Opposing fee's. Opposing violence

UMSA students with Medway Labour Council candidates

Medway Labour activists stood with the Universities at Medway Students Association (UMSA) today in support of the NUS campaign to oppose the Conservative and Liberal Democrat hike in fee's to £9,000 per year.

A hike in fee's that will leave a middle-class grammar school child in Medway a debt of £25,000 and a medical student a debt of £50,000

This blog believe it is grossly unfair that intelligent people should be penalised at the earliest point in their professional lives with unmanageable levels of debt. This blog does not believe that a 17 year old should face a financial burden which will weigh him/her down for close to two decades, and at a time when leaving University, they are joining an unstable employment market and thinking about housing and perhaps marriage.

The Conservatives opposed tuition fee's in 2003 under Howard and Ian Duncan-Smith. They have undertaken a change in stance, blaming the deficit, knowing full well that the deficit reduction period is driven on an electoral cycle (four years) and not an economic cycle. They have made a political choice out of ideology - marketisation of the University sector, marketisation of trains, marketisation of schools. These are all choices.

Around 50,000 students, lecturers and members of the general public took part in what is being labelled as the biggest student demonstration in a generation, jointly organised by NUS and the University and College Union (UCU). The majority marching were doing so peacefully.

The march covered a route pre-approved by police from Horse Guards Avenue to a rally outside the Tate Britain where protestors heard from UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt, NUS president Aaron Porter and TUC deputy general secretary Frances O'Grady.

The rally focused on the Liberal Democrats who opposed tuition fee's for the General Election in May. They pledged to students they would never support an increase. They pledged to student families that any increase in fee's would be regressive. They have betrayed their voters and for that in May 2011 they face decimation in Medway.

NUS will target Liberal Democrat MPs for a recall ballot if they betray voters trust and vote for fee hikes.

NUS and not one member of its executive team support violent action. It was a minority of individuals who hijacked a just cause for personal ends.

The Tory spinners tonight are making out that the entire NUS protest was violent and was hell-bent on disorder. They can casually sneer at the hard-pressed middle class families of Medway but the fact is Mark Reckless, Tracey Crouch and Rehman Chisthi will leave an average grammar school pupil from Medway a £25,000 legacy of debt, before he/she starts working. If you become a medic, and help save peoples lives, you will have a £50,000 debt. It is the wrong values. It is Tory values.

Next week the windows will be be replaced, the glass cleared, the signs removed - but young people will still have the threat of Tory debt. Parents, pupils, teachers and lecturers all oppose a rise in fee's.

Today, they made that point.

A £9,000 fee is regressive. It is wrong. It is Conservative Party ideology against the interests of the majority of people in this Country.