Today saw the first national protest called by the NUS in two years - specifically, the first since the occupation of Millbank Tower on the tenth of November 2010. It was, without wishing to glorify violence, a glorious moment. The student population, long since thought dormant and uninterested, swung into action, staging campus occupations and a series of protests which led to an attempted storming of the Treasury building in Whitehall.
It was also the moment that cleaved the student movement in two. As with any violent demonstrations, many people were turned off, and the large scale street protests which continued throughout the winter of 2010/11 never quite reached the same levels of attendance.
The march today, a
'rainy walk to Surrey' in which the media and police both waited for something big to happen. Nothing did - the most interesting part of the day was when protesters stormed the stage in a Kensington park where NUS president Liam Burns was making a speech. He walked off and continued through a megaphone, and that was that. By that point anyway, the majority of the marchers had left (this isn't first-hand reporting, by the way, all the information I've got comes from the always good
Guardian live blog) for the pub, and shelter from the rain. The story will barely scratch the surface of the mass media, an added failure given that the protest was intended to reopen the dialogue about this generation of students and their economic future.
There is growing disquiet in the student movement about the leadership of the NUS. The majority of student unions at universities feed into it, and ones that don't tend to be entirely independent, so it's status is largely unshakable. Therefore, it is placed at the forefront of a movement it helped to kickstart, but has never shown any enthusiasm for. As the wreckage of Millbank was picked over, the NUS immediately distanced itself from the student movement. It never called another national protest in London, until today, and backed away from any support of student occupations - something it had promised beforehand.
Whether the NUS is still suffering a hangover from the one-year reign of Aaron Porter (whose motto seemed to be 'No Fees! Actually, if it causes you a bit of hassle, then perhaps we should get fees! Sorry for the mess!'), or is in a perpetual state of pointlessness. I feel it may be the later, as any hope given to a more radical view of the movement when Liam Burns succeded Porter has all but evaporated.
The real problem with the NUS is that it remains obsessed with the notion of civilised dialogue, of rational, open debate. It exists, however, in a field where these things are dismissed. The coalition government has no will to back down on education cuts, as students do not represent a core voter base for them (or any party). With the help of the Met Police and Territorial Support Group, the government had managed to sideline and nullify any attempt by protesters to take some sort of action. Occupations of any kind are considered illegal, the police are able to arrest people on a whim on a charge of 'aggrivated tresspassing'. The police, ahead of one rally last year, sent
letters to attendees threatening them with rubber bullets if there was violence, which helped to drive people away.
The NUS have helped in this, routing their protest away from the Houses of Parliament, and into a posh area of London where nothing important is. They claim they don't want to disrupt anything in central London, which means their march is essentially a large, organised stroll. It is the same as trade unions who say that a proposed strike 'should not cause distruption' - surely removing the exact aim of a strike!
The nadir of the NUS 'fight' again tuition fees arguably came in October 2010, when Aaron Porter secretly met with government ministers to agree a deal with them - a £800 million cut to maintainance grants (which are given to the poorest students to help them afford to live while at uni) to avoid fees. A betrayal of those worst hit in the first place, and an attempt at dialogue which admits the need to austerity and attacks on the welfare of ordinary people.
The antipathy continued today, and will continue as long as the NUS continues it's lacklustre campaign against the cuts. So is there any hope for the student movement? Less than two years ago it was vibrant, alive, straining with activity was rooms and halls were occupied at universities across the country. It even inspired solidarity marches from students in France and Greece at times - yet it has visably withered, falling from public consiousness. The same thing happened with the trade unions, who failed to capitalise of the momentum of the historic 500,000 march in London earlier this year. The problems are the same with both leaderships - a fear of action, a fear of risk taking, a fear of offending the middle ground (the ground on which politics, regretably, is largely fought). The movements to not attempt to reframe the austerity argument.
The advantage that the student movement has is that it is more autonomous than the workers unions. They do not operate under the same strict guidelines as trade unions do (students, for example, can protest about a general political problem, where strikes, under British law, must concern a direct act of government or piece of legislation). Individual branches can also operate with more freedom, holding walkouts and protests seperate from each other if needs be. The rise of alternative groups, such as the NCAFC, which played a large part in organising the later demonstrations, show the way forward for the student movement. As I argued in a
previous post, (although concerning mainstream political parties) organisations like the NUS will move with the largest group of the people - a large scale, independent student movement would either rescue the NUS from centre-ground, inoffensive oblivion, or force it there, leading it to be replaced with a group fitted to the needs and the desires of the student movement as a whole. Again, the fight against austerity must be led by the people who oppose it, not the organisations who do.
