students were to receive a grant increase of 22 per cent. A student living outside London will now be given the princely sum of £740. The reality of this measly award is that students are expected to take another cut in their living standards. Twenty-two per cent is not enough to compensate for inflation, But already the college authorities are trying to redirect this small increase straight into their own coffers. What the state gives witn its leil nand it snatches back with its right. No sooner had Prentice spoken than it was announced that rents at University College, Cardiff would be going up by 43per percent. For some students this will mean an increase of £150.
However, at least they will have somewhere to stay. From a recent report of the University Grants Committe, the body that dishes out the cash, it is clear that thousands of students face the prospect of no accommodation next term. admit that the number of places has 'dwindled': in 1972-73 just over 10,000 new places were built, while this year it will be only 3,000.
These cuts in spending are part of a wide range of penny-pinching policies. The report spells it out: It will be inevitable that most of the economies instituted in 1974-75 will have to continue... This means that costs per student will be reduced in expanding univCISILICS. let alone take the grant back to the 1962 level below which it has fallen. action at the start of next term for a rent and price freeze, and to. demand that student facilities match student intake.
This term students at Warwick University have set an example bv occupying against the victimisation of rent strikers. While demands for a rent freeze have not been met, the authorities have been unable to break the rent strike or the determination of students to carry on une mond However the authorities also set They an example others may follow in the autumn with the use of hundreds of police, including the SPG, and writs to kick out the occupiers. term could be a turning point for the grants campaign, for at some point the law must be defied if the authorities and the police are not to walk all over students and impose severe cuts in living standards.
The campaign for an autumn offensive must be prepared now. paltry grants award, the proposed rent have left colleges in struggle like Lancaster, Warwick and Surrey, to fight alone.
NUS leadership has failed yet again.
too well, which is why they have called for an emergency national conterence to discuss the But true to form, the Communist Party opposes this conference.
a similar stand. They would prefer such a conference in October, when the IS consider they will be better prepared to debate the Communist raTe If you think the decisive next step for the student movement is Next building IS, then by all means wait until October.
Warwick students would disagree. The bankrupt line of the NUS leadership has to be challenged before it is too late. national rent strike, occupations and ary now. The IMG urges to kunnort and amnion for The strategy of the Warwick students know that only grants campaign mcmanona socialists, too, have taker But the IMG and Preparations for a other forms of direct action are necess all student