LONDON, Great Britain, Dec. 9 — Earlier today, the House of Commons voted to approve a proposal to slash funding for higher education and teachers, which will end up more than tripling tuition costs while universities and departments will be forced to close.

The Liberal Democratic-Conservative coalition in power narrowly adopted the plan 323-302. While the vote was mainly along party lines, 21 Liberal Democrats and a handful of Conservatives broke with their leaders.

During the general election campaign earlier this year, the Liberal Democrats had pledged to cut tuition costs, but the party dumped the pledge before entering into the coalition with the Conservative “Tories.”

The day before, tens of thousands of students and teachers protested again across Britain against the education cuts and tuition increases. It was the fifth such protest since the proposed cuts were announced in October.

The first day of protest saw 50,000 students, teachers, school workers and supporters march on Tory Party headquarters, with dozens entering and occupying the building while thousands cheered them on outside.

London’s police were overwhelmed at this protest, which was larger than organizers expected, and used this as a pretext to use violence and brutality against young protesters.

The repression began with mass arrests of students who were involved in or supported the occupation of the Tory Party building, which led to the arrest of over 100 people.

Successive protests also saw mass arrests through the cops’ use of “kettling,” a tactic where protesters are detained behind a phalanx of riot police and denied access to food, water, toilets and lawyers for hours on end.

Hundreds more students were arrested after being “kettled,” some for up to 12 hours.

After the first protest, leaders of the National Union of Students, the main student organization in Britain, shamelessly sided with the government and denounced the “violence” by student protesters, and vowed to not call another national student protest.

The British labor union federation, the Trades Union Congress, backed the NUS’ decision against endorsing more protests, and the Labour Party similarly denounced the protesters and joined the call for repression.

The media also joined in the witchhunt against student protesters, printing pictures of students suspected of causing “violence” and denouncing the students of being “spoiled brats.” One editorial in London’s Telegraph called for the students to be waterboarded!

Many students, and many others who really ought to know better, have painted the protests as the spark for a new “revolution.”

Clearly influenced by the student protest movement of the late 1960s that swept across Europe and North America, these elements believe students as a group can be the leading force for fundamental social progress today.

The problem with this is obvious. “Students” are a vague social category that includes the children of both the exploiters and the exploited, in an environment where the ideas and doctrines of the exploiters dominate.

Yes, the main group of students affected most by this attack are young people from working-class families. But unless these students
are in charge of their movement, they will remain tied to the very classes demanding the budget cuts and rise in tuition costs.

Part and parcel of the necessary reorientation from a classless to a class-based student movement is, at once, a decisive break with the Labour Party, and the officials and structures of the NUS and TUC, and the organization, along with co-workers, family members and other organizations that are of, by and for the working class, of new structures — bodies of joint student/worker struggle against capitalist austerity and state violence.

Right now, we call for all those arrested to be freed immediately, all charges dropped and a workers’ inquiry into the repression.