Youth

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.

On Wednesday March 2nd students from different schools in Glasgow met
at the Centre of Contemporary Arts to officially launch the Glasgow
School Student Union (GSSU).

Recent developments at the University
of Glasgow have cut across the relative lull that set upon the student
movement following the mass demonstrations of late 2010. Student
activists occupying an old post-graduate and mature student social club
on the one hand, and the announcement of a raft of cuts on the other,
have provided combustible material that has seen the movement reach a
new plain and wider layers than it previously had.

Following the revolutionary upheavals
that have spread from Tunisia to Egypt, and which are inspiring
solidarity protests throughout the Middle East and the world as a whole,
the University of London Union Marxists decided to postpone their
discussion on Marxism and the State to discuss the revolution in the
Arab world. Egyptian socialist and SOAS student, Walaa Quisay, was
invited to introduce the discussion on a movement that the whole world
is watching.

In light of the recent student
demonstrations, particularly the events at Milbank tower during the
first protest, the question of "direct action” tactics has once again
been raised.

This leaflet is available for download for comrades intervening in the
student movement against the cuts, in particular the demo against the
abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) this Wednesday. Click here to download.

Joby
Hart, who attends Abbey Grange high school, has been involved with the
recent wave of political activity by school students in Leeds and the
surrounding area. Joby is part of a layer of young people radicalised by
the attacks of the Tory government and its Lib Dem stooges, and brought
into activity by the occupation at Leeds University last year. While
Militant Student is not in full agreement with everything that is said,
Joby is all too aware of the wider implications of the struggle, and the
need for the working class as a whole to come together and defeat this
government. Luke Wilson from the Leeds Trades Council spoke to him.