THE THOUSAND or more students meeting at the Margate NUS Conference this weekend will never before have attended such an important gathering. The fate of the grants campaign and the living standards of students rest in their hands.
The Labour Government, trapped in a reformist rut, has continued to chop the social services, especially education. A few days before the Budget, Edward Short put it bluntly: 1 cannot see where the Treasury is going to lind the money to increase public expenditure, in real terms."
Hot favourites to be cut are higher education and the discretionary awards given by local education authorities. Rampant inflation has meant that the education budgets of the college authorities have shrunk still further, It is no wonder that they want to put up rents and prices by between 20 and 40 per cent. The Labour Govemment has not exactly helped with Its decision that the extension of the rent freeze will not apply to students. DETERMINED In the face of the moves by the Labour Government and the college authorities to make students and college workers pay for the crisis, students have made a determined response. In 30 towns there have. been squats and occupations, with rent strikes, pickets and refectory boycotts elsewhere. The term has seen the biggest wave of student direct action since the late 1960s. But where has the NUS executive been during all this? Last week, for the first time since 1968, a Vice-Chancellor closed down a campus Subscribe to Red ion, the students asked NUS Pres ident John Randall to come down.
No such luck. He and his colleagues on the executive had more important tasks. They were scurrying off to brief Members of Parliament.
This highlights their approach to the campaign. For them the innuence they could wield within the "House" was more important than the direct action the membership were taking LESSONS The struggles waged so far this term are rich in lessons. It has become clear that the days of the quick victory are gone. The authorifies cin no longer afford to buy off students. They have drawn the battle lines, and dug in for trench warfare.
Students must organise campaigns of direct action in the colleges, using all sorts of tactics. Occupations, for example, have to be used to launch other action and take campaigns into the local colleges and labour movement.
With the cuts biting in all sectors of education, and within the whole of the public sector, joint actions can be organised with teachers, school students, hospital workers, building workers and the college staff. A massive programme of public works could kill two hirds with one stone.
Area campaigns have already been successful in Leeds and Newcastle. It is on an area basis that the small calleges can really be united. In Leeds, students from three colleges occupied the town hall to force the coun cil to reverse the £55,000 cat in discretionary awards. In Newcastle the