Autonomy&Solidarity joined students and socialists to take action last Friday evening at the news that the government would be leaving 40,000 university goers without funding. The mainstream media have largely played this down as cutting back funding for ‘the middle class’ which is a nice way of saying the Labour Party is going deny the grants they threw us as a sweetener when they brought in top-up fees. How Scotland can afford not to charge top-up fees is left unexplained. The truth is this is part of a drive to gradually remove any kind of link between state or ‘public’ (i.e. taxpayer) funding and education. Instead they want a range of competitive market-lead institutions. Of course this means that the best universities will be the most expensive and only the rich will get to go, but that is unlikely to bother our rulers when nearly 33% of MPs and almost 66% of members of the House of Lords went to private school, compared to 7% in the wider population.

The Socialist Worker website announced “students will march on the government’s department for innovation and skills” but A&S were told it would be an action; as it turned out not everyone seemed entirely sure which it was on the day either. There was a rally of about 100 students at Westminster Cathedral, then a march to the Universities Ministry 2 blocks away. When the demonstration arrived a fair number of people just went for it whilst some of the stewards looked a bit confused. After a bit of a to-do with police and security the students came out on top and took the foyer of the Ministry. A&S hung our ‘DON’T PANIC, ORGANIZE!’ banner from the first floor balcony - perhaps as much a message to the other marchers as well as the general public!
The occupation only lasted 5 minutes, which did not have much impact but on the plus side meant no arrests and that the students were able to move off quickly and without a huge police presence. Our destination was the HM Treasury building on Whitehall to join the rally by the university workers union UCU. The 'Put people first' protest was to start at 4.30pm and had the support of trade unionists from the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS), the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and the Communication Workers Union (CWU). Some of us had to get to work so we had to leave before the rally began – we hope it was a success. We dished out 30 or so copies of the anarchist paper Freedom to interested parties (no pun intended) on our way and can be contacted through our email with any questions.