24 November: school students lead the way

Submitted by Newcastle on 26 November, 2010 - 12:03 Author: Ed Whitby
Students

School, college, and university students took to the streets on 24 November, in a show of protest to make it clear that students are not going to accept this government's attacks.

The response to the call for the day of action by National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts has shocked politicians, police and student leaders even more than the size and anger of the National Demonstration on 10 November. Students have made sure that the Royal Wedding didn't force the cuts off the front pages!

It is will be hard to find a school, college or workplace not talking about this action in the next days.

The protests were not only spontaneous and enormous (10,000 in London; 3000 in Manchester, Brighton and Leeds; 2,000 in Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol and Liverpool) but were also some of the most diverse and working class led protests in student history.

Many reports estimated a larger proportion of school and college students than university students. In most big cities a number of schools had sizeable walkouts of students as young as 13 and 14 (300 walked out of Heaton Manor in Newcastle, and 300 marched through Allerton Grange school in Leeds to join the city centre protests).

The protests were spontaneous - students using Facebook to link up with groups and coordinate city wide protests; the majority of placards were homemade. The focus for many demonstrations was as much anger at the aremoval of Education Maintenance Allowance as the higher education fee rises and education cuts.

As well as the large protests in the bigger towns and cities, protests have been reported in schools in every area of the country, with many examples of school management attempting to lock students in to prevent them joining the protests.

In University cities many of these protests led to university occupations with school and university students occupying together. At the time of writing this from an occupation at Newcastle University 20 institutions are believed to be in occupation (Newcastle Uni,UCL, University College London, London South Bank, Birmingham, Oxford, Cardiff, Warwick, Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Dundee, UEL, Leeds Met, Portsmouth, Royal Holloway, SOAS, UWE, and Plymouth)

Where now?

- All out for 30 November. NCAFC has called a second day of action for next Tuesday, and this is already gathering momentum
anticuts.com
Facebook group
- Every school or college needs to set up action committees with open meetings every week, circulating decisions taken to the whole student population.
- School students, college and university students need to link up these local committees, share resources and build local protests, and student assemblies to discuss future actions.
- Link up with workers and trade unions - though some students faced opposition from teaching staff, many more have been buoyed by support from teacher and lecturer union activists; these links need to be build upon
- Students should also call on the trade unions to call local demonstrations against attacks on education as well as the other attacks on our class.

Comments

Submitted by Newcastle on Fri, 26/11/2010 - 00:22

More info on Newcastle University occupation
here
And more on other university occupations
here

Submitted by stuartjordan on Fri, 26/11/2010 - 01:28

Over the last 2-3 years the National Union of Students has been led by a load of career politicians who wanted to get jobs in the New Labour machine. More interested in impressing their future bosses than representing students, they abandoned the priniciple of free education. They caved in to the government's logic, rejecting the priniciple that education is a right, not a privilege for the rich. At the same time they shut down the channels of student democracy, abolishing the national delegate conference and created a board of Trustees who have a substantial control over NUC decision-making. They invited in all sorts of capitalist scum to sit on the board of trustees - ex-bankers, university managers etc.

As democratic channels were concreted over, free education activists got together and set up the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts on the basis of mobilising and fighting for free education. The latest demonstrations show that the New Labour NUS leadership is radically out of touch. It is important that students now build the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and make it their own. This is just the beginning!

Submitted by cathy n on Fri, 26/11/2010 - 08:07

Italian students have occupied the Colosseum and the leaning tower of Pisa (and several lesser-known monuments) in protest at government cuts to and 'reform' of universities. The cuts according to some accounts add up to 1.4bn (others say 600 m) euros. The 'reform' will allow external
representatives on governing bodies (for which read bankers/businessmen/Berlusconi's cronies), give a funding premium to 'top' universities at the expense of others (so, heading in the UK direction), among other things. Berlusconi no longer has an outright majority in parliament and it's not clear whether he can get this through.

In practice the cuts have already meant big new restrictions on access to university. Previously so long as you passed the entrance exam you could pretty much study the course you wanted at the university of your choice. Now ceilings have been placed on admissions and many people are excluded, especially from courses like law/medicine/engineering.

Cath

Submitted by AWL on Fri, 26/11/2010 - 10:09

Bournemouth

The walkout was impressive, 600-700 people from local colleges and Bournemouth university. No obvious organised group had control over the demonstration, which was good and demonstrated the level of mobilisation amongst ordinary students. The placards were home made and were of a very eclectic mix (from as low as 'I only came 4 the orgy' right up to better stuff like 'no to education cuts'). There were a small number of terrible chants from one group of college students such as something along the lines of 'Nick Clegg, Hitler's got more balls than you', but I spoke to quite a lot of students expressing criticism of this. Chants for free education and against the government were very popular and some chants called for linking up with workers.

We marched from a park to the Town Hall where two of the organisers went in to speak to the executive of the council. The demonstration broke out of a fairly ineffective police cordon and marched in to the city centre where it was a lot more visible.

Colchester

It seems that around 600 students took part in a demo which marched around town, with roads being closed by police. Students (250 according to the police media website)then did what I think was an unplanned sit down protest outside the town hall, which got the police riled as it wasn't expected - they were all supposed to be good and disperse in the park. Two people were arrested, one student and one 'member of the public' and a few 'missiles' were thrown (my understanding is coins and small things).

Police say: "This was a difficult operation to police but the protest was largely peaceful and no damage or injuries were caused. Despite the prior arrangements made with the organisers to facilitate a peaceful protest a large segment of the group chose to break away and do their own thing which caused disruption and inconvenience to the public." Cops say the students moved on after 'protracted negotations' but press pictures show coppers forceably lifting students. Other comrades have reported that some of the younger/inexperienced students became a bit rattled/unnerved by the police response.

The Uni took part in the march I believe and then had a teach-in in a pre-booked lecture theatre, which was then occupied overnight. Lots of good banners, I think a core group of activists leading the organisation (both before and on the day, in terms of security of the doors, next steps and so on). Morale was high when I went to visit them and there were good ideas bouncing around.

Unfortunately a good few people went home for the night pledging to come back the next morning, but at around 11am the occupation ended due to too few people (I don't know any more than this). Occupiers were due to attend a Colchester Against Cuts meeting this evening.

Glasgow

There were walkouts in Glasgow at Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow University, Strathclyde University and (I think) Glasgow Caledonian University. Not sure about the University of the West of Scotland. Also a number of school walkouts. (Not sure how many.) There was a joint demonstration from Buchanan Street to Strathclyde University at 3.00pm. One building at Strathclyde was occupied for the afternoon. There were about 300 on the demonstration, and about 50 in the occupation.

At 5.00pm there was a rally in George Square – students, school students, and various trade union speakers (STUC, EIS, UNISON, possibly others I missed). I’d say 500 plus at it, but there was a lot of coming and going, so total attendance
was probably higher.

Three main themes in the speeches at the rallies: attacks on Lib-Dems (and much more than attacks on the Tories; e.g. calls on Charles Kennedy, who is anti-fees-increase, to lead a breakaway from the Lib-Dems); the need for student-trade union joint struggle; the virtues of direct action.

The day’s events were organised following on from an open meeting at Glasgow School of Art for student activists on November 17th, organised by School of Art students. Unless I misheard what was being said at this evening’s rally – the ‘sound system’ was a megaphone – there is a planning meeting at GSA on 8th December to plan for a conference (I assume a Scottish-wide student conference) in January.

Newcastle

Writing this from occupation at Newcastle Uni. 60ish students occupying the arts dept, after a day of marches and teach-ins. Over 1000, poss nearly 2000 marched throughout the day, including a majority of school and colege students. Then 200 took part in teach in cos they hadn't booked a big enough room! By end of day the remaining 100 voted to go into occupation at 5.30.

Manchester

There were about 2,500 people out in Manchester. Very mixed, lots of home made placards, militant. About 20 from my local secondary, who I assume had walked out as they were half in uniform, and organised as they had downloaded and printed off NCAFC posters.

The demo was supposed to be going to the Town Hall but getting close the police had rather half-heartedly blocked off the road with one van. Presumably they'd agreed with those leading the demo (MUSU people, I think) to go down a side street and eventually end up at Castlefield arena where things were set up for a long sequence of speeches. The arena was packed and a smallish group of people marched across the front shouting 'To the town hall'. Virtually everyone stood up and followed them. The police had been keeping a low visible profile but were also caught by surprise. So there was a lot of chaos in the city centre. After a bit of a rally behind the Town Hall they marched back to MU, apparently blocking Oxford Rd. According to the news, about 50 are now occupying a building in the university.

NW News also reported about 1,200 people in Bury which is amazing as there is only an FE college there.

Sheffield

The demo in Sheffield had about 2000. About half from schools and colleges. I counted 7 schools, from across the city. First student protest I've been on with alot of working class students on it. Lots of chants about the EMA.... and about Nick Clegg. No one was leading the demo it was just a mass of shouting people, with home made placards and banners. The Uni student union turned up at the end with a microphone, critisised Clegg and promoted the NUS recall campaign. 100 students went into occupation at the University.

Stockton

There were demonstrations of FE students in Stockton High Street yesterday. About 30 students attended. They were quite vocal and made an impression amongst locals.

Submitted by Newcastle on Fri, 26/11/2010 - 18:31

The occupation at Newcastle University is going well! After problems with security and stopping non-students from coming in easily over the last few days, the university has now agreed that the occupation can decide who comes in and out provided it is just students staying overnight. So student ID not a problem and the school students can now come and go more freely than before.
With the gigs and discussions last night the numbers swelled and there are now over 70 in listening to alternative lecture on global capitalism from politics lecture, before planning meeting to discuss the weekends plans, the day of action, holding a general student assembly and more!

Submitted by Bruce on Fri, 26/11/2010 - 23:41

At the end of Wednesday's march students occupied a lecture theatre in the Roscoe Building. They are still there despite being locked in over the weekend. More information at: http://roscoeoccupation.wordpress.com/

Submitted by Newcastle on Tue, 30/11/2010 - 00:27

Report on Hexham school students by Will Lloyd from QEHS.

Around 50 students from Queen Elizabeth High School in Hexham took the train to Newcastle to join protestors fighting against the scrapping of EMA, the cuts to Higher Education and the near-tripling of university tuition fees on Wednesday the 24th November. At Hexham train station they were photographed and some students were interviewed by the local newspaper, the Hexham Courant. In the run-up to this day of action the school stated to all parents that it could not authorise the walkout, but neither could it prevent students from protesting, and many of the teachers tacitly or explicitly expressed their support. However, they insisted that students could not gather at the front of school due to ‘health and safety’ concerns. Another national day of action on the 30th will see more students along with samba drummers from QEHS joining the demonstration. Students are now planning to start an anti-cuts group with regular meetings in Hexham to discuss the cuts and how to take action against them. A meeting with their Conservative MP Guy Opperman, is timetabled for the future

Submitted by Newcastle on Tue, 30/11/2010 - 15:23

In Newcastle today on 2nd day of action we had a demonstration of 600- 700 students marching through town, half the numbers of last week for a number of reasons, the weather in the northeast means many schools had snow days. This meant there could be less school walkouts and more had people coming independently. But the mood was great and the march was more organized than last week, with marches on the roads delaying traffic with tailbacks of buses and cars into town making more of an impact.

The mood was good and more people turned up to the occupation meeting afterwards making it the biggest occupation general meeting so far. With at least 100 people in the general meeting.

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