‘Resistence is buiding up. Anger is building up’

Some of the things that made the news in the last couple of weeks, and some others which didn’t, made me think that the student occupations of last term had something contagious about them.

First, there was the occupation of a small packaging factory in Dundee by its twelve workers who turned up for work one Monday morning in early March only to find out that the plant was shutting down and that they shouldn’t expect any redundancy payments. They were so outraged that they decided to stay in until their demands were met. Eight weeks later, they are still in and support for them has been consistently growing across Scotland (they will certainly appreciate any support from Sussex students: prismeworkerssolidarity@googlemail.com).

In Scotland, on Friday 3 April, parents of primary school children occupied two schools set to shut down as a result of cuts in the education budget. Two weeks later they were still there.

Then on the same day, in Streatham in south London, activists from the Defend Council Housing campaign occupied an empty flat in protest at Lambeth council’s policy of selling off its housing stock despite the chronic shortage of accommodation in the borough.

And then the big one came. Workers in the Visteon car part plants in Belfast and Enfield in North London occupied their factories when they were told that these would shut down and that they would be given no redundancy payments. In each occupation around 200 workers were involved. The Belfast one was still going strong at the time this article was written and the Enfield one lasted for nine days, only to be replaced by permanent pickets outside the plant after the workers were threatened with legal action.

What is important is that these occupations are radical actions – all of them are in defiance of the law – and  they have all occurred almost at the same time. They have occurred at a time when people feel that something is fundamentally wrong with the system we live in.

But so much else has also happened that should go down as resistance to capitalism. In Glasgow there have been strikes at the Daily Record and Sunday Mail newspapers over compulsory redundancies, an indefinite strike by community service supervisors and 10,000 council workers in the Unison union are balloting for action over a single status pay deal. Call centre workers in the PCS union at the Revenue & Customs government department have voted by 74.4 percent for strike action over attacks on their terms and conditions.

Closer to our campus, the G20 protests dominated the news for days. 40,000 marched on 28 March to “put people first” and the 1 April demos at the Bank of England saw thousands provoked and attacked by the police. The result was  another shameful cover-up by the people whose job is supposedly to guard our safety. The death of Ian Tomlinson has provoked enormous anger across the country. And of course, on the continent, there have been the protests in Strasbourg where tens of thousands of people marched against NATO and the war in Afghanistan.

There is more to come. On the London Underground, 10,000 workers are balloting to strike against management’s attacks on pay and jobs. There is overwhelming support for strike action. Should it take place, it will bring London to a halt. As well as the traditional May Day protests, there will be a national demonstration in Birmingham on Saturday 16 May against job cuts in manufacturing, called by the Unite union; and the UCU lecturers’ union and the PCS civil service workers’ union have called a joint demonstration on 23 May against hundreds of job cuts at London Metropolitan University and Archway Towers.

So resistance is building up. Anger is building up. And most importantly, the feeling that we can do something against the consequences of the crisis is building up. That’s where I think we should see a link between the student occupations and what’s going on in society. Not that the occupations were the sole source of inspiration for all these people who are occupying schools and factories or who are taking to the streets to protest. But in their way, they have contributed to strengthen this feeling. In the same way that these occupations have themselves been the result of years of anti-war campaigning which saw hundreds of thousands and at some occasions millions march against the US’s war on terror.

Demonstrating against the war, occupying a lecture hall and striking for jobs or pay involve different forms of action and different demands. But they have something fundamental in common. In all these cases, it is ordinary people who stand up and say “this is what we want, this is what we demand”. And to take it a step further, all of these actions are directed against the destructive impact of the same system: capitalism.
As the recession starts hitting the state’s fiscal revenues, so the choice between maintaining the war effort in Afghanistan or maintaining provision of education, health and welfare will become more and more obvious. The record of this government can only make one think that they will prefer the war over the rest.

More and more people will see their factories close down, their wages cut or their schools down-sized (as in this university where management want to shut down the Linguistics department) or shut down altogether.
That’s why it’s important that resistance and anger are building up and that the feeling that we can fight back is generalising.

Everything seems to suggest  another increase in tuition fees is on the government’s agenda. That’s when the experience and example of last term’s occupation might prove useful. Because surely, if so much money can be spent on wars and to prop up bankers, then why can’t it be used for schools, universities, hospitals and everything else that people need?

On the 28 March demo in London, I saw orange placards which carried in big white characters the following slogan: “We won’t pay for their crisis”. I think we should all take it up.