A System of Abuse, Betrayal, and Alienation

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.

A System of Abuse, Betrayal, and Alienation In 1997, Labour swept to power, receiving a disproportionately large number of seats compared to their vote share, thanks to the electoral system...

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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.

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...

First of all, let me preface this by saying this – I’m not a Labour member. With New Labour, and its shift away from the left, I can not in good faith support them in such a way.

Tomorrow, voting begins for the Labour Leadership election – although you can still vote provided you join by the 8th September. I understand they’re using AV for this election, which is amusing given how many Labour MPs are now rejecting AV, primarily for partisan reasons.

When it was announced that Brown was standing down, I immediately expressed my support for Cruddas, although it later emerged he would instead be running for Chairman, and my support turned to McDonnell, who then withdrew in favour of Diane, and so my support followed.

There’s a clear trend in where my support for the leadership bid goes – to the MPs who best represent what the Labour Party was supposed to be, before it was twisted into its authoritarian, neo-liberal form.

Diane being elected Labour leader would represent a rallying cry to the Left, and provide a central pillar from which a sorely lacking, united left-wing party could exist. With Labour representing the voices of the left, we would see greater representation of views across the political spectrum, rather than the squalid centre/centre-right complacency we’ve seen growing over British politics in the past two decades.

Diane’s views aren’t so left wing as to alienate the centrists, instead she seeks policies based on sense and conviction. As her campaigns team have said in a release – “Diane was the only candidate to vote against the Iraq War, has a strong record on protecting civil liberties and also wants to scrap Trident.”

She is uncompromising on education. Believing it ‘should be available to all’, rejecting the compromise of a Graduate Tax as an option. I take this to mean she would also seek to abolish tuition fees. Educating the public should not be considered a “burden” as the universities minster puts it, but as a chance to enrich the lives of the populace, as well as providing an able and intellectual workforce. Yes, she sent her children to private schools, but this is a symptom of the neglect and abuse education suffered under the Conservatives and New Labour.

She also understands the failing of the private sector, and so seeks to renationalise the rail network. With fares rising disproportionally to inflation, and the government subsidies given to the operators, the public’s money is lining the pockets of fat-cat businessmen, whilst the services themselves are poor and under-invested. Renationalising the railways gives us back control, would give us lower, fairer fares, and allows Britain to bring its public transport into the high standards seen across Europe at the same time as reducing our impact on the environment.

Some of her less well-known campaigns include fighting for the right to have abortions in Northern Ireland, protecting the rights of child migrants, and the removal of innocent persons from the DNA database.

I’m not saying Diane is without her flaws. She’s probably not the best person to lead Labour, but she’s the best candidate to lead Labour, and that is why I believe Labour supporters, and union members should put her as their first preference on their ballot papers.

First of all, let me preface this by saying this – I’m not a Labour member. With New Labour, and its shift away from the left, I can not in...

Today, a general election was declared. It was also the day that the human rights infringing, industry-drafted, protectionist Digital Economy Bill had its 2nd Reading in the commons, before being passed through the wholly undemocratic process of wash-up in the coming days.

The controversial bill would see the death of public wi-fi, houses being disconnected on allegation of copyright infringement – with them having to prove innocence by paying for an appeal after the fact, photographers and works creators having work taken and exploited by industry without consent, or as one MP put it (in an endorsement of the bill!) – “putting creativity before freedom” – despite the fact the bill mentions not once the content creator or artist, and instead refers only to the rights holders – most often record labels or publishers, not the artists who created the works.

Understandably there has been outrage over the bill itself, and the government’s insistence on passing it without true scrutiny and debate: Over 20,000 letters and e-mails to MPs, over 35,000 signatures on the Number 10 petition against the bill, 100,000s of tweets, campaigns against the bill from consumer groups, business groups, ISPs, the  public, and the Pirate Party; concerns from the JCHR and the Law Society of Scotland that the bill breaches human rights, one of the  most discussed topics on social media worldwide, even on the day of the declaration of the election.

Guess how many of our great ‘Representatives’ turned up to the debate today?

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Today, a general election was declared. It was also the day that the human rights infringing, industry-drafted, protectionist Digital Economy Bill had its 2nd Reading in the commons, before being...