Thousands march for free education
Students lead the fightback
Thousands of students marched through cities all over Britain on November 1st in protest against plans by the new Labour Government to scrap student grants and impose £1000 per year tuition fees.
In many areas the turnout was the biggest by students for 20 years, and is a promising preparation for the National Demonstration called for November 26th by the Campaign for Free Education - though the CFE march is being built by campaigners without NUS support. But the anti-fees protest also has a wider significance: it is the first organised fightback by any group against the policies of New Labour, and it represents a challenge to the brutal Tory logic behind the government policy.
Platform speakers (including Diane Abbott MP) have warned that the attack on free education is the "thin end of the wedge". They are right. The students are not simply fighting for their own interests: the reforms will mainly hit younger students still at school. Their prompt and militant rejection of Blair's policies underlines the need for the workers' movement to prepare now for action to defend the welfare state against Labour's lethal combination of "unthinkable" new reforms and old-style Tory spending cuts.