It may have escaped your notice but December 1st-5th was a week of action against tuition fees in higher education. It seemed to escape the notice of my college union and I’m not aware of anything of significance taking place anywhere else.
The suspicion is that NUS declared the five days to perpetuate the illusion that they were actually doing something to oppose fees. In fact official NUS opposition to fees can be gauged by the behaviour of the NUS speaker at last November’s London rally against fees. “Students don’t mind paying something towards the cost of their education,” he declared, earning an angry response from several thousand students.
The Campaign for Free Education is doing a good job of organising opposition to fees independently of NUS, and last November’s national CFE demonstration was well attended. This year’s NUS conference will be a real battle, and it will be a test of the left’s political maturity to see whether we can unite sufficiently to get a good number of anti-fees candidates elected to the Executive.
The fight against fees must not be confined to the student movement. The introduction of tuition fees is an attack on the principle of universal provision that is at the very core of the British welfare state. Once you make the first step on this slope, you are embracing the logic that could lead to fees for GP callouts or hospital food.