A national student meeting hosted by Birmingham Defend Education on 29 January was attended by around two hundred activists from all over the country.
It was called by anti-cuts groups involved in student occupations last term.
The meeting agreed a number of demands to orient the student movement and around which local groups can agitate. These include free education with living grants, the writing off of student debt, and support for better pay and conditions for higher education workers.
Responding to the wave of repression on universities last term, during which dozens of students were arrested and universities were granted injunctions to prevent freedom of assembly, the meeting called for no disciplinaries as a result of the protests and demanded that police should not be called on to campuses without permission from elected student representatives.
The meeting agreed to call for local actions in support of these demands around and after the national strike on Thursday 6 February.
At the demonstration afterwards, the need to fight for democratic universities and against state repression was brutally underscored yet again.
At the end of the march, around 100 students peacefully entered the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall. Upon leaving, the students were kettled in a courtyard outside the Aston Webb Building for between two and four hours, without access to food or water.
When students were finally allowed to leave in pairs, West Midlands Police forced all students to present their personal details. Some refused to do so, and were subsequently arrested. In a recent High Court judgement, this action was found to be in breach of human rights legislation.
14 were arrested, and all of those arrested who were Birmingham students have been suspended from the university.
After being held for over 24 hours, they received draconian bail conditions which include an order to live and sleep at their home address every night and not to meet publicly in groups of 10 or more people without police consent.
