Robert Hayes reports back on the 2013 NCAFC National Conference which was held at the University of Birmingham from on November 23rd-24th The National Campaign Against Fees & Cuts (NCAFC) is a federation of students, education workers, and campus campaigns, founded by far left student groups and allies in 2010. It organises radical direct action against ...
Last week saw an outbreak of student protest. Daniel Harvey reports The sudden re-ignition of student protest on campuses began on December 5, when students from the University of London began an occupation of Senate House Library in Bloomsbury. A set of demands blasted the “undemocratic and unaccountable” university management, and announced the solidarity of the ...
Callum Williamson looks at the latest assaults on the student movement University managements are clearly attempting to tighten the parameters of what is deemed as acceptable protest on campus. In collaboration with the police they have set about to intimidate dissenting students taking part in protests over the last three weeks through arrests, physical coercion, suspensions ...
Syriza has been held up as a party that should be emulated. Daniel Harvey examines the reality Since the general election last year, Syriza, a coalition of left organisations, has been the main opposition in the Greek parliament. This achievement seems likely to be followed up by Die Linke in the German Bundestag, where it is ...
The latest developments in German politics should serve as a reality check for the ‘broad party’ advocates in this country, argues Ben Lewis For all the talk of the recent German elections being the most boring in memory, having been met with huge levels of apathy and indifference on the part of the population, the results ...
Daniel Harvey examines the politics underlying recent regroupment efforts The International Socialist Network’s October 26-27 ‘politics conference’ saw a left ‘grouping’ (actually too disorganised to be a faction in the proper sense) around Tim Nelson and Paris Thomson narrowly winning votes against the right (led loosely by Richard Seymour) on rank-and-file strategy and on any immediate ...
Daniel Harvey looks at developments in the political regroupment project centred on the International Socialist Network following its weekend conference In the last six months or so there has been a slowly developing regroupment project underway between various Trotskyist splinters. Some of the roadblocks in this process became clearer at the October 19-20 ‘politics conference’ of ...
Callum Williamson on the offensive against university workers and students The strike action taking place in universities across the UK this week follows the refusal of the University and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) to resume national negotiations with Unite, Unison, the University and College Union, the Educational Institute of Scotland and the GMB (the last two ...
The left’s demands should look beyond what seems possible right now, argues Christina Black Last week, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg alienated his Conservative coalition partners by suggesting that more constraints should be put on free schools to ensure that minimum standards are met. Clegg’s proposed changes would mean that free schools could only employ ...
Ben Lewis spoke at an international conference in Paris on ‘Rosa Luxemburg’s concepts of democracy and revolution’. This is an expanded version of his paper This presentation forms part of ongoing research into the origins and evolution of the political programmes of the German workers’ movement, in which I am attempting to grapple with some particularly controversial ...
Robert Eagleton reports on the Manchester policy conference The September 28 Left Unity policy conference at Friend’s Meeting House in Manchester was attended by around 100 comrades - which was good, considering many members felt that having a discussion on the policy of a new party before its founding conference was putting the cart before the ...
This weekend’s elections will be a test for Die Linke, argues Ben Lewis, especially when it comes to the coalition-making that will follow (19/09/2013) As Germany prepares to go to the polls on September 22, there are enormous issues that confront both Europe’s most important power and the continent as a whole. Given Germany’s dominance of ...
The goal of reforms to higher education undertaken by successive governments has been to subject universities to the immediate needs of the capitalist class. Through pouring money into universities, funding research, the tuition of future employees and through creating links with specific courses, capital is remodelling higher education to benefit its operations directly. The government ...