It’s now been a year since students from across the country descended on parliament square in an attempt to block the Tories and Lib Dem sell-outs from tripling top-up fees and slashing EMA and education budgets. Paint bombs flew, the book bloc was in full effect, and students prepared to take on the police who had violently attacked and kettled the previous two London students demonstrations. At the same time the NUS leadership, headed by the (self-proclaimed) spineless Aaron Porter held a glow-stick vigil for the death of Higher Education.

Shock turned to anger when we heard that the government had succesfully driven through the tuition fee rise. Though we managed to ensure that it passed through parliament with a low majority of 28, we failed to stop it or force the break-up of the coalition government.

There were several problems for the movement. Sadly, although many members of trade unions offered their support, attended demonstrations and donated to the occupations, there was never a real attempt to pressure the trade union leaders to order strike action to block the bill. Though ‘students and workers, unite and fight’ was heard on every demo, it was not realised in practice.

A number of activists popularised the idea that the answer to stopping fees was to ‘crack the coalition’ by pressuring Lib Dem MP’s to stick to their promises and vote against the bill. However, the Lib Dems’ popularity had already been shattered by December 9th, and a defeat for the government could have led to a new election which would have driven them out of the Westminster bubble permanently.

The idea of appealing to the Lib Dems’ conscience was always a pipe dream. Even if these Tory-Lite stooges had consciences, they would not sacrifice a place at the Cabinet table for the sake of an opportunistic election pledge.

Despite the mass participation of young people in the movement (over 130,000 walked out of their schools, colleges and universities on November 24th), there were few structures established which were able to channel the initial spontaneous anger and action into a strong base which could keep mobilising people for further demonstrations and actions. Anti-cuts groups in the schools and colleges could have led to a larger youth mobilisation for the J30 and N30 strikes, and tried to bring the radicalism of the student movement to the trade unionists.

This is not to undermine the achievements of the movement. It was successful in showing people that you can organise without your official leaders and even against them when they sell you out. It revived the tactic of occupation on a scale not seen in many years, with many people realising the power of using them to collectively organise on a local, national and international scale. *

It also radicalised a huge number of people, demonstrating in practice that the police were there to stamp out protest which got too close to defeating the politicians, and that parliament exists to monopolise political power for a social elite whose interests our totally opposed to ours. It created a whole new layer of anti-capitalists who have continued to organise, occupy and resist the Con-Dems’ austerity.

In the twelve months since the student movement Britain has changed a lot. The trade unions have entered into open confrontation with the Tories, staging two of the largest days of coordinated strike action (June 30th and November 30th) in decades, and organising the biggest demonstration (March 26th- 750,000 demonstrators) since 2003′s anti-Iraq War demo. We’ve also had the riots which showed that young people’s anger was still there- with the politicians, the police and the cuts all being blamed by rioters for causing a situation of desperation, alienation and poverty.

Internationally, we’ve had inspiring examples from Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, where hated tyrants have been brought down through general strikes, mass occupations and even civil wars. Student and youth protests in countries as diverse as Chile, Spain and Israel have demonstrated the huge extent of opposition to austerity and corruption. Finally, the #Occupy movement has started to channel this general anger into opposition to a world economic system which ensures that wealth, and therefore power, is concentrated in the hands of “the 1%”.

Each of these movements have left their mark on people’s understanding of the world, and increasingly we find people people who hate the banks and the system they represent, but aren’t sure what, if any, alternative is possible.

As we prepare for the government White Paper on education (which will see universities turned into money-making businesses proper) and a further round of cuts to please the ‘bond-markets’ (read: the few billionaires’ whose speculation led us to the crisis, before they got bailed-out with our money and then lent it back to us with interest), we can be sure that will resistance will intensify. The PCS, UCU and NUT trade unions are talking about another wave of strikes early next year, while the police and media predict years of unrest as service cuts throw millions more into poverty.

But is this the best type of resistance we have? One-day strikes can be brushed off  - the Greek governments has seen off 15 in 18 months - and rioting brings only devastation, police repression and patronising quick-fix schemes to working class communities.

With youth unemployment at a record peak, the Tories regouping for a fresh assault on the NHS, and trade unionists across the country drawing a line in the sand, young people need to ask ourselves how we can engage with these different groups of people to create a united anti-cuts movement.

While it will be necessary to prepare fresh struggles against the wave of redundancies, closures and cuts unleashed by the government’s White Paper, it is vital that we look beyond just ’education issues.’ Mobilising students for strike action, to fight cuts in our local communities, and to build a movement against youth unemployment; all these will be necessary. So what’s stopping us?

Most campus anti-cuts groups have a policy of focusing on education cuts or cheerleading lecturers’ strikes leading to the marginalisation of other issues which affect both students and the wider community.  The failure to build a mass basis around an alternative pole of resistance to NUS is reflected in the demoralisation and apolitical campaigning seen at the campus level.

The right wing, Labour and apolitical bureaucrats in the NUS, while shaken, have managed to retain their grip on power, and some of the student left are all too content to rely on their executives rather than organising at the grassroots.

It was to be expected that last year’s defeat would lead to a loss of activists and a temporary retreat amongst students. This is even more the case, since although the movement was co-ordinated through student campaigns like NCAFC, it was dominated on the streets by tens of thousands of school and college students who had no existing networks, resources or tradition of struggle to fall back on. The lapse into inactivity by those who were the most courageous in confronting the police sent out to crush our protests has been the most significant loss in the last 12 months – especially since many of those are now languishing in the dole queues or press-ganged into unpaid work for supermarkets.

The movements which have erupted since December 2010 provide inspiration and examples which we must seize with both hands if we are to reinvigorate campus based resistance and combine the resources and traditions of students with the radicalism of a youth with no future and deploy it with maximum effect against the millionaire’s coalition.

The importance of youth-worker unity seen in the Arab Spring, the power of rank-and-file organisation seen in the recent electricians’ wildcat strikes and protests, and the power of creative campaigning on broader issues to unite disparate groups, as seen in the #Occupy movement must form the bedrock of a drive to unite local and national student campaigns in one federation which can bring students out of the campus, into the communities, in common action  alongside the millions resisting austerity.

The next step is not lobbying the government to stop this or that cut. but fighting to bring down the government to stop every cut. Prioritising certain struggles over others plays into the government’s hands – they will look to divide us, play us against each other and buy off, bribe and isolate different sections wherever they can. The coalition’s mission is to force through a comprehensive package of cuts – they can afford temporary concessions which allow them to regroup, but we cannot. To stop the cuts, we must bring down the government.

We need to build a movement to create a general strike which draws together public-sector and private-sector workers, students, the unemployment, benefits claimants and the disabled, and we can’t do that if we rely on bureaucrats, sectional struggles, or a sectarian left. It’s time for real unity in action.

Read more

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Acts of Resistance: the story of the student movement

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Thousands defy intimidation to march on bankers

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Bring down the millionaire coalition

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