Victory as London Met students and staff sack board of governors!

Students and staff showed that “unity is strength” yesterday as hundreds turned out to demonstrate against the jobs massacre at London Met university. The action ended up forcing the resignation of all the governors in charge of the uni.

A lively demonstration outside university offices saw pushing and shoving with City of London police on Moorgate, but some activists managed to get inside and hang an anti-cuts banner from a balcony as protesters cheered from below. Elsewhere in the building, the unelected governors were having a discussion on how to make even more cuts to the university and had to conduct their meeting with chants of “resign! Resign!” and “students in! Governors OUT!” from below their boardroom window.

London Met has undergone what are quite possibly the most severe cuts of any university in the country, with five hundred staff under threat of losing their jobs, 25% of the whole staff body. The crisis was caused when the Vice Chancellor allowed the uni to lie to the higher education funding body about the number of students completing their first year, by which the rate of money given to a university is calculated. When they got caught out, university management slashed the budget, sending London Met spiralling into a financial crisis. But students and staff have run a long campaign of meetings, rallies, demonstrations – even an occupation and staff strike action to make sure that they were not the ones to pay the price of management incompetence.

Furious staff and students then braved the extreme Christmas cold to listen to speaker after speaker slate the board of governors, who were not only responsible for the hiring of disgraced Vice Chancellor Brian Roper, but allowed him to remain on full-pay for nine months on his six-figure salary after he had left, praising him for a “significant contribution to the university”.

No surprise then that staff unions and students were demanding the resignation of the entire board of governors at London Met. Placards demanding a “fresh start” for their university were held high and some students told the demonstration that “the governors are the past; but we are the future”. Between passionate speeches, protesters shouted “sack the bosses! Not the workers!”

Later on in the evening, a London-wide meeting held to organise against education cuts was told that the entire board had indeed been forced to resign by overwhelming pressure from staff and students united as applause filled the room.