Despite violent police attacks and three sets of concessions from Edouard Balladur's conservative government, mass mobilisations against the cheap labour 'youth Smic' scheme continue unabated in France.
According to Charles Pasqua, minister of the interior, over 230,000 marched in towns outside Paris last Thursday, while over 32,000, mainly students, filling place Denfert-Rochereau in Paris were later charged by CRS riot police.
The size of the militant mobilisations outside Paris was especially striking.
Towns of just 50,000 or 60,000 people had demonstrations thousands-strong. protestors back onto the route. while police attacked the part of the march nearest Parliament George Napier, a student who did not participate in the attempted break to Parliament, was one of many violently assaulted by the police: "A tall policeman strode towards me swinging a truncheon - I am hit on the head again, on my neck, across my shoulders and then my kidneys. As I scramble up the truncheon smashes my right hand and then I am swamped by police, pushed down into the gutter, my limbs knelt on, twisted.
"At the time,' " George adds with restraint it really annoyed me that no-one came to help me. Thinking back on it now, I realise that it was the organisers of the march who were to blame they were more concerned about "liaison' with the police than defending students exercising their right to protest." Quite right.
In the run-up to NUS' conference however, Left Unity candidates are looking more credible than this behavior would suggest - mainly because of the total inaction of Labour Students, which has held the leadership since 1982. Left Unity candidate Sarah Wellings was elected NUS Women's Officer last week by 66 to 24 for the labour candidate and 35 for 'Re-Open Nominations'. The Contract of Professional Insertion (CIP) aims to place 750,000 youth in workplaces Rank and file student demo lacked effective self defence This strikingly high vote for RON partly reflects a confused layer to the right of Labour which may be volatile at the national conference.
Labour Students is the architect of the plan to protect the NUS from government attacks on automatic NUS membership and student services by converting the union into a charity.
Its careerist cadre prioritise services and the enhanced prestige charity status may offer.
They consider it a victory that the forthcoming Education Act retains union's right to control their finances, while taking away automatic membership of student unions.
Some student unions already hold charity status, in whole or for part of their activity. On occasions, charity status can be skilfully employed to give student amongst the youth, is becoming a pressing social problem in France. Over 4.6 million are jobless or on work schemes.
The "Act Against Unemployment!' (AC!) campaign has been launched by left-wing trade unionists to mobilise for radical measures like reducing the working week.
The Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, French section of the Fourth International, is calling for a one-day general strike to force Balladur's resignation. This week its' newspaper, Rouge, explains 'Every part of society victimised by the crisis has come into action.' unions financial advantages while retaining well-funded student campaigns free from the control of the Charities Commission.
This is not the plan of the Labour Student leaders. They counterpose charity status to student campaigning. So does a section of the student left.
In this context the student left must be slowly re-oriented through maintaining the orientation of the student unions to campaigning. Premature 'rank and file' national student federations risk giving up the fight in the mass student organisations.
Instead we need a delegatebased assembly of those student unions who wish to defend the role of the NUS as a national coordination of campaigns, and to carry out that coordination when the NUS refuses to do so.