lems posed by the vicious austerity measures of the Labour Govemment. The cutbacks in the colleges are so enormous that students alone feel incapable of pushing them back. Students have also been faced over the past year with repression from college authorities whẹn they do take action in the colleges against the Government's policies in education.
The Broad Left leadership of the NUS have responded to the present situation by emphasising the necessity of an alliance with the trade unions. However the Broad Left refused during the suimmer to prepare students to come out clearly in support of workers' struggles against the £6 norm. But despite the lack of any national publicity from this leadership for the 21 October demonstration on education cuts, students from Colleges of Further Education and teaching training colleges turned out in large numDers. HALF-HEARTED Students must demand that the 26 November unemployment demonstration is not taken up in the same half-hearted fashion. They must demand that both their student unions and the NUS Executive put out a clear call for strike action by students on the 26th, as well as forming a mass contingent of students on the demonstration to show students' opposition to the anti-working class policies of the Wilson Government. The Broad Left's misleadership in failing to mobilise the mass of their membership against the policies of the Government is the direct result of their unwillingness to dancies and 'natural wastage'; defence of une overnment s ciccuon pieages Ior increased provision in the social services housing and education, etc, and to implement that part of the Labour election manifesto which calls for a real redistribution of wealth and power The Trades Council hàs also swung into action with proposals for a campaign against the closure of the Further Education College in Saltley.
WEST OF ENGLAND Militants in Bristol who broke through a ponce cordon tound Avon County Cour cil discussing whether or not to build two schools. The demonstrators immediately raised the cry: 'Build the schools, fight LHC CULS.
Earlier 400 people had turned out to picket the meeting of the Tory-controlled Council to demand that police spending be cut, rather than social spending (it is estimated that the Avon and Somerset police force will overspend its budget by bureaucracy and in the Labour Party in a real fight in defence of education and living standards in general.
In contrast to this, IMG students in the colleges have been fighting for demands and a strategy way forward. Central to such a strategy is the slogan that neither the working class or students are responsible for the present crisis, and that they should not accept cuts in their living standards to safeguard the profits of a few. the IMG fights for a sliding scale of grants based on a student cost of living index monitored by prices committees of students and workers in the colleges.
BASIC THING
This is the basic thing that students must establish in the claim for a new level of the grant. This must be combined with the demand for an immediate increase in the grant to £1,200, to bring students' real living standards back to the 1962 level.
In the same way the IMG calls for cash injections into the public sector as a whole and a sliding scale of social expenditure to protect the social services from the ravages of inflation. A socially useful plan of public works, to build the hospitals and schools that are so desperarciy neeaca to provide adequate racmine: for all, should be fought for by students. Such demands show that students are clearly part of a fight to defend education on a class basis and not as a special case or pavueged group in society.
and it eventually drew support from a half day strike by ATTI members at Bristol Poly, tenants from the Hartcliffe estate, over 50 NALGO members in the Social Services Department, as well as from students all over the area.
The usually quite streets of Gloucester also saw 300 trade unionists, students and parents making a strong protest against massave culs ill tre coucauon buaget by the Tory-controled Council involve a 30 per cent cut in educational supplies and a reduction in teaching staff of at least 200.
This situation is common throughout the West Country. More than 1,000 students and local trade unionists who marched through Exeter last week protesting about the education cuts were told by speakers that Devon has one of the poorest pupil-teacher ratios in the country. The Conservative-controlled education authority is preparing drastic cuts in nursery and special school budgets and the school building programme, while continthat can really provide a Thus the setting up of a joint student and woiker committee in North-East London Poly to open the books; they have also been fighting for joint demonstrations of students and workers in Bristol and Birmingham against the cuts, In Liverpool, Edinburgh and London, IMG students have been in the forefront of mobilising 3362 ployment. A campaign is being launched by the IMG nationally to commit student umons to support any reaundancy struggles by workers in the localities, in the way in which Newcastle students supported the Eldon Square pickets.
The present Wilson leadership of the Labour Party is selling the working tionary organisation inside the working class.
is our ideas. wards daily.
Mary centres way.
To give is a militant act Yours fraternally, gradualist solutions achieved through Parliament, but because it realises the basic need to establish political unity between students and the working class The unemployment demonstration on 26 November is a real test case for whether or not students are willing to support workers in action. Already in many arcas students are bullding Joint mobilising committees with college workers and local Trades Councils to build mass support for the demo.
Space, on student coaches must be given over to the unemployed, strike action must be discussed in every college, pickets must be organised, and college facilities should be made available to trade unionists where necessary. In building for the demonstration, workers involved in local struggles should be invited to address general meetings and money should be raised to finance broad based Right to Work committees.
OPPOSITION
Such actions could really turn students out on the day to express their opposition to the anti-working class pol icies of the present Labour Government. The IMG will be continuing to fight insae menvos ror mis overau artesnatve strategy to the present bankrupt one offered by the Broad Left. A real fight to defend education means a fight to challenge and remove the present Labour lendersuo isen ane mass acuol by students must be clearly directed towards that goal.
BN44 063362 British working class will depend to a large extent on
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by the IMG Student Commission