Occupations, Police Violence and Student Resistance
Resistance
Students across the country have been fighting back against job cuts in Higher Education as the government is attempting to offload some of the crisis onto students and education workers. As part of the ‘National Wave’ organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts students at the University of Westminster went into occupation for three days in a couple of rooms at the Regent Street Campus. They went in to occupation because the management had announced that 250 job cuts were to be brought in this year. Over 200 students took part in a demonstration on March 1 which disrupted the meeting of the Court of Governors with many then going in to occupation. Their demands focus on education cuts and can be found here.
At the University College London around 200 students and staff demonstrated on March 3. The demonstration was called against proposed job cuts with Life Sciences and Modern Languages being lined up for the biggest cuts in budgets, staff and courses. The demonstrators marched on the office of the Provost, Malcolm Grant and called for him to come and speak with the students, he refused. Demonstrators held a sit down protest for a while and then went on to discuss the next stage in their campaign. The lecturers union the UCU is organising a ballot for strike action. More information cane be found here.
Sussex University was the scene of a viscous attack by police after 80 students went into occupation on March 3 against proposed cuts and in solidarity with staff who have voted 76% in favour of industrial action, the UCU report can be found here. The demonstration and occupation was peaceful until management called in the police, who brought in vans of police to attack and control the demonstrations. Threatening at one time to break through the barricades students had erected inside to defend themselves. The demontration outside was attacked by police as the below video shows:
We must demand that the police are kept off university campuses and that a full investigation is organised with the full involvement of both students and staff into why the police were invited by Sussex University management to attack a peaceful demonstration of students on University grounds.
To keep up to date with what is going on check out and bookmark the website of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts
An investigation must be carried out on why the police turned up at Sussex University in such numbers (or really why they turned up at all? Who called them?) and the student union should lodge a formal complaint with Sussex Police for wrongful arrest of two students and for the inappropriate way in which they dealt with a peaceful demonstration (see video).
Calls for investigations? Surely the weaknesses of such an approach are obvious?
The police become more and more authoritarian regardless of provocation. Disgusting while it is, the most shocking thing about the Youtube video is not the dragging away of a peaceful protester but the huge numbers of a vastly well-equipped, strong and organised police force and the inability of the gathered students to resist. In the present state of affairs, are such outrages hardly surprising?
Surely the emphasis should be on how to organise people to defend themselves. Not in a voluntarist fashion but a gathering of the consensus and willing for such an approach. The tactic of peaceful protest seems to admit defeat from the outset. It originates from a feeling of weakness, I suspect, rather than a confidence in the potential strength of people when they are united.
If the current pattern of peaceful protests followed by police brutality followed by calls for investigations continues, the result will be that police confidence continues to grow, and far worse outrages than this will occur. Surely Communist Students should attempt to win people to the tactics of militant self-defence?
Self-defence of demonstrations is obviously something we would support, but we should also be clear that our movement can and should be able to engage in peaceful protests. Calling for an investigation under worker and student supervision and involvement, maybe through the unions would be an excellent way to put pressure on the management at Sussex to not let police attack peaceful gatherings of students again.