'I WANT AN END to this nonsense for ever. The students have been given their last chance.
The words are those of Charles Carter, the Vice-Chancellor at Lancaster University and a leading light in the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and College Principals. Ho knows the national implications of his moves to victimise students on rent strike, and his action to try to smash the student occupation. The NUS Executive sadly do not.
The "last chance at Lancaster' situation exploded after a student on rent strike was refused a hardship grant. The Students Umion had made it clear from the start that any moves SINCE STEELSEEKE SABLE ALLI with a swift rebuff. Two weeks ago, 300 students occupied the misin administration buiiding including the wus not amused.
If the students were not out in two hours, he said, they would all be excluded from the University. But they are still there at the time of writing because in those two hours one thousand names were collsibility for the occupation SPLITTING TACTICS Carter's tactics are clear split the occupation off from the rest of the campus. To de this he has to Taise the stakes. So he has put the collepe workers on two-thinds pay. on the pretext that the students are holding documents vital to wage calculations. The students have offered to allow staff in to collect the documents. The administration refuse because by not paying full wages they hope to break any links betw een the campus trade unions and ected for a petition accepting respunshut. reward. students. Then on the day of a natjonal demonstration, supported by over a thousands students, the bar was closed. Last weekend the library Isolate, divide and rule is Carter's motto. If he succeeds, workers and students at Lancaster can expect no mercy in the face of future education cutbacks Higher prices and rents, low wages and lay-offs will be their However, nationally, in the pres ent state of the grants campaign, Lancaster is of great imporlance. For along with Essex, where first year Tent strikers are not being allowed to sit their examinacions. and Surrey. where a Cireat of legal action still hangs over the head of the rent strike, Lancaster is a cest case for A victory at these colleges for the authorities would not only demoralise other rent strikes, hut would spur on college authorities up and down the country to launch similar victimsations. While the rent strike may be just one tactic of the grants campaign, in Icality it is the only lactic that is being applied today. A defeat for the rent strikes would therefore he a severe blow for the grants campaign as In this light the behaviour of the Coltmunist Party-dominated NUS executive is all the more disgraceful. They have not organised and coord- cracy inated national activity in the rent strikes this term. Because the rent strike is a tactic they feel its prolagonists can be sacriticed on the altar of pressure politics. Al Sussex, which has the third biggest rent strike, they recratly proposed to wind it up Thankfully, the only poople supporting that call were the CP Cheinselves!
The watchword of the NUS now has on the contrary lo be for the mational defence and extension of the rent scrikes, which in turn means for the national defenec and extension