Fighting the cuts at MMU
James O’Leary reports on last night’s meeting of the MMU anti-cuts group.
On Tuesday 26th October various independent activists, members of the SWP and five members of Communist Students met in the student union of Manchester Metropolitan University to discuss strategy for mounting an effective opposition to the proposals in the recently published Browne review, which the Government of this nation looks set to adopt in the near future. The meeting was attended by 13 people in all.
The meeting began with the group contributing to the making of a banner to hang in the student union to raise awareness about the cuts. As it had been acknowledged that although a significant obstacle in the way of mounting a effective opposition was student apathy towards the cuts, a lot of this stemmed from students complete lack of awareness about what the cuts were and what they meant. There was a general enthusiasm at the meeting to combat the problem so posters advertising the NUS march in London on 10 November and an accompanying poster outlining what else students could do to get involved were printed off to be put up all over the university.
The banner itself consisted of the headline, “Fight the Education Cuts”, and included details on what the cuts meant including, “£4.2bn cut to higher education funding”, “Creating a hierarchy of universities further dividing the rich and the poor”, “60-80% cut to the teaching block grant putting art and humanities course seriously under threat at MMU”.
This will be painted on the Wednesday and hopefully another banner will be made with just the slogan, “Fight the Cuts”, and advertising the march which will be large enough to be seen from all over the university campus.
The issue of free education was raised by an independent comrade but was met with some opposition form other attendees who argued that the campaign should not raise the issue of whether it should be pushing for free education or letting it lie so as not to upset the NUS who are pushing for a graduation tax. At the end of the discussion no consensus could be reached so the issue was again dropped.
Some members of CS then departed for the weekly branch meeting and the remaining attendees held a meeting on the course of action to raise awareness of the cuts and of the march in London and a rota was arranged. The action will be based around keeping a stall at the centre of uni hopefully all week, arranging people to go around and make lecture shout outs and also for some folks to flyer the student halls to win support.
Although these measures may be useful it was obvious that the meeting lacked the man power that would be required if any effective opposition to the cuts was to be mounted. With the march only a fortnight away and the cuts to education to be rushed through probably before xmas, it is obvious that in this campaign time is very much of the essence. We need unity, commitment and organisation, the latter of which was somewhat lacking at tonight’s meeting, if we are to beat these cuts. We have been presented with the best opportunity we are going to get for a long time to really make a difference and we need to seize it by the horns.
My main beef with last night is that by the time most of us had left, an hour and a half later it was obvious that there had been no forum for us to ‘discuss strategy’.
Moreover, this is why when there was a discussion on the call for free education I found it to be a mess off people standing around and shouting at each other, tyranny of disorganisation reigned!
This article is hilarious!
Apparently Communist Students seem to forget it was their members who explicitly called for free education not to be discussed in the organisation part of the meeting – what a farce
I am sure that the time we have spent arguing that it is important and criticising the SWP for dropping it to get cosy with the NUS tops does more than enough to show that we would like it discussed at these anti-cuts groups and for the basis of them to be open for discussion. I suppose it is easier to lie than address opportunism.
Maybe you can explain why Free Education has been dropped as a demand by the SWP locally and at the EAN conference? Your previous front ‘Another Education is Possible’ was clearly and correctly for Free Education. Maybe you did not read the Browne review and get that it the cuts and rise in fees go hand in hand.
What was a farce though was turning up to an anti-cuts meeting where to our surprise we were making banners – which was news to us because our two comrades who attended the meeting the week before had no recollection of that being agreed – no discussion has taken place about the structure and political basis of the campaign.
It appears that the decision to not discuss how the campaign is taken forward was made by Alex Fountain – one of the MMUnion bureaucrat who controls the group through a cosy set up with SWP/SWSS where no politics is raised and we limited the campaign to opposing the cuts at MMU and as a result we get the mind numbing narrow mindness that we should defend the MMU anti-cuts group autonomy from the domination of the University of Manchester group. In reality it is just a cover for the Bureaucrats in charge to maintain control over the group because they have no interest in the group operating on a democratic basis something they share with the Bureaucrats who control the group at University of Manchester as well.
Both the campaigns at Univ. of Manchester and Man. Met. Univ. are going no where because of the empty and hollow basis on which they are built. Where there activity amounts to nothing more then gimmicks and building for demos of the NUS and SWP fronts.
Whilst free education is not the most important point we need to be making it is very strange to see the SWP not arguing for it. Keeping the movement within the narrow confines allowed by the NUS tops and local officials is dangerous, we need to broaden out the movement by linking fees with the austerity drive and pose a radical alternative based on socialism. We also need to ratchet up our militancy, let’s fights to go beyond NUS marches as we know that the key to victory will be whether education workers will strike. We can then back this action up with occupations, blockades and support groups. It is not like we would scare away education workers by being for Free Education considering the UCU and the other unions have voted for such a policy by overwhelming margins.
So, keep it broad, keep it radical.
7Eggs: It wasn’t at all clear until the organisational part of the meeting actually started that there was going to be a an organisational section of the meeting separate from the banner-making. My understanding and I think most people’s understanding when the free education demand was discussed was that any organisational matters were to be discussed while we were making the banner, and by the time most of the CS comrades left to go to their own meeting it appeared that no more time was going to be made for organisational matters. When the organisational part of the meeting actually came around me & James were made to feel difficult for calling for a vote on affiliating to the free education bloc, so I said we may as well let it slide since 4 out of the 6 people we knew would have voted in favour were gone and it seemed like most of the people remaining had been opposed in the earlier discussion. In hindsight it was a mistake; its always a mistake to allow democracy to be diluted by not insisting on confirming an apparent majority, and actually most people had stayed silent before not been opposed, so the outcome of the vote we never took was by no means predetermined.
PS I’m not a member of CS
Thanks for the clarification. So It wasn’t CS who argued to stop a discussion on free education after all. What was the decision on supporting the free education bloc?
7EGGS… no idea how you can say that.
sorry to see EAN/SWP up to their usual tricks again.
Shame that no-one from manchester could make it to the national campaign against fees and cuts north meeting in leeds on saturday, but there’s a report here http://anticutsnorth.wordpress.com/
and another meeting has been called for 11th december, where we hope to see more universities represented.
I had some experience of the particular unpleasantness of certain swp comrades at the recent teach-in at mmu SU, and can only suggest that their sectarian binge will only be overcome by drawing in much wider layers of anticuts students, tho i recognise this is hard if the group is bureaucratically degenerated from the start.
anyway good luck, and at least EAN is apparently now going to be on the Free education feeder march…
solidarity from leeds.
Why are there so many events on December 11th…
Hi Kd,
What was decided at the Northern meeting, our comrades have been pretty stretched with everything that is going on and work/uni at the moment?
It’s all in the report on the blog really, we just decided to try and hold local demos on 10th for those who can’t make london, and to build free education bloc and day of action on 24th. We are producing a leaflet for the day of action to hand out on 10th.
those are the main things, as well as making efforts to link up with as many anticuts campaigns as possible across the north and gather info/share reports thru elist and blog so we can get a more co-ordinated picture.