la NCAFC, luchamos contra de algo que pueden dañar al acceso igual a la educación, como el requisito para sentarse estos exámenes, y la reducción en los humanidades, y reconocen que la gente debería que tener la derecha a estudiar lo que quieren. Fuimos fundados en la lucha contra de la ampliación de tasas de matrícula y vos apoyamos mucho en esto.
Los recortes están golpeando fuerte sobre todo Europa, no solo en el Reino Unido, y no solo en España, y la lucha contra de austeridad es la lucha de todo porque Unión hace la fuerza divididos caemos.

Solidaridad

National Campaign Against Fees and CUts

By Rosie Huzzard, NUS National Executive-elect [Read more...]

by Roshni Joshi, NCAFC National Committee and NUS National Executive Council

As a member of all four Liberation campaigns and an advocate of intersectionality, I would say this event hit the mark in terms of providing a safe learning and organising space in which anyone could come together to discuss Liberation and share ideas.

Having attended several NUS/ NCAFC/ student political conferences, I can honestly say that the first NCAFC Liberation Conference was the only one where I have felt intersectionality has truly been prioritised. I ran two sessions on the first day; the Stephen Simpson and Boniface Umale campaign planning workshop and the Hidden Black* identities discussion group. Both workshops had a fair to excellent turnout, especially of members who didn’t define as Black* themselves. The discussions had in the sessions were genuine and interested- it was a very good opportunity for people to air questions and learn about Liberation issues with which they has very little personal investment.

I think the caucus and ally sessions, which allowed self-defining Black*/ LGBT/ Women/ Disabled people to come together and organise and then for our allies to join us in discussion afterwards, were too short for proper discussion to be had; but I think the tone of discussion within them was positive, progressive and constructive, and a solid base for liberation led anticuts campaigning.

by Edmund Schluessel, NCAFC National Committee and NUS National Executive Council-elect

NUS Sections Conferences – for International, Postgraduate and Mature & Part Time students – took place in a training centre in Milton Keynes from the 24th to 27th of April. The key theme emerging from all three is the differences between the three Sections and how NUS’s one-size-fits-all approach to the campaigns is growing less appropriate every year.

International Students Conference was the best-attended ever, with 55 voting delegates and over 80 participants. International Students Campaign won extra staff support off NUS this year and the contrast with last year’s conference showed clearly, as the event presented slick, high-level workshops and discussions. Missing, though, was the practical aspect of building campaigning on the ground. While the mainstream of political thought in the UK is increasingly anti-migrant, NUS has won some victories against government policy, especially around the issue of attendance monitoring as well as the fight in Autumn 2012 around London Metropolitan. The incoming generation of international students’ officers needs the knowledge base of this past year in order to keep the fight going.

Where the campaign around London Met did make itself most known was in the International Campaign elections. London Met SU president Syed Rumman, who had the support of Student Broad Left, challenged incumbent Daniel Corradi Stevens in a campaign that, sadly, saw Rumman’s team make use of smears & re-writing of history to attempt to undercut Stevens’, and NUS International Students Committe’s, contributions to the UK-wide campaign to save the university’s international students. Particularly worrying was the willingness of NUS UK’s non-international full time officers to intervene in the election to give weight to their preferred candidate. After a poor showing by Rumman in the pre-election hustings, Stevens was handily re-elected with 43 out of 55 votes.

Left candidates performed exceptionally well in the International Students Committee elections. NCAFC activists Arianna Tassinari of Oxford University and Aurora Adams of Edinburgh University were elected to fill the Comimittee’s 2nd NUS NEC seat and Scotland seats respectively, with No Borders campaigner Shrouk el-Attar of Cardiff and Vale College taking over from Edmund Schluessel in the Wales seat. NCAFC members also supported Shreya Paudel of Middlesex University, Jovanna Yiouselli of Essex University and Chidinma Nwokoro of Liverpool University, who were all successful.

Policy debate was focused around technical concerns with delegates contributing alerts to the Committee regarding issues like overseas recruiting fares and a fundamentally broken visa system. The only controversial motions were two from Belfast Metropolitan College, one calling for solidarity with the Tamil people facing genocide in Sri Lanka and partnering International Students Campaign with the Tamil Solidarity Campaign, which passed; and the other which would have linked ISC in with trade union solidarity group Campaign Kazakhstan, which failed. The Committee received a mandate to continue pushing forward for more political independence for ISC, after NUS Scotland president Robin Parker shamefully dismissed ISC’s bid for more freedom to stand up for itself as “political point scoring” at NUS UK conference earlier in April.

Postgraduate Conference was a more relaxed, less formal event. Under the surface of the conference, though, was a deep political tension between left members of the Postgraduate committee and the NUS establishment, who have pulled opposite ways with regard to a plan on postgraduate funding. While left members stood in the elections, candidates failed to organise into a coherent list so while Socialist Party & NCAFC member Edmund Schluessel, SP member Sam Morecroft and SWP member Amy Gilligan were elected to the committee, with Gilligan representing research students on the NUS NEC over the coming year, the committee has no dominant political direction, with independent Anna Chowcat taking the Postgraduate Taught NEC seat. An open question is how left activists should engage with the SWP following the Party leadership’s attempts to cover up rape accusations toward Martin “Comrade Delta” Smith.

The level of discussion at Postgraduate Conference was very high and far in advance of the anodyne, boilerplate grandstanding which has come to typify NUS UK conference. One workshop took up a discussion around educational theory which delved into comparisons between fundamentally different models of education, even invoking Soviet attitudes toward vocational training and the work of socialist educationalist Lev Vygotsky.

Mature & Part Time Conference has traditionally been the thin end of NUS, with the campaign poorly supported and ill-publicised. Hurting it further, for nearly two years now the campaign has been short an officer due to absences and, infamously, a 2011 corruption scandal. In a one-day conference, students elected former Block of 15 member Josh Rowlands and newcomer Emma Barnes to represent them nationally, with Matthew Smith of Ruskin College the only radical leftist joining the committee. The conference was marred by misogynistic and otherwise confused comments by keynote speaker John Field of Stirling University.

Both Postgraduate and Mature & Part Time conferences voted unanimously to establish representation structures for Wales, Scotland and the north of Ireland within the campaigns, recognising the increasing divergence among the UK’s four constitutent nations on education support. Sections were established by NUS only five years ago and are still finding their place in NUS. With better organisation, the prospects of a left takeover of student sections – speaking up for the huge numbers of non-traditional students in the UK – are strong for 2014, but this will mean making best use of the resources we have now to ensure NUS is no longer the bastion of middle-class undergraduate students in well-off English universities.

On Tuesday 7^th May Kingston Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) will decide the fate of the A&E units of St Helier and Epsom hospitals. Not only will the loss of these units be a huge loss to the community, but all patients will be directed to the already-overstretched Kingston A&E unit. As a result, Kingston Keep Our NHS Public are holding a demonstration outside the meeting of the CCG at the Guildhall (on the High Street) at 12 noon on Tuesday and are calling for the saving of these 3 local hospitals. The good news is that only 1 of the 7 local CCGs needs to reject the plan in order for the motion to fall, which makes it even more important for activists to get down there and show their support for their local hospitals.

Location: Guildhall, High Street, Kingston, KT1 1EU

Time: 12 noon, Tuesday 7^th May

Organised by Kingston Keep Our NHS Public