UK students

Student activism in the UK and the NUS. See also UCU.

Iraqi students organise

By Houzan Mahmoud , on behalf of the campaign to support students in Basra against Islamic repression The first student congress since the US-led invasion will be held in Iraq on June 15th, 2005. Student committees set up in December last year have been working hard under extremely dangerous conditions to organise students and create a progressive student organization to defend the rights and freedoms of young people in Iraq. The March student uprising against repression by Moqtada al-Sadr’s Basra militia has made the need for a national student organisation clear. Currently Islamist political...

A statement from GUPS

In Solidarity 3/71 we wrote about an anti-semitic leaflet issued by an Islamist member of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS). GUPS have dissociated themselves from this leaflet. Their statement: The General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) is highly concerned at recent accusations of anti-semitism by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) on the basis of a leaflet available at NUS Conference 2005. GUPS disassociates itself from the leaflet (Zionism) which does not represent GUPS' views in any way. Once GUPS became aware of the existence of the leaflet, it was removed from the stall...

Students Against Sweatshops launched

Twenty-five student activists met in London on 23 April to discuss and plan the development of a major new student campaign, Students Against Sweatshops. Participants included reps from People and Planet and Speak. Plans were made to stage a seminar at the G8 counter summit in Edinburgh in July, and set up initial organisational structures. The conception of the campaign is to bring together individuals and existing groups to work against sweatshops. While it might be necessary to set up new anti-sweatshop clubs in some areas, much work can be done through already-existing student unions and...

Qaradawi and Ken Livingstone’s dodgy dossier

Ken Livingstone's office has produced a document defending his invitation to the Muslim cleric Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi to City Hall in July 2004. Al-Qaradawi is a leading spokesperson of the Muslim Brotherhood. According to a briefing written by gay activist group Outrage, using the words of Qaradawi himself, the Livingstone dossier includes factually untrue claims in defence of Dr al-Qaradawi. From Outrage’s briefing: The Mayor claims Dr al-Qaradawi is one of the Muslim scholars who have done the most to combat socially regressive interpretations of Islam on issues such as women’s rights. Dr al...

A real rise of anti-semitism

On the final day of NUS conference, the two Union of Jewish Students members on NUS national executive, Luciana Berger and Mitch Simmons, resigned in protest at the NUS leadership’s failure to stand up to growing anti-semitism in the student movement. In addition to the Executive’s lack of response to a variety of anti-semitic comments and incidents over the last year, they might also have cited the political capitulation in search of votes, by NUS President Kat Fletcher and her allies to the MAB-supporting leadership of FOSIS. Yet their resignation statement met with scoffs from all parts of...

Letter to a student SWP member: Why are you joining the reactionaries?

Dear comrade, On 7 April, at this year’s National Union of Students conference, Socialist Worker Student Society members, in alliance with the Islamist-dominated Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), organised a walkout in protest at the speech given by the Iraqi socialist, Houzan Mahmoud, who had been invited to conference as a guest speaker. At the same conference, numerous right-wing speeches by Blairites, Tories and others were met not with walkouts but properly with debate. What must this woman have done to inspire such hostility amongst sections of the student left? Is she one...

Stop the rise of the religious right

By Sacha Ismail Events at National Union of Students Conference, which took place in Blackpool between April 5 and 7, should sound the alarm for socialists in the student movement and beyond. The deterioration of NUS’s political culture is gathering pace, with the leadership and sections of the left facilitating the rise of right-wing forces that previously had no presence in the student movement. The Islamist-led Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) was strong enough to conclude alliances not just with the SWP and others on the “anti-imperialist” far left, but with large swathes of...

Who's left at NUS conference?

With the introduction of top-up fees only a year away, the need for a militant, left-led National Union of Students is an urgent one. Unfortunately, as in the wider labour movement and world, much of the “left” is busy making a mess of things. On one hand, we have Kat Fletcher, elected National President last year on a united left slate — a former Workers’ Liberty supporter who still calls herself a revolutionary socialist, but in practice has moved so far to the right that Labour Students provide a left opposition to her. In her previous incarnation, Kat was co-chair of the Campaign for Free...

Students against Sweatshops launch meeting

3–5pm, Saturday 23 April 2nd Floor, University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1 (Euston tube) * Building international solidarity with workers’ struggles * Campaigning for workers’ rights on campus * Fighting student low wages and exploitation. This meeting will establish a student activist network to campaign and coordinate activity on these issues. More information: tel 07961 040618 or email Laura Schwartz . Sponsored by No Sweat ..

The arrival of top-up fees

The market in Higher Education provision made possible by last year’s Higher Education Act, which allowed the introduction of variable top-up fees, is not taking the exact shape most student activists predicted it would, but it is definitely taking shape. The Government’s Office of Fair Access (Offa), which was created by the HE Bill, has announced that from 2006 it will allow 112 of the 120 Higher Education institutions in England and Wales to charge the full, £3,000 a year top-up fee. Eight have chosen to charge less than the maximum. Only three are fully-fledged universities, while the rest...

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