We need unity to break the Con-Dems’ attacks
Stand with the protesters against victimisation
Wednesday’s national NUS/UCU 50,000 strong national demonstration was a magnificent show of strength against the Con Dems’ savage attacks on education. The Tories want to make swingeing cuts, introduce £9,000 tuition fees and cut EMA. These attacks will close the doors to higher education and further education for a generation of young people.
During the demonstration over 5,000 students showed their determination to defend the future of education by occupying the Tory party HQ and its courtyards for several hours. The mood was good-spirited, with chants, singing and flares.
Yet at least 32 people have now been arrested, and the police and media appear to be launching a witch-hunt condemning peaceful protesters as “criminals” and violent.
A great deal is being made of a few windows smashed during the protest, but the real vandals are those waging a war on our education system.
We reject any attempt to characterise the Millbank protest as small, “extremist” or unrepresentative of our movement.
We celebrate the fact that thousands of students were willing to send a message to the Tories that we will fight to win. Occupations are a long established tradition in the student movement that should be defended. It is this kind of action in France and Greece that has been an inspiration to many workers and students in Britain faced with such a huge assault on jobs, benefits, housing and the public sector.
We stand with the protesters, and anyone who is victimised as a result of the protest.
Initial signatories include (all in a personal capacity):
Mark Bergfeld, NUS NEC
Ashok Kumar, Vice-President Education LSE
Vicki Baars, NUS LGBT Officer women’s place
Sean Rillo Raczka, Birkbeck SU Chair and NUS NEC (Mature Students’ Rep)
Nathan Bolton, Campaigns Officer Essex SU
James Haywood, Campaigns Officer Goldsmiths College SU
Steve Hedley, London regional organiser RMT
Wanda Canton, Women’s Officer QMUL
Michael Chessum, Education and Campaigns Officer UCL SU
Jade Baker, Education Officer Westminster Uni SU
Dan Swain, Essex Uni SU Postgrad Officer
To add your name or organisation email teneleventen@gmail.com
Join our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/We-need-unity-defend-the-Millbank-protestors/128397300550227
From the site: http://teneleventen.wordpress.com/
The protestors yesterday were left with no other choice, were it not for the actions at the Millbank the protest would have passed without any media coverage.
my daughter has just finished uni at sheffield i watched her graduate yesterday im so proud , these students are the uks future and unless you have money people from working class families like mine are no longer going to be able to better themselves and strive for a better future , what this goverment is trying to do is way out of order and needs us to stand strong and be together and we will win.
You clearly don’t understand how it works.
One won’t need money, it will be a LOAN that is paid back as a % of earnings over 21k.
Who wants to start life with atleast £30000/40000 debt hanging over their head you don’t understand.on is set to destroy nus welfare state u’d measures they are introducing will devastate nus economy and cause extreme deprivation and suffering. This country offer an educated population we are falling far behind other countries. Make the banks and the tax avoiders pay. They are robbing the people of this country! A TAX ON RICH NOT POOR! Anti Tax-avoider day of action Sat 4th December i 2010 anti cuts coalition.
“Who wants to start life with atleast £30000/40000 debt”
People who want to invest in their own future?
I don’t think you understand starting working life with b debt of £30000-40000 around your neck will deter many. This country needs an educated population, we are already falling far behind other countries. Why should the students and ordinary people pay for the arises caused by greedy bankers and tax avoiders? Thex are swindling our country out of billions. TAX THE RICH NOT ATTACKS ON THE POOR AND ORDINARY PERSON.
The coalitions cuts will devastate this country it is a savage attack on ordinary people on nus welfare state that will lead to massive deprivation and suffering of many while the bankers still pay themselves billions in bonuses and the richest live in obscene decadence money made off the backs of the ordinary working man and exploited third world.
So we all have a right to violence if we can’t get the media coverage we are apparently entitled to?
You all have my full support. I went to university in 1996 the last year of the grant. I would never have gone if I was facing £9,000 a year in fees. I defend the rights of others to have the same opportunities I was given.
I’m in – as a scholarship PhD (Economics) student – will try to get appropriate organisations at my uni to sign up.
I think they were VERY brave….it takes guts to be hemmed in in a crod and facing police. I wish peaceful protest worked but history would dictate that sometimes more is needed. I can’t condone the throwing of a fire extinqisher of the roof but otherwise well done!
Whilst disagreeing with violence (on all sides) I support the young men/women who vented their anger/frustration yesterday at Millbank and I support them wholeheartedly. The hypocrisy of Cameron in Korea today, while he is cutting the police budget too, must be seen for what it is. We must protest against this craven capitalist bunch of hijackers who put profits before people and the murder of women/babies in Iraq/Afghanistan before butter.
By any stretch of the imagination smashing windows and lobbing objects from the roof is not a peaceful demonstration. But this is what is needed sometimes to highlight the depth and strength of feeling across the country. However by focussing solely on this incident and ignoring the whole of the demonstration the ‘impartial’ media are doing what they always do and siding with the government and the status quo. These attacks on students are only the beginning. The government are hoping that by announcing the extent of the cuts one by one there will be no collective opposition. We all need to be on the streets together! This is one cause and we should fight the cuts together!
I totally understand the anger of these young people. No one in my family has been to university and the opportunity for a college education was just not considered for the likes of us. I now have children, who are in secondary school and who believe that they couldn’t afford to go to Uni. So believe me I am enraged by this too. This policy will ony further damage Social Mobility and the future of my children. However, smashing windows doesn’t win over the wider public and you need thousands of parents like me around the country to join these marches. The fear of being caught up in a violent scene and getting battered by riot police will scare some away.
Peaceful direct action can get media attention and the UK has a history of it to draw upon. Just be imaginative. It would have grabbed the media attention if thousands of people instead of burning banners and throwing misilles at police, instead conducted a sit in at Millbank. Some protestors could even chained themselves to each other and to fixed objects to make the police having to pick them up one by one and remove them all more difficult. It would have taken them hours to clear that area. Direct action doesn’t have to involve battering the crap out of police, many of them probably have children who will be affected by the policy too and might be faced with redundancy as well. Funny how they wern’t all that quick to start hitting back. Perhaps they had sympathy with the cause !
I’m not a group or organisation, I’m just me. And it’s a long time since I was a student. And since I’m approaching my 70th birthday, and I can’t be out and about too long these days without having to find a toilet, I’m unlikely to play a particularly active role in protest these days. But I support the Millbank protesters and say we should stand by ALL of them and resist any attempts at victimisation.
So a few windows were broken and there was a bit of a fire, possibly about £10k damage ,possibly the cost of 1 students fees.Lets put it in perspective against the millions were stolen by MP’s in the expenses scandal and the broken promises by the lying liberals.They seems happy to spend billions in Afghanistan,build aircraft carriers that we wont use , allow companies like Vodafone to walk away from billions in tax rather than invest in the education of our young people, no wonder there is anger.
Solidarity with all those who stood up against the cuts on the London Demo, those that occupied the Millbank building, as well as those currently in occupation at Manchaster and other universities.
Well done to clare solomon fending off Paxman and defending the students last night.
You really think that by repeating a mantra and failing to address direct questions Solomon fended off Paxo?
I’d say he made her look like a ridiculous sponging monotonous vain hubristic Millie Tant.
Well done to all who participated.
[...] in a “Coalition of the Resistance” letter Mark Bergfeld, (NUS NEC), Vicki Baars (NUS LGBT Officer) and Sean Rillo Raczka (NUS [...]
is this an endorsement by the coalition of resistance?
[...] Defend the Millbank Protestors: Sign the Unity statement … [...]
You’re extremely naive.
The government is up to its neck in debt. It’s spending vast amounts more than it earns. Total liabilities are around the 6.9 trillion mark. (The bank bailout is down 20 billion as a comparison).
So its a choice.
You can take on the cost of your education as an adult yourself, or you can get the government to borrow the money for you. You get to pay it back in both case.
In the first case, you’re responsible.
In the second case, the checkout girl at Tescos will be forced to pay for your education as well.
So if you want to get into debt one way or another, don’t complain when you have to pay it back.
In reality you should be complaining about the level of government debts including all the debts that are hidden off the books. That’s your real problem as students.
You will have around 300,000 pounds plus interest to pay off. Since you will be better off, that figure goes up.
30K? More like 330K
It was an appalling demonstration on behalf of the organisers and NUS. Anyone will have seen that there was a great bunch of people egging on minor violence.
Higher education has never been a “right” of the people. It’s for those who are intellectually privileged to attend HE establishments. Unfortunately a lot of those who turned up to this demonstration proved that they do not belong in such establishments.
Personally I believe that the government already contributes to HE funding a great deal and that asking students to fund their education out of their FUTURE income is morally correct, in comparison to those who enter the workforce straight away. It’s only in Britain where people would demand such privileges for free.
Education is for the “intellectually privileged”? You mean, like Nick Clegg, who claimed this governments “reforms” were the biggest thing since the Great Reform Act of 1832 ? Bigger than giving all working class men the vote, which happened in 1918, 86 years AFTER the so=called “Great” Reform Act? Bigger than giving all women the vote, which happened in 1928, 96 years AFTER that so-called “Great” Act? The man is clearly ignorant of 19th and 20th Century history, despite his posh Westminster School “education”. What he benefits from is not “intellectual privilege” but just plain old fashioned “privilege”. And this privileged ignoramus has broken the explicit, written, signed promises he made to students BEFORE the election. As an old-age pensioner, I say well done to the Millbank protesters.
I was there marching proudly along side our children, our future; it was MAGNIFICENT! We are proud of all of them; and will be behind them every step of their fight!
This is what it has come to – it’s not pretty, but it is absolutely necessary. Everybody knows that peaceful protest doesn’t change anything. The politicians routinely ignore it. The only way we can make them take notice is through direct action.
The ConDem plans for university fees will destroy the prospects of all working class people, by making it impossible for us to get professional or academic careers. They are also going to destroy the quality of life for everybody with cuts to NHS and law enforcement. The police should have been fighting WITH the protestors, not against them, and i hope they will one day soon decide to go on strike when there’s a protest. Furthermore, the rest of the cuts are going to make millions of people, jobless and homeless or forced into slave labour. The politicians have backed us all into a corner, and are planning to destroy the lives of millions of people, and we have no choice but to fight back.
The Millbank rebels were fighting for ALL of us, they made that clear, and I am grateful to them, and give them my full support.
hear hear well said i don’t condone throwing the fire extinguisher but people are angry and rightly so. We have to have our voices heard and if a few windows get smashed along the way so be it. We must be heard, we must build the resistance and spread the word.
If they have acted criminally, they should face the appropriate charges.
What else is there to say?
Bring it on. The rest of the nation should take note and get active. These idiots need to be ousted
As an OAP I am proud to support all of those students who demonstrated peacefully for their right to an education that they will NOT be paying for for life. I take even more pride that you let this government know in no uncertain terms that those MPs who campaigned on false promises to get your votes SHOULD and
WILL be held accountable for their downright lies. NO MP should be allowed to get away with signing a contract of
promises which is binned for a bum on a seat. Good Luck to you all… keep on demonstrating, (perhaps without the damage)……
Can’t wait to see even more of those of you stupid enough to show your faces as you destroyed property and threatened police and the public get arrested.
I hope that soon I won’t have to pay a penny of my taxes for the tuition fees of the criminal rabble involved in the protest, including the NUS ring-leaders who planned this violence for their ‘DEMO-LITION’
i was there and im appalled. All the direct action did was make all us peaceful people look bad and it put of millions of people who may have sympathised with our cause. IT PUT US BACK YEARS – THE SAME THING DESTROYED THE RESPECT PARTY – STUPID, VIOLENT THUGS, GO JOIN THE NATIONAL FRONT WHERE YOU BELONG AND LEAVE HONEST DEMONSTRATIONS ALONE.
There was enormous sympathy here locally (a small rural community) for the students – until the mindless vandalism started and whoever hurled the fire extinguisher totally discredited the protest. I hope the next protest due in 2 weeks time will be policed by the NUS to avoid any repetition.
there is still massive support and sympathy for the cause. This government is smashing this country to pieces destroying the welfare state and our future. We have to make a stand I don’t condone violence but a few broken windows in comparison to the devastation this coalition is thrusting upon us is far far worse. A TAX ON THE RICH NOT ATTACKS ON THE ORDINARY AND THE POOR Make the bankers and the tax dodging theives pay
Newsflash – the rich are already taxed. The top 10% are paying 54% of all income tax in this country, the bottom 10% are paying 0.6%.
And when you say “a few broken windows” well I’m sure the BNP would like your logic. They completely undertand the appeal of political violence.
Or perhaps the Bullingdon Club. Newsflash 54% of X millions is still stinking rich. Poorest still poor. Where do you think they gat there money, mostly frm slave labour in the third world and those working for them aat the bottom. Who can honestly justify anyone earning 10, 20, 30, 100, 1000 a 1000000x what the person on the shop floor earns nobody works that hard. It is disgusting and immoral that people live in such obscene decadence while others starve. Shame on them and you if you can’t see that.
How much is enough the greed of these people is sickening.
I was amazed and heartened over the universal support here, in the face of the usual right wing press barage. Then I reached a few ‘naive’ posts. Sadly representative of so many who still swallow ‘without water’ the Con Dem deficit lies. There are many other ways to tackle the deficit. Most censored by the media because they would hurt the buggers who caused it.
I hope the naive never have to solve a Poirot Mystery. There are some out there who would still find Cameron and Clegg innocent if they were standing over the body with a bloody dagger.
It only takes a cursory glance, and indeed to actually listen to Cameron himself, to see through them. He himself admits ‘when’ (fat chance – not even an if in my book) recovers he has no intention whatsoever of reversing any single cut. Just how plain do you want it? I could go on piling up the evidence, but there are none so blind as those who only see what they want to. Who maybe agree with the idealogy behind this. ‘A semi-victorian state’, greed driven bankers, bosses and landlords, the actual criminals who caused this, laughing all the more on their way to the Caymen Islands Tax Haven. Know your recent history waverers. The Tories have been waiting to do this since Thatcher. After she became an embarrassment to them and Britain.
This is absolutely not about saving money. It is about ideology and privatisation. I have personal experiece in the public sector to prove that. Every privatisation, some I know personally from the inside, have cost the taxpayer more and delivered in so many instances a crass, inneficient and inhuman service to it’s customers. Even worse conditions for the people who work for it.
Usually if reform does not work, it is rolled back. Funny how these crass naked capitalist crimes are not. Please and respectfully open your eyes.
As for the girl on the Tesco checkout. I imagine, like me, if she is seriously ill sometime, she will be so grateful for the college/Uni Education the Surgeon opening maybe her heart has had. Or is she suddenly supposed to drum up the thousands of pounds that week it would take to go private. Maybe some still believe in Witchcraft?
The ‘Big Society’ is no society and you are in the jungle by yourself.
The brave students caused no part of this. They are the beginning of a solution.
Brilliantly put, don’t stop putting your point across we must build the resistance and challenge the lies.
Solidarity with the Millibank occupiers.Direct action is a democratic correction to elective dictatorship.
Well done to all involved… well, apart maybe from the extinguisher guy, but do’s and don’ts sometimes take a bit of time to filter through. It’s a great start to stopping this rotten government in its tracks: let’s hope the resistance keeps growing and stays united. We’re all in this together: the Tories and their tax-dodging pals aren’t.
Typical Socialist wankers – stand at the back, egg on a few idiots, then try to take the credit for insurrection!
Either the workers pay for your education (through their taxes), or you do – nothing in this life is free!
Esher College student suspended by Head, for taking the day off to protest against the Education Cuts. Now this clearly is victimisation.
Esher college Student Suspended for taking day off to attend protest against the education cuts. Shocking. http://bit.ly/bR23Rr
I totally support the cause and the peaceful demonstrators 100%
I deplore the mindless few that ruined it. The protest will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
My son is a Met Police Officer now at home injured by mindless thugs hell bent on creating damage and injury
As I said elsewhere, I abhor all violence. But if the ‘murdering thug’(!) who threw the Fire extinguisher is to be prosecuted, I look forward to seeing alongside him in the dock the other uniformed thugs who killed Ian Tomlinson and Blair Peach. Plus no doubt some who did not hit the headlines.
I have a feeling though I will have a long wait for that.
If we condemn violence. There is no half measure. We condemn all of it.
As in a 7% rise in retail Gas at the start of the winter. Hitting the most vulnerable. By a company with record profits this year. Just do not get me started on the bloody ‘Titfield Thunderbolt’ British train services I endured today.
Privatisation absolutely does not work for the consumer, dare I say passenger, most times.
So all politicians are just about to give us more of it!
Hedge Fund anyone?
Meant to add to the anon poster before me. I feel for you and your son. The tragedy is this is what happens when they constantly pit worker against worker, Student against police, divide and rule, the list is endless. It has worked for decades. No consolation I know but my father was hospitalised by a police truncheon in the miners 84 strike.
This time I am fast coming to the conclusion though that the lack of police around Tory HQ was no accident or a botched job. The police are under attack by the Condems as well. Maybe this time they are thinking twice about being the ‘Tory Boot Boys’.
At least ‘Maggie’ could, in her terms, legitimately claim an electoral mandate. 3 times, much to Britains shame.
This lot have no mandate whatsoever. Quite the opposite. Nobody voted for any of this.
Except I assume Cameron and Osborne’s chums in the city, and maybe the Bullingdon club.
[...] Officer) and Sean Rillo Rascza (NUS NEC Mature Students’ Representative) signed a letter for the ‘Coalition of Resistance’ stating: “During the demonstration over 5,000 students showed their determination to defend the [...]
[...] Vicki Baars is currently the NUS Vice President for Union Development, and chairs the NUS Charitable Services. Ms Baars was brought to national media attention by encouraging students at a protest to chant “Build a bonfire, build a bonfire, put the Tories on the top, put the Lib Dems in the middle and burn the f***ing lot!” contrary to calls for a peaceful march from the NUS President Liam Burns. Later, an apology was issued. Ms Baars was also a major signatory also a ‘unity statement’ to “defend” the Millbank protesters in 2010, reading: [...]