Student movement will follow last year’s demonstrations with series of actions in step with trade union strikes

Student leaders who organised a series of mass demonstrations that saw tens of thousands of young people take to the streets last year are planning a fresh wave of protests. Students from across the UK will descend on London for a national demonstration in November, before staging a series of walkouts and occupations to coincide with the biggest wave of trade union strike action since 1926 at the end of the month.

Veterans of last year’s demonstrations say there is a growing anger among students and young people about the government’s plans for higher education and the axing of the education maintenance allowance (EMA). They predict this year’s protests could be the biggest yet.

“The student movement has grown up a lot in the last year,” said Michael Chessum from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. “There are now dozens of networks and thousands of good activists, and many of last year’s school students will have come to university this year with the intention of being politically active. We’re looking to build a sustainable and democratic movement.”

Students say they are working more closely with trade unions in the fight against the government’s austerity plans and say the new wave of protests will focus on government plans to “privatise” the university and college system.

Maev McDaid, president of the University of Liverpool Guild of Students, said: "”Students and trade unions gave a massive boost to one another – and this year we will be looking to do the same thing on a bigger scale. It’s fantastic that the unions are now properly standing up to the government and we’ll be right behind them: on pensions and on the welfare state, their fight is ours as well.”

Last year’s student demonstrations saw tens of thousands of young people descend on London in a series of protests about the rise in tuition fees and the drastic cuts to post-16 education. There were outbreaks of violence and more than 180 arrests. Scores of campuses were occupied, some for several months, as the student movement spread across the country.

A student assembly held in London last weekend decided this year’s national demonstration would be on 9 November and would focus on opposition to the government’s higher education white paper.

“The government’s higher education white paper is a threat to what education is in Britain,” said Luke Durigan, education and campaigns officer at University College London union. “It threatens to turn higher education into a chaotic business model driven by false consumer choice – rather than anything resembling social progress.”

Chessum said “barely anyone” believed the government had done the right thing with fees or the EMA, adding: “The coalition is politically and morally bankrupt.” He said that although the government’s proposed rise in tuition fees had gone through, the student demonstrations had politicised a new generation of young people. He added that they hoped to mobilise support from young people in inner-city areas which are being hit hardest by the cuts.

(The Guardian, September 16, 2011)

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