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The Red Mole 11 December 1972 Page 2 There can be no doubt that the NUS conference at Margate was a set-back for the struggle in the colleges. The disarray of the revolutionary forces allowed real anticapitalist policies to be marginalised and, by consequence, the reformist and integrationist perspectives to be reaffirmed. No clear strategy therefore was provided for struggle against the rationalisations taking place within higher CaucaTOR. Rather than refusing to accept responsibility for the problems of the capitalist state, and struggling to veto any attempts to solve the problems of the state at the expense of students or the working class, the NUS has decisively reinforced a policy which will misdirect student struggles - that of representation.
REPRESENTATION For the NUS leadership and more particularly the CP which is its dominant trend, representation is one half of a strategy for curing all ills in capitalist education. Fighting alongside what they are pleased to call the labour movement", representation is meant to be a process whereby gradually more and more "say" is gained by students in each institution so that the influence of "Big Business' is gradually neutralised.
Unfortunately the two sides of this strategy are in contradiction with each other. Inside the colleges we are expected to accept national education policy as given, whilst outside the colleges struggling to change it. The fight against capitalist education policy is therefore weakened in two vital respects. First of all we would have legislated away any 'undemocratic attempts to change educational policy in the colleges which the committee on which students had representation had agreed on. Second, and perhaps more importantly, students would have compromised themselves in relation to that force with which it is necessary to ally. It is absurd to expect the working class to fight against a policy when students have taken on the responsibility of implementing it.
In other words, at no point does this strategy come to grips with the relation of higher education to the capitalist state. The NUS will be leading students into a struggle which cannot solve their problems, and which leads students to accept responsibility for implementing policies determined by the priorities of, capitalism. It is little wonder that many college authorities actually support this policy. AUTONOMY But more yet is involved, as is revealed by the whole executive approach to autonomy. In previous conferences they had struggled to win a line which accepted that students unions should be accountable to theS tate. This was again re-attirmed. But clearly this appraoch is quite sufficient for their purposes if viewed within the strategy of representation. Students unions are never going to be called on to take up the struggle against the State, so what need for unions to be independent from the State? Such complacency on this most vital of issues was revealed in the executive opposition to and the consequent defeat of an amendment calling for unconditional support to any union fighting as autonomy struggle. This was completely in line with the previous executive policy towards the struggle in North London Poly, and contrasts sharply with the fuss that has been made around Nonnington College where the aim here is to get..... a government enquiry (it's all a matter of backward college authorities" ).
Within this context, therefore, the seeming victory of the "left" at conference in committing NUS to "hold an immediate national campaign for full autonomy" amounts to no more than a publicity stunt. For any campaign which would be capable of informing a movement for autonomy could only be built through solidarity around those "local" struggles. A campaign which doesn't recognise this can only be a smoke-screen for the very real defeats on autonomy which have been suffered in the recent past and will continue to be suffered. The best that revolutionaries can make of this is to use any heightened interest created to intervene to explain what a real, claus line is on autonomy.
ACCOMMODATION AND GRANTS All these confusions and idiocies suffuse the proposed campaigns which the NUS is committed to wage over the next period. Fortunately. the methods of struggle were not made explicit and the NUS does not totally determine the policies adopted by individual unions. Revolutionaries can, in the colleges, have a real determining influence despite the leadership" from the NUS executive.
The present situation concerning grants and accommodation are examples, par excellence, of the rationalisation to which we have so often referred. Because higher education is now becoming part of the costs of reproducing labour power it is more and more subject to financial cutbacks in the same way as all other elements of this reproduction. This process happens, that is to say, because of the normal workings of capitalism and not by design of some evil government or state against this has therefore to take account of this, A method of struggle has to be adopted which brings the real weight of students to bear Nationally coordinated rent-strikes are already one element of a fight. The adoption of this tactic at NUS conference clearly offers an opening for the struggle to be taken up. But the experience gained in the rent strikes which have happened this term should be taken into account. Unless the mass of students are actively involved in the struggle only defeat and demoralisation can be expected.
As against the representation, negotiation and pressure politics of the present NUS executive, therefore, revolutionaries can begin to promote the mass struggles of students which in turn can begin effectively to arrest the deteriorating conditions which students are having to face. Fought on the basis of opposition to capitalism a real student-worker alliance can be forged.
The unity of the forces of the revolutionary left during the course of the last session had allowed the growth of a sizeable current within the colleges which was organised on a clear revolutionary basis. It is the dissolution of this unity that has seen the strengthening of the reformists in the colleges. The action of the International Socialism group both in walking out of the ongoing united front with the IMG and in refusing any future unity has been the cause of the big defeat for the revolutionaries at this NUS conference. The frivolous attitude to this question of unity was revealed in the walk-out of the I.S. contingent to the "unity" conference held just before the NUS conference. To base such a walk-out on the "apolitical" proposals of the IMG without even attempting to offer any constructive criticism or alternative, is the height of irresponsibility. What the I.S. comrades must grasp is that a revol. utionary current amongst the mass of students will not grow spontaneously but has to be forged through an intervention in the actual struggles of students. The activity of the I.S. leadership at North London Poly should serve as a dire warning to those who link up with the reformists against the revolutionaries. The big struggles around grants and accommodation which will emerge next term need a revolutionary perspective: such a perspective can gain mass backing - but only if the revolutionaries bring their weight to the struggle. Unity around a clear anti-capitalist perspective could transform the situation in the colleges and nullify the effects of this NUS conference
Pete Cresswell and Brian Slocock report on The occupation of the CAV-Lucas factory in Liverpool is now entering its tenth week and there is no sign as yet that the management of this multi-national giant is being forced to alter its determination to shut the plant down. Nor have talks with "developWE DEMAND meeting of Merseyside shop stewards for the 13th to discuss building support for CAV. This meeting could be a real opportunity to open up the kind of campaign throughout the British labour movement that would force the Lucas combine to
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