Fight for free education

- Scrap the Browne Report! FOR FREE EDUCATION!

- Build a demonstration on 10th November!

- For a democratic campaign of students and workers!

Dear Executive,
If implemented, the proposals made by the millionaire Lord Browne in his review of higher education will make university inaccessible to many students, particularly from working-class backgrounds, by massively increasing the debt which young people will be shackled with upon graduation. Allowing universities to vary fees for different courses will also make the most attractive courses the most expensive.

Increasing fees will not increase the quality of education, especially since huge cuts to the service will be announced later this month- the politicians want students to pay for the economic crisis created by the bankers and speculators. Ultimately, the agenda is to privatise education and to turn universities into mere training camps for big business, which Queen’s University’s management is committed to.

It is clear that the Northern Ireland Executive are determined to move in the same direction, since Reg Empey has now called for the report by Joanne Stuart – of the Institute of Directors – to be re-examined in the light of Browne’s findings. Students have no friends among the main parties, who are all wedded to cuts and privatisation.

Rather than lobbying the politicians, the Union should mobilise students and assist them in organising to fight in their own interests and put pressure on the politicians. The meeting called next Tuesday by the Executive is a very welcome step-forward, as is the protest to be held afterwards. However, this can’t just be a one-off, but should be the beginning of a real campaign- not just against Browne’s proposals, but for free education and against all cuts to services.

Many current students may feel that these proposals don’t directly affect them and, while opposing the plans, may not see the need to get active on the issue. Of course, the argument must be made that we should fight to defend access to higher education for future students, but a fight for free education with a living grant and the abolition of student debt is something which students will see as directly in their benefit. This is not impossible.

Opposing the cuts to jobs and services which are on the way – as well as being in the interests of students – can lay the basis for linking up with workers in the university. The UCU has come out openly against the Browne report. Involving workers in the campaign would massively strengthen it, because of their ability to take industrial action. The unions on campus should be invited to call their members to the meeting next Tuesday. From there, a committee of students’ and workers’ representatives should be democratically elected to run the campaign, building for a demonstration on 10th November to coincide with that taking place in London.

What is the alternative to cuts? How can you pay to scrap debt and provide free education with a living grant? For one, the government could shut down tax-havens and aggressively pursue the £123 billion which the super-rich and big business avoid paying every year. The banks which have been bailed out by the general public could be fully nationalised, with their profits invested into public services, rather than going into the pockets of fat-cat shareholders. Privatisation projects such as PPP/PFI, which allow big business to run services with huge profits, could be scrapped and the services brought ‘in-house’. The planned replacement for Trident could be scrapped, saving £34 billion.

Yes, these are radical demands. But the reality is that the Con-Dem coalition is determined to mortgage young people’s futures in order to pay for the crisis created by those they represent. They will meet no real opposition from the parties in the Assembly Executive. A campaign which is not militant in both its demands and its tactics cannot win significant concessions on this issue and defend access to higher education.

Yours,
Chris Loughlin.

On behalf of QUB Socialist Society

Joe Higgins MEP Speaks at QUB

On the same day as the Irish government’s announcement that the total cost of bailing out Anglo Irish Bank could reach €34bn (£29bn), Socialist Party MEP for Dublin, Joe Higgins, spoke at Queen’s University on the case for socialism. Higgins said the Irish government and working people face a “stark reality” in the coming months if they are to recover from the current financial crisis. The solidarity of citizens and mobilisation of youth must force an entirely different approach in Ireland.

For the full article, click here.

Capitalism offers no future for young people

The economic crisis which has reverberated around the world in the last three years has demonstrated the true nature of the capitalist system. This crisis was caused by massive speculation by the big banks and finance houses in the global casino known as the stock market, in search of a quick profit. Inevitably, huge bubbles were created which were bound to burst, bringing the house of cards crashing down.
However, it is workers and young people – those whose skills and labour actually create the wealth in society – who have been asked to pay for this crisis time and again. Workers bore the brunt of the global economic downturn, as bosses slashed jobs, pay and conditions in order to protect their profit margins. Now, we are being told we must accept massive austerity measures in order to fund the bail-out of the bankers who caused the crisis! This is being replicated across the world.
 
The Tory government are currently finalising the details of their huge assault on public spending. It is predicted that this will include £2 billion cuts here, causing up to 40,000 job losses. This is at a time when around 120,000 are already out of work. Despite the posturing of some local politicians, all the main sectarian parties in the Assembly are signed up to the agenda of making ordinary people pay for the crisis. As it becomes clear that there is no recovery on the horizon, mass unemployment is the future facing young people today.
 
Conditions facing students have never been worse. Most of those ‘lucky’ enough to get into university, despite thousands of places being slashed, can expect to live in poverty in slum housing for the duration of their degree. Working-class students are forced to search for low-paying, part-time jobs just to get by. The average student currently leaves university shackled with £24,000 of debt, and this is likely to climb as the Russell Group (which Queen’s is part of) push for annual fees of £10,000! The quality of education received will be undermined as further cuts bite and elements of the service are privatised. And at the end of it all, the chances of getting a decent job are slim. Currently, 69 people are chasing each graduate-level job.
 
Workers and young people cannot and will not simply accept this assault on their rights and living standards. We are seeing the beginnings of a fight back, with demonstrations involving millions taking place in Spain, Portugal, France and other countries. In Greece, we have seen 7 general strikes against the government’s austerity measures! Closer to home, small groups of workers – such as those at Visteon, Vestas and Lyndsey Oil Refinery – have taken militant action to defend their interests.
 
Industrial resistance and demonstrations are crucial in the fight-back, but they must be wedded to a real political alternative. By its very nature, the capitalist system functions to create massive profit for a tiny elite who control the economic levers, and thereby the political levers of our world. This runs entirely contrary to the interests of working-class people.
 
Capitalism offers nothing but poverty for the majority of people on our planet. This rotten system – which breeds war, environmental destruction, sectarianism and racism – must be done away with. In its place, we stand for a socialist world, where the massive multinationals which dominate our globe, the banks and the crucial sectors of the economy are taken into public ownership. On this basis, the wealth and resources of our world could be used in a democratic and planned way by the mass of working people to meet the needs of everyone on the planet.

Democracy Under Threat at QUBSU

A Society member discussed this with Andrew Dodge, Director of the Students’ Union, who told him this was due to altercations between political societies and visiting students last year, some of which required intervention by security staff. This is unfortunate, but absolutely no reason to ban all political societies from taking part this year.
 
Those incidents whick took place last year were driven by sectarianism, which the Socialist Society is resolutely opposed to, being neither Nationalist nor Unionist. Some members were active in School Students Against Sectarianism, which united young people from both communities following the sectarian murder of Danny McColgan in 2001. Other members of our society played a similar, exemplary role following the killing of Michael McIlveen in Ballymena in 2006. This is the way to take on sectarianism, not undermining democratic rights!
 
The incidents last year should have been investigated by elected union representatives and disciplinary action taken against any society who were deemed to have provoked sectarian confrontation. The solution is not to tar all societies with the same brush and ban us from being able to introduce prospective students to our ideas at the Open Days. The whole point of having clubs and societies present is to give young people an idea of what they can participate in outside of their academic activities if they come to Queen’s – political societies, debate and action should be a central part of this, not something which is sidelined and brushed under the carpet. Numerous private companies, seeking to make a profit off prospective students and with no base on campus, were present while students’ political societies were banned!
 
Crucially, this decision was taken by the previous President and Executive Committee, but was enforced by Andrew Dodge who is entirely unelected. Mr. Dodge, while on the phone one of our members , actually boasted of the fact that he felt no obligation to justify this decision to the students at Queen’s University which the Union is meant to represent! Exactly who is it that runs the Union- the elected representatives of QUB students or unelected individuals like Mr. Dodge?

We called on the current Executive Committee to take immediate action to overturn this decision and ensure that ALL political societies who had applied were able to take part in the events, but to no avail.  Socialist Society members attempted to exercise their right to organise on campus, but were quickly escorted from the Union building by well-prepared security staff, before receiving the same illogical excuses for this censorship from Mr. Dodge.
 
This decision represents the beginning of a slippery slope towards the kind of political censorship that we now see on campuses of the University of Ulster, where political activity and debate is strangled and students have to jump through hoops just to get together and discuss ideas. Students must now get organised to oppose any attempts by Union management to undermine our basic democratic rights!

The Socialist Society is proud to announce that Joe Higgins, Socialist Party MEP for Dublin, will be speaking at our opening meeting in Queen’s University this year on ‘Europe in Revolt- The Case for Socialism’.

Joe served 2 terms as member of the Irish parliament for Dublin West, during which he played a leading role in a number of workers’ struggles and became known as the ‘real opposition’ to the Fianna Fail government.

Now a Member of the European Parliament for Dublin, he is playing a similar fighting role in Brussels and Strasbourg, opposing the right-wing, bosses’ agenda of the European Union leadership. He has recently visited Greece, witnessing the mass revolt which is taking place there against the government’s austerity programme.

Joe Higgins to speak at QUB

Students must defend rights

Around 800 first-year students at De Montfort University in Leicester have been forced into hotels around the city after the university ‘ran out of space’ in halls. Many of the students were told that they were guaranteed a place after they applied in May and June but were then informed, some just two days before they were to move in, that they did not in fact have a place and were going to be put into temporary accommodation.

By Becci Heaghney, Leicester Socialist Students

Some students were housed in private accommodation but, as one student told us, the houses were not suitable. There were reports of windows not closing, front doors not opening and boilers being unsafe.

Others have been put into hotels and are being charged £100 a week, a significant amount more than the £75 they were promised in halls. Students are also being charged extra for internet access, which would have been included in their rent in halls, and for taxi and other travel costs to get to and from university. The average that students have been spending in taxi costs is £10 a day.

It is not only the extra cost that is a problem for students but the inconvenience. The students were looking forward to starting university so that they could meet other people and now many are feeling isolated and distressed.

Members of the student union have been visiting the students in the hotels to check on them and it has been reported in the local press that, according to the university, the students are happy. This is not the case; students are feeling very uncertain about the near future.

No one knows when the situation will be resolved and students are being kept in the dark about what the university is doing to sort the accommodation crisis out.

The university have stated that they will try to provide more permanent housing by the end of October but many students have already started to look for private accommodation themselves.

De Montfort Socialist Students does not think that this is good enough. The university were willing to over-subscribe places and accept the £3,225 in tuition fees from each student, but they have been unable to provide accommodation for everyone. De Montford only offers a maximum bursary of £500. Not only this, but their lack of organisation has meant that students were not informed of the problems with sufficient time to look for somewhere else to live.

At the freshers fair, Socialist Students had a petition against the accommodation crisis demanding that the university finds decent, low-cost permanent housing for all of the students affected as soon as possible and that all extra costs that students have had to pay be refunded to them. We got hundreds of signatures and students were pleased that someone was supporting them.

However, the petition is only a start of the campaign and we hope to do more to put pressure on the university to rectify the situation.

How can we fight the racist BNP?

1pm Wed 7th Oct
Room 207 PFC

The BBC have offered the BNP a platform on Question Time. The far-right BNP won 2 seats in the recent European elections. This party is attempting to develop a respectable image, but their core is out-right fascism. Their founder called Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ his ‘Bible’ and Nick Griffin, the current leader, regularly denied the Holocaust.

Paddy Meehan of Youth Against Racism said:-
‘It is disgraceful that the BBC is offering the racist BNP a platform from which to put forward their lies. This party’s aim is purely and simply to stoke up racial tensions which they seek to exploit, by scapegoating immigrants and ethnic minorities for the lack of jobs and social housing

‘Where they are given a platform, it gives confidence to racists and fascists to carry out attacks. We must fight to stop them being allowed to speak on Question Time. That is why Youth Against Racism has organised this protest, in solidarity with those campaigning on the same issue in England’.

‘We call on all young people, trade unionists and community activists to mobilise for this demonstration, and send the message loud and clear that we don’t want the BNP on our airwaves.’

The protest is to take place outside BBC Broadcasting House on Ormeau Avenue, Belfast, at 5.30pm on Thursday 15th October, a week before the BNP are due to appear.

University of Ulster
Coleraine – 4pm Wed 23rd September
SU Bar

Jordanstown – 4pm Thurs 24th September
Site Executive Office 

Queen’s University
1pm Thursday 1st October
Room 203 PFC