In order for the campaign to have any purchase on campus it first has to exist. There are many ways in which left, socialist, communist and such groups have written programmes. All are polemical, in the sense that they are both an intervention into the movement as it stands and a call to arms on some core tenants.
We should see ourselves as an organisation that is intervening in the existing current, and seeking to establish from that a new organisation that will prosecute the campaign against cuts, and fees, and for funding restoration. Society is awash with money, the profit motive drives inequality.
The student movement, like the workers movement, is constantly being made, re-made and made again by the never-ending changes in capitalist production and technology, and by the outcome of the struggles that it is part of. We have to look at the past for lessons, parallels and examples.
In that spirit the campaign will:
- Oppose all cuts, be they to staffing, courses, student support or otherwise
- Demand the abolition of tuition fees, for all students home and international, education at all levels of society is a social good
- Demand the introduction of a universal maintenance grant, paid at the level of the living wage
- Demand the restoration of funding across all constituent parts of the UK and NI. In Scotland the precept that is paid for home students has not risen since 2008
- Demand the abolition of fees in Northern Ireland. We recognise it is for the people of the Island of Ireland to decide their future, whilst NI is part of the UK, we will build pressure for restorative funding, abolition of fees, for maintenance grants, in other words, fully funded free education
For a society where education is for satisfying needs, not profits. For a reduction of working hours for all staff.