Liam Byrne “would love free education”

Submitted by Matthew on 18 February, 2015 - 12:26 Author: Beth Redmond

In an apparent bid to stop any more students pledging to vote for the Green Party, Labour’s shadow minister for higher education, Liam Byrne, is touring the ten campuses where students have the ability to swing the vote.

I interrogated Byrne at the Kings College London leg of his tour, about tuition fees, living grants and how rubbish his proposal of a graduate tax is. We filmed him contradicting his usual line; he told us that he was in favour of free education in principle, but he wasn’t going to make promises he couldn’t keep.

Whilst we should not trust anything this man says, the fact that he so openly told us what we wanted to hear shows that pressure from the student movement is working.

We have managed to change NUS’s line on free education, but in order to keep persuading others we need to carry on mobilising on campuses.

On March 28, the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts are organising the next national student demonstration in Liam Byrne’s constituency in Birmingham.

We don’t think a graduate tax is good enough, nor do we think a reduction to £6k fees will make a difference.

For model motions to pass support for the demonstration, including booking coaches, see here.

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