Almost a hundred people demonstrated outaide the Shire Hall in Cheims/ord lust Friday, 8-June, when the Esser Monday Club held a showing of the Last weekend the National Union of Students held an emergency conference to discuss the future of the campaign it has been conducting against the Tory government over the low level of student grants. The grants campaign was originally based on a set of four demands: an end to 'discretionary awards" (grants which can be given or witheld at the whim of Local Education officinis), no discrimination against married women, abolition of the means test, and an all round increase in the amount of grants.
NEGOTIATIONS However, the NUS execative reported to the conference that the fight for the full claim was hopeless and that the only way gains could be made would be through the upcoming negotiations with the government. Ironically, the Communist Party members of the executive (who are its leading elements) shared this high expectation of government talks, despite the more sceptical attitude shown by their fellow party members in the trade union movement. Indeed, the NUS executive could take a lesson or two from the book of trade union struggles. For not only have they put all their eges in the basket of negotiation, but they are entering these negotiations with all their cards showing. A decision was taken, on the recommendation of the executive, to assign an order of priority to what were formerly considered the inseparable demands of the grants campaign. Top priority was given to the demand for an end to discretionary awards; COMPROMISE While compromise may become necessary in any struggle, this particular move simply gives the government advance notice that the NUS is prepared to settle for only a small part of its DECIALE promise move is made before any attempt to renew and extend the struggle in the coming college year. By reaching such a decision now, the student movement is left trying to mobilize students around demands that have virtually been abandoned. If very many in dustrial strikes were run on that basis, the working class would not have made any gains at all in the past thirty years.
By accepting this approach, the student movement will now find itself in the same position as any group of workers who accept a pay settlement within government norms: forced to fight among themselves to decide how the "cake", the size of which is fixed by the government, will be divided between the worst-off (the polytechnics and colleges) and the slightly better-off (the universities).
A more positive sign was the rejection by conference of the executive suggestion, once more supported by its Communist Party members, that the rent strikes currently in progress should be abandoned before the summer vacation. This decision, and the adoption of a motion calling for full backing to the 14 students victimized at Reading University over a rent strike, means that there is a possibility of the rent strikes serving as a springboard tor future militant struggle.
CONFUSED IDEAS The pessimistic mood of the conference reflected both the defeats that had been suffered at the hands of the government, and the confused political idea, promoted by the CP and the NUS executive, that real support could be gained from college authorities. If u perspective had been put forward from the start of giving the campaign real power by linking it up with the fight of the working class against the Tory pay policy, then it would be much easier to talk anti-immigration film, 'England, Whose England". Eighteen people passed through the police cordon to see the film autumn.
This made it crucial at the conference for the revolutionary left to start popularizing this type of perspective the only way to break the student movement out of its current confusion and demoralization, Unfortunately, this was not understood by important sections of the evolutionary left - particularly the Interns. tional Socialists. IS, along with the IMG, supported the proposal to continue the fight for the full claim. But they refused to cooperate in the call for a "week of explanation and action in which students could bring the question of grants to the attention of the working class throught mass action, and abo rejected the suggestion of a national conference of students in support of the coming struggles of the working class against Phase 3. On the crucial question of strategy for the campaign, IS had nothing to offer but more of the same militancy and "join IS'. Needless to say such ideas could not deal with the problems facing the conferenor MAJOR TASKS Several major tasks face revolutionaries in the student field at the present moment: maxi mum support must be organized for rent strik ers under attack, as at Reading, and preparation made to support others who may soon come under attack, action should be taken to extract guarantees from Vice-Chancellors that no disciplinary action will be taken against rent-strikers over the summer, The aim in the autumn should be to extend the rent strikes and lay the basis for a return to a united canpaign for the entire four demands at the autumn NUS conference. Decisive to all this will be the popularization of a strategy that can link these struggles up with the renewed offensive of the working class movement in the coming year. Piers Carbyn Photo: Exra Nathan sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Like