Solidarity 129, 20 March 2008

Near-win for left at NUS Women’s Conference

The success of ENS Women at this year’s NUS Women’s Conference (13-15 March) in passing radical left-wing policy and mobilising a significant number of conference delegates around socialist feminist politics, is testimony to the hard work of our activists both within NUS and outside it with Feminist Fightback over the last two and a half years. So is the result of the election held at the conference for NUS National Women’s Officer. Our candidate Sofie Buckland very nearly won the election, getting 29 votes against 33 for Labour Students’ Katie Curtis. Sofie’s activist record persuaded a...

Election results show possibilities

There have been interesting election results in a number of university student unions over the last couple of months. The SWP/Student Respect have lost control of their two strongholds, Manchester University and SOAS in London. In the former, which they have run for several years, the left slate which they led narrowly lost general secretary and a number of other key positions to a Labour Students/Lib Dem/Jewish Society lash up. It seems, however, that the SWP sealed their own fate by refusing to work with more independent minded elements of the left and alienating many left-wing activists. A...

Student unionist victimised over anti-militarism

On 5 March, a 300-plus strong general meeting of UCL Union passed a motion proposed by socialist activist Sham Rajyaguru, president of UCL’s Stop the War Society, to ban the Officer Training Corps, University Royal Navy Units, University of London Air Squadron and all other military organisations from freshers’ events and other union-sponsored events, union premises, and student-run media. Now the right of the union has responded by suspending left-wing General Secretary Sam Godwin. Military recruiters currently have access to nearly all freshers’ fairs, and about half of British military...

1968: Vietnam solidarity and the British left

March 17 1968. 20,000 gather in Trafalgar Square for a rally and march to the US Embassy in protest against the US war in Vietnam. The Square is full of the flags of the National Liberation Front (the “Vietcong”), who, only weeks previously had launched the Tet Offensive that had taken a largely rural guerilla war into the cities of Vietnam, getting as far as the gates of the US Embassy in the capital Saigon. Someone throws red dye into the fountains to symbolise the blood shed in the war. Police move in but are resisted — a policy of “no arrests” means demonstrators try to snatch back those...

Handing over schools to business spivs?

Gordon Brown and Ed Balls will continue to accelerate the academies programme. The fake concern Balls expressed about some schools flouting admissions procedures acts as sand in our eyes as he and Brown increase selection through academies, trust and foundation status. Local authorities currently face a terrible choice. If they include an academy in their bid for funding under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, it will be built with no charge to the authority but at a £35m cost to the taxpayer. State schools will be given away at knock down prices to any two-bit entrepreneur...

Pushing education beyond capitalist limits

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire W. B. Yeats There has to be selection because we are beginning to create aspirations which society cannot match. In some ways this points to the success of education in contrast to the public mythology which has been created. When young people drop off the education production line and cannot find work at all, or work which meets their abilities and expectations, then we are only creating frustration with perhaps disturbing social consequences. We have to select: to ration the educational opportunities so that society can cope...

A different type of trade unionism

This [NUT 2008 Easter] conference comes at a crucial time for trade unionists both in education and across the Public Sector. Both the NUT and UCU are balloting members over the government’s 3 year pay cut, which will hopefully lead to the first national strike over pay for a very long time. At the same time, other Public Sector unions are involved in similar disputes. As NUT activists we need to seize the opportunity to unite and act with other unions who are fighting the same battle against an increasingly hostile and aggressive government. However, activists will know the problems we face...

Get a life — building action on workload

If you ask teachers what the worst aspect of their job is, a very big majority will point to excessive workload. We know this because they have been asked by trade unions and by academic researchers on a regular basis. In particular, research commissioned by government to identify why so many people leave the job consistently shows that workload is a crucial factor. Teacher trade unions are aware of the importance of this issue but have taken two diametrically opposed paths in dealing with it. The NASUWT and ATL have taken the route of social partnership. They made an agreement with the...

Education: the world’s biggest industry

“Teachers are proletarians. Indeed, it has been some time now since a significant number of teachers owned their own means of production; in order to survive they sell their labour power…” Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labour: Workers’ Movements and Globaliation since 1870 The significance of teachers as workers has increased in Western capitalist economies in the post-war period. Mass education and the work of teachers within the “education industry” has become the lynchpin in an economy dependent upon workers with high levels of “knowledge”: “Like textile workers in the nineteenth century and...

Push back the “new management”

I am a local officer of Leeds NUT. One of our biggest sources of casework is workplace bullying. It is also one of the most depressing and frustrating aspects of our work because it is very difficult to protect individual members from systematic intimidation by school managers, and the problem grows like a malignant tumour. Recently I found myself sitting in the reception area of a Leeds secondary school staring at a wallposter which stridently proclaimed the legend “The power of me can tackle bullying in Leeds”. In the previous weeks I had frequently sat in traffic jams and stared at this...

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