Mark Harrop, the Tory president of the University Of Birmingham Guild Of Students (student union), has Colluded with the University management to try and suppress a peaceful protest. Harrop identified one of his own students for disciplinary action and helped the university in the deployment of an injunction that was condemned by amnesty international and other human rights groups. Knowing that this would not be accepted by the student body Harrop lied about, misrepresented or neglected to mention how he was acting.

Mark Harrop arrived at the occupation that took place on the 23rd of November pretending to be looking after the students human rights when in fact he was taking down names that he could later pass on to the university. He is now the most important prosecution witness in the case against the only student in the country to be disciplined following the wave of occupations. His testimony even goes beyond a simple eyewitness account as he speculates negatively about the involved student’s integrity and character. Because of his actions the disciplinary of the involved student, Simon Furse, has progressed to the stage where he is facing expulsion from the university.

Harrop was briefed about the injunction, by university senior managers, before it was delivered to the occupiers. Knowing the University was preparing to remove the protesters, possibly by force, if they did not comply with the injunction, Harrop’s concern when being called to scene was not with the students but that if he didn’t keep his distance they might become “suspicious.” He then refused to condemn or even tell students about the existence of the injunction until over two weeks later when he was forced too by political pressure and the condemnations of human rights organizations. This complacency could easily have put students at the university in danger of prosecution.

The full referenced story of this can be found here

Unfortunately action that puts the interests of the University and Harrop himself over the interests of students is not the exception but the rule of Harrop’s presidency so far. Earlier this year Harrop suspended Edd Bauer his VP Education. He suspended Edd without any vote in student council for his participation in a peaceful protest at the liberal democrat conference that unfortunately led to his arrest. This sparked mass protests on campus, objections from academics and sabbatical officers across the country. It even lead to a early day motion being put to parliament.

The right to protest and freedom of speech is under attack at the University of Birmingham. We have a long and proud history in this country of student protest. As students working in the education system we can’t go on strike. Instead we take our equivalent of a strike: we do sit-ins and occupations. We withdraw space because we can’t withdraw our labour. This has been a key feature of UK student activism for generations. In fact, at the University of Birmingham, all the student representation we have on university committees was won, in 1968, when 800 students occupied the Great Hall demanding a democratic voice.

Sadly it is now these same student representatives in conjunction with the university who seek to discipline students for taking part in sit-ins, suspend officers for unfurling banners off bridges and take out injunctions banning protests on campus.

The independence of policing and politics is a fundamental principle of democracy. Yet, as very few people at our university know, Matt McPherson, the elected President of Edinburgh University Students Association (EUSA), is also a part time special constable with Lothian and Borders police. This article seeks to begin a dialogue about the appropriateness of this dual role and of the ways in which policing and politics have become dangerously blurred in recent years. To clarify, it is in no way meant as a personal attack on Matt, but is the opinion of a student who, until recently, had no idea of his role as a police officer and feels that the lack of debate about this during election time and since is worryingly indicative of a dubious acceptance that policing and politics can encroach upon one another without creating real threats to democratic rights.

It is another little known fact that Mr McPherson was unanimously disallowed from entering the last Edinburgh Anti-Cuts Coalition‘s occupation, after a long debate in which fellow occupiers from Glasgow made it clear that they felt unable to participate in the protest whilst there was a not-particularly-undercover police officer present. These were students who had been violently evicted by police from their own occupation, The Free Hetherington, in a move that was uniformly condemned; Charles Kennedy, in his report on the occupation said the police had ‘no legal authority’ for the ‘opportunistic’ eviction, whilst Tommy Gore, president of Glasgow Univesrity Student Representative Council, called the eviction ‘heavy handed’ and ‘unacceptable’. In this light, with the bruises from the eviction barely healed, it is totally legitimate for students to feel uncomfortable discussing tactics, personal details and ideas for action against the government fees and cuts in front of a police officer, off duty or not. The question of whether, in a similar situation, Mr McPherson could have condemned police brutality in a comparable way to the Glasgow Student Union, adds further problematic complexity. When asked simply whether he could ‘assure us [the occupiers] that he would not pass on information to the police’ about the people involved in the occupation and the activities going on there, he unequivocally replied that ‘he could not guarantee this’.

At this point it might seem easy to break out the old adage of how people shouldn’t be worried ‘if they have nothing to hide’, but I would hope students at this university have a less Orwellian ideal of justice, and can see the implications of Mr McPherson’s juggled roles for all students, regardless of their political persuasions and views about protest. EUSA is a body mandated to serve student interests and in numerous cases; not just organising buses to protests and planning marches but also holding personal details and dealing with pastoral problems within the student community; the presence of a special constable at the heart of the organisation raises fundamental issues. Mr McPherson’s responses to this have generally focused on his ability to comfortably switch between the two ‘hats’, but this is clearly impossible without severely undermining his capacity to fulfil the obligations of either position.

So why are people worried about politics and policing becoming embroiled?

It is important to also see this problem in a wider societal context. This has not been a good year for policing, particularly in terms of transgressions away from the police’s supposed role as ‘servants of the people’. A number of cases of gross misconduct by undercover police officers came to light: the high profile example of Mark Kennedy, who was found by judges to have acted as an ‘agent provocateur’ in spying on non-violent climate change activists and most recently, Jim Boyling, another undercover policeman, was found to have lied in court under oath, married and fathered children with a deceived female activist and spent years spying on Reclaim The Streets, a group whose only ‘crime’ has been to organise free street parties. Bob Lambert, now a lecturer on Terrorism Studies at St Andrews University, was found to have been spying on Greenpeace and anti-fascist groups for special branch over a period of 26 years. Britain’s top police officer, the chief of London Met, was forced to resign in July over his failure to tell senior figures, including the prime minister, that Scotland Yard had hired a former News of the World executive as an adviser while steadfastly refusing to reopen any inquiries into the phone hacking scandal. This comes after top governmental sources were found to be asking lecturers to ‘spy’ on potentially ‘extremist’ students and police released a statement telling people they should ‘report’ anyone they knew who may have ‘anarchist’ ideas. These transgressions fundamentally undermine people’s faith in the police and motivation to get involved in democratic protest. They show that, in a general environment of broken trust and curtailed freedoms; it is totally unacceptable to have a serving police officer at the helm of our student union.

The fact that many people have felt the hard brunt of the police in the last year should not be trivialised. Students have been kettled, dragged from wheelchairs, beaten with truncheons and charged by mounted police horses. Many have ended up in hospital simply because they wanted to go out and protest about the way cuts to higher education and sky-rocketing fees are wrecking their lives. Alfie Meadows, a student from Middlesex University, had to have emergency brain surgery last December after being struck in the head by a police officer. Scottish students up here have been barricaded in their own homes by police to prevent them attending rallies, profiled and stopped from entering the inauguration of Princess Anne and arrested whilst peacefully protesting outside tax-dodging businesses. I am not suggesting that Mr Macpherson is in anyway personally implicated in these appalling acts of violence, but am seeking to show why so many students are angry about the police’s response to their democratic right to protest and why they have utterly understandable grievances about then giving details to and having meetings with a man who spends his time in the same uniform. Police involvement in student issues should be on our terms and in our time, not a constant presence which undermines our autonomy and privacy.

There is clearly a fundamental issue in people being able to make laws one day and enforce them the next. At a time when the Tories are implementing costly initiatives to bring in elected police commissioners, against the wishes of The Association of Police Authorities who called it ‘the wrong policy at the wrong time’, we should be actively enforcing a clear division between police and politicians. Our Student’s Association cannot be the dynamic and inclusive fighting force it needs to be in a potentially catastrophic time for education when our student president wears a policeman’s hat.

Finally, after a fairly protracted Freedom of Information request, I managed to get this response from Lothian and Borders Force Intelligence Unit:

Special Constables are subject to The Police (Special Constables) (Scotland) Regulations 2008 and part of these stipulate that it is not possible for a Special Constable to take an active part in politics. That is not to say that someone who has held an elected office could not apply to become a Special Constable, however it would be necessary for them to step-down as such before they took up the post. I note that you have included being an elected member of a Student Union as part of your example of political affiliation. Given that participation in a Student Union can take a variety of forms, this type of activity would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis to see whether it would have an impact on a person’s recruitment as a Special Constable. Again, it would not automatically bar them from applying but, depending on the political involvement, it might prove necessary for the individual to resign from the Union before taking up any Special Constable duties.

So what now?

It seems that we, as activists and protesters on the left, need to be re-articulating our relationship with the police. The idea of ‘democratic policing’ is a fundamental fallacy, which is being used by policy makers and right wing analysts to essential disguise what we know as ‘political policing’. The ways supposed ‘community coppers’ have been used to gather data, harass protesters and undermine hard-fought freedoms should not be left unchallenged. It is a very easy step to move from naive solidarity – ‘the police are the 99% too’ – to allowing the state to control the terms of our protests. Articulating this can in a balanced and convincing way can seem challenging, but we must remember that ultimately, those movements that court or placate the state in such ways will get utterly subsumed into it. The police have a monopoly in state-sanctioned domestic violence, and not acknowledging their placement within societal structures of power will exclude far more people than the worry of seeming ‘anti police’ in some vague sense.

Right now this means fighting for:  no platform for state spies (like Bob Lambert, mentioned earlier, who recently came to give a lecture on ‘Extremism in Universities’ in Edinburgh) – further engagement with groups campaigning about deaths in police custody and victims of police brutality – properly formed critiques of ‘democratic policing’ – examination of the ways in which climate and animal liberation groups have reacted to and avoided police infiltration (this will be happening to anticuts groups as the movement progresses but should not be an excuse for blanket secrecy or infighting) – being unafraid to articulate the clear connection between police brutality and the recent London riots – and then looking very closely at the relationship between police and politicians in our localities and parliaments.

To keep out the cold, Laurie had put on our small fire the novel she was reading. Shiv sacrificed the manuscript for his new book. Our bonfire huddle represented the older hacks – campaigning journalists and twentysomething activists who’ve been round a block or two compared to most of those present.

But we were a minority: maybe 2% of people there were the older usual suspects. A bigger minority -perhaps 30% – was university students. They were mostly white, mostly middlish class: a cross section of the kind of people who get to go to university in broken Britain. But a clear majority of the people kettled outside Whitehall that day were at inner city schools or further education colleges. Most weren’t white. I’d post with this blog numerous photos of young teenagers protesting in school uniform if the police hadn’t nicked my phone after Fortnum & Mason. A journalist who wasn’t there rang me to ask what was going on. I handed the phone to the nearest teenager and he spat rage: “they’re taking away my EMA – how will I afford sixth form? How will I ever get into uni?”

But after 8 hours of anger, we were mostly just cold, miserable, and terrified of being charged again by the thundering police horses. The chants had dried up, and we were too busy asking ourselves how long we could hold on before peeing on the Treasury building was the only remaining option to ask how to re-build Britain.

Various people or Trotskyite factions had attempted to give speeches or otherwise indoctrinate. Bizarrely, we stumbled on a Tory MP who had come out to see what was going on and thought that the minimum wage for 16 year olds was £7.50 an hour. In one corner, a sound system played some dance music down a loud hailer and a few followed the demands of the beat. But mostly, people were cold, despondent and depressed, hunched round little bonfires of placards and leaves to keep us going in the sub-zero temperatures.

Or, at least, they were until right before the end. Throughout the hours, there had been various attempts to cheer up the crowd – to turn this formative experience of political expression into a fun day of carnival and solidarity. But almost all of these had failed. None of the songs had been taken up, the chants had become blunt and dull. No one wanted to listen to yet more speeches.

None of the songs were taken up that is until one magical moment not long before I got out. After 8 hours, the police started to allow a slow trickle to leave. Everyone queued up, awaiting our turn – knowing we could be there for hours. Suddenly, someone next to me started singing Hey Jude. I joined in, as did a couple of others. Gradually, more and more people were singing: “better Better BETTER BETTER”. Another Beatles song followed, and another. Here, finally, was some culture that united us – the old hacks, the middle class university students and the working class black 16 year olds. Whilst we would all go home and turn on different radio stations, whilst we are all fans of different bands, singers or stars, we all knew the Beatles. Our parents – or grandparents I suppose – were the children of the 60s. They grew up at a time of relative economic equality. And their culture was so much less structured by class. And so to find some common songs in this crowd united by our belief in education and disgust at the government, we each had to reach back through the generations, to that era of equality – to the tunes which have echoed down the decades

Now, I’m sure there may have been other songs we would all have known. But it does seem that we have become more divided by culture as we’ve become divided by wealth: there is no one voice for my generation – we don’t have a Beatles. Thank god the Tories are there to unite us.

On the 27/06/11 Strathclyde University went into occupation over the proposed cuts to four departments; community educacation, geography, music and sociology. These annoucements come in the context of other student courses and servives being affected by Jim McDonalds* ruthless campaign. These cuts are a clear ideological attack on the students and staff of this university.

Jim McDonald has continually refused to engagae with student and staff in any meaningful capacity. Management have made a back handed attempt to push through cuts when the majority of the student population are on holiday for the summer therefor highlighting the undemocratic procedures and lack of consulation with students and staff.

The board of management are un-elected and un-representative of the student body.

This occupation wished to oppose all cuts and to highlight the undemocratic procedures being pushed through over and over again by Jim McDonald.

No to course closures
No to staff redundancies.
No to cuts.

Messages of support can be left on their facebook page, you can follow what’s happening on twitter via the tag #strathSOS and if you’re in Glasgow go join them on the 5th floor of the Graham Hills building, 50 George St – they’ve a quiz this evening (moved from the Free Hetherington at Glasgow Uni – about to enter it’s 6th month of occupation! Go Glasgow)

Solidarity from everyone here at Bright Green.

——update——

You can now follow the occupation at @StrathOccupied and on the tag #strathoccupied

*Jim McDonald is Vice-Chancellor at Strathclyde University

To make this a reality we must first accept that the results of NUS sabbatical elections are already decided before the conference begins. A successful election strategy is measured in years: those last days at the conference are just the finishing touches. In 2011, Labour Students is the only national organisation which sufficiently organises for these elections. It supports its members to become elected officers in student unions, fills the conference floor with sympathetic delegates and makes sure that delegates know exactly how to vote to maximise seats. We on the left must therefore replicate the winning strategies and improve the weaker ones where we can. All we need to do is think in the long-term.

So here is a proposal: my ideal five-year plan for a successful progressive left student movement in NUS.

Step 1 – Institutional Elections: Delegates and Sabbatical Officers
At this year’s NUS conference I was amazed to discover that a Labour Student in my delegation had been sent a text from the leadership outlining the order in which to vote for Labour candidates (thus ensuring that each of two Labour candidates won exactly half of the Labour first preferences). I’m not proposing that we organise ourselves in the same way, but we do at least need to make sure that the conference is filled with lefties.

Of course, this is easier said than done. We need to be willing to spend a couple of weeks each year mobilising for NUS elections. This means taking a long term perspective, balancing these commitments with our respective fights with university managements over course closures. Moreover, we need to be sharing expertise and resources with groups elsewhere. Ideally, we need a formalised network of information and tactics swapping.

More effort still should be put into each institution’s sabbatical elections, as these have a greater payoff but are much more difficult to win than delegate elections. Like it or not, student union sabbatical officers make up an increasingly large proportion of the institutions that send delegates. Furthermore, candidates for the NUS full-time positions are considered more credible if they’ve had past experience as a sabbatical officer, and they have more contacts on the national level.

The payoff will not be immediate – but until the conference floor if covered in lefties, can we really expect the elections to go our way?

Step 2 – The National Executive Committee (NEC)
The NEC is a place where we can immediately win seats. We already have enough delegates (and sabbaticals) for this to be possible. This year we won 4 seats on the block of 15, and would probably have won 5 if we’d run another FE (Further Education) candidate. Next year we should be aiming for 5 or 6. These seats are important for two reasons. First, they allow us to have a lot of say in NUS’ direction without winning any difficult full-time positions. Second, NEC members are in a strong position to stand in VP and Presidential elections.

There are many different routes to these positions. Our higher profile candidates should take the seats on the block of 15. Experienced sabbatical officers should support each other into getting elected at the ‘Zone Conferences’. And we must not overlook the importance of the sections (part-time, mature, international, post-graduate) and liberation campaigns (black, LGBT, women’s, disabled), where we have had much success in the past. The structures have been designed to stop us from taking too large a proportion of seats on the NEC, so we need to use a diversity of strategies. This is by no means impossible: after all, the Scottish Parliament was designed to stop the SNP winning a majority.

Step 3 – VPs
Now for the full-time positions. Here we have to pace ourselves; we must not try to run before we can walk. At first we should only aim to elect one VP. If we make one candidate our priority, our chance of winning will be much higher. We can make sure that s/he is absolutely everywhere in the build up to the campaign and we can hammer home why our candidate is the best one while the student right (or centre-left…) is focusing on an entirely different position. My suspicion from looking at this year’s election results is that many delegates who support the incumbents could be convinced to vote for one lefty VP as a counter balance. My gut reaction is that our easiest target this year is VP Higher Education but that’s by no means certain.

This is not to say we should rule out running multiple candidates next year – we certainly should run them. My point is that we need to think tactically and draw a distinction between winnable seats, where we unite to get the candidate elected, and unwinnable seats which we use as a forum for making our points and supporting the slate.

Of course, this requires that we put our factional differences aside. If we’re only aiming for one or two VPs each election then most factions won’t be represented. But, if we take a long-term perspective, then over the years each faction will have its opportunities.

Step 4 – President
This is the obvious final step, but all too often it’s presented as the first and only step. Electing a president will be the easiest thing in the world once we have a couple of VPs, a supportive NEC full and a conference floor full of sympathetic delegates. More importantly, if we want to maintain leadership over a long period then pushing for one presidential candidate isn’t enough – we need union sabbaticals, an NEC and string of VPs to act as presidents-in-waiting. We are not ready yet, so unless we get in by a fluke we can’t expect this to happen anytime soon. But by April 2016 we can be victorious.

And then we can get on with all the important stuff like much-needed democratic reforms, and fighting for the free, fair and funded education that NUS used to endorse.

Over the next year, and further ahead, we are going to see the imposition of those fees, strike action from the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU), departments cutting courses, firing staff and closing entirely across the country, and attempts to fully privatise our education. A united and strong left campaign that brings together all those who believe education is a public good is going to be absolutely essential. It was heartening, therefore, to see a wide variety of political groups at conference: the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL), Workers’ Power, Student Broad Left (SBL), Counterfire, Green Parties (both Scottish and England and Welsh), Socialist Party (SP), Labour Representation Committee (LRC), People & Planet, anarchists and other independent socialists. There was a reasonable geographical spread too, with all the devolved nations represented. It was a little disappointing, however, to see no Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) members there. One of the most pleasing aspects of our movement over the last six months has been the lack of sectarianism, and I hope that whether or not the SWP choose to get involved with NCAFC — and I hope they do — we can continue to work together against our real enemies. We’re never going to agree on everything, but we’re all anti-cuts, pro-public services, and want to build a more democratic, more sustainable and more equitable economy.

Constitution
Until now the NCAFC has been organised by open meetings with no formal leadership or committee and,due to those meeting happening there, been dominated extensively by activists from London and the South East. Those of us in Scotland, for example, have had no real opportunity to influence the direction of the ostensibly national campaign. Some at conference thought this should basically continue, meetings should move around the country, but remain open to anyone who wanted to attend. Others thought an elected national committee would be more representative and democratic. I side with that latter camp. Open meetings are great if anyone really can attend, but there’s more needed for that than just a right. Transporting people all over the country on a regular basis would cost hundreds of pounds, money that could be better spent actually fighting cuts and building a national demonstration than organising our own internal meetings.

The proposal we adopted for an elected national committee elected by STV and with guaranteed gender balance (at least 5 of the 14 nationally elected block must be self-defining female), plus self-organised regional committees and liberation caucuses, ensures a degree of continuity while also allowing a spread of geographical representation and preventing any one faction from dominating the campaign.

The election itself was, however, somewhat less than ideal. By the time we had agreed a structure people had almost to leave. That left us with just half an hour for nominations, hustings and voting. We also didn’t have software to hand for STV and had to resort to an online calculator with a very poor interface which took a long time to enter the data (this is why you never admit to knowing how electoral systems work).

Fortunately, five women were elected normally, so there was no need to use the gender balancing mechanism and, though still far from proportional, we have some geographic diversity with 7 London, 1 Edinburgh, 1 Aberdeen, 1 Liverpool, 1 Northern Ireland and 3 Birmingham activists elected. Unfortunately Workers’ Power, disagreeing with the process by which the conference was called and the committee agreed, boycotted the election; despite that, however, we have AWL, SBL, Green and self-defined libertarian communists on the committee, so no faction should be too dominant. Bizarrely, NUS NEC member and NCAFC founder Michael Chessum didn’t make it onto the committee, but hopefully he can still get a place through the London regional committee.

Future Action
Going forward, regional conferences and liberation caucuses will have to be set up. There is already a London committee and a women’s causus. There is also the Northern Ireland Student Assembly (NISA) and we’re in the process of forming the Scottish Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. It remains to be seen how those two regional bodies will formally relate to NCAFC, but I hope that whether they also affiliate to EAN, or any other UK wide body, they can work with NCAFC.

The constitution was approved by a relatively small conference of people (around 90) and can undoubtedly be improved. There should be another conference in the Autumn, prior to any national demonstration, to evaluate our structures and make improvements. New elections should be held then and regularly thereafter, maybe 3-4 times per year.

On June 30th we will see the biggest coordinated strike action in this country in years. It’s a opportunity for us to connect the struggle of workers with that of the student movement and NCAFC will be working to build solidarity action and support over the next few weeks. We need to work with school students to support the NUT action and walkouts from pupils.

We agreed to protests at party conferences this Autumn, including Labour. There was unanimous (I think) support for demonstrating at governing party conferences (including the SNP and Welsh Labour) and most activists were in favour of a demonstration at the UK Labour conference too. Despite the membership of some very good people and their connection to the labour movement, Labour are passing on cuts on councils across the country and support cuts nationally. They cannot be absolved of their complicity. There will, though, be no single line or message for Labour conference, some will want to lobby them to oppose cuts, some to protest the whole system; it is best not to try to force a single message, we need to campaign together where we agree and accept we will have differences in our preferred tactics.

There will be a national demonstration in Autumn. We need to try to persuade NUS to support that demonstration, but we will take the lead and move forward with or without their support. When that happens we need to broaden our message, against all cuts and in solidarity with the broader trade union movement; we can’t just fight the same battle as last year, but neither should we accept that the fight over fees is lost. La lutte continue.

Finally, we need to organise for NUS conference next year. We need delegates elected across the country and need to make a much better job at reaching out and including FE. We need to decide whether to target specific positions on the NEC and if so which ones. I think it’s better to focus on winning one or two sabbs than spreading ourselves too thin. We may not be able to realistically challenge for president. Liam will be hard, if not impossible, to beat mid-term, but if we can win at least one VP position we will be in a much better position to build for the year after.

Those elected (using the Single Transferable Vote) were (in no particular order):
Edward Bauer, Bob Sutton, Ryan Barnes, Claire Lister, Jade Baker, Aaron Peters, Eshe Asante, James McAsh, Alice Swift, Greg Brown, Daniel Cooper, Gordon Maloney, Ed Maltby, and Claire Locke.

Congratulations to all involved – let’s hope for an exciting year of student activism ahead. From an historical perspective, this is the most united left grouping in student politics since the Campaign for Free Education back in 2003. Let’s hope in can build on an phenomenal year of student protest, and deliver something spectacular next year.

Last week the Scottish media were enthusiastically reporting a poll suggesting that 65% of the population were in favour of students making a contribution to the cost of their degree. Yet only one of the Scottish parties is proposing that students make such a contribution. The SNP, Labour and Greens have all made clear pre-election promises not to charge student fees. Even the Liberal Democrats have tried to close the door after their £9000-a-year fees horse bolted by claiming to be against fees in Scotland.

And it’s not just Scotland. All the parties in Northern Ireland have ruled out £9000 a year fees. Even the doctrinaire Amero-philes in the DUP have ruled fees out.

What this shows is this the power of protest. Where normally government is guided by focus groups, polls and the well-paid lobbyists in sharp suits who whisper sweet tales of privatisation in the ears of politicians, for the rest of us protest provides a very successful antidote.

I was a student from 1998-2004. During that time fees were introduced for the first time, and the foundations laid for the £3000 a year fees introduced by the last Labour government. In response to this student leaders organised a few marches. In 1999 we marched in orderly fashion down Princes Street. This secured deferred fees for Scottish students. Instead of being charged £1000 a year, Scottish students were charged just over £2000 on graduation. Protest worked – we secured a concession in proportion to our protest.

The student protests in October and November were a whole different matter. Instead of a gentle walk through London students expressed their anger fulsomely. We all remember the images from Millbank. And that explosion of anger has so frightened our politicians in Scotland that they take their lead not from lobbyists for Universities, nor from business leaders, and not even from focus groups and polls. Instead almost all Scottish politicians have been cowed by the student protests.

It is interesting the extent to which protest produces results in almost direct correlation to the anger of the protest. This shows how we can counter the narrative that the cuts are right, but just too far and too fast. The lesson is that we must harness public anger through protest at cuts to welfare and public services to stop the Westminster government and pull our political representatives off the fence on cuts. There is, as Adam Ramsay points out, plenty of money to go round. But that money’s only available for the common good if we’re not intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.

We need protest and we need it soon so we can beat the cuts being imposed by this government at the behest of the filthy rich, and ensure that the next government wants to make a more equal society, not make  (slower and shallower) cuts to public services. And that protest has to be angry, otherwise we’ll lose the rights and services it took so long for popular movements to win.

Students from Edinburgh University Anti-Cuts Coalition will be joining lecturers on their picket lines in solidarity.

We are a large group of students campaigning against cuts, through direct action and the lobbying of Edinburgh University management and Scottish parliamentarians, with our primary focus being on education cuts. Alongside informing fellow students and the public on the impact cuts will have locally and nationally, alongside possible alternatives.

Edinburgh students have also been heavily involved with UKuncut.

We are calling for our fellow students to email their lecturers in support, to boycott classes on the day and to join lecturers on the picket lines. Alongside informing students on the reasons behind the dispute.

A rally has been called by UCU Edinburgh in Bristo Square at midday on Thursday.

We have planned further action for the day. (Check our Twitter feed for updates on the day)

The strike on the 17th will coincide with strikes at 7 other Scottish Universities over the same dispute.

The following Thursday, the 24th, Edinburgh UCU members will strike again alongside 62 other institutions across the UK unless management re-engage in negotiations.

These changes will cost lecturers at the start of their career more than £450,000 in total expected benefits and reduce their annual pension by nearly one-third whilst an existing scheme member aged under 55 in similar circumstances will see their total expected benefits fall by £150,000.

Mike Williamson, Vice-President Academic Affairs elect of Edinburgh University Students’ Association(EUSA) said “In the long term the proposed pension plans will negatively affect the quality of lecturers attracted to the profession. A number of our postgraduates are UCU members, whilst many students will also be entering the sector after graduating. It is critical that we stand by our lecturers, and send a clear message to University management through supporting this strike.”

Jaye Ware, an Edinburgh University Sociology student, said “The proposed scheme will disproportionately affect women through punishing those taking career breaks. Further widening gender inequality in University staffing and pay.”

Mike Holmes, Edinburgh University UCU Pensions Officer said of the changes [In reference to £450,000 figures and £150,000 figures – see above]:

“Those numbers neatly bracket the sorts of houses we all live in and, given what we’re all being asked to give up, it led me to the simple question “Would I Give My House to Save a Banker?”.

I decided “Hell No!” and put my X on the form. I’ve paid for my pension, I value my pension, and I’ll be on the picket line on the 17th and 24th to defend my pension. If you feel at all the same way, please join me there.”

For more information on the strike, visit UCU Edinburgh’s website.

I’m a student at the University of Birmingham, and one of twelve facing disciplinary action that could lead to my expulsion after a peaceful one-day sit-in that ended with our forceful eviction by university security and the police.

A second-year student in the theology department, which has already lost a third of its staff due to swinging cuts, was assaulted by a police officer forcing his way into the room. He was linking arms across the door when he was head-butted by an officer and then thrown against the wall. This was described by West Midlands police in a press release as “an officer accidentally clashed heads with a student”.

This video taken in the immediate aftermath as the last students are being pushed out shows a another female student, who has pressed charges of assault against a security guard in a very distressed state describing being pushed to the floor, punched and kicked.

There was no intention for the sit-in to be malicious; we were only attempting to follow the time honoured tradition of student protests to draw attentions to injustices. The University of Birmingham was founded by Joseph Chamberlain because he believed in the principle of free and universal education for all. If anyone should be put through the disciplinary process for their actions it should be the Vice Chancellor David Eastwood, whose damaging cuts are ripping up the principles of the public university.

David Eastwood and the University of Birmingham are pushing ahead with cuts of ten million pounds and 200 jobs despite its income actually being projected to increase by 2012/13, despite government cuts.

The Vice Chancellor David Eastwood sat on the Browne review and has also written a number of letters in the Guardian encouraging fee increases (link to http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/10/education-cuts-graduates-tuition-fees).

He has also opted to award himself an 11% pay rise this year despite his staff some of whom are on £12,000 pounds only getting 1%. With inflation at 4.8% this can be taken as a hugely damaging cut to people whose wages are already below the poverty line.

David Eastwood has overseen the hugely controversial closure of the Sociology department. The excellent exposing research done by Academic FOI shows that the University of Birmingham is treating its staff in a very aggressive manner, being one of the top five universities in deployment of gagging orders.

The University of Birmingham’s managers are treating the cuts as opportunity for growth, a veil for disgusting cuts to staff wages and as a chance for self aggrandisement, alienating staff and students from across the political spectrum. By being the first university to attempt to discipline students for standing up to education they are compounding their error.

The hundreds of signatures we have received on our petition and the letters we have received from as far afield as Australia and South Africa are testament to this.

The support we have received from the excellent student body at Birmingham University has been brilliant and unstinting. However, the case has not only thrown into sharp contrast the university’s hard line attitude but also the student union’s inability to represent students. While we have received exceptional support from students and the unions TUC, UCU and Unison, the support from the Birmingham Guild of Students has failed to materialise. The Guild has told us that they can’t support us because they will later sit on the disciplinary panel as our “prosecutors” and so it would be a conflict of interest. I find this deeply troubling; any student union that can’t support its students against the university is failing significantly in its role.

We have a cause that is worth fighting for and no amount of university threats or timid student unions will cause us to cease fighting for it. But the process of a disciplinary is a problem for many of us and is causing a lot of stress and worry. A friend of mine wants to apply to PGCE, but she can’t graduate with a disciplinary case ongoing, and if this case stretches out then the final year students involved are not going to be able to graduate and apply for jobs.

The hearings will take place on Wednesday, 2nd February; the students involved are worried they will go on for sometime. Please spare a thought and spread our petition by e-mail, Facebook, blogs and Twitter.

Thankyou, you can find our blog here and us on Twitter.