Workers Solidarity Movement

In 2012 the attempt by the government to Quebec to introduce a 75% fee hike was defeated by the organisation of a mass student strike that lasted over 6 months.  That fee increase was part of the global process of imposing the privatisation and commodification of education.  Since the victory, organisers of the strike have been being doing speaking tours to aid the process whereby "youth and students everywhere are becoming increasingly conscious of the need to organize as a means to defend education as a social right".  In September this tour reaches Ireland where we need to hear how a sustained and militant student movement that can win is built. 

[PDF of leaflet about the tour to download and distribute]

[JPG of the tour poster] 

Sample audio from the tour (actually from our launch dinner & discussion on feminist organising in the strike)

Quebec Strudent Mass Strike 2012 - sampler from tour around Ireland with Vanessa by Workers Solidarity on Mixcloud

This college year has seen a large increase in the number of students taking out loans in order to go to college. As part of an aggressive advance into the student debt market, Bank of Ireland has already agreed schemes to provide “discounted loans” to students in DCU and Trinity, and to postgraduate students across the country (in this case the scheme was negotiated directly with theState) .BofI is also said to be in “advanced discussions” with over 10 other 3rd-level institutions.

Despite increasingly desperate attempts by the government to extract their pound of flesh from householders,the Campaign against Household and Water Taxes (CAHWT) continues to rack up victories.

On Wednesday 29^th February, over 200 people marched on the streets of Galway against the government’s ongoing attacks on the education sector. The march was organised by Free Education For Everyone (FEE) Galway in conjunction with NUIG Students Union, to fight back against cuts including the increase of third-level fees to €3000 by 2015, abolition of postgraduate grants and the slashing of the numbers of Special Needs Assistants (SNAs), which FEE views as part of the wider neo-liberal attack on free education and further argues that all of these measures make education increasingly inaccessible to working-class people.

The changes to third-level fees and the maintenance grants system for new postgraduate students in Budget 2012 come as no big shock. The €250 increase in the student contribution charge means students will pay €2,250 from next September, with other increases likely to come in 2013 and 2014. In relation to postgraduates, no maintenance grants will be paid for new entrants from the 2012/13 academic year. These changes come into effect after months of campaigning by the grassroots student campaign group Free Education for Everyone (FEE) and the Union of Students Ireland (USI).

The changes to fees and the maintenance grants system for new postgraduate students in Budget 2012 comes as no big shock. The €250 increase in the student contribution charge means students will pay €2,250 from next September, with other increases likely to come in 2013 and 2014. In relation to the future of the postgraduates, no maintenance grants will be paid for new entrants from the 2012/13 academic year.

These changes come into effect, after months of campaigning by the grassroots student campaign group Free Education for Everyone (FEE) and the Union of Students Ireland (USI).

Over twenty thousand students demonstrated in Dublin today against the introduction of student fees and the cutting of student grants. The main demonstration organised by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI)also included a Free Education for Everyone All (FEE) bloc comprised of rank & file students in disagreement with the passive lobbying tactics of the USI leadership.  USI stewards formed a line with Garda to prevent FEE rejoining the demonstration after they led a breakway protest at Fine Gael HQ.

(Pic: From FEE twitterstream
USI stewards form 3 rows
to stop USI members
in FEE joining march)

The Fine Gael party was confronted with angry scenes at not one but two different blockades during a meeting of the parliamentary party in Galway city yesterday.   Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his cabinet were attending their pre-budget think-in at the luxury Radisson hotel when some 30 students from the NUIG Free Education for Everyone (FEE) group and the Students’ Union blockaded the entrance in protest at the government’s policy of education cuts, registration fee increases and the ever-looming prospect of full fees.  They were joined by two dozen members of the Save Roscommon Hospital Alliance who were equally intent on showing the Fine Gael party what they think of their callous indifference to the welfare of the working class. 

In this interview with Noam Chomsky he reflects on the progress the left has made in the last 50 years particularly on university campuses.  He reaffirms his self-identification as an anarchist and calls on students in general to "challenge authorities and join a long anarchist tradition."  He was being interviewed by the German language publication ZEIT Campus.

The autumn and winter of 2010 saw the sudden and dramatic re-emergence of radical student movements, with mass student uprisings taking place across Europe and the United States in opposition to both the austerity measures being levelled against ordinary people as a result of the crisis in capitalism, and the neoliberal restructuring of education according to the needs of capital. Across the Western world, governments are introducing measures to transform universities into “factories of precarious workers” - institutions devoted to the production of graduates equipped with the skills and ideas desired by industries increasingly reliant on immaterial and mental labour, turning ideas into profits. These employees must be willing to work in increasingly precarious situations, either entirely unpaid, or for increasingly low wages on increasingly short-terms contracts – a transformation that is increasingly meeting resistance from both students and academic staff, and which has only accelerated since the present crisis began. Meanwhile, in the Arab world, students have played a key role in the mass uprisings to topple Western-backed thugs such as Zine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.