IT WAS IRONIC indeed that Polly have asked, gone?'. For Wednesday 28 largest student demonstration for ten years or more.
took part in a demonstration that was illegal and militant. Over 40 students were arrested and charged with public order offences, had been leading chants of 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out!' Many newspapers have tried to explain this sudden re-emergence ot students taking to the streets. Most Diane Thatcher Jospeh for provoking of students whose parental income is in the £20,000 a year bracket prime Tory supporters by and large!
proposals to abolish the minimum award of £205 troduce £530 tuition fees, have led the biggest nack-benca ICVUELI yet seen against Thatcher.
the reality is However. that firstly, this is an attack on the principle of the grant support system, not just a 'privileged' layer of the student movement.
For a variety of reasons, many students whose pass of e20,000, already do parental income is in cannot pay their contribulous to the pre sent system of grant supFees students in this bracket have to pay f520 fees before they Coll stall their courses, thousands, women in parwill be denied access to further and higher education.
Secondly, hundreds of thousands suffered from students the have decline in the value of the grant. For SLUUCHIL students in the further education colleges it has disappeared entirely, for hundreds of thousands ol orners it has been rcauc ed by as much as 30 per Toynbee, all the Student Revolt November saw the All estimates agree that over 15,000 students including. Tories who past five cent over ycals.
CFE ing amongst very the This 1981, national students the leaderswallp ing all process.
Cy flas leadership whatsoever the cuts DI ULCOl through met with response.
persuasion will this the NUS. une ballot for movement has been mobilised and regrouped around the issues raised by Having seen the Labour Student's leadership NUS dash the hopes of the lett through carrying out theil 'middle-of-the-road' politics, ine lent broadest sense — is once again pushing forward within the students' movement.
the left remats unorganised the tional level, it is likely that the 'Kinnockites' leading the NUS will repeat their performances over Harrington at the Polytechnic North London (PNL), and the students that were arrested on Wednesday. The NUS leadership is so obsessed with 'abhorrence violence desire to stay within that they have been denouncing refusing to support those attacked and arrested by the police last Wednesday.
At the PNL, where two students nave Deci llllprisoned for breaking COLIT injunction picketing, rather than support students in struggle, the leadership of NUS has organised a campaign of lies and slurs, about what is happening.
While the left does not organise nationally LUC NUS leadership get away with such disgusting acts of sabotage against their own members. However, as the ahead with their DI COS cuts, attacks on studen financing autonomy through 'ultravires, will more and more come up against the use of the law.
Students will be forced to look for leadershit tha interests. that end, they will fing themselves standing shoul aer to shoulder with miners, those fighting rate-capping, those in the disarmament - indeed, all those sectors in real struggle against the Tories.
The task for socialists in the student movement is to organise the 'new left emerged around miners which extending its radicalising influence into all other student struggles. To link student struggles to those occuring in socie ty at large, and to raise the question of leadership the task that the socialis students must get down to in a serious way.
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writing in the Guardian last Wednesday, should 'Where has