Our so called “Socialist” Prime Minister has inflicted a massive defeat on students with his victory over top up fees in Parliament. This was not a socialist measure by a compassionate man. It was an attack by a neo liberal war monger on the right to free education. It is another step along the road to a total free market in education.
Working class people fought for university education to be free in the last century, but in the present day the government prefers to spend £1 billion on the imperialist invasion of Iraq than to spend it on filling the hole in universities’ budgets. They lied in 2001, their manifesto pledging “we will not introduce top-up fees”, and they are continuing to lie to us now, saying that if taxation funded universities fully, then it would be the dustman subsidising the doctor. This is stupid. Not only do doctors pay more in tax anyway, but corporation tax has been cut by 23% and the top rate of income tax has been slashed by 43% since 1979.
This means that the rich pay barely any more tax than workers, and if they’re rich enough to employ accountants they often avoid tax altogether. Proponents of top-up fees in the liberal press claim that its right to make students pay vast sums of money for their education, because graduates all get well-paid jobs that will put paid to their debt swiftly and easily. Try telling that to any teacher or nurse, or the thousands of graduates working in call centres because there are no other jobs available.
We also have the highest graduate unemployment ever seen, showing that there is no guarantee of a job at the end of our degrees, leaving us with a mountain of debt to climb before we can even begin to plan for a house and family.
Variable top-up fees are yet another way of oppressing working class people too. As the government tries to get 50% of young people into university it is simultaneously trying to keep the working class down by charging variable fees, forcing the poor to go to universities that charge lower fees and take courses that cost less.
So to describe the policy of top-up fees, as socialist is not just wrong, it’s offensive.
Members of the current government who went to university, all did at a time when there were no tuition fees, and they got given a grant to help with their living costs. That they are now implementing policies the complete opposite of this is a disgrace, as is the stream of careerist Labour students who run the NUS and pay lip-service to the needs of students before falling into line, capitulating and failing students at every opportunity.
Education is a right not a privilege and should be free for all, funded by taxing the rich and the corporations that benefit from a highly educated work force.
Yes, we have lost the battle, but we can still wing the war. We need to build a mass campaign which aims to shut down and occupy every university. We can build on the support we already have on campuses. We need to draw in secondary school students into the campaign because they are the ones who will have to pay the fees. They should be involved in every occupation. They’ve already shown around the war that they are willing and able to take direct action.
We also have to link up with every trade union involved in the university sector. Workers in the universities are fighting on a number of fronts against the government and the vice-chancellors who want to introduce the fees. Link the fightback.
But we should not stop with the workers on the campuses. All over the public sector workers are fighting back against Blair’s attempts at privatisation. Students should go to the meetings of trade unionists and explain why fees are all part of Blair’s’ plans to privatise education. Explain why the struggle against fees is the same struggle as the fight against foundation hospitals or the fight against low pay in the public sector. We should propose a joint campaign against privatisation in every sector and link all the struggles together into one big fightback against Blair’s band of privatisers.
The victory for Blair shows that “lobbies” of Parliament and our chancellors get us no where. It shows that the Labour leadership of the NUS will lead us to defeat. Our movement desperately needs a fighting rank and file movement willing to take the militant action we need to win.
Occupy the universities, link the issues and build a joint fight back against privatisation with the unions.
That’s the only way we can win.
