In one hundred and forty colleges List term students organised direct action against the continuing drop in their living standards. The new term will be no quieter. If the authorities thought that students would have had Christmas for thought" and decided to accept the 30 per cent rent and price increases they are mistaken.
The effect of these increases will be shattering on a grant which like pensions and social security henefits and other state fixed payments. have already been badly hit by inflation.
CAUSED
What has caused rents and prices in the colleges to soar? In the midsisties it was a Labour Government that withdrew subsidies to the catering and housing bulgets in the colwan. They made it clear the state ia longer intended to pay.
The collegr ruthorities had two ces. Either balance the accounts hy taking money from othet lacilities of botrow the money on the open market af exorbitant interest ales In cither case it wis the stur dents ot college workers who mfferod!
Interest charges have chinbed upwatdı. But it is not the authorities who have paid hut the students. The interest charges are included in rent leveli. At Sussex University 42 per cent of the ronts go into the pockels of bankers and money enders Last year the Labour Covernment sutpassed even Its present miserable record. Having decided not to testore the massive Tory cuthacks in efucation spendine, they then started making more cuts. They put amother nail in the student coffin by Subscribe to Red specifically excluding students from the tent freeze extension. This decision has-given the college authotibies the green light, up and down the country, to go ahead with the swingeing rent and price rises.
It did not need a crystal hall to realise what studeats facod at the start of the new year. So what did thie Broad Left dominaled NUS Executive propose students should do? Normally the executive is short on action but long on words. At Margate during the last national conference they could not even manage to spit out the words 'national rent strike."
RENT STRIKES
For the second term running the executive will not give ony national lead to the fight against cutbacks. Il will be left to students in the colleges to do it themseives. Already rent strikes are being organiscd in many ureas However, a rent strike on its own will not be cnough. The rent strices have to be part of a wider campaign of direct action, within the colleges but also on an area level. Just to light in those collepes with their own housing and merely on rent lovels would ignore the majority of students. For this reason the rent strike demands have to be wider on sssues Eke prices, creche facilities or statfing levels, but also part of a campaign that draws in all the colleges in thie This term lookslike going off with a bang, and continuing the events of Last Lerm, But just as students are determined, so are the authorities-the signs from last year are that the closing of colleges ind the victimisations will increase, A hot spring w brewing for the collepos. In the Thirties a Tory Home Secre-