November 11, 2010

IN WHAT Sky News described as one of the largest demonstrations to hit London streets in decades, tens of thousands of students, teachers, staff members and their supporters rallied November 10 in opposition to the new Conservative-led government's plan for tuition increases and cutbacks at Britain's colleges.

Organized by the National Union of Students (NUS) and the University and College Union (UCU), the demonstration drew students from across the country for a march through central London, during which students occupied the Conservative Party headquarters.

Under the new tuition regime proposed by the coalition government of the Conservative (Tory) and Liberal Democratic (Lib-Dem) Parties, student fees, which until recently were subsidized entirely by the government, would rise to $14,500--almost tripled from their current level of $5,300--while university teaching budgets are being cut overall by 40 percent.

Though proposed by the current government, the tuition hike proposal comes about after the release of a study commissioned by the Labour-led government that lost power after a general election in May. The study, known as the Browne Review, recommended the steep increases in tuition.

Tens of thousands of students turned out in London to protest education cuts and tuition increases (Geoff Dexter)

Protesters were keen to voice their sense of betrayal at the hands of the Lib-Dems, who, desperate to distinguish themselves from the Tories during the election campaign earlier this year, made appeals to students a central part of their strategy. The party went so far as to require every candidate to sign a pledge opposing any and all increases in tuition if elected to office. Now the Liberal Democrats are partners in the Tories' budget-cutting regime.

Coming in the wake of last month's announcement of plans for $130 billion in spending cuts overall, many march participants connected the increases in tuition to the broader attack on working-class living standards embodied in the slashing of social welfare programs.

As Frances O'Grady, deputy general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, the main union federation in Britain, said in her speech at the rally: "This is about turning our colleges and universities from places of learning and opportunity into finishing schools for the rich...Don't dare tell us we're all in this together, because the bankers have been let off scot-free."

FEEDER MARCHES led into the main demonstration from campuses across London, and the march route made its way past the British Parliament and Conservative Party headquarters before winding up at a rally outside of the Tate museum.

At around 2 p.m., hundreds of protesters from the march forced their way into Tory Party headquarters and occupied the building, holding the facilities into the early evening before being removed by police, resulting in the arrest of 32 people.

The occupation was portrayed as marginal and violent in media accounts, and those sentiments were echoed by NUS President Aaron Porter, who condemned the breakaway action as "despicable."

But as author and university lecturer Nina Power wrote in the Guardian, the spontaneous action was really "a genuine expression of frustration against the few who seem determined to make the future a miserable, small-minded and debt-filled place for the many."

In an interview, Ashok Kumar, the full-time vice president of the London School of Economics Students' Union, explained the reasons for the demonstrators' anger.

Organizing for the demonstration was relatively easy among students and lecturers because of the brutality of the cuts and the tripling of fees. In little more than a decade, we've seen free education turn into more than 30,000 pounds of debt... I'm proud that so many of us took our anger out on the Tory Party campaign headquarters. The brutality of the police will not be reported on CNN or MSNBC in America, just as it wasn't reported in Seattle, but many...students around the country are more confident after today that we will be a wrench in the Con-Dem machine... Today was only the beginning. The 46,000 students who attended today's march and the 4,000 students who occupied the Tory Party HQ will now go back to their universities and begin building for the walkouts, strikes and occupations planned for the 24th of November.

It will take a sustained struggle to turn back the hack-and-slash policies of the coalition government, but the November 10 demonstration showed the determination of students and their supporters to draw the line.