Students are to get an extra E40 on their grant instead of the £20 originally offered, it was announced on Tuesday. This is in reply to the claim for E105 from the National Union of Students, Six days before the NUSdesignated 'Deadline Day', therefore, the government has attempted to set its scal on a dying campaign.
The NUS campaign is on its last legs, with the Executive unable to mount any reply to the sow generalised offensive of the college authorities — our erstwhile "friends' - against militants active in the campaign. Kent strikes have collapsed at Keele and Surrey as a result of legal threats, and demoralisation is growing as nothing but a farcical "picket' outside the Department of Education and Science has come from the Executive, In this respect, the Executive's immediate response to the government's offer that the campaign will continue is no more than a sick joke. It was timely, therefore, that delegates from over 50 colleges came together last weekend at the LSE as a result of an initiative by the IMG and militants in several colleges to plan how to reverse this state of affairs, The retreat by the NUS before the college authori lies was catalogued and their lack of support to the rent strikers condemned.
For its part the conference voted overwhelmingly to defend those under attack by setling up a sleering committee to centralise and co-ordinate activities in the colleges. It 4. of force on 21 May, the day when the NUS ultimatum to the DES runs out. The absence of any clear way forward, plus the government's offer, means that there is a danger that a whole section of students might see this as the end of the campaign. It is therefore vital to transform the nature of the picker called by the NUS outade the DES on that day, to show Thatcher exactly what is thought of the offer and to revitalise the struggle. To this end the Grants Conterence wist De organcing = the last, year been diverging strangely. In fact between the second ball of 1971 and the second hall of 1972 the economy grew 41 per cent according to the output estimate and 1.1 per cent according to the expenditure estimate The government, without much justification, has simply been taking the highest of the available estimates. The CBI's survey adds no hard information to this since it is an entirely subjective happiness poll of businessmen; its results have never borne much relation to