Love and solidarity!
A sign!
READ ALL ABOUT IT:
http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/
http://photographywithoutborders.org/2010/02/sussex-university-students-occupation-education-cuts/
http://ringworldian.blogspot.com/2010/02/cuts-at-sussex-university.html
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23savesussex
Will update as find out more.
Wit
Higher Education is in dire straits. And not just because of cuts, but also because the sources of “critique” are severely lacking.
A report released on 28th of Jan by Lord Browne’s “independent” review somehow managed to come to the conclusion that University students would be willing to pay higher tuition fees for courses that lead to the highest-earning jobs. According to the Guardian:
The researchers found students, particularly those from the poorest homes, were willing to pay higher fees for courses that would lead to high-earning jobs. The majority of the 81 university applicants who were quizzed could be “sold on the idea,” they said.
Of course this simply demonstrates what we have said from the start: that the review is a sham – just as the Postgraduate Review also ongoing is a sham. But, still, there’s a certain illogicality to this that I do find surprising: the researchers found that the poorest students were the most willing to pay higher fees. Surely even the most braindead must ask themselves, “yes, so they’re willing in theory, but can they actually afford to pay these fees in reality?” Beyond that they might ask, how is it that the politics of a generation has been so manipulated that they will actually support policy that works against their own interests? Or perhaps instead, how is it that an investigation was so manipulated that it arrived at such distorted conclusions? (One friend has suggested that, given the low number of participants, perhaps they simply interviewed the members of one University’s Labour and Conservative party Societies).
Of course, the criticism levelled by both NUS’ Wes Streeting and UCU’s Sally Hunt (who almost word for word echoed each other) that such policy would leave poorer students hunting ‘for bargin basement degrees’ is also valid. But, note that neither question the basic validity of the review and the review process itself, nor dismiss it as not only a sham, but also as being fundamentally undemocratic. Furthermore, both allow that students fees are viable in themselves, and focus merely on achieving a (slightly) better distribution of HE. Neither point to the basic contradictions inherent in the HE system and in our current system of government, nor call for:
1/ Immediate action
2/ A complete overthrow of the HE system
3/ A complete overthrow of the State
If they could even call for the first two, that might be enough. If they could even offer some sense of a unified critique of the HE system and of the governent, that might be enough. Instead they put the power and ability to bring about change in the hands of politicians, and in doing so they sell out their members. In a very real and actual sense both the NUS and the UCU are complicit with the current system, both are lackies of the State who only serve to bolster the government’s legitimacy and authority by providing a pseudo-opposition – i.e. the image of an opposition that does not, in reality, even provide the beginnings of a critique, presenting the debate instead as a series of isolated problems, each demanding its own individual solution.
UCU and NUS should completely cease to cooperate in any manner with the HE reviews, instead concentrating on producing and disseminating a review produced by their members (and strictly not shaped by “their” own argument – i.e. these bureaucratic institutions have become drastically separated from those they supposedly represent).
But, as I have said before, we cannot wait for or rely upon the reformation of these bureacracies. It is time for students, academics and university staff – and the populace more generally – to take matters into their own hands.
STRIKE NOW!
-Wit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/feb/07/job-losses-universities-cuts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jan/28/students-would-pay-more-for-some-degrees
http://hereview.independent.gov.uk/hereview/
http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=1680
http://www.bis.gov.uk/postgraduate-review
Sally Hunt of UCU on Left Foot Forward… why are all union leaders essentially Labour party supporters? Whatever happened to the REVOLUTION?
So, I wanted to get a story going, and I thought a good mode of encouragement might be to post it in serial fashion on here, as a work in progress. Comments are welcome, but be aware that this is only a draft.
Love,
Wit
Story in progress: 1
I’m driving home, a strange route along A-roads, cross-country, through the hills. “Home” now being a relative word: I leave home to go home – it no longer denotes the anchor-point it once was. Or perhaps I’m wrong. Leaving the University town, travelling toward the flatlands of my youth, there’s a definite sense of return.
The beat up car only has a tape-deck, but it’s playing a slightly tinny recording of “Pale Blue Eyes” from a compilation I made myself in preparation, and it makes me happy. The summer has bloomed, and with the windows wound down the only thing in my mind is the song, the road, the pollen smell of the fields. But together this forms a feeling that gets stronger with every mile closer I get and so, stupid as it is, I put on my sun glasses and start singing.
-
Pulling up on to the drive no one comes out and so I lug my bags to the door and ring the bell. Nobody answers, so I search my pockets for my keys but they must be inside my rucksack somewhere. I ring the bell again and scramble around, and then my Ma opens the door up.
Haven’t you got your keys? she says.
I give her a hug and so on, and she goes to tell my stepfather that I’m home and he looks up and smiles and so on.
I make everyone a cup of tea, snaffling a few biscuits.
Coming into the kitchen, my Ma says: Your brother’s off with Joe, he just went out but he said he’d be back soon.
Thanks Ma, I say.
Which is my tea? she asks.
-
No man is an island…
…But sometimes he (along with a few friends) might be an enclave.
The Situationists refused eclecticism, partisanship and the support of partial causes. Their critique was of the totality of the capitalist system, and of current conditions of existence. Sometimes this made them unpopular; their group remained very small; Debord was often accused of running the SI like a dictatorship. But, the continual refusals to engage with other groups and to expand membership were about integrity – about the integrity of a critique.
The relevance of which is? Recently anti-intellectual attacks have been launched against British universities. Partisanship is encouraged by a wealth of pseudo-oppositionary actors, the biggest offenders being Unions, which very much describe in their limited actions the Debordian analysis of the spectacular: that which offers the compensation of pseudo-unity in the face the actual impoverishment of unity. By this I mean, the image of solidarity and the image of critique pasted over the actual paucity of current analysis, solidarity and critique.
Rather than coming together as equal actors in a situation, to demand the revolution we need, the UCU prostitutes itself and its members to the whims of the government, with the media acting as mediator (as both medium and arbiter). Rather than recognising itself as a collective of actors – as a people (in the old and politically charged sense) – and taking action, it prefers to sit passively observing the spectacle that is parliamentary politics, deferring action indefinitely. Here is an excerpt from an email issued from UCU HQ:
REF campaign update:
I wanted to write to you to update you with some good news, showing that our lobbying and the publicity we have generated over the ‘impact’ campaign is having an effect. Please see below:
Tories call for REF to be shelved:
David Willetts announced last week that if elected, the Tories would shelve HEFCE’s plans on impact until the completion of a two year review. The shadow minister for higher education, David Willetts, said he would delay proposals that would force 25% of future research to be assessed on ‘economic impacts’ by two years in order to listen to the concerns of the academic community. The news comes just a week after a UCU poll of top professors revealed that over a third (35%) would consider pursuing their academic career abroad if the plans were introduced. Read more here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=409991&c=2. This is a measure of the pressure we are building up on political parties and HEFCE and a testament to your support, so thank you again.
Rather than wasting our time analysing this, being disgusted at the operation of pronouns in their discourse (“we and you” – thanks Jristos) and constructing from this micrography a history of the relationship between revolutionary struggle and bureaucracy/institutionalisation, &c., &c., let us ask simply:
ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BE PLEASED BY THIS LATEST “DEVELOPMENT”?
From here on I can no longer give the UCU or any of the Unions (who have inserted themselves as bureaucratic mediators between our protest and our action) my support; I can only offer them my condemnation.
This is a difficult line to tread, though, and I am equally cautious of apathy, isolation and complete inactivity. As with the debacle that is the LUSU campaign against tuition fees, I will have to place myself, then, on the side-lines. Joining in only so far, and offering up frequent (and some would say rabid) critique at every stage. But, I also hope to develop and nurture an enclave of people dedicated to the critique of the totality… posts from willing candidates for membership please drop a line to me on this blog or in person. We already number, give or take, five. That’s a good number and I’m happy with it, but we might possibly allow a couple of others in.
Oh, I am aware that I have not yet explained the LUSU situation, but I won’t. I am busy now and must leave matters here, so, bearing in mind the above, I will let you analyse this one for yourselves. I issued a call for action via the facebook group site (which is more of a hindrance than a help now that it has been established as the sole means of communication) suggesting we create a presence (perhaps even an occupation) at the opening of the Lancaster University Learning Zone opening, which a chief executive of HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council) was attending. I also sent out emails to the LUSUs who have control of all means of communication. Nothing happened, until it was too late, when I received the messages below:
–
Andy Johnston January 14 at 11:53am
Hi —–,
Apologies for the slow reply.
Thanks for your thoughts, we were thinking exactly the same things last week. But we’ve been looking at what exactly it could achieve and our plans for the whole term and it is actually a bit of a false starter.We have big plans for University Court at the end of the month where we can make an even bigger impact. We have submitted a motion regarding fees that will be voted on that, if passed, will be a really big win for us.
The protest outside the Learning Zone Opening unfortunately is something that would actually conflict with what our aims are I think. We need to focus all our energy on Uni Court. Another problem with the learning zone opening is that a lot of the people forming leading voices in the protest have actually been invited to the opening and our resources are best used inside that building talking to people who have casting votes in Court the week after.
I hope you agree with some of the points, and thank you for the message. I think this term we need to play it really carefully and use all our resources where it’ll be most effective.
I’ll get info out to the group wall asap and Mike will be sending out an email to everuone soon as well.
If you have any more ideas or thoughts at all then please do contact me. Hope to see you on the morning of Uni Court too.
Cheers ——-
AJ
–
Torri Crapper January 14 at 2:10pm
hi —–
it has been decided that we are not going to protest outside as all the sabbatical team – the ex presidents and incoming ones are all in the official opening. It is therefore paramount that we mobilise students again – as you suggest over the next week before university court – which we need huge huge numbers as all the stakeholders of the university, various bishops, councillors, MPs, lords sirs etc (you get the picture) will be there as well as a lot of university staff! We have submitted a motion to univeristy court this year – first time in years – surrounding student funding and need people outside too – making a noise.
Don’t worry though – this will happentorri
————
Love and Solidarity,
Wit
Unspeakable Practices: Notes on Today’s News and Future Academic Protest
Two stories reported in today’s news that provoke comment here:
Firstly, the banning of Islamic groups Al Muhajiroun, Islam4UK, Call to Submission, Islamic Path, and London School of Sharia, announced today by Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, can only provoke condemnation here.
Let me be clear: I do not support these groups, and have no sympathy for their right-wing politics – only disdain. But, there is no justification for banning these groups that I find acceptable, and I see this move as a strategy of excluding and criminalising the Islamic community. Make no mistake, I am certain that Islam4UK and similar groups do not speak for even a majority of British Muslims, never mind the entirety of the Muslim community. But, we must ask on what basis this group has been labelled a ‘terrorist’ organisation, and who decides what is and is not terroristic. The Terrorism Act gives too much power to the Government. If terrorism is no longer to be judged by concrete actions – by violent acts, or plans to commit violent acts – then on what basis does this criminalisation proceed? If we are to start (sorry, if we are to continue) criminalising thoughts, political views and religious beliefs, how far will this marginalisation and criminalisation of our Islamic community go? And how far will this logic of unfreedom eat into the rest of society? Certainly the Terrorism Act is already being used to constrain other forms of protest, including those of the Left and Green movements. We need to oppose all forms of censorship and undemocratic legislation.
There is a paltry argument that has been formulated in support for this crass censorship: that allowing the propagation of extreme views allows for the ‘radicalisation’ of certain vulnerable groups. But we must ask, who decides what is and what is not an ‘extreme view’? Rather than trust the Government with these decisions, we must trust the people to make such decisions for themselves. Certainly provide debate, certainly provide support, and certainly at the level of public organisation (i.e. Universities, Mosques, and other community groups) refuse these right-wing groups a platform (since who wants to waste time listening to their garbage?). But do not ban them, because then we will all find ourselves standing on a very slippery slope.
Secondly, leaders of the Russell Group of Universities, Wendy Piatt, the group’s director general, and Michael Arthur, its chair and the vice-chancellor of Leeds University, have today condemned the Government’s Higher Education plans.
At Unspeakable Practices we have already responded to these plans with condemnation. Certainly, then, it is good to hear mainstream ‘powerful’ voices condemning them also. But, they are entirely too easy on the government, and too elitist in their outlook.
In the new year we need to stop looking to our ‘leaders’ and start some serious organisation at the level of students, lecturers, parents and teachers – and possibly other workers too.
These plans do not simply affect a small privileged and insular minority. Research has implications for society far beyond my ability to describe here, and it will suffer immensely, in all disciplines. Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences will of course be worst hit. Mainstream society does not even recognise the severity of this loss, because mainstream society has been so proletarianised, its everyday praxis so devalued, that it does not properly value the arts; it has already been so excluded from the sphere of art, that perhaps it will not even suffer any further losses. The real importance of these cuts, though, is that they may well enact the complete division of students and lecturers. Fees enabled the current Government discourse of “consumers and service providers” to prevail and presented a very real threat to academic solidarity. But, when the research and structural cuts go through, lecturers and administrators will feel severely less inclined to support students in their campaign to maintain the cap, never mind to abolish fees altogether. For these cuts will create a massive hole in University budgets and, if we allow them to go ahead, removal of the cap will seem like one viable way to fill it. Lecturers will quickly start thinking: “I don’t like what it will do to the students, but raising the cap would certainly make my life easier”. Especially when cuts start to cause redundancies.
There is only one serious solution – one that is not yet evidenced anywhere. That is to organise Student-Lecturer solidarity, to get onto the streets, as well as into the headlines, and to demand that Government properly fund Universities. This would mean reversing the decisions on cuts and instead investing more money in Universities, especially in research, as well as abolishing student fees altogether.
To this end, we should also be stretching our arms out into the wider community, creating solidarity with other workers suffering from similar cuts, “recession contingency plans”, and modernisation programs. We are all in the same boat. We also need to engage with teachers and with their unions, for in many ways they will be affected by this disaster also. And finally, we need to engage with the public, particularly with families and parents. Parents and families of the middle as well as lower classes are suffering the consequences of being expected to pay the costs of sending their children to University (as well as being expected to pay the costs of bankers’ indulgence).
We have all the cards, we only need to make it happen. So do it!
Solidarity!
Wit
Capitalism reinforces itself by affecting the atomization of society, and thus the disempowerment of the subject. No-one can operate in a vacuum. So…
So I’m reading about Guy Debord stumbling one day across crazy Isou’s Letterists, and about the Letterist International’s break-away (a few friends, inc. Debord, with similar ideas), and the formation of the Situationist International. And about all the time Debord spent in bars in bad company in 1952, and I’m thinking:
Where is my band of trouble makers, where is the group of people I will learn from and bounce off, and create situations with?
How are we ever to start the revolution if there is no ‘we’?
I’m setting about searching for a concrete we: the actors of our future revolution!
Solidarity!
Wit
Today the election campaigns kicked off a little bit harder. Of course, there is no choice in British parliamentary politics, only the illusion of choice; the spectacle is in full motion, and visible opposition is either illusiory pseudo-opposition or quickly recuperated.
So no new new year solutions, just a couple of notes of analysis.
Firstly, make a note of the way the media (e.g. BBC) is used to create a sense that this election is important, that there is much at stake, that the results fortell “radical” change. Obviously the BBC and other news outlets are fully implicated in the spectacle. When you hear things like this, sneer, shout obscenities, or simply turn off the damn racket. But, don’t worry or panic, even though you will probably, like me, feel that the spectacle is pervasive, and its weight crushing. There is still space for surreal tactics, chance perspectives, and moments of elation, even now.
Secondly, please also note the common pattern that sees all mainsteam political parties try to shift blame and the weight of enacting change onto the individual – be it the responsibility for the envirnoment, the cost of higher education, the bankers’ crisis, national security, unemployment, or social problems. With one hand they take away our freedom and autonomy, whilst with the other they point an accusatory finger blaming us for problems (now) beyond our control. They then use the latter to further the former, leading us deeper and deeper into the unreality of the spectacle.
Again, don’t dispair.
Soldarity!
Wit
2010: New Year, New Decade
2010: that futuristic year in which Arthur C Clarke’s characters set out to try to understand the mysterious events of 2001 amongst the moons of Jupiter. And here we are… and here’s me with my second full decade under my belt.
When I was a kid my dad had this computer (which was not as sophisticated as HAL – it operated in DOS for a start), and he used to let me and my little brother play games on it sometimes. Prince, Terminator 2, Dizzy, Pinball, Wolf, Duke Nukem and, later, Doom and Doom II. At the time he worked for RACAL, this computer company. I went to their offices once with him – I guess it must have been on a Saturday or perhaps during school holidays. There was a combination lock on the door and I tried to memorize it. Inside there was a room of Asian women working in rows soldering circuit boards, tittering at me as we passed. In my pa’s office there were what seemed to me to be loads of computers. Magically they were all hooked up together, and I played Doom II on one against my Pa and one of his office mates. I must have only been about 5. So, very early Nineties.
Sometimes when I go into London on the train I see that RACAL still have office buildings in the same place (Harrow?). My Pa works for a different company now, though, since RACAL made a lot of redundancies in the late 90s. The new company is Agresso, and if you’re ever visiting any university, national museum or council office (as well as a lot of businesses, charities etc.) you can usually see evidence that they use Agresso software on their networks. Parliament uses Agresso.
Strange – nostalgia surrounding IT companies. But if we were to continue in the same vein, I can remember the day, when I was perhaps 8, that my Ma bought a computer for ‘us’ – meaning us three, my brother, me and her. (My Pa took his PC with him when he left). It was the latest thing – it had Windows ’95 on it. What an amazing gesture of female independence that was, flying in the face of male expertise: the purchase of a computer.
And what else? In 1998 I moved to P’town, where the man fast becoming my step-father lived and worked. And (don’t laugh) how futuristic it seemed! Moving from the old suburban estates to the new suburbs of a New Town. North Werrington, P’town, was all built at the beginning of the 90s, and all the bricks of its houses are either yellow or red, and all the tarmac was smooooth. My step-pa was renting this little house, when we first went up to visit him, in a little close called Sunnymead. (There are other similarly streets named in a similarly utopian manner – usually the ones with the worst housing.) My brother and I just roller skated all day on that smooth smooth tarmac, and thought that there was nowhere better to live. (Now I note, when I go back ‘home’, that this tarmac is cracking.) It was also so green. After all that southern concrete, here our pioneer suburbs were eating out into the countryside as developers bought up farmers fields, and copse land. So, of course, to a city boy, I felt like I was in the countryside. The first summer my brother and I spent the whole time outdoors with the two boys from next door, climbing trees. Here’s a short story about that year, my first year at secondary school:
One evening in that summer between primary and secondary school, that also marked our move to Pbo, whilst my parents were fixing up the new house (which was only 10 years old), I was playing with just my bro, swinging about. And we saw some smoke coming from a copse across the road, so we went to investigate. There were a group of kids in there, most a bit older. And I was a bit scared. They’d set some twigs on fire. They also had a flying fox. It looked pretty dangerous, but I had a go. One of the older boys seemed particularly dangerous – like he might just turn on you. He wasn’t too much taller than me, but a bit more solidly built. He had black hair. And, anyway, he did turn on us. I dunno why. Him and another couple of other boys chased me and my brother off, and only stopped when they saw my step-dad walking towards them around the corner. I was very thankful to see him.
When I started school I used to ride my bike there, but it was pretty hard going on my own. I started getting the number 2 or 13 or whatever bus, there and back. One day I noticed this same boy with the black hair was on the bus. I sat at the front to be as far away from him as possible, and looked fixedly out of the window. But, he noticed me, and seemed to remember me, and came up to me. He started ‘having a go’. First he accused me of hiding behind my Dad. “Wasn’t it you who tried to get your dad on me?”, he asked sneeringly. I could tell he wanted an excuse to batter me. So I said: “No”.
“What do you mean,” he said, “I remember, you live in those posh new houses where they chopped down all the trees we used to play in”. (First I’d heard of it, but he was right: there’s a row of trees down my street which are the last of a small wood that used to stand there).
“No,” I said “it can’t have been my dad because I don’t live with my dad”.
How calculated the move was at the time, I’m not sure – perhaps I was just being purposely obtuse because (being smaller than him) it was the only way of giving vent to my indignation. But, it had a sudden effect on him. All the anger went out of him. He became sympathetic; suddenly we were brothers. “My dad don’t live with me neither, I know what it’s like”, he said, or something to that effect.
It’s strange how an otherwise trivial story can tie together so many of the threads of your life.
That was 1998, then. In 1999 I found my way into a group of friends I’m still close to, found a place. And on the eve of the millennium, with a huge party going on next door, I was feeling rotten sick, with a bad cold and a fever. I stayed at home till maybe 11, on my own, then went around for the fireworks and a bit of cheer. I remember it was very cold, but we were all excited. We stood on the fence and watched as it hit 12am, and not only our fireworks went up, but fireworks all over the neighbourhood. We felt like history was in the making.
Also in 2000: Coldplay released their Parachutes album, and I became interested again in music. I thought that album was amazing, at the time. For months I only listened to Parachutes, the 1999 Travis album The Man Who, and Oasis’ Morning Glory. I told my friend John that Coldplay were the best band ever. Enjoying the benefit of two older brothers, he was suitably disdainful, and proceeded to introduce to me other bands. So it was, in 2000 that I decided that the most important years in music were 1992 and 1997, and switched to Radiohead, Nirvana, the Manic Street Preachers (Street Sweepers), and began listening again to the REM albums my Ma and Pa used to play over and over when I was a kid. (In 2010 I still listen to the old REM albums they recorded with IRS, but I’ve stopped listening to a lot of those other bands. Radiohead still get the occasional play, but more of Kid A and In Rainbows than OK Computer. Last night, new years day, I was listening to Tim Buckley, Tom Waits, Miles Davies and that Wreckless Eric song ‘Whole Wide World’… oh, and I can’t stand Coldplay anymore…).
And so we come to 2001, to us all coming out of school, hearing rumours something big had happened. I raced home on my bike with my friend Josh, all the way speculating but not believing the few crazy details we’d heard. And when I got home we spent all evening watching the same footage replayed – a plane crashing into a skyscraper over and over and over. The Noughties’ (fetishistic) obsession with that moment was already beginning. But I sat there with my brother feeling strangely indifferent to this strange metallic omen.
What else? The bus bombings? Onwards…
In 2003 I walked home thinking: I am so happy – I will never have to do French with Ms Deasy ever again. I was with two friends from the same class, and they had exactly the same look.
In the summer of 2005 I was sittin out the holiday, waiting for University (for escape). A few months later I met H, and we’ve been together ever since – almost half of the decade.
2008 I graduated. 2009 I graduated again.
2010.
I’ve got this far, and now I’m too tired to go on. I just hope this decade is a good one. Before I get to the end of it I will be 30. When I ushered it in I was sitting on a table with Helen with a brass tag numbered 11. Eleven has been my lucky number for… oh, at least since 11 years, maybe longer. Hopefully that’s a good omen.
Solidarity with all those who struggle against oppression!
Wit
