Hi everyone. I'm not blogging properly again: it's been one of the busiest weeks in years and I'm rushed off my feet. But here's a letter I've just sent to the President of The Dark Place's Students' Union.
Dear President,
thank you for your email asking me if I could help out with the Students’ Union’s University Challenge effort this year. As you know, I’m a huge fan of the show and would love to see our students do well.
However, I feel I must decline your request. As you know, academic staff took strike action yesterday and are working to contract. This is because our salaries have reverted to their 2008 level, with further real-terms reductions projected some years into the future. As a hard-working, committed, conscientious academic, I support students well beyond my contractual duties, as any of them will tell you. My colleagues in the library, the cleaning staff, the caterers and security guards all do their best for students, in public and in a thousand little ways which might never be noticed. This university is rightly proud of the ‘student experience’, but it never acknowledges that its success is dependent on the good will and free labour provided by staff who go the extra mile, not for money, but because it’s the right thing to do.
Yesterday, I stood on the picket line, in the cold, for hours. Between explaining to strike-breaking colleagues and passing students why I wasn’t in a nice warm classroom – which is my natural and favourite environment – I followed the Twitter feeds of fellow academics and students across the country. I saw Students’ Unions at Warwick, Birmingham, Sussex and many other places joining their friends on the picket lines, or occupying their universities.
What you won't see at The Dark Place
They know that to attract and retain good teachers, cooks, cleaners and other workers who make the ‘student experience’ so good, universities need to stop squeezing their standard of living.
What did your Students’ Union do? As far as I can tell, the Student Council has no policy on this matter. The Executive decided to make policy in breach of its own constitution, and decided to remain ‘neutral’ as you put it to me. I and my UCU colleagues are not ‘neutral’. Nor are you fellow student leaders in the NUS and across the country. They know that good staff make life good for students. I am desperately sorry that the Dark Place’s Students’ Union is ‘neutral’ when faced with declining living standards.
I’m sorry I can’t help with University Challenge and wish you well. But it’s just a giggle in the end. What will really help students is solidarity in our fight to make sure that this institution can attract and retain motivated, secure staff, whatever their jobs: some of them are or will be your members. We support your members every day: when it came to the crunch, you failed to support us. Until this changes, I won’t be taking on additional duties, however much I enjoyed them.
We're striking on Thursday (not me, I'm away, damn it), and the National Union of Students fully supports us:
NUS President Aaron Porter was quoted in the Guardian on Monday saying "huge cuts to university budgets ideologically imposed by this government pose a massive threat to jobs and education. NUS has worked closely with UCU throughout our campaigns to oppose government cuts and stands in solidarity with their strike action next week." The NUS has also written to the Employers’ Pension Forum urging them to meet UCU to resolve the dispute over USS.
Well, not quite. The President of our SU is a minion of management and takes a rather different view.
As a union we have to promote the idea of using the time to study. We are encouraging students to who are affected to use the time to catch up on work. Remember that there are two main unions at this university, UCU and Unison. Unison are not striking.
I had a meeting with X [the man he seems to think is his boss] last week to discuss the University's stance on this. He informed us that the university will not be re-running any missed lectures and have no obligation to do so. All they will do is make the work available for students. For me, this is unacceptable as it means students are missing out. Lecturers are not providing an alternative for students and it is because of this that we are unable o support.
the groups decision is that that we do support lecturers but we have to put "students' First", A should have made this clear to you.
As I'm sure you will understand, we find ourselves in a difficult situation here, but we are a Students' Union and our first duty is always to you the student. Students are affected adversely by the strike abut are not to blame for the situation we are in. Students expect to be taught and receive the education they have paid for.
He seems to have forgotten that he's elected to take the bigger picture - not act as a complaints desk or shop assistant. Students will miss a day's formal teaching. If the university and government get their way, they'll miss out on staff being able to pick them out from a crowd, staff who aren't working two jobs, and staff who aren't completely demoralised.
Clearly his election didn't include a literacy test either.
My alter ego, David Mitchell, not only agrees with me on everything, but says it better.
Students bring out a violent streak in me. When I see NUS spokespeople on TV talking simplistically about tuition fees, even though I basically agree with the sentiments they express so unattractively, I want to punch them. But I also like watching them chuck stuff at the police, smash windows and jump up and down on vans. I'm not so keen on the fire extinguisher hurling – I lose my appetite for the scuffle if I think someone might get killed – but a bit of a ruck with some bobbies dressed as X-wing pilots seems entirely appropriate.
It's the peaceful protesting that winds me up: the super-keen "political" students who've nosed their way into being interviewed to show how clever they are. They seem unrealistic and unaccountable and you can smell the self-interest and grubby ambition lurking beneath the veneer of unworkable ideals. Like pre-election Lib Dems.
My inner Victorian thinks they should be seen and not heard. But I don't mind seeing them piss through the letterbox of Nick Clegg's constituency office.
A few short clips of jerkily televised vandalism make the government look like it's failing to govern. The fact that more damage gets done to public property every day by people turning round quickly while holding something hot is irrelevant. A photo of broken glass is a thousand times more politically threatening than a kid with an unwise haircut whining about his allowance.
At least the protests are being taken over by independent organisations rather than the NUS, which is just a kindergarten for obedient New Labour MPs (almost every President since the 1950s has become one).
Hats off to one of Mitchell's commenters for this line too:
You can say what you like about this government, but it took Margaret Thatcher 3 years to achieve riots and a royal wedding. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have achieved it in 6 months.
Don't get fooled into thinking that you've done your bit by protesting on Wednesday and now it's time to accept what's happening.
The education cuts are part of an all-out assault on the the kind of country the British have built. The poor and the vulnerable are being abandoned to the cold wind of free-market capitalism without benefitting from the positive aspects (did you know that FTSE 100 directors' pay went up 45% this year?).
Fight the cuts and fight the ideological attack on education as a public good. Protest when other groups - workers, the unemployed and the sick - are attacked.
Head on over to Blossom's place for her account of the student protest yesterday. She's a mature student at the Hegemon who went on the demonstration because she felt she had no choice. While all the attention is paid to the hotheads, people like Blossom are on the streets - perhaps for the first time - because our illegitimate government is hellbent on ideologically-driven policies without regard for fairness or the long term.
David Cameron was overjoyed by the student violence: it meant he could spend the interview time condemning it, rather than deal with the issues. Violence, he says, is 'unacceptable'.
I agree. There's nothing more despicable than anonymous, disguised students running wild and going on orgies of pointless, selfish violence.
Let's remind ourselves of what Call Me Dave was up to when he was a student, shall we?
Each year, he paid around £10,000 for membership of the Bullingdon Club. He'd dress up in special silly clothes (another few thousand pounds) and go on sprees of drinking and smashing. Because the club had a reputation for destroying restaurants then buying the owners' silence with wads of cash, the club had to go under false names to book rooms.
David Cameron was among drunken posh yobs who vandalised a restaurant, it was claimed last night.
The Tory leader has always denied taking part in the attack by the Bullingdon Club, the elitist Oxford University student society.
Mayor of London and Cameron's fellow Old Etonian Boris Johnson, below, admits he was part of the mayhem.But a former club member says the idea Cameron was not there on the night in 1987 is "ludicrous", claiming he "sprinted off" when others ended up in the cells. The idea someone just went to bed early! I mean, come on... " the Financial Times blogs reports him as saying.
He adds: "Details have been kept a closely-guarded secret by the group of old friends. A policy of omerta has descended on the Cameron episode."
Clearly upper-class violence is a jolly jape, whereas political violence is despicable. Or am I missing something here?
The BBC live stream is a good way to follow the student protests, for good or ill.
The demonstration has certainly monopolised the coverage, which is great. However - rolling news is desperate for material, so it's not too difficult. Students are good at this stuff: Twitter and iPhones mean there's an avalanche of material flowing in.
However: I suspect that the coverage would have ended hours ago if the demonstration had remained entirely peaceful. Both sides know this. Unfortunately, the media have form in egging on the behaviour of a minority and then running it as representative (as they are now). On the other side, some protestors will be only too aware that polite protest doesn't get the attention of the press, while others are ready for any opportunity to sell sectarian papers, chant slogans and smash a few windows.
I wish I'd been there - the issue is more important than a couple of seminars - but I also have a responsibility to the students who for whatever reason, chose to come to class. Had I been there, I'd not have supported violence in this context (it's not the Miner's Strike) and the hijacking of the protest by splinter groups, but I certainly support the occupation of Tory HQ. Compared with other countries (and the UK in the 1960s and 1970s) this is mild stuff.
If you need a reminder that the vast majority of students on the march were peaceful and determined to make their point clearly, he's a video of their reaction to one of the provocateurs chucking a fire extinguisher off the roof of Tory HQ: a round of boos and the chant 'stop throwing shit'. Good on them.
Let's hope this march is the first in a massive series of resistance actions from all sectors of society in the coming years.
That's certainly true in some students' minds. Sky News has such a bad reputation now (think Kay Burley - and here - and Adam Boulton) that their live broadcasts are fair game, as the Guardian reports:
Sky News ran into difficulty about 5 minutes ago when they attempted to go live to one of their reporters on the ground. She appeared to lose her temper as students standing around her began to pitch in with comments like 'ladies and gentlemen the insurrection has started.
"They just want to shout people down," said said, turning to them and telling them (as well as the studio) that the vast majority of people at the protest didn't support what has happened.
Sky cut the link, with an anchor saying, not entirely convincingly : "I'm not sure what was happening there."
Well, it looks like several more thousands on top of the predicted 24,000 students - possibly 50,000. It's got a bit tasty in places - the Tory Scum Headquarters has been raided and had a few windows broken.
Fires burning, eggs thrown, windows smashed, activists with scarves across their faces barricaded into a marble-clad lobby after exchanging punches with police, all to chants of "Tory Scum". Feels like the 1980s here at Millbank Towers.
Protesters are shouting: "Nick Clegg, we know you, you're a fucking Tory too."
Footage of Nick Clegg promising to scrap tuition fees was met with chants of "wanker, wanker", while Sally Hunt, UCU's general secretary, led the rally in a cry of "You say Tories, I say scum."
I know it's slightly irresponsible - the rightwing newspapers will feature this isolated violence as though it was common and representative - but I have some sympathy. Compared with the French and the Greeks, a few broken windows is nothing, and perhaps a useful sign of the depth of feeling about this crude and reactionary policy. (Suggestions that I'm leading the chants are unfounded - but I hope they got 'Tory Scum' from meticulous reading of Plashing Vole).
Unfortunately, it was probably orchestrated by one of the ridiculous micro-splinter-sects that gather around any demo. They probably think it's the first blow in the people's uprising, and it just isn't.
I'd prefer a mass outbreak - an invasion of parliament or something like that. A few idiots breaking windows can be used as rightwing propaganda, whereas the lesson of the Poll Tax riots is that ordinary people can be provoked into disorder if the cause is just. A meaningful attack on a well-chosen target is political - a few broken windows is little more than vandalism.
Back to the 1980s is good: the Tories and their Lib Dem butlers need to realise that they don't have the consent of the population, no matter how often they repeat 'we're all in this together'. It's clear we're not: the poor are going to suffer much, much more.
My own union, the University and Colleges Union, is holding a mass demonstration in London with the National Union of Students to protest the privatisation/abolition of higher education.
Our Students' Union is advertising the event thusly:
Oh dear. Apart from the horrendous spelling mistake, all it says to me is that this demo is a bit of a lark before getting on with the serious business of shopping. Shout a few slogans about education-as-consumerism, then get down to Oxford Street with your credit card.
No wonder the government doesn't give a feck for student opinion. I'd go with Pol Pot and send all the intellectuals out to the fields, only the SU leadership wouldn't qualify…
