Personal Capacity)
IT'S THE start of the year now for most students who, if they're lucky, will have got a schemes' with no hope of real jobs — an ex- the thousands on ercise which typical year for the education system under Thatcher.
struggles class and labour movement at the moment purposes such unions that clearly ed on Thatcher's logic.
pithead Plenty resource for their communities, with closure Lave 'uneconomic' activity in the community don Poly.
unity between all power.
paign parliament and letter writing support for workers' disputes as we mean to go on.
ing force in the government.
slave labour 'training conveniently hides the unemployment figures. All in all it's another These facts on their own should be enough to make socialist students realise the importance of building fighting and campaigning student unions • and that's without even considering the major going on in the whole of the working There are many parallels between the student world and wider struggles. Student unions are having battles over ultra vires (illegal payments) for as transport to demos.
Trade unions come up against Tory attacks on the have the same philosophy behind them. Unions must be powerless or smashArguments about economics don't stop at the small colleges, are threatened • a valuabl been shut for being At another level the growth of racist and fascist mirrored by the frightening emergency of the National Front and other fascists at many places as well as North LonWhat is clear is that students can't see their situation and problems in isolation. The need for groups under attack from this government, and the sort of society it breeds, greater than ever. At the moment students have an urgent need to support the miners. Whether this means breaking the ultra vires laws or not, we must get involved in all struggles going on around us.
As part of a fighting movement we have some We must use it, turn outwards and cam — and campaigning doesn't mean lobbyin It means direct and concrete action, mobilising financial and physica We mustn't be afraid of confrontation, even i leaders may sometimes say otherwise. As socialists we have an active role to play in all the struggles against this government. We should start the year - building a mass, campaign• student movement working with the miners and the labour movement to defeat this
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grant, somewhere to live, and will be wonder- ing how to survive until Christmas on next to nothing. That's the students. Then there are