I'm sorry to say it, but this really is pretty lame.

You hold vigils when people die in wars and stuff; not when the government wants to introduce top up fees. When the government wants to introduce top up fees, you for example occupy buildings and refuse to leave them... You don't stand outside them holding little candles..

I think a bit more than a vigil is required to stop top-up fees. Occupations and strikes seem to be a reasonable and mild response to start with.

Organize it, then. Something certainly needs to happen...

I am sorry but this is not just up to DIY activism. CUSU (the Cambridge Uni student union) has 6 full time, paid officers, whose job it is to organise such campaigns and actions. Furthermore it has more executive members and each college (32 in total) has around 20 people in their student unions (JCR+MCR). In total there are more than 600 people in Cambridge in somehow representing students, and most of CUSU mobilizations do not even attract 200. All the campaings I have participated in (peace+refugee rights) were (a) not staffed by full time organizers (b) not directly affecting most of the families in the UK with a financial burden of about 20k. I therefore do not see why we should again be the ones organizing and agitating while those affected, and those paid and elected to take care of these issues, are so pathetic at doing something about it.
 https://www.headporter.com/display.php?section=cms&uni=1&module=index&page=206

CUSU's track record in recent years when it comes to sticking up for students in this kind of issue has been pretty dismal. CUSU excells in all sorts of identity politics, and is very good at publishing lots of little books and handing out lube to first years.

However, it wasn't till AFTER the 1000 pound tuitition fee had been introduced that the boys and girls decided that, yes, maybe there should be student union busses down to demonstrations and even then mobilisation has been pretty minimal - stretching at best to a couple of hundred people, which at best is a fraction of the number actually gaining CV points by 'representing' people.

In all of my experience with CUSU, this gaggle has primarily excelled in timidity.

... why don't you go down to CUSU and try speaking to them about what they're doing? I think you'll find that they all have 9 to 5 jobs that don't leave a speck of time for this campaign - indeed the only one that 'is getting paid to do this' is the president - and he, like some of the other Sabs, works a 40 hour week ON TOP OF their 9-5 job.

So please, please, don't suggest that they have more time than you, it's just silly.

More seriously, FACT (funding and access campaign team) would apreciate suggestions as to how to do things better, and how to motivate people to come on these demonstrations. Please email  fact@cusu.cam.ac.uk with any ideas you have.

I admit that the vigil idea might seem silly, but considering we've already done marches, sit ins, big noises, lobbies, etc., it's hard to find something different.

And for people who are complaining about lack of impact - which was the last protest you were on that helped to get the governments majority down to 5 votes?

Check out what others have done on:
Oxford:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/oxford/2004/01/284430.html
Germany:  http://www.education-is-not-for-sale.org/

Let's be serious. I have spent years in the CUSUcracy circles, and the issue of the sabs and executive being overworked is always the first excuse. For some reason effective campainging and mobilizations is ALWAYS at the bottom of their priorities, and there is never enough time for it. The only president who followed and created a very effective campaign was Tristan Jones that launched the rent strikes: He did find time, presumably because he prioritised it.

It is political timidity, a paper-shifting attitude to their job, poor time managment and prioritisation and cluelessness when it comes to building grassroots movements that makes them ineffective. Not other overwritting priorities and overload.

Sorry, I think you took my last point slightly wrongly. I wasn't suggesting that the exec/sabbs were over-worked and thus couldn't do activism properly - I was just countering the idea that they weren't doing their job, i.e. as far as I can see the president puts as much time into activism (outside office hours of course) as most people 'on the ground' I know. No other sabb was elected on an activist pretext, and very few of the exec.

You've used the word timid again? The idea of them being paper-pushing (What exactly does this mean?) seems a bit odd, but I'm curious as to what you mean by timid.

As for clueless when it comes to building grass-roots activism, perhaps you're right - Could you give us a clue? As far as I'm concerned, far too much time is put into ineffectively trying to build up support from students. i assumed the failure was due to apathy, but if we are doing something wrong, please let us ( fact@cusu.cam.ac.uk) know.

P.S. Am aware of the oxford action, and am pleased it went well. But, to be fair, we get more than 50 people at CUSU's actions (and that's just from 1 uni), so I'm not sure it's a damaging comparison.

P.P.S. If you really want us to have an oxbridge rivalry going, take a look at
 http://www.ousu.org/system/systempages/file/265/file/awp.pdf and
 http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/campaigns/blairrich/hefunding_whitepaper.pdf

A vigil for what?
9000

did someone die?
no. just a bunch of students lost 9000
fuck off

"P.S. Am aware of the oxford action, and am pleased it went well. But, to be fair, we get more than 50 people at CUSU's actions (and that's just from 1 uni), so I'm not sure it's a damaging comparison."

Nothing against your current action, but you got permission from your university authorities to occupy the building. The most controversial thing you did was light candles. At Oxford the whole thing was against university regulations start to finish. Maybe there were less people there, but at least it meant a lot more.

.... I think there's always a comprimise that has to be made between numbers of people and strength of action. Which is the university going to care about more - 50 really passionate people or 200 people who care quite a lot? It's a hard one to call, and I'm glad that between us we are covering differnt angles.

After being overworked, apathy is always the second excuse.

Well we (CamSAW) managed to realise a (non-authorised) occupation of a university building without the participants even knowing where they were going, with police and proctor escort (let alone having the warm feeling that nothing bad is going to happen to them). This was at the beggining of the anti-war campaign, which would only affect people 6000 miles away, and at the time when it was not yet mainstream to oppose the war. It is not a question of apathy but ability to mobilise.

Timid: it is the attitude that says that while most poor people will effectively be excluded from HE we should still behave like we are having a civilised debate with polite people. The documents that you presented above (from CUSU and OUSU) are a good example: they assume that it is mere logic and argument that will make us win the campaign. While this is necessary it is unfortunately bargaining power, effective mobilization and disruption that makes a difference in practice. The animal rights protests are an unfortunate example of this: not logic but constituant power makes a difference.

Always yours, Manos

"The documents that you presented above (from CUSU and OUSU) are a good example: they assume that it is mere logic and argument that will make us win the campaign. While this is necessary it is unfortunately bargaining power, effective mobilization and disruption that makes a difference in practice."

If God existed, I would be very tempted to say "amen" to this.

I quite agree - I don't like using 'apathy' as an excuse, partly because i don't believe it to be true. But the reason I have had to use this excuse is I'm not sure what more can be done towards effective mobilisation. If you have any ideas as to how we can mobilise people better, please say, either here or at  fact@cusu.cam.ac.uk

As for the argument over timidity, the reason that the lines you've pointed out have been persued is not, as far as I can see it, down to people being scared. Instead, it is two-fold: firstly, it is a complex debate (much more so than, say, the war), and there is a need for a thorough rational backing to any action. Secondly, disruption is unlikely to be effective here as with the animal rights protests. Essentially, they won because it would cost the university too much money to protect people against them. The potential for the university to make money here would outweigh any disruptive costs.

(NB: I'm not suggesting direct action's crap - It is a great tool and it has its places. But within this debate it can only really be used for (a) publicity and (b) as a means of expression. But both are unuseful without large numbers.)

Oh, and one more response (I'm really sorry aobu this long-windedness) - the new legislation will undoubtedly get more poor people into HE, i.e. it's not the case that "most poor people will effectively be excluded from HE".

"the new legislation will undoubtedly get more poor people into HE"

Now, this comment leaves me speechless.

This goes against any logic (that more people will be coming here if they think they will have to pay. Particularly from poorer backgrounds), and any experience (where is it that fees widened access? Harvard? Yale?). If you count as HE the university of Luton, that might end up not charging as much as Cambridge (questionable) maybe. We will definitelly not see more people from the three lowest social categories having better access to Cambridge, Oxford or the other top ones. (For the situation today see:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3313687.stm)

Let aside the pressure that debt will be putting on further choices: pursuit of post-graduate studies, careers in less well paid jobs (rush to the city of London) or the ability to buy a house or get further loans. Dept is basically slavery: since all your further choices are conditioned by it.

A subtle argument: I do not think so. When Greece and Spain, quite poor countries compared to Britain, can afford to provide free education at all levels, I cannot believe that you cannot get it here. Or to put the question differently: how many studentships could the cost of each bomb dropped in Iraq support? When was the cost of the war (aside the link to terrorism and WMD) an issue? How many state subsidies has the arms industry got in the last 10 years? These are just examples that I am personally aware of because of my campainging. It is not therefore a question of cost but priorities: Bombs and Fees is Blair's choice.

But at least now I understand why you guys are not bothered enough to properly mobilise against top-up fees. If you think they might not be that bad!

Hello, Liam,

It seems that you are arguing that the reason Cambridge students are not getting more angry about the top-up fees debate is not that they are timid, but that they either don't really care too much about fees (apathy) or that they are unclear about the merits of the anti-fees argument. I don't think that the fees arguments are too much more complicated than the various pro- and anti-war arguments were, it's just that there are fewer people articulating a range of possible political choices that can be made; in fact, so far there have been only two real options put forward: the Blair option ('we need to charge fees to be fair to the poor', a masterful piece of classic Blairite strategy), and the Rebel option (more revenues should come from general taxation, and the rich should foot the bill). The fact that Blair has responded to this option by saying (to paraphrase him) that the rich will simply hire better accountants and cheat the state out of any additional tax revenues, and that therefore the UK has (presumably) hit some sort of absolute limit of income extraction from the upper classes, seems to me to be quite ludicrous. That there might be additional options (stop pouring cash into a militarist grand strategy and devote it to education instead) seems to be not on the agenda.

A few questions for you:

Do you think that there is any pattern to the worldwide assault on public education, health services, etc?

Do you think that direct action only succeeds because of monetary disruption, or is this only one reason among others (such as the assertion of effective physical control over a piece of the earth's surface)?

Do you really think that the Blair plan, which destroys the principle of a single publicly funded system, is going to benefit the poorer sectors of society in the long term? That is, what do you project will happen ten years from now if Blair gets his way?

Finally, and this goes to M as well: why do you think that it matters if poor people go to Cambridge?

Does it matter if poor people go to Cambridge? Yeah, probably. Maybe. But it's not really about that is it? I mean, Cam-centrism is great within a 3 mile radius of Great St Mary's, but I reckon the issue is broader than this.

Since the end of the 1990's, there has been a spectacular failure to build a strong (dare I say militant?) student union tradition in the UK. Primarily, I blame the student Union leadership for this. Christ knows why the NUS didn't call for a general (1000 pounds)fee strike a few years back ("ca- ca- ca-reers??") - CUSU (my local union) didn't - because it would be illegal. And that would be difficult. And there were other things to think about. Careers and stuff.

The point is that many students just in general believe organisations like CUSU will stick up for them. And so they don't want to 'strike', because CUSU doesn't support it (i.e. hasn't made a little book about it). You can talk all you will about 'why' Cambridge student don't support X, Y or Z - fact is that the position of the union they have elected to represent them has a lot to do with it. Timidity does, I fear, breed apathy.

It is quite probable - as someone pointed out on this site - that the 'historical task' of 'students' in this particular epoch is to provide a 'managerial class'. This, it seems to me, would be one of the best reasons to start kicking up a stink anyway. The debates on access are often centred around the idea that 'everyone should have a fair chance at cracking the whip', or: 'it's OK that we have inequality in society, just as long as there is some equality in university access for people who are clever enough'.

Thing is, if student can't even be arsed to 'do something' when their direct financial interests in becoming part of the 'managerial class' are jeopodised - well, when the hell can they??

CUSU isn't just one partuculary backward union, infact its represntive of the shape of student unionism and the level of radiclisation in the colleges genrerly.

If you look at the anti war movement in the universitys it is in most cases 1 - 2 years behind the anti war movement in the towns and schools and sixth forms! Cambridge university for example has a pitifull rag of an anti war group, that has gone and called 1 meeting all term. This is during a period where radiclisation over the war is huge. Where people should be planning to give tony blair a thrashing, and its going on outside of the universitys but there has been a real vacum within the political spectrum in the universitys.
Cambridge university had rubish meetings that wern't involiving or inspireing but had people who were so up themselves that they would only involve people if they waved there hands arround in the right way. Looking at this to the background to the situation its not surprising that the mobilisations against fees were crap.
And on the student unions how can you expect anything from them. Come on, theres nothing political about there leadership at all, ben brinded suposedly was ellected as being "non political" and then hes the one that people wan't to run a political campain. Just forget it. He made a speach where he said this is not about blair its about the state of our universitys. Well actuly it is about blair, its a blairite policy pushed by a blairite govenment. When thatcher was closing the mines people didn't go arround saying it's not about thatcher its about our mines, fuck of did they it was all maggy maggy maggy out out out.
Tution fees are the epitomy of blairite policy so they must be attacked from a political perspective. And to do that you have to make political links, to the other things that blair has done; war, privitisation etc. and also you must fight this as a neoliberal policy, without challeneging the ideas of the market andneoliblisim you are hitting blair with a rubber hammer.
This reqires a mass movement with meeting of people on the ground orginisng arround political ideas, like the anti war movement, not a bunch of students listening to what mandy telford has to say, and lets face it its crap, the day before the vote she was canvasing for the labour party, and she spent the day of the vote in the pub. What a fuck wit we have to have people that talk the talk on the ground, but they canna arse about cos theve gotta be on the ground they have to walk the walk as well.

Nice job, Ed, glad to see you've got it all figured out.

Just to issue a quick correction to the statements made about the Oxford Occupation, and the criticism that only 50 people were involved. What actually happed was that 50 people *started it off* - 200 people were there by the end for a march on the University Offices.