 Welcome to the fifth episode of International Marxist Television, brought to you by Socialist Appeal and Socialist.net. My name is Joe Assard. I'm a Socialist Appeal activist and I'm also a member of the University and Colleges Union, UCU at King's College London. And we come to you at the end of a very exciting and interesting academic year, which has seen the biggest and most militant strike action by university workers and particularly lecturers in living memory. It involved thousands of university workers, both academic and support staff, and it also saw a huge wave of grassroots solidarity action by students and a number of occupations up and down the country in solidarity with the striking lecturers. And here to discuss these events, we have Ben Gadeski, who's the National Organiser of the Marxist Student Federation, and Fiona Lally, who is the president of the Soas-Marxist Society and had a very good fortune to be a delegate to the National Union of Students Conference. So Fiona, how did the strikes affect students and how did the issue of the pension cuts and marketisation, casualisation and so on more generally affect students? Well, the marketisation of education is what has directly caused the enormous tuition fees that students have today, and on top of that increasing very much kind of scandalous rent prices, particularly in London but also across the country, and grants have been cut and linked with a wider austerity that we're living under. The government has constantly attacked workers and students and the youth, and that's particularly in universities and higher education. We've moved towards a much more business-like model in which students are consumers and universities are kind of competing for those consumers. And this model, this business-like model, means that universities are conscious of money and what they need to do in order to make savings and they think about their budget more than they think about what's necessary for students and what's necessary to create a nurturing learning environment for those students. And so in order to make savings, universities have to exploit their workers and they have to attack their workers, which like you're just talking about resulted in the pension scheme that just happened. And students can recognise and they could feel immediately I think during that strike that it was you know not just about the lecturers but it's about the students as well and it's about the whole university and who makes it up. It's not just the lecturers but it's also the students as well as that and that's why we did see students coming out on on the picket lines with the lecturers during that strike. And that was very much a message conveyed from the grassroots at the UCU at the very least. This isn't just about our pensions, this is about your education about the sector more generally as well. Ben, the Marxist Student Federation was of course involved in solidarity efforts around the UCU strike. In your opinion how well did students support the lecturers in their industrial action? Oh yeah well I mean there was massive support. You gov did a poll just before the strike started which said that in the institutions where staff were going on strikes students supported the strike with about two out of three students supported the strike. It was about 66% of those institutions and only the same poll found that only 2% of students blamed the staff for the disruption being caused to the teaching. So it gives you an idea of which side the students were on and you saw it as well. You saw it on the picket lines that's the point. In Glasgow, in Liverpool I've never seen such big picket lines on any strike to be honest, let alone a strike at university and it's because the students were there filling it out and in the student unions as well you saw that kind of support. In Queen Mary about 180 people turned up to the open meeting of the student union to pass a resolution in support of the strike action. In Canterbury there were loads of students on the picket line. It took the student union about two weeks before they came out to say anything at all about the strike. Eventually they did come out in support of it but so lukewarm was their support that when they were addressing a rally of students the student union president got heckled and booed for not being more supportive of the strike. And bear in mind as well all of this was taking place in that snowy patch that we had around that time of year. There was a demonstration in London while the snow was falling thick and fast. There were hundreds of students on the picket line up and down the country in subzero temperatures. It gives you an idea of how much support there actually was and actually I think the support it took everyone by surprise especially the the UCU leaders. I don't think they were expecting that level of student support. It was really impressive. No absolutely and it's interesting that you mentioned the UCU leaders and the relative topidity of the leaders of the student movements because I felt like in the strike there was a real split in terms of energy and radicalism between the leadership and the membership between the leaders and the grassroots. In fact from perspective of the UCU our leaders were a break on our action from the beginning and they remain a dead weight around our necks for the entire duration of the strike and in fact there was a point about three weeks into the strike where it was going from strength to strength and it was at its most radical where they almost stitched us up. Sally Hunt who is the general secretary of the UCU went behind the back of the membership behind the back of delegates and attempted to stitch up an absolutely rotten deal with the bosses that probably most gallingly of all aside from the fact that the terms were terrible would have required us to cover any hours lost to the strike for free in turn three in order to make up for the inconvenience of our strike action and I've got to say I've been in academia for not as long as a sum but I think you'd be hard pressed to think of a time in the history of the higher education sector in Britain where lecturers got together on a grassroots basis overnight organising on social media there was a hashtag going around on Twitter no capitulation in response to this attempted stitch up and organised a spontaneous grassroots protest at the UCU head office in London and at one point nearly stormed the building. So Fiona we talked about the limitations of the UCU's leadership what did the official leadership of the student movement do or as the case may be not do with regards to supporting the UCU strike? Yeah so this year I was a delegate to the NUS conference and I was quite excited because the conference was taking place during the the UCU strike and like you said earlier this UCU strike is the most militant strike that we've seen in the education field for a very long time and so I was excited to go to NUS because the NUS as an institution has seven million students behind it and therefore I would say has the infrastructure and the capacity to mobilise those students and make a real difference and be a real force a real energy in the UCU strike but unfortunately the leadership was incredibly weak the leadership of the NUS is incredibly weak and not only did they take a very long time when the strike first happened to even come out in support of the strike and give out information but the NUS conference which could have been almost a war cry could have been a really energetic start to you know mobilising all students out on the picket lines and supporting their lecturers it was very weak and it was you know over the course of the conference it was very rarely mentioned and that's because the the leadership of the NUS have no real desire to be that force they have no real desire to link up students with the working class and with their lecturers and with workers in wider society and if they had done that then we would have been in an incredible position not just in you know defending education and stopping these attacks in the education sector but also the attacks that austerity is causing throughout the whole of society you know if the NUS leadership had mobilised the students in the way it could have done we could have seen a huge change in society in terms of linking up students and education lecturers and workers with other workers other trade unions throughout society that are all being attacked and we could have potentially brought down this government but the NUS leadership was incredibly weak and didn't really do anything I would say and over the course of the conference it wasn't really discussed it was there were a couple of motions I think put forward in order to get the strike discussed in order to really build genuine solidarity with the strike but they weren't they weren't discussed over the course of the conference due to a combination of things but in particular an occupation that took place that resulted in countless motions being pushed off the agenda and I think that's a real shame because there was a real gent there was a real opportunity there for the NUS you know with its role in the student movement with its authority in the student movement to really made a big difference but it didn't do that and I think we missed a massive opportunity I remember at the time it was said online oh the NUS has reached peak NUS they've occupied their own conference do you think that has an effect in terms of putting off the wider layers of students who might otherwise be involved definitely I think so I think in general a lot of students don't know the NUS exists because I think if you go on the official NUS website they even say that their role is to help students with campaigning and get cheap student deals and this kind of stuff you know it's very apolitical it's very neutral which ignores one what a union is and two what it could be and who it's representing and it should be leading the fight against the fight for free education sorry but it's not and I think that what happened at that conference and with the occupation and just you know meant there are probably countless other examples of things that happen at NUS is it was a very inward looking event and I think a lot of students in wider society will feel alienated from the NUS as a result of that and you know won't feel like it's a body that is actually fighting in their interests for free education for example yeah okay well it sounds like it was a pretty sorry affair but were there any significant discussions or decisions made at the NUS conference at all I mean as far as the UCU strike is concerned there were no significant decisions made or motions passed and I think that's just a missed opportunity really quite disappointing so Ben we mentioned briefly that the strike also saw a wave of student occupations in solidarity with the lecturers what were those like there were members of the MSF in some of those occupations of course yeah that's right that's right I mean well the occupations and student occupations included in that can be a very powerful tool in the class struggle and certainly the people involved with all these occupations had the best interests of of the movement at heart in general though I'd say these this wave of occupations was a little bit disappointing as a general rule most of them seem to be formed or seem to be initiated by small cliques of activists you know not based on a political program a set of ideas that unites them based instead on effectively people they knew it was a friendship group in some cases and the result was there was no kind of mass participation certainly not a first in any of these occupations and in fact the result of that in for example Southampton and Liverpool was occupations that lasted a couple of hours before they were chucked out by security because when you've got a small number of people it's very easy for security to isolate that kind of occupation and shut it down so the way these occupations were initiated were were not the best in my opinion and then I mean the other problem they had where they did manage to last more than a couple of hours they didn't really make a very good job of turning outwards and involving as many students as possible in the occupations because that's really how occupations can be effective it's when they turn outwards and get and loads of people get stuck into them it's not what happened in these cases for example in in in Liverpool in Reading a number of other places the occupiers aimed for small administrative buildings corridors in some cases basically spaces that were not open to loads of students getting involved what you need in occupation is as many people involved as possible if you have it in a tiny little administrative room at the top of a tower that no students even know where it is or a corridor where you can fit about 20 students you're not going to have a good occupation because you can't get people involved and likewise once you're in the occupation you've got to have good interesting discussions that link the occupation to the broader question in this case the ucu strikes link it to that industrial struggle but what happened in in Reading in Edinburgh in Cambridge you had discussions that instead were on topics like drag culture or or lesbianism in 20th century Britain or divestment from fossil fuels things that whilst maybe interesting perhaps for some people they're not what is going to engage the mass of students with the strike at hand basically which is what those occupations should have been used for they should have been used to get people involved discussing the strike how to build solidarity and everything else and so whilst there was loads of student support for the strike as as I've already mentioned as those opinion polls indicate and as the presence on the picket lines indicated the occupations remained very small in number they didn't manage to turn outwards and to be honest in a lot of cases felt a bit like activism for its own sake and that was a wasted opportunity also just as Fiona was talking about with the NUS well well these occupations were also a wasted opportunity unfortunately so yeah I think that statement a missed opportunity really summarizes the outcome of what was really a very impressive action at its height and that was epitomized at our recent UCU Congress which if anything was even more absurd than the NUS conference that Fiona endured prior to that a deal had been accepted which effectively ended the strike the bosses the union tops rather used scare mongering to push that deal through despite the fact that it has no real assurances as far as resolving the issue with the pension scheme goes it just kicked the can down the road for a year and as congress there were two motions to be discussed a motion of no confidence in Sally Hunt's general secretary and a motion of censure for her and her clique's behavior during the strike and this actually culminated in Sally Hunt's and some of the paid representatives of the UCU who are represented in that capacity by another union unite calling industrial action against their own members and I must say this is the first instance I have ever seen or heard of of unionists relying on representation from another union to call an industrial action against their own members and the reason they did that was to avoid having to be held accountable democratically by delegates at one point they walked out repeatedly um when these motions came up no fewer than four times delegates tried to discuss these motions and in the end when they had nowhere left to run and they were going to have to face the music they switched all the microphones off and walked out and turned off all the PA system turned off the cameras so that congress couldn't continue and it was curtailed it was absolutely absurd and it really demonstrates the incredible limitations of the leadership of the union movements and indeed as you both described the leadership of the student movement as well so I think it's fair to say that there were mistakes made but also there were lessons to be learned from the UCU strike so this is a question to both of you what should student activists in particular on campuses be doing in order to support workers strikes and struggles and fight against broader issues of marketization casualization to fight for free education and that sort of thing what kinds of actions should students be taking well I mean the the crucial point it comes back to actually one of the first questions you asked that that Fiona gave the answer to is despite about linking all the struggles together right like the problems that we face as students and as workers all come from the same sort of source this problem of marketization of privatization is on you can link these things together and so it's really important as Marxist students did for example in the UCU dispute to interview the workers and get their opinion and their struggle and their thoughts their their experience of everyday life into the minds of the students so we interviewed people for example on the picket line and we wrote them up we videoed people all over the plane warwick in in in kings for example that we put loads of interviews with the with the striking workers and and then it's also really important to get the workers in person get the striking staff in person to come and talk to the students about what's going on so Marxist societies all over the country put on meetings invited representatives of the UCU to discuss the strike and why students should be out on strike as well and and as much of that sort of thing as possible is really important on the picket lines themselves and at the rallies Marxist students were standing up and giving speeches explaining why the struggle of the workers and the struggle of the students is the same thing it's that kind of argument that is that is required that students need to be making about linking the struggles of students and workers and I mean there's there's practical things that need to be done as well right you need to you need to involve as many people as possible and broaden out the struggle as what involves as many people as possible in things like the UCU dispute so in Cambridge for example the Marxist society put a motion to the student union saying that the student union should be the ones coordinating an occupation and involving as many students in it as possible turning it outwards and using it to bolster the struggle of the of the staff unfortunately the the actual the occupation that did take place by a relatively small group of people cut across that so the the student union didn't manage to get a chance to discuss that particular motion but that kind of idea is what's required the a motion came from King's College from the Marxist society to the to the NUS conference saying that the NUS needs to take a similar approach linking up the struggles that sort of thing Marxist students were arguing for example for unison members and for the unison leadership to call its members out on strike in solidarity with the UCU struggle we were making the argument that the Labour leaders the Corbyn and McDonnell need to be linking this struggle up with other struggles in the public sector trying to try to move towards for example a public sector general strike to bring down the government that kind of thing broadening the struggle out this is the argument that Marxist students were making throughout the dispute and that in general linking those struggles together is the crucial point and above all it has to have a political foundation right has to be founded on the understanding that all of these struggles come from the same source this isn't happening this isn't this wasn't just a struggle about pensions this isn't happening just because the Tories or the university bosses are particularly nasty people there's a fundamental problem in society that means this kind of stuff is inevitable as long as we have a system based on profit as long as we have a capitalist system we are going to come up against these problems that's what unites all the struggles together having that political foundation understanding that is probably the most crucial thing that students can do at the moment that's the purpose of the Marxist Student Federation that's why we exist to have those kind of discussions to have that understanding and use that understanding to to guide our practice I think ultimately it boils down to a question of leadership as is so often the case when it comes to worker struggle so Fiona do you have any final thoughts yeah I think I would just I would encourage students to link their activism with theory like Ben said so that it has that political foundation because the Marxist Student Federation this year we you know we had a conference celebrating 50 years since 1968 which was an incredibly revolutionary year that saw huge movements across the world in Pakistan in Mexico in Czechoslovakia in the USA and in Paris I think that there's in general a fear I think some people feel like students are limited in their power as we're not exactly workers in a traditional sense but the lessons from 1968 show that students linked with workers can have huge power and can make real difference and in France for example in 1968 you know with that mass movement that started with the students the students very much sparked that and then you know linked up with the workers on the basis of that the French ruling class were terrified and Charles de Gaulle famously said to the US ambassador that in a matter of days the communists will have taken over and that was because of the revolutionary mood or un-movement that you know erupted in France at that time and that is what students should look to for inspiration today so they can recognize the power they do hold in society once they've linked up with the workers and their struggle and that is how as students we can help to change the world and that's why I would encourage students to link up with their Marxist societies on campus so that they're you know trained in theory and they're educated so they know that when these movements start to happen they're ready and we can really make a big difference okay well I think that's a really inspiring note to end on join us next time we'll be talking about women's struggles for abortion rights and against domestic violence and various other issues in the meantime you can follow socialist.net for our 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