Today, HEFCW has accepted proposals from Welsh Universities to charge an average of £8,800 per year in tuition fees, with almost three quarters of universities in Wales charging the full £9,000 from September 2012; Glyndŵr pulling the average down marginally by charging an average of £6,643.
Today’s announcement comes just weeks after the publication of the white paper for Higher Education in England which envisions further marketisation of the sector to make up for gross miscalculations on the part of the Universities and Sciences Minister, David Willetts. Here in Wales, similar negligence has occurred, with today’s announcement being £1,800 more than HEFCW’s expectations.
At an average of £8,800 per year, Wales is now one of the most expensive countries in the world in which to attend publicly funded Higher Education Institutions; despite the proposed halving of institutions in the country by 2013, and drastic cuts that will critically undermine the quality and diversity of courses, as well as hitting access and social mobility.
Yet again we face the prospect of worsening education whilst the governments in Cardiff and Westminster slash and burn as they try to find a way to make the numbers add up.
Fee rises and funding cuts are regressive, unnecessary, and hugely damaging. The reforms have no sound basis in reality. Far from being a drain on the economy, public education is a major contributor to the UK economy, with a return of almost £3 for every £1 invested, and with graduates earning on average £100,000 more than non-graduates. Additionally, according to a study by Universities UK, the HE Sector alone has generated over £45bn in UK output, whilst providing 2.5% of the jobs in the workforce. In 2003 the Welsh Assembly published a report showing that any level of fees is wrong, and that as the numbers increase, return to the individual, and to the public, diminish. The UK Government was also forced to admit earlier this year that the cost of raising fees will increase the deficit.
Students and lecturers must continue to stand together in opposition to these reforms – to protect social mobility, to protect the right to education. We must fight for public education funded through progressive taxation, the scrapping of fees, and restoration of funding. We must target the £140bn tax shortfall generated by tax dodging companies like Vodafone and Barclays.
On June 4th, the National Campaign Against Fees & Cuts held a ‘Reinvigoration Conference’ at Birmingham University. I was in attendance alongside around 90 other people. The aim of reigniting the group was sidelined swiftly as the day descended into a successful attempt to force through a steering committee proposal in such a hideously biased and directed way that makes Parliament’s wash-up period stand as a paragon of debate and accountability by comparison.
The major issue of the day was a vote on a proposal for a committee against a proposal for retaining open steering meetings. The fact that only the committee proposal was presented beforehand, with the opportunity for amendments, meant that conference was from the start directed towards the committee as the only acceptable option by those responsible for organising conference. Many took issue with the fact amendments could not be submitted from the floor at the time, presumably due to the imbalance and issues it caused.
At the time, I also voiced my concerns over the democratic integrity of elections to the committee itself. Firstly, the NCAFC has in place no democratic procedures or guidelines for carrying out independent electoral oversight, meaning the election was handled on an ad-hoc basis by non-independent persons, who only declared affiliations upon my request. This issue could have been avoided had proper democratic procedures been considered. We should not have elected at conference, simple as. We should have began an open nominations and campaigning period over the summer, allowing for valid elections by early autumn. This would have given the campaign time to set into place strong and acceptable rules with regards to procedure. It was on this basis that I ran for committee – the committee elected that day would have no legitimate mandate over the NCAFC and so should be transitional and serve only to set in place the ability for a real committee to exist.
Earlier this week it emerged that one of the persons elected to the new committee, Claire Locke (London Met SU President-Elect), was nominated and elected without her knowledge. That this could happen just goes to show the massive issue of democratic integrity with regards to the committee elections. Today she has announced her intention to resign from the committee, citing “deep concerns over what is going on here in terms of process, outcome and future implications.”, and a fear of sectarianism damaging the wider student movement as well as potentially destroying the NCAFC itself.
In an open letter, several key members of the NCAFC expressed their ‘grave concerns’ over what had occurred, branding the committee as “exclusive and a step backwards from the broad and united student movement that Ncafc has been at the forefront of trying to develop through initiatives like the Student and Education Assemblies.” This letter was twice published on the NCAFC website, only to be deleted both times; which raises further concerns about how the NCAFC is being manipulated and controlled by certain individuals who seek to stifle debate and discussion of real issues.
If the new committee does not act swiftly to address the democratic deficit and rectify the situation as soon as possible, it is likely we will see the group disintegrate and fragment, inflaming tensions between far-left parties, when we really need to be working together as we prepare for thousands to take the streets on June 30th in solidarity with striking unions. I call upon the committee to draw up a provisional constitution for the body of NCAFC, including proper democratic procedures including independently appointed persons to serve as a DPC of sorts, and to then hold a new conference in August to vote to ratify this constitution, as well as to hold proper and just elections to a new committee.
In 1997, Labour swept to power, receiving a disproportionately large number of seats compared to their vote share, thanks to the electoral system of FPTP used in the United Kingdom. Labour promised positive change for the country, but what we saw was the enshrinement in British politics of neo-liberal principles and authoritarian law, compounded with corruption, sleaze, and disillusionment.
Under New Labour we saw the deregulation of the banks and financial sector, which would contribute to the recession in the late 2000s, and allows obscene risks to be taken whilst bankers and executives pocket millions of taxpayers money to this day. We also saw the introduction of tuition fees in higher education, restricting access to education for thousands of young adults across Britain who were turned away by the prospect of debt on top of ever-rising living costs, and paving the way for the tripling of tuition fees from 2012. After 2000 we saw attack after attack on civil liberties, perhaps best highlighted by section 44, and detention without trial. On February 15th, 2003, over a million people took to the streets of London in opposition to action in Iraq; ignoring their cries for peace, the UK Government engaged in a barbaric and unjust – many would say illegal – war that would destabilise a region and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. It was clear this was a government that did not listen to the concerns of the people.
A New Hope
Born from a failed political system, the coalition that acts as a catalyst for radicalisation.
The end of the 2000s brought rising unemployment, a financial sector that was lining the pockets of its executives, and representatives that would rather spend taxpayers money on personal duck ponds than public services. The people were angry at the Government, and at the political system that had allowed all this to happen. The seeds of change had been sown.
As the new decade started, and an election loomed, the people of Britain sought real change, a chance to clean up politics, and to have their voices heard. Angry with Labour after their record in government, and concerned about the threat of any conservative government, voters looked away from the same old parties and found a champion for their beliefs in the form of the Liberal Democrats, and Nick Clegg.
In the run up to the General Election, the Liberal Democrats captured the support of the country. They inspired older and first-time voters alike, with their promises to bring about electoral reform and usher in a new political age; to not just oppose any rise in tuition fees, but to abolish them; to build a progressive tax system; to invest in renewable energy; to truly represent the people.
Come election day, however, the new-found support for the Lib Dems was nowhere to be found – no doubt due in part to the electoral system acting against them. The voters who had put their faith in the party, particularly students and first-time voters, were now facing the serious prospect of all their efforts achieving nothing. All hope now rested in the idea of a progressive ‘rainbow coalition’.
For days, the nation waited to learn who would lead the new government. Demonstrations occurred to remind the Liberal Democrats, who now found themselves kingmakers in a hung parliament, that they had promises that they must live up to.
They didn’t. One year ago, a Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government was formed. Many of the key pledges of the Liberal Democrats, and the hopes and desires they represented, were crushed there and then. Abolition of fees would become an allowance to abstain on raising tuition fees, and introducing STV became a referendum on AV linked in the same bill with Conservative gerrymandering.
May 2010 would become the start of the program of the most regressive policies ever seen in modern Britain. Policies that sacrificed the public sector and welfare in favour of making the richest in society even richer. Policies that would destroy the aspirations of generations to come. Policies that put the economy, and the environment at great risk. Policies that would rapidly radicalise the people of Britain.
When They Say Cut Back
In 2010, the Coalition Government held the Comprehensive Spending Review, which outlined plans to cut £81bn in public funding up to 2015, putting 500,000 public sector jobs at risk, destroying public welfare, cutting funding for the arts, and the scrapping of EMA. The Government was proposing massive cuts, whilst doing nothing to prevent the £120bn tax shortfall from dodging and uncollection, or halting the disgusting bonuses and damaging practice of the financial sector. The Government had declared war on the very people it exists to protect.
With peoples lives and livelihoods at stake, people all across the country began to mobilise. One week after the cuts were announced, UK Uncut made their first strike back against the cuts by shutting down a store belonging to Vodafone – a company who have dodged £6bn in tax. In the coming weeks and months, the now famous scissor logo of the decentralised protest group would appear in shops and banks all across the country; peacefully demonstrating against those responsible for the deficit, those who should be paying the price instead of the public. The fightback had begun.
NUS Demo Lition March, photo credit: Andrew Moss
Later that Autumn, the Browne Review was published, and the Government set in motion plans to make real term cuts to Higher Education of between 80% and 100%, whilst trebling tuition fees to £9,000. The higher education policies, which I blogged about at the time, will actually increase the deficit, whilst destroying education, and putting jobs and the economy at risk. With young people facing the prospect of high costs for poor education, coupled with high youth employment, students took to the streets in their tens of thousands to fight for public education, in days of action called by the National Union of Students, and later by the National Campaign Against Fees And Cuts. The scenes from these demonstrations would become the face of public discontent, with images of Edward Woollard throwing a fire extinguisher off of Millbank, and with video of police dragging Jodie McIntyre from his wheelchair, whilst children as young as 12 were kettled on Westminster Bridge for hours on end. The winter saw these same students take the fight to their own institutions, occupying and teaching the alternative, including at my own University here in Aberystwyth.
March For The Alternative
Going into 2011, the demonstrations and protests so far had largely been decentralised events organised by the people themselves. This continued to be true in the first few months of this year, where in January 15,000 students and workers marched on London, and in February where a new wave of student occupations occurred. This monopoly of the people was all about to change however, with the trade unions working together to organise what would turn into one of the biggest demonstrations in British since the turn of the century, as around 500,000 shut down London in opposition to the cuts to public services. With the funding and organisational abilities of all the unions, it was possible for mass mobilisation, which meant this demonstration had people from all walks of life standing together in solidarity against the cuts, be they pensioners, students, single parents, public sector workers, lecturers, farmers, disabled, unemployed – whatever you can think of, they were there.
March 26th was when these grassroots local networks of activists, national campaigns, unions, and the public all came together with one united voice. The day would stand as testament to the public opposition to the Government’s shameless attack on society. The people had come to be radicalised, radical Britain had well and truly been born.
Strike Whilst The Iron Is Hot
Since the national march on the 26th March, people have gone back to their communities, to continue the fight in their local area. Students are expressing their outrage at tuition fees and funding cuts, with more left-wing candidates being elected to local unions, as well as within the NUS. We’ve also seen UCU strike over pensions, and on June 30th, 4 unions, PCS, UCU, NUT and ATL, representing around 1 million workers, will be on strike. June 30th is a vital opportunity for students and workers to once more stand side by side, in solidarity against the cuts. The Education Activist Network is urging everyone, regardless of who you are, to join those teachers and lecturers on the picket lines.
We cannot afford to let the anti-cuts momentum waiver, and so it is heartening to see that as activists continue to shut down banks and stores across Britain, the unions are ramping up the fight. The people must continue to campaign for the government to tackle tax dodging and bankers bonuses, rather than destroy education and dismantle the NHS. We must fight, and we must win.
Photo Credit: S. Khan (http://www.flickr.com/photos/skhan/5309874137/in/photostream/)
Time and time again, the NUS has utterly failed to represent and protect the interests of students. On Saturday, during an NUS/TUC rally in Manchester, the self-proclaimed “Popular President” of the National Union of Students was egged and booed by crowds of students who feel betrayed by Porter’s chronic feebleness including refusing to endorse NCAFC marches, attempting to divide the movement, and even advocating huge cuts to education funding.
Aaron Porter is a symptom of a disease that has plagued the NUS since its inception- the disease of unaccountability. Rather than a union with full time officers and an executive elected by students to represent students, the NUS is a career plitician stitch-up, where the top are put in place year after year by delegates representing their candidate’s party, serving only to prepare middle-class career politicians for a life in a safe seat. Indeed, the previous president, Wes Streeting, is currently a Labour Councillor.
Currently, elections for NUS are conducted in an under-publicised process, culminating at the annual conference where the voting takes place. Of course, as a student, you or I have absolutely no say in who our President is, even when we’re members of an affiliated student union. No, instead we see partisan candidates backed by partisan friends, who are then voted in by those same partisan friends who work to ensure they’re selected as conference delegates – the chosen few who dictate to the rest just who will be in the NUS administration.
This can not continue. Such a disjuncture between the top of the Union, and those it is supposed to represent invariably leads to the Union failing to live up to its task of representing its disenfranchised students. We used to find the NUS pushing one way, whilst students push the other. Now, however, the NUS sits in its bunker, making accusatory gestures at students who are doing what the NUS fails to do and standing up for education.
We need a fighting NUS. We need a democratic NUS. Now is the time for the NUS to look inwards, and restructure itself to ensure that every single student in Further and Higher Education Institutions has a direct say in who represents us. At the same time, the NUS needs to open up, and make all of its processes and structures far more transparent and publicised.
As the great divide grows between the students fighting for their survival, and the Union administration trying to worm their way into a life of politics, the National Union is at a crossroads. To the left lies the a path of no confidence motions, de-affiliation, and fatal wounds to the student movement and students themselves; to the right lies democratic reform, a united front, and the chance for all of us to fight to the fullest against the cuts in education and the public sector, and the unjustifiable and irresponsible restriction of access to education.
The message to the NUS is clear: Democratise or Die.
With just one day to go before tens of thousands of students from all across the UK take to the streets to protest against the Government’s systematic destruction of education, the fine folks over at UCL Occupation have launched a new mobile phone application called Sukey designed to keep peaceful protesters informed with live information that will assist them in keeping clear of trouble spots, avoid injury and from being unnecessarily detained.
The application works through the web browser on modern phones, ensuring cross-platform support. They have also developed an SMS version they dub “Growl”, for older phones, to compliment the shiny, probably rather battery-hungry, web “Roar” version.
Bernie, one of those involved, said:
I really hope that Sukey helps to prevent the mayhem we saw in December and helps the demonstration to get its point across – which is that these education cuts threaten the very future of our country and our young people. The general public are up in arms and the government really must reconsider.
I believe Sukey will become an integral part of protests in the UK and across the globe, as policing gets more extreme in its attempts to quell anti-government demonstrations. I implore anyone who will be taking to the streets to make sure they make use of Sukey.
Sukey Roar and Growl officially launch on Saturday 29th January, but before then you try it out here: http://sukey.org/tutorial
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