Youth

Just a few days before the Scottish
Government are to announce  details of a series of major spending cuts
to public services, students from around Scotland have occupied the
George Square at Edinburgh University in protest against rising tuition
fees for English, Welsh and Northern Irish students wanting to attend
Edinburgh University.

After 7 months,
the occupation of the Hetherington Research Club at Glasgow University,
better known as the Free Hetherington, has come to a close. With
universities across Britain on the verge of a new term, two student
activists from Glasgow look at the history of the occupation and the
anti-cuts movement at Glasgow this year, and the lessons that the
student movement can take from it.

"I
must say I was really impressed, first of all with the presence of so
many young people, and the high political level of all those who spoke",
commented Mark from North London. This summed up the general feeling of
all those who participated.The Marxist Summer School, which was the
first of its kind organised by Socialist Appeal, was far more of a
success than the organisers had anticipated with over 100 attending over
the course of the weekend. Those who attended ranged from experienced
trade unionists to young people, including many school students.

The coalition argued that higher tuition fees for university would allow
for less government funding of education without a loss in the quality
of Britain’s ancient institutions. The increased fees were supposed to
end state funding of universities but instead a massive shortfall in
investment has been created due to the levels of unpaid debt that will
be created. From the capitalists’ point of view the only way that this
can be dealt with is through further cuts to higher education.

Announcing… Young artists from the
University of the Arts, Slade School of Art and Edinburgh University
will be holding an exhibition, starting next week in Saint George’s town hall in Shadwell,
East London. The artists in the exhibition at Cable
Street are not only coneying the current political climate but also
connecting it with the long tradition and history of the movement.

2011 will go down in history as the
year of the Arab Spring and could yet go down as the year that also saw
widespread protest and a revolutionary mood develop in Europe, as recent
developments in Spain indicate. For revolutionary socialists this
situation presents an opportunity unlike any seen in decades. Yet such a
situation also poses difficult questions for the activists in the
emerging movements. In particular the seemingly contradictory aims of on
the one hand mobilising as many people as possible and achieving the
clear goals of the movement, and on the other, achieving a revolutionary
change in society

It can only be an accident of history
that last month’s Royal wedding took place on the anniversary of the
marriage of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun. That the Metropolitan police
carried out a number of raids, charging several students with criminal
offences in the same week, is no coincidence. Cover for the police was
provided by the media circus surrounding the wedding. On the other hand
it is clear that the state had been biding its time, waiting for the
distraction of the exam period. The most prominent and outrageous act on
the part of the police was the charging of Alfie Meadows with violent
disorder.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT),
the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the National
Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) are balloting their members for
strike action. It is likely that as a result of this we will see
sometime in June or July strikes of teachers up and down the country.
For school students this raises the question of what the response should
be.

As Socialist Appeal reported in its last issue, since the call for a
National School Student Union (NSSU) was launched earlier this year we
have had quite a response and on the basis of this we helped to organise
a meeting on Friday 15th April, which was an enormous success.

Come
to the Marxist Summer School June 17-19 for a packed weekend of
discussion and debate on what relevance the theory and programme of the
Marxists has in this epoch of world revolution.

Two weeks ago Adam Booth, Militant
Student supporter and Chair of the Cambridge Marxist Discussion Group,
launched a campaign for the Presidency of Cambridge University Students
Union, on the slogan of a fighting student union committed to opposing
all cuts and fees and broadening the struggle into the wider labour
movement. After three days of polling, Adam came a close second out of
three, polling 1,300 votes to the winner’s 1,600. This was the most
votes of any militant left candidate at Cambridge University in living
memory.