Students protest over art cuts and course closures
As worker’s struggle reignited, the student movement left the forefront of dissent in Britain. However, students didn’t simply go back to drinking and watching Countdown (or whatever other cliché you want to throw at students).
Before I go into the last year of activism, I want to explain a bit of what Portsmouth University was like politically when I joined almost three years ago, which makes the last year, and the few months before it greater. Upon coming to University I joined SWSS (Socialist Worker Student Society). As far as I am aware, they group had not been active for a year or more, or the previous members had all left that year. I was the only student that attended that first meeting. The group slowly grew and diminished, as people became less active, but there was a small, but active group always around. After that first year, the local organiser moved and for the first time just two of us were left to really organise for ourselves. This was all during the now famous protests at Millbank and the height of the student movement of last year. In those few months before Christmas, we made mistakes and we sometimes made the wrong decisions, but we learnt, and ultimately that small group of two grew to a solid 6, with many more students around us. Bear in mind that SWSS was, at the time, the only political group on campus. There was no active Labour Students or Conservative Future. This is a major in the lack of a real political atmosphere on campus. This brings me to the start of the year, where just a small number of student, many of who were newly active, managed have some real solid impact and victories on and off campus.
Before I begin, I should explain that students were always involved PACT (Portsmouth Against the Cuts Together) events which I wrote about
here, and I mentioned student’s impact in some of them in the article, so I won’t repeat myself but I will go more into students around the strike days.
The year kicked with January 29th. We were unable to gain any transport from our student union for the event. This was down to NUS flat-out refusing to support the day and calling for a joint demonstration with the TUC in Manchester, where the then NUS President Aaron Porter was chased off the demonstration by students for being a spineless sell out. Our union had originally booked a coach for Manchester but this was later cancelled as getting up the night before to travel the length of the country was not that appealing. We were right not to build for the Manchester coach because it would have been more effort than it was worth when there was a separate but linked demonstration just an hour or so up the road, but it did leave us in the situation with no real transport to invite other students on.
So, the five of us who were in SWSS got the train to London, and for most it was only their second or third big demonstration and the first since being kettled on Westminster Bridge for several hours on December 9th. But the day was great. Seeing over 10,000 students assemble after the defeat on tuition fees and a Christmas break was an inspiration for us to continue the fight, and joining Egyptians at their embassy in support of the revolution there really showed some newer members international solidarity in action and we all came back ready to restart the fight back on campus.
But, for the last couple of months of the academic year that fight back did not really happen. With a union unwilling to be political (with two sabbs being an exception) and students still deflated after the defeat over tuition fees not much see a reason to keep fighting, no matter who much the ‘loony’ lefties argued they should.
However, we tried to keep the struggle going. We organised a Demonstration shortly after the London demo in January, and for the first time outside of social media we really pushed building it among FE students. We visited a number of local colleges, trying to disguise ourselves as 16 and 17 year-olds as we went about campus distributing leaflets. The weeks before the demonstration was my first serious encounter of police harassment outside a protest. When our Union notified police of the intention to march, the reply they received mentioned myself and another comrade by name and asked if we were involved, saying that we would be held responsible for the actions of those on the demonstration rather than the person who notified the police, and would be arrested should something happen. It didn’t end there. For a week before there was permanently a marked police vehicle outside my flat every day, one day a riot van. Now I could be paranoid, but considering the stories of other activists, and that police officers I had never seen started to address me by name, I think I was justified in my paranoia. In the end, with no real building outside of SWSS the march flopped, but it was still a learning experience for the coming months.
April saw the Student Union hold its annual elections to fill sabbatical and Part-Time Officer positions. For the first time in at least two years, SWSS ran two candidates. Becky Gardner for Women’s Officer, and myself for Ethics and Environment. After a week of campaigning, we both won. That may be because we were only running against Re-open Nominations, but I’ll take it as a success nonetheless!
June 30th was the first real big day of strikes that any of us had ever been active in. A few of us were still in Portsmouth for it, but the academic year was over and no other students were! But we still made sure that people saw the few students left in Portsmouth at the 700+ rally.
After the Summer break, the lessons of the previous nine months were going to come into good use, as student activists hit the ground running.
Shortly before the new academic year officially began, it came to the attention of Becky Gardner, and then, the Student Paper,
Pugwash News that pictures of female participants from the Athletic Union’s Naked Calendar had been leaked onto pornographic websites for at least the last three years. What is worse is that the Student Union had known about it, and did not act. You can see my article on the issue at the time
here. Now usually, unions do not like to give us much, but the Union, in an attempt to show they are ‘student led’ maybe, decided to call an EGM to debate and vote on the continued existence of the calendar. This was ludicrously named ‘The Naked Debate’. It’s fair to say that no one ever expected us to win the vote to get the calendar banned, neither was it our intention (I would rather the calendar wither and die on its own as students stopped buying it, but one can dream). However, we were determined to fight like we could win. Over two-week before the EGM, thousands of leaflets were handed out on campus, meetings were called by both SWSS and the Union’s Women’s Association to state the case that the sexist calendar should be no more. The athletic Union on the other hand, made videos of Male students getting naked and arguing that the calendar is a great event for charity, although which charity almays seemed to be an afterthought for them.
As soon as I entered the room for the debate I knew the result. Around 200 AU members filled the chairs and not many were there to kill the calendar. The debate was a farce. While the Anti-calendar side debated why it is sexist and why it has no place in the Union. The Pro-side spoke about new ‘safety features’. But there were some revelations at the debate. We found out that the suffragettes burned bras, and that feminists are all about nudity. Needless to say, we did not win the debate, but we sure as hell made a mark on the start of the year.
Without much time to rest, October brought the news about cuts to art courses, as well as the closure of three workshops and 17 redundancies. With much haste a
protest was organised starting outside the Eldon Building where arts is based. But two days before the demo, Management took the decision to terminate the position of Intern, and graduate Claire Heath. Why? Because she had been the member of staff who took it upon herself to inform students of the cuts and organise a campaign. Disgustingly, upper management are still yet to give her a meeting.
The protest took place on a miserable Wednesday. Around 60 students and lecturers marched to University house where John Craven, the Vice-Chancellor is based. The bottom floor of the building was occupied for over an hour after it became apparent Craven would not come to see us. A march back to Eldon followed where an open canteen meeting was held to discuss the next steps. Students agreed to keep some sort of protest going each Wednesday until circumstances changed.
The following week, around 30 picketed Eldon, stopping students and lecturers and telling them what was going on. Many were shocked to hear of what happened to Claire and activists and the Student Rag made sure the case became a story bigger than Portsmouth. Even former Portsmouth student Grayson Perry spoke out against the University. But as he is only a Turner Prize winner management didn’t care. After all, they are in the business of money.
The campaign in Eldon made sure that Portsmouth students had a decent mobilisation for November 9th in London. Without help from the Union, even when democratically mandated to build for it (Remember about being student-led?) a coach was filled. My views on the day are written about
here.
Back on Campus the campaign against the Naked Calendar was still on going. The Women’s Association attempted to hold a counter-event to the Calendar launch which was being held at the local shit hole, Liquid. However, in order not to upset their top clients, the Union bar
refused to hold a Love Music, Hate Sexism gig there.
December went by with little activity as people were preoccupied with essays etc, but it drew the end of an active half of the academic year.
So where does this leave us in 2012? Well, we know have an inactive, but existing Labour Students. They don’t seem to be a group that will be easy to work with. They are on the right of the Party and argued in favour of cuts in Eldon if it leads to a post-grad common room. We also have a politically inactive, but socially very active Conservative AND Unionist Future. They have aspirations to be more political it seems. They attend Student Council, and seem quite obsessed with what the Left is up to on campus. There is a meeting in the next week with UCU about the cuts at Eldon. We have potential for strike action there, I hope. And we still have to quick to act on all other issues that could crop up on a student level as well as supporting workers and local people in the City, be it against cuts, fascists or whatnot.
The last year has been a significant learning curve for a lot of us, and I hope, as it is my last year of my degree, that our hard work will ensure that there is a significant base of activists when some of us leave like there was not when I joined. Whatever happens, you’ll read about it
here first.
Sam Bogg
