Workers Solidarity Movement

Free Education for Everyone held its first National Conference on Saturday, January 31st. Over forty student activists traveled from UCD, TCD, Maynooth, Galway, Limerick and Cork.

The Education Cuts announced in the Budget have unleashed a wave of protest across the country. 12,000 parents and teachers protested outside the Dail on Wednesday 29th October. Regional protests have since been held in Galway (attended by over 8,000), Tullamore (4,000), Cork (30,000) and Donegal (8,000). The national demonstration in Dublin on 6th December brought a massive 60,000 people onto the streets. All in all, over 120,000 people have joined the protests to say loudly and clearly that our children should not have to pay for the financial crisis. In addition there have been local demonstrations and pickets outside the clinics of Fianna Fail and Green Party TDs across the country.

The CFE was the Campaign for Free Education. It existed the summer of 2002 and the summer of 2003 and was predominantly based in UCD. Mary (MOF) spoke to two activists from the CFE campaign to find out what student activists today can learn from their experiences.

I was a student at Trinity College Dublin in the last four years of the 1980's. The following account is based entirely on my recollections of student activism in those years, unfortunately I don't seem to have archived any of the actual leaflets or papers produced back then. At the time we were always disappointed with the level of struggle, it’s only in hindsight that I realize that period was one of relative militancy in terms of student struggles in Ireland.

A student who was claims to have been manhandled last night by Minister Eamon O Cuiv at an Anti-Fees protest in NUIG has called for an apology from the minister.

Somewhere over 50,000 people took part in the INTO organised march through Dublin this afternoon in protest at the education cuts, The was the culmination of a series of regional marches called by the INTO.

On October 22^nd, in the biggest show of student strength in many years, over 15,000 third level students marched through the streets of Dublin. They were united in their opposition to the Budget’s 67% College Registration Fee increase and Minister for Education, Batt O’Keefe’s threat to bring back full college fees by September 2009. Last month, he announced that the return of fees would raise €530 million in revenue at a family income threshold of €120,000. To his embarrassment, he later had to admit that these figures were wrong and that in fact the maximum revenue would be only €130 million.

As part of the growing struggle against education cuts WSM branches have produced a leaflet that is being distributed by anarchists who study or work across the education sector. We’re working together to build a democratic and open campaign that can fight education cuts, challenge the imposition of fees and push to improve access to, and quality of, education. You can help by downloading the leaflet and distributing it at education protests or at local schools and colleges.

The world seems about to end. The markets are convulsing, the banks are tumbling, the entire island is about to become some sort of black hole off the coast of Europe.

Never fear though, we’ve got a brilliant political establishment to shepherd us through the economic wilderness, and in the Budget on Tuesday 14th they revealed their master-plan, carefully crafted, as Mary Hanafin said, to ‘protect the vulnerable’. Unfortunately, it seems like they’ve got a different understanding of who exactly ‘the vulnerable’ in Irish society are.

Somewhere in the region of 15,000 people took part in the INTO protest at the Dail Wednesday evening. From the crowd it was obvious that as well as teachers many parents, secondary school pupils and college students had turned up to show solidarity.
The Gardai prevented access to Kildare street and the mounted riot police were on standby at the gates of the Dail. An elaborate filter barrier had been installed across the top of Kildare street