by Rebecca Christiansen, Leicester Socialist Students

Student union executives at both the University of Leicester and De Montfort University (DMU) are refusing to support the NUS-called walkout. DMU has gladly said that all lectures are off when the Queen visits on 8 March but the student union is afraid that students “will miss too many lectures if they walk out on 14 March.”

At Leicester, we issued an emergency proposal to the student union parliament calling for them to support the NUS campaign and build for it on campus. We asked the student union to use its authority to make sure that the students walking out are not penalised and to organise pickets outside academic buildings. However, the steering committee blocked this emergency proposal and made it into a white paper, which is not due to be discussed on Tuesday 13 March – the day before the walkout!

Students at both University of Leicester and DMU have been seriously let down by our student unions, so we have to do the work ourselves. We will leaflet for the walkout and connect it to the Youth Fight for Jobs and Education campaign to bring back EMA, so that college and university students can walk out together in solidarity. On 14 March we will arrange a demo either on campus or in the city centre.

We held a meeting titled “a socialist alternative to cuts, fees, job losses and workfare”. The response was good and the questions asked showed that people have started to be critical towards capitalism and look for a socialist alternative.

What we do after 14 March is equally important. We need to continue with the meetings on cuts to education and the socialist alternative. We are also looking forward to next term’s freshers fairs where there will be potential for Socialist Students to get many more members, as next year’s freshers will be paying £9,000 fees.

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Steve Score will be reporting from our National Committee meeting in December for our first meeting of 2011. What are the prospects for building the Socialist Party, as we move into another year of struggle in 2012?

Tuesday 10th January, 7.30pm
Turkey Cafe, Granby St, Leicester

All welcome.

This is taken from the National Shop Stewards Network site – it is vitally important that this is spread as widely as possible in a short time, so please feel free to circulate to anyone you feel may be supportive. After the magnificent strikes and demonstrations up and down the country on November 30th, we cannot back down and let the government off the hook. They have given almost nothing away in terms of concessions, yet some leaders of trade unions and the tops of the TUC – notably Brendan Barber and Dave Prentis, are preparing to wave the white flag already.

The TUC’s Public Sector Liaison Group (PSLG) has met for the first time since the magnificent 30 November public sector strike.

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, argued that trade unions should sign up to the government’s latest agreement on pensions, which would then allow Francis Maude to announce before Christmas that the dispute has been settled.

This was met with outrage by many of the public sector trade unions present. Not one of the central demands of public sector workers has been met. All public sector workers are still being told to work longer, pay more and get less. The teaching unions NUT and NASUWT reported that they had been offered no serious concessions by the government, as did the civil servants’ union PCS, the Fire Brigades Union and representatives of workers in the NHS. In local government, the only concession is to delay the attacks on pensions until 2014, provided that local government unions promise to accept the pain without a fight when it comes.

Yet Dave Prentis – general secretary for Unison – the biggest union in health and local government – argued for accepting this rotten deal. Hundreds of thousands of Unison members who struck on 30 November will not agree.

30 November showed the potential power of the working class in Britain. We can force this weak, divided government to retreat, but only if the action is stepped up. The leadership of the TUC and Unison supported N30 because of the pressure of rank and file trade unionists – now we need to do the same again. PCS demanded that the meeting name the day for the next day of national coordinated strike action. In Scotland, Unison delegates have already unanimously proposed 25 January as the day of the next strike.

We all – public and private sector workers alike – need to pile on the pressure for the date of the next strike to be set before Christmas, and to take place in January.

Sign the petition here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/pensions_strike_january/

PCS Left Unity is organising an open meeting at Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London on Saturday 7 January to demand further action on pensions. This meeting will be open to all reps in any union that took action on N30 and is to put pressure on union leaderships to name a further strike day.