Of Revolutionary Dogs and £1 Billion Surpluses

Today (31st October 2013) was the Halloween University Strike across the UK, with a joint strike in Leeds with Unite, UCU and Unison. We met on the Parkinson Steps at the University of Leeds (see above). There was sun, striking lecturers/tutors (and some students) and a revolutionary dog (see below).

Along with leafleting from the main unions involved, there was also a student leafleting in support of our strike and asking students to understand the implications in higher education of historic cuts in pensions and a lack of pay rises, despite the £1.1 billion surplus of money in higher education pockets! This is what the leaflet said:

But this dispute doesn’t affect me.
It definitely does. Even if you don’t work here, it is your tutors and support staff on strike today and they need your support. Moreover, it’s a labour market. Bad wages and conditions become an excuse to attack the living standards of all workers.

Well said! Here is the leaflet, so you can read it in full:

One comment on an article in The Ripple ‘UOL Staff to Strike on Halloween’, posted by Brian, says “Lecturers already have a rather lazy and easy job, so striking must come easy for them.” and a comment in response to it says “Well you obviously didn’t read the article if you think it’s just lecturers. Tit.” LOL

Related Links:
J30: The City is on Strike
Public Sector Strikes: The Situation at the University
J30, N30 ?30 Go!

J30 N30 ?30 Go!

November 30th 2011 - Public Sector Strike

Well, I've just got back from the public sector strike which took us from outside Old Mining Building, at the University of Leeds, to Woodhouse Moor (see above picture) and then into Leeds city centre. The title of my blog (for those of you old enough to remember) is taken from the Bow Wow Wow single C30 C60 C90 Go! (1980), which doesn't appear to be very revolutionary on a superficial viewing, but in the song the protagonist does challenge a copper for threatening to arrest her for taping a single! My title alludes to the June 30th 2011 strike and today's, obviously, plus any upcoming ones, which I'm sure there will be!

This is where we started our protest, outside our school at the university, on Woodhouse Lane (The School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies). This is Daniel looking very determined and sporting a couple of signs saying 'strike' in different languages.

Here is one of the revolutionary dogs we met during the protest. She was wearing a bandanna and a union badge. Her owner was part of the Socialist Revolutionary Organisation who were carrying the following banner.

Above is our union's banner, the UCU (The University and College Union). But mostly our group carried handmade banners, made by the PhD students/Teaching Assistant's in the school, in an attempt to add a creative flavour to our input to the protest.

There was also face-painting carried out by Sybil, and Gail provided a performance element to the proceedings by reading out notes of support from lecturers who were unable to attend.

I particularly like the following posters which were outside one of the university entrances.

According to the lunchtime news, there were more of us than anticipated. So, it took us a while to get into the city centre. Once we got there there was not enough room for us all to gather outside the Leeds City Gallery and we flooded onto the road and consequently blocked part of the Headrow.

Today's strike was extremely heartening in terms of support, not just from those attending but also from those passing by in their cars, vans and trucks. There was a great communal spirit and plenty of fervour to take us to the next step. Watch out Cameron!

To close my blog I'd like to add a few Situationist slogans that were used in the 1960s and are still relevant today:

No replastering, the structure is rotten!

We'll ask nothing; we'll take, occupy!

Action must not be a reaction, but a creation!

Reform my ass!

Links:
Public Sector Strikes - The Situation at the University
J30: The City is on Strike

The Student Movement / Moving the Students

The recently published The Assault on Universities (edited by Michael Bailey and Des Freedman) contains a very up-to-the minute essay, by John Rees, on the current situation as it pertains to students and education cuts. Here I shall include a couple of paragraphs from the essay with some anecdotal commentary of my own.

The student movement of 2010 was the largest for a generation. It transformed the political atmosphere around the Tory-Liberal Democrat Coalition government’s cuts programme and popularised the 'rejectionist' argument that the deficit could be paid for by taxing the rich, the corporations, and the banks or by cutting Trident and the war budget for Afghanistan. It undermined the legitimacy of the government by exposing a larger democratic deficit: the election of 2010 had revealed an electorate that voted centre left, but the government they got was a monetarist and right wing. (page 118)

Having been, prior to this moment, someone who was questioning the general lack of engagement in political life that appeared to be happening in some of the young people in society, I was very impressed by the student protests of 2010/11. As a mature undergraduate student, and now a teaching assistant at university, I have been exposed to many young people since 2005. While I don't want to make generalisations, nor conjure up stereotypes, I was a bit puzzled by the lack of fervour in relation to current issues in some students prior to this point. And, while I would not use the term 'apathy' in the way it was being used, I didn't really understand why the young of today were different than 'we' were in the 1970s.

By the time I was fifteen years old we had been on strike twice at my school (in regards to school policy). I had also had my own one-woman revolution. We striked 'at the drop of a hat'. It was our default position. If we were unhappy about something we were going to have our say. Which is interesting, as this was a period when children had even less of a voice than they do today.

While doing my BA in Cultural Studies (2005-08) we read Mary Wollstonecroft's On the Vindication of the Rights of Women. At the time our teaching assistant asked us if we thought that women had now reached equality in society. As a 45 year old who can remember a time when there was not a law for equal pay in regards to gender, since I thought the answer was pretty much overdetermined I decided that I would not answer it and would allow someone else to offer their opinion. No-one answered the question or even made a comment until I allowed my exasperation to be expressed. After the seminar I was left feeling confused: their parents were the same age as me, had they not communicated these issues to their daughters? Was there a certain level of wealth in particular groups in society that created a buffer of comfort and therefore there was no reason to question political life? Or, was something much more disturbingly hegemonic going on?

I didn't, and don't, still have a simple answer to this. However, the recent student protests have been inspiring and I hope that students and public sector workers can come together over current government cuts, and that students will realise that education cutbacks are actually situated in a larger context of capitalist ideology, the repercussions of which don't only just effect them.

This is what John Rees says about strikes and protests in relation to students and workers supporting each other:

The students can...cause a social crisis into which workers...are drawn. But for this to happen the student struggle itself, the occupations and demonstrations, need to be sustained and spread. The trade unionists in the education unions will find it easier to become involved in the struggle if this is the case, and this can be a bridge to other workers becoming involved. Occupations are key to this because they make the campuses ungovernable for the university authorities and present the staff with the question of taking sides in a way that demonstrations alone do not. (page 122).

Links:
Public Sector Strike Flyer
The Students are Revolting
University and College Union

Public Sector Strike - The Situation at the University

My university and school are currently preparing for next week's Public Sector Strike (Wednesday 30th November 2011). The Guardian newspaper says that Britain's three largest trade unions are backing the strike.

I have created a Situationist stylie flyer (see above). Please feel free to download, distribute and print. It is in jpg format and A5 size, so two fit neatly onto a landscape A4. Or you can enlarge it to A4 size for a poster. The stats on there are 'generic' and apply to both students and lecturers.

Links:
University and College Union
The Students are Revolting

J30: The City is on Strike

"The invocation of the idea that 'there is no alternative', and the recommendation to 'work smarter, not harder' shows how capitalist realism sets the tone for labor disputes in post-Fordism." Mark Fisher

This was the scene outside The Leeds Metropolitan University yesterday. This woman, below, representing the UCU (University and College Union), was happy for me to take a photo of her and her placard:

This is a paragraph from the PCS literature that was handed out:

Members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, along with our counterparts in education unions, have made the difficult decision to take industrial action as it is the only way of standing up to the government's unprecedented attacks on public sector workers.

Below is one of the leaflets I was given by protesters:

Related Links:
The Scene of Teaching
J30 Strike Organisation
Public and Commercial Services Union
University and College Union


Bibliography:
Fisher, Mark. 2009. Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? (Winchester: Zero Books).