National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts
A coalition of students and workers fighting against tuition fees and education cuts
Sussex University student Tom Will launches a political attack on International Relations lecturer Jamie Shea, an apologist for Britain’s wars overseas. Sussex university have faced protest after hiring him, so students attending his first lecture decided to challenge his views.
Listen to it here:
Last term, six Sussex students were suspended for taking part in the occupation of their VC’s office in protest against cuts. Following a hundreds-strong occupation and a thousand-strong general meeting, coinciding with a UCU strike, which voted no confidence in university management, they have been reinstated. The battle against cuts continues.
Sussex students have built a powerful campaign, made strong links with lecturers and other campus workers in struggle and pushed their management onto the back foot. How did they do it? The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts is organising a speaker tour with activists from Sussex Stop the Cuts, including reinstated student Patrick Rolfe, to spread the lessons of their struggle and build the national anti-cuts movement.
The tour will take place at the end of April and the start of May. Dates confirmed so far:
Leeds University – 21 April, 5pm, Meeting Room 4 in the ARC, Leeds University Union. Facebook event here.
University of East Anglia – 22 April
Manchester Metropolitan University – 28 April
Surrey University – 7.15pm, 5 May, Lecture Theater TD1, University Of Surrey, Guildford
There will also be meetings at Westminster, UCL, Kent, Cambridge, Oxford, Sheffield, Hull, Birmingham, Gloucester and Newcastle – dates tbc.
If you would like to organise a meeting at your college or university email [email protected] or ring 07775 763 750.
As staff at Sussex go on strike against cuts today, we are happy to announce several important victories that the anti-cuts campaign have won already!
In a packed Student Union Emergency General Meeting with over 750 students present, a vote of no confidence in the Vice Chancellor and the senior management was overwhelmingly passed. That is a great blow against the legitimacy of management.
While that was taking place, the University Senate voted to re-instate the Sussex 6, and to organise an independent investigation into the events surrounding the calling of the police on the 3rd of March. The only members of the Senate who voted against were the unelected senior management.
The Sussex anti-cuts campaign have won a victory for all students. They have sent a clear signal to university managers that heavy-handed, brutal authoritarian tactics on our campuses will not go unpunished.
Now students and staff around the world should send messages of congratulations and support the Sussex strike!
More like this, please
This just in from Sussex. More information to follow as we get more updates from the occupied lecture theatre:
hot news from the south coast - defend the sussex 6!
At 1pm, a demonstration of several hundred marched around the campus at Sussex University. It was the largest demonstration yet, and included many members of staff– some of whom spoke directly in front of Sussex House, the home of management.
As of right now, there are 200 people gathered in a lecture theatre (where no lectures are scheduled), drafting a list of demands for VCEG, the Vice Chancellor’s Executive Group. They are refusing to leave until Vice Chancellor Michael Farthing or another member of the VCEG comes in person to pick up the petition demanding the reinstatement of the six students who were suspended, and until he meets their demands.
Sign the petition against the suspension of the Sussex occupiers here:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/nosummarysuspensions/
Please post messages of support in the ‘comments’ section below
This from the defendsussex.wordpress.com blog:
Suspensions:
Following the non-violent protest and occupation of Sussex House on Wednesday 3rd March and the violent repression of students on campus by scores of riot police armed with attack dogs, batons and pepper-spray, the management of the University of Sussex have taken further regrettable action directly against the students of the University.
As of 3:30pm on Friday 5th March, the Stop the cuts campaign has been made aware of at least 4 notices of suspension for students involved in the occupation of Wednesday 3rd March. These suspensions come directly from the Vice Chancellor Michael Farthing without recourse to any disciplinary process, effective immediately. The terms of the suspensions specify that students will not be allowed to attend lectures or be on University property for a minimum of 30 working days. In addition, students have also been threatened with expulsion.
High Court Injunction:
Furthermore, University management have been granted a High Court Injunction prohibiting “protest action (without the consent of the University of Sussex).” This injunction can be interpreted as meaning that further protest action could be considered a criminal offence.
The witness statement on the injunction provided by Registrar and Secretary John Duffy contained false information claiming that students were holding staff “hostage,” which was refuted to police at the scene. Staff within the building were given leaflets explaining why the occupation was happening and were allowed to leave safely.
As staff were leaving the building, the head of Sussex security, Roger Morgan, stopped senior managers and some other staff, including John Duffy, from exiting and herded them into an office in the VCEG corridor, which was then locked. Roger Morgan and John Duffy presented this to the police as a kind of hostage situation, requesting a police escort out of the building despite the occupiers guaranteeing the safe exit of all staff inside.
More information: http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/what-actually-happened/
Don't let Vice Chancellors victimise students - it could be your campus next
riot cops back up job-cutting uni bosses
Videos of the shocking police attacks on peaceful student protestors at the University of Sussex are available on the sussexnot4sale Youtube page, here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/sussexnot4sale
Students and staff should not tolerate the use of police violence on our campuses! It is not acceptable for Vice Chancellors and the government to break strikes and anti-cuts demonstrations through police violence!
This is a quick round-up of the day’s events – more information coming soon.
Students at Sussex occupied part of their university following a campus carnival – but were attacked by riot police armed with dogs and pepper spray. Footage of this outrage will be uploaded shortly. More details here: http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/
As the occupation was going on, the lecturer’s union UCU at Sussex announced an overwhelming ‘yes’ vote, in favour of strike action: http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/76-of-ucu-members-in-favour-of-strike/
Meanwhile, at the University of East Anglia, scaredy-cat management had also organised a heavy police presence, to intimidate the hundreds of students who came to the day of action against fees and cuts. The demonstration was a warning shot across management’s bows – to show that, whatever cuts are being planned at UEA (no cuts have been definitively announced yet), students will not tolerate them. Students at UEA surrounded their VC’s office and demanded public negotiations between management and staff and students: not the kind of behind-closed-doors ticking-off, or sham “consultation” that we have seen at other universities. Management agreed to discuss the university’s finances and future in a public meeting organised through the students’ union. More details coming soon. Check out: http://ncafaceast.blogspot.com/
Keep reports of anti-cuts actions on your campus flooding in to [email protected] – and, rest assured, the National Campaign’s wave of action is far from over…
Reposted from defendsussex.wordpress.com
The occupiers left the conference centre at 7pm this evening, greeted by a crowd of over 100 cheering supporters.
The occupation proved its power this afternoon – we called a 200-strong demonstration, which stormed Bramber house and entered the occupation. The occupiers left in a position of enormous strength, promising more action and a continued campaign.
The 29-hour flash occupation has demonstrated to management that this campaign is capable of taking militant action in support of staff fighting against cuts and job losses, and that we are capable of mobilising huge numbers at incredibly short notice to support actions.
The campaign continues!
Upcoming events -
TOMORROW Wednesday Feb 10th, 4.30pm, Chichester 1
School of English Consultation with management – come down to demand honest answers, details, and stop management pulling the wool over our eyes!
Thursday Feb 11th – 5pm, Falmer Common Room
Organising meeting – come and contribute your views and energy to the future direction of the campaign.
Monday Feb 15th, 3pm, Silverstone 121
Consultations between the registrar and student reps – All student reps are encouraged to attend, Stop The Cuts will protesting outside at the ridiculous plans that management have for the student advice service.
Saturday March 6th, Midday, The Level – March For Jobs
February 8, 2010
We have occupied the top floor of Bramber House, University of Sussex, Brighton. There are 106 of us.
The decision to occupy has been taken after weeks of concerted campaigning during which the university management have repeatedly failed to take away the threat of compulsory redundancies and course cuts.
We recognise that an attack on education workers is an attack on us.
The room we have occupied is not a lecture theatre but a conference centre. As such, we are not disrupting the education of our fellow students; rather, we are disrupting a key part of management’s strategy to run the university as a profitable business.
They’re occupying everywhere in waves across California, New York, Greece, Croatia, Germany and Austria and elsewhere – and not only in the universities. We send greetings of solidarity and cheerful grins to all those occupation movements and everyone else fighting the pay cuts, cuts in services and jobs which will multiply everywhere as bosses and states try and pull out of the crisis.
But we are the crisis.
Profitability mean nothing against the livelihoods destroyed, lost homes, austerity measures, green or otherwise. We just heard we’ve increased ‘operational costs’ – they’d set out the building for a meeting and now they’ll have to do it again
We’ll show them “operational costs.”
Occupy again and again and again.
NO CUTS ANYWHERE.
THE UNIVERSITY IS A FACTORY. STRIKE. OCCUPY.
-All the occupiers of the 8th of February.
Just two days after the National Convention Against Fees and Cuts, Sussex University students have gone into occupation against cuts and marketisation on their campus.
On 6th of February the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts voted almost unanimously to support student occupations. Throughout the history of the student movement, occupations have played a pivotal role, and have proven that they can win. Sussex’s occupation is a clarion call to students everywhere, and may prove to be the tip of the iceberg as our education is attacked by government and management.
Below is a statement from one of the occupiers. Contact againstfeesandcuts [at] gmail.com for more information.
_________________________________________________
Find the demands of sussex stop the cuts at
http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/occupation-statement-1/
Sussex university students have occupied the Conference Centre in Bramber house to oppose budget cuts and cuts to teaching and services. (check out the blog for figures)
There was a demonstration outside the management offices of the uni today, and 100 people spontaneously walked across campus and occupied the conference centre of the university. Security refused to let anyone else in once the students had barricaded the doors with furniture. The police turned up after about 20 mins in two riot vans, and assisted the security to lock down the whole building.
A demonstration has been called for midday tomorrow outside Bramber house on Sussex Campus. Come down to show your support.
We will fight Mandleson’s cuts, we will fight rises in tuition fees and we will fight all cuts to public services. We won’t pay for their crisis!
