Staff and students reclaim King’s College

Last Tuesday’s (30 March) strike in defence of education at King’s exceeded all expectations. More than 250 people joined loud and vibrant picket lines on all four King’s campuses. Security guards at one campus indicated that numbers entering their building were as much as 75% down. At the main building on the Strand only a small trickle of students and staff went in.

Support for the strike was boosted after the latest hapless intervention by senior management, who refused to allow non-UCU staff to take annual leave yesterday. This prompted more than sixty of those obliged to work on the Strand to sign a card expressing solidarity with the pickets. Members of other unions on all sites brought refreshments out to colleagues on strike and stood with them during breaks. Local cafes displayed UCU material explaining our reasons for striking. Students brought cakes for pickets, played musical instruments, set up stalls and hung a huge banner over the entrance to the Strand: ‘Education massacre: do not enter.’

Messages of support have flooded in from King’s alumni, students and non-UCU staff, as well as from universities and colleges across the country. Colleagues brought solidarity greetings and donations in person from UCL, Westminster, QMW, London Metropolitan University, the Institute of Education, Southwark College, City and Islington College, Tower Hamlets College, the University of the Arts and the London Nautical School. Supporters also came along from local workplaces, including the National Theatre and the National Gallery, and from other unions, including the NUT, PCS, Unite and Unison.

Around 50 people attended a lunchtime rally at Waterloo, while more than 200 students joined pickets for a rally on the Strand, which took place in an electric atmosphere. The huge crowd heard speeches from UCU representatives at King’s and elsewhere, from members of other unions and from a Sussex student who told of their struggles with their own management. Many students heard for the first time of the appalling treatment of our colleagues in Engineering by King’s management. The ‘We Support our Teachers’ campaign was a lively presence throughout the day. Dozens of students expressed their disdain at the way the College’s senior management addresses them in Orwellian ‘Newspeak’. Many have written to the Principal and Vice-Principal complaining that they feel patronised by senior management.

Our campaign in defence of education at King’s is partly about our colleagues’ livelihoods, and about the lack of regard shown to them by senior management. But it is clear that it is also about much more than this. The creeping culture of managerialism in universities is also an issue. The support we have received from students, and from colleagues who are either members of other unions, or not yet members of UCU, is an indication that this campaign is also about defending the values that underpin education at King’s and elsewhere, which include collegiality, respect for individuals, cooperation, intellectual integrity and academic independence.

The verve, humour, creativity and imagination of yesterday’s pickets offered us all a glimpse of the potential that exists within this institution for staff and students to make education at King’s more rewarding and more enjoyable. All too often this potential is either stifled or by-passed by the dead hand of senior management.

Our thanks and congratulations go to all who took part yesterday, and to everyone who showed their support for our campaign. Senior management teams across the country are offering no resistance to government cuts. They are determined to follow the example set by King’s and impose redundancies and department closures on their staff and students. The magnificent collective response to these attacks that we have seen at Leeds, Sussex, Kent and King’s is a powerful reminder to all that if we stand together we can defend our education system from the ministers and managers who want to turn it into a marketplace.

Jim Wolfreys

President KCL UCU

Please continue to send donations and messages of support to: ucu@kcl.ac.uk

For more information on our dispute see: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ucu

UCU London Region Demo Report:

Around 1,000 students and workers from higher and further education joined the lively and vocal march on Downing Street on Saturday March 20th in protest against the government's education cuts. Delegations were present from many institutions including Queen Mary's, Westminster, University College, King's College, London Met, City and Islington College, Hackney College, CONEL, London College of Fashion and many others. A large group of staff and students from Sussex University joined the march, after their victory over management the previous week. Other trade unionists also brought their banners and solidarity to the demonstration, including teachers and civil servants. At a rally outside Downing Street, Kevin Courtney, deputy general secretary-elect for the NUT, and Austin Harney from the PCS spoke amongst others. A petition was then taken to Downing Street condemning the cuts in higher and further education.

Education Activist Network meeting for London & SE

Following the success of the over 300-strong Teach-In last month, events have accelerated.

Ballots for strike action are underway or imminent at King’s, UCL and Westminster, along with London FE institutions. Student sit-ins have taken place in Essex, Sussex, UCL and Westminster. Now Sussex UCU are set for strike action following an unprecedented 80% turn out in their ballot, with an overwhelming majority for action, and the break-up of a student occupation by riot police.

There is clearly a need to coordinate action and to share lessons from our collective fight against education cuts, and to build solidarity with the suspended students and victimized lecturers in Sussex. We are calling on activists from London and across the south-east to come together next Tuesday at 6.30pm at King’s (room details to follow):

Organising the resistance: the fight to defend education

Speakers from Sussex, King’s, UCL, Westminster.

Tuesday, 16 March 2010
6:30pm
Room tbc
Strand Campus, King's College London

Videos from Take Back Education Teach-in - 27th Feb 2010 - King's College London

TAKE BACK EDUCATION - REPORT FROM TEACH-IN

This Saturday over 300 students and university workers came to King’s College London to unite and fight against the cuts in higher and further education, at a mass teach-in hosted by the London Education Activist Network. Participants included lecturers who have defeated cuts through industrial action in Tower Hamlets College and Leeds University, and students who have been campaigning to defend their education in universities from Sussex to Strathclyde.
After a day of lively workshops, the electric final session included a report from Nikos Lountos, an Athens student who reported from the general strikes in Greece. Popular left-wing academic Terry Eagleton warned that the economic crisis was being used as a pretext to radically restructure universities. And perhaps the warmest response was given to Lesley McGorrigan from Leeds UCU, who explained how an active and political union branch could unite its members and defeat the resolve of management.

The teach-in was a success, but it was only the beginning. Delegates agreed on a plan of action (below), including regional teach-ins to replicate the experience of the day on our campuses, a regular bulletin to coordinate actions and campaigns on a national level, and a pledge to build resistance and solidarity in defence of jobs and education.

PLAN OF ACTION

Education is under attack. Up to a third of university funding – £2.5bn – is to be cut, 30 universities could shut down and over 14,000 lecturers may lose their jobs. Big businesses exert more and more control over the university system. Cuts in student places and higher fees could exclude many people from higher education altogether.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Education workers are winning through strike action. Student protests are taking off across Europe, with universities occupied to stop neoliberal reforms – and to take control of campus for another kind of education. From this conference we resolve build on this resistance, and:

1. To support, build and encourage action against education cuts through demonstrations, student occupations and industrial action. To build solidarity with these struggles through inviting strikers, occupiers and others to speak at our college/union/campaign meetings; organising petitions, collections, and solidarity demonstrations and occupations.

2. To organise regional teach-ins on the Take Back Education model. To launch regional education action networks from these that can help develop local networks of resistance and spread the kind of action that can win.

3. To organise a national coordination from here to help coordinate and spread our resistance nationally. This coordination should produce and distribute without delay a national bulletin carrying reports and announcements from this teach-in and the developing local struggles. It will help to spread the resistance when people move into action.

4. To mobilise for and support the London wide demonstration called by London region UCU to defend education on March 20th and other initiatives such as the no cuts at Westminster demonstration on Monday 1st, the Leeds UCU demo Thursday 4th march, and No Cuts @ Kings protest on sat 13th march.

5. To recognise the cuts in education as part of a broader attack on the public sector, and the need for solidarity across the sector. To support and mobilise for the national demonstration against public sector cuts on the 10th April.

6. To organise through our respective trade unions, students unions, local anti-cuts groups, campaigns and organisations support for a national demonstration to defend education in the autumn.

BREAKING NEWS - STUDENT OCCUPATION AT WESTMINSTER UNI
Over 200 staff and students at the University of Westminster have protested, stormed the board of governors meeting and are currently in occupation, vice-chancellors office, in regard to recently proposed tutoring and administrative job cuts.
For more details, see their blog.

FIRST EDUCATION ACTION BULLETIN UNDER PRODUCTION
We aim to produce the first of the bulletins in time for the rallies at Leeds and UEA this week. If you would like to subit any reports, announcements or photos please reply to this address. Articles will also appear at https://www.educationactivistnetwork.wordpress.com/

STUDENTS CURRENTLY IN OCCUPATION

- - - PRESS RELEASE FROM OCCUPYING STUDENTS - - -

http://fightcutsatuow.blogspot.com/

Over 200 staff and students at the University of Westminster have protested, stormed the board of governors meeting and are currently in occupation, vice-chancellors office, in regard to recently proposed tutoring and administrative job cuts.

Management are planning to slash 285 jobs by April and this follows the closures of the ceramics department and the nursery. Recently, over 150 staff and students placed a unanimous vote of no confidence in the vice-chancellor and his management at a rally addressing Westminster's severe proposed job cuts, on February, 17.

The vice-chancellor has openly declared that job cuts are the initiative of the governors, not his. Well, demonstrators asked him for themselves, after storming past security and into the governor’s meeting. They were greeted by a board of governors who were ‘quaking in their boots;’ shortly after students persuaded Geoffrey Petts, the VC, to stick around and answer some questions which he hesitated to on the first instance but then proceed to do with a full bureaucratic and dismissive tone.

Our demands to the vice-chancellor are:

A) Issue a statement on the avoidance of redundancies

B) Make freely available to the unions in the university appropriate financial documents

C) Produce alternative, sustainable plans for addressing the financial gap over the next several years.


Join us, over 40 students are currently occupying at Regents Campus, V-C's office!

Demonstrate Tomorrow (TUES)
SUPPORT THE WESTMINSTER UNI OCCUPATION!
12NOON
309 REGENT STREET, nr Oxford Circus Tube

TEACH - IN TOMORROW - Over 370 people are booked up for the event already!

Take Back Education Teach In: Saturday 27th Feb, 11-4pm, Kings College, (Registration from 10.15am)

Please see below for a provisional timetable. Over 370 people are booked up for the event already. If you haven't yet booked up do so now and please bring as many friends and colleagues as possible - We don't want anyone to miss out!

The venue is:

Strand Building
King's College London
London WC2
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/about/campuses/strand.html
There will be further directions when you arrive.


11am-12.30 Opening Plenary
The crisis in our universities and the battle for education

Jeremy Corbyn MP
Juan C Piedra Justice for Cleaners
Jim Wolfreys President KCL UCU
Sarah Young Sussex Uni occupation
Michal Rosen poet and education campaigner

12.30-1.30pm lunch

1.30-3pm workshops

1. The corporate takeover of our universities (RM: Lucas Theatre)
Stathis Kouvalakis lecturer and radical theorist
Alex Callinicos lecturer and author Universities in a neoliberal world

2. Reclaiming our student unions (RM: S-1.06)
James Haywood NUS NEC
Daff Addley LGBT NUS

3. Education for liberation –what should our education look like? (RM: S-1.27)
Patrick Ainley author 'Education Make You Fick, Innit?’
Gargi Bhattacharyya professor of sociology and author

4. 1968 – what can we learn from the fire last time? (RM S.2.23)
Mike Gonzalez 1968er and author

5. Education for all – challenging Islamophobia, racism and points based immigration (RM K2.40)
Assed Baig Staffs SU President
Arun Kundnani Institute of Race Relations (invited)

3-4pm Final Plenary

The tasks ahead – taking back our education
Terry Eagleton
Lesley McGorrigan Officer Leeds Uni UCU
Nikos Lountos Panteion University, Athens
Alison Lord Tower Hamlets UCU
Student from No Cuts @ Kings