Our Side of the Occupation

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: All opinions expressed in this blogpost are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of other members of the Exeter University Open Occupation.

Anyone who has been following me on Twitter recently will probably be aware that I have been taking part in the Open Occupation of the largest lecture theatre in Exeter University. The harsh, ideological governments cuts must be fought, and so hundreds of us joined together to make a stand.

It all began on Wednesday, 8 December 2010. After a march organised by the Students' Guild, over a hundred of us continued back to the Newman A lecture theatre, taking over the room during a maths lecture, that, as with all lectures, we sat through and allowed to take place. Within an hour after this, we had a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, and a blog. It's been impossible to overstate the importance of social media and the blogosphere to publicise the occupation. Every decision, and every significant moment has been available for anyone to see, and the amount of support that came through via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail was a constant inspiration (not least the email of solidarity from Billy Bragg. BILLY BRAGG!).

The support we received from the University, and specifically the security and porters, was also incredibly heartening. We allowed all lectures that could not be moved to take place, albeit after reading out a notice at the beginning of each explaining that our aims and that we would remain silently sitting through the lecture with them. Sadly, we did not receive the support of the Guild, who claimed that they needed to act in the interests of all students. I find this confusing, given their support for the marches with the same aim. The occupation was peaceful, legal and did not disrupt lectures (some were cancelled on the first Thursday due to the University assuming we would not allow lectures in).

Friday saw a debate between Vice-Chancellor of Exeter University, and president of Universities UK, Steve Smith debate the future of HE funding with president of the NUS Aaron Porter. Since this debate was open only to University students, not students from the college, I live tweeted through it. We were not allowed signs or banners due to an alleged "health and safety risk" (a shorthand, it seems, for anything that's been banned, and I wonder where these ridiculous myths come from!) -- though, to be fair, the Guild president did apologise for this overzealous reaction (and his treatment by some was undeniably unfair). After the debate, Aaron Porter came around to support the occupation and answer questions.

Getting Steve Smith to recognise the Occupation was always going to be a priority, and so when he came round on the second Wednesday, wearing a name badge and in the circle as anyone else would be, it was a major coup. Again I tweeted through it, this time on the official Occupation feed, so you can see what he had to say here. Our research was thorough, and I at least was shocked to hear such an influential supporter of the fees rise describe the HE cuts as "ideological".

The unity and creativity in the occupation was incredible. We were all there for political reasons, but though the sleeping arrangements were tough, people seemed genuinely engaged. When we could schedule them, we had free lectures, and we were all proud to be a space on the campus where you could receive free education. We had music, storytelling, and dancing. At times, I almost felt guilty for having so much fun.

But we did get a message across. Yes, the Tuition Fee rise made it through both the Commons and the Lords, and yes, Phillip Green still isn't paying the taxes that he should be. But we have shown the government that we will not stand for its cuts, that put the burden on the poorest whilst the richest go free. When I tell my MP that I will never vote for him again, he'll know that this is no idle threat, and that I damned well mean it. We have created a tradition of peaceful protest in Exeter, one which will live on long after the end of the Occupation, and shown that the "apathetic generation", so addicted to Fecebook and Twitter, can turn those tools against those who try to remove our rights.

The occupation may be over, but the movement lives on!

The Steve Smith/Aaron Porter Debate

These are the tweets I sent from the debate between Steve Smith, president of UUK, and Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, about HE funding. They are presented in chronological order.

Smith claims we "underinvest in HE", and doesn't think it should be privatised. #smithporter #solidarity #ukuncut

Browne review "utilitarian", says Porter. #smithporter #solidarity #ukuncut

Porter: individuals, businesses and the economy should ALL contribute to HE. #smithporter #solidarity #ukuncut

Q: with a £50m forum project unrequested,how do you guarantee student fees are spent on the best interests of students #smithporter #ukuncut

Smith: openness with guild, focus on research. Porter: much opacity exists still. #smithporter #solidarity #ukuncut

Q: should the NUS put more effort into telling poorer students the debt is bot[not] as they see it? #smithporter #solidarity #ukuncut

Porter: NUS will explain system, but figure is still daunting. #smithporter #solidarity #ukuncut

Telegraph allegations of secret NUS talks were unfair - Porter #smithporter #solidarity

Cable's advisor tried to discredit us ... Disgusting. - Porter #smithporter #solidarity

£335m invested in Exeter is based on zero increase in fees. Balancing the loss. -Smith #smithporter #solidarity

Poorer universities may have to charge less, problems arise -Porter. #smithporter #solidarity

[Porter:] Universities can't just stand still with tripled fees. #smithporter #solidarity

Q: What can I do now? #smithporter #solidarity

Future governments may act, show it's unpalatable. - Porter. #smithporter #solidarity

Question on the consumerisation of education. #smithporter #solidarity

Smith: Education should not be influenced by how it's funded. #smithporter #solidarity

Smith: Important to hold universities to account. #smithporter #solidarity

Porter: Unis should be responsible without direct funding from students. #smithporter #solidarity

Porter: Recovery through growth, not just cutting. Education is key. #smithporter #solidarity

Q: Previous privatisations have required governing bodies. One needed here? #smithporter #solidarity

Porter: We can't stand back and allow this without regulation. #smithporter #solidarity

Office for Fair Access run by "two men and a dog". Needs more teeth - Porter. #smithporter #solidarity

Smith: there will be more regulation. This is the right thing. #smithporter #solidarity

Smith: Number one problem, attainment. #smithporter #solidarity

Q: how will tuition fees help science degrees when they have links with businesses? #smithporter #solidarity

Smith: businesses do not put much into degrees. #smithporter #solidarity

Porter: international students show us our future. #smithporter #solidarity

Porter: UCAS received calls from international students asking whether their fees going up 3x as well. #smithporter #solidarity

Q: Is U of E best placed to endorse a two tier system when it doesn't represent the interests of other Unis that may close. #smithporter

Smith: policy of UUK agreed unanimously at every board meeting. #smithporter #solidarity

I believe no universities will close - Smith. #smithporter #solidarity

Social mobility different at each uni -floor. #smithporter #solidarity

Porter: "No fees" tactic didn't win '98 or '06, and there was not enough scrutiny. #smithporter #solidarity

The 60% of people who do not go to university should not pay the entirety of the costs of the 40% that do - Porter. #smithporter

Q: why is this debate closed to non-uni students? Why were we denied banners? #smithporter #solidarity #ukuncut

Smith: I have no knowledge. This was organised by the Guild. #smithporter #solidarity

Final question: funding low, accessibility low. Big disparity in Unis. Will gap between Unis get worse? #smithporter #solidarity

Porter: people may have to stay local. Subject choice may be influenced by future jobs, not personal preference. #smithporter #solidarity

Smith: earnings better with degrees, fear the "elite" Unis may have to spend much to bring small group of smart poor students. #smithporter

Smith: poorer social classes attain less generally; this is the battle we should fight. #smithporter #solidarity

Steve Smith receives the pledge from @ExeterOccupied. #smithporter #solidarity

My First Official Complaint

I have never sent an official complaint before. I moan about things, blog about things, but I have never felt the need to make an official statement before. Until now.

This interview went out on the BBC News channel yesterday:

As a result of this disgusting interview, trying blame Jody McIntyre for everything that happened whilst simultaneously trying to play down the event itself, I have sent the BBC this:

The appalling treatment of disabled protester Jody McIntyre

Protester Jody McIntyre was subjected to a disgustingly aggressive attack by presenter Ben Brown, rather than a fair and balanced interview, on the BBC News Channel, 13 December 2010.

The segment seems designed to throw as much suspicion as possible on Mr McIntyre, constantly questioning his involvement with the protests, which has little relevancy given the seriousness of the incident in question. After the first question, every query seems more concerned with Mr McIntyre's character than the very serious actions of the police force. Mr Brown asks about his previous political statements, which should have no bearing on the facts of the incident, and even asks, based on no evidence whatsoever, whether Mr McIntyre was throwing missiles at the police, clearly insinuating that Mr McIntyre somehow deserved his treatment.

That such suspicion should be thrown onto the victim of violent action -- and the footage shown clearly shows the incident, despite Mr Brown stressing that it would only "appear" to show this incident -- is appalling. It shows a bias towards the police force, despite the quite overwhelming evidence against them, and it is offensive that Mr Brown should try to imply that a protester somehow deserved to be thrown out of his wheelchair and dragged along a road. As such, I feel very strongly that this is unacceptable from the BBC.

It doesn't quite get across how strongly this interview disgusts me, but then, as I said, this is my first official complaint, and I felt that just repeating the word "bastards" as many times as would fit in the box would probably render my argument somewhat invalid.

Policing the Police

Recently, I wrote about my displeasure at certain judicial decisions made in this country. But if we have learnt anything from the introduction to Law and Order: UK, in analysing justice,we should also look at the police force.

I would have thought the MSM's (Mainstream Media's) bias supporting the police force, rather than condemning it, was fairly apparent. Anton Vowl's piece here seems to sum up why that would be the case - that the authority of the police force would initially outweigh statements from the general public. Throughout Thursday's protests the only figures being relayed from Sky and BBC News were the number of police officers injured and protesters arrested -- no mention until much later of the number of protesters injured. The lack of relevance the MSM places on the wellbeing of protesters, many of whom were caught in the middle (if that is an important factor anyway), is highly troubling.

However, there is a lot of condemnation from the blogosphere, because time and time again police have been shown to be using needlessly brutal and thuggish tactics. But these are not groundless accusations. The case of Ian Tomlinson seems almost too obvious to mention, but the video footage shows clearly that he was walking away with his hands in his pockets when pushed, and regardless of whether or not this did cause his death (and it is my opinion that it probably did), this footage alone raises questions. More sickeningly, Lance Corporal Mark Aspinall was savagely beaten in a case of mistaken identity, yet only one of the three was successfully prosecuted.

These incidents are all at least few months old, but there have been so many during the recent protests. Take the case of Officer U1202, shown punching repeatedly into a crowd of students in a clearly unnecessary display of brutality. I doubt very much that the students suffering brain injuries as a result of being hit over the head with truncheons, or being pulled out of their wheelchairs would argue that they are more of a service than a force. The intimidating tactics, such as kettling or those deployed in Cambridge, only serve to make situations worse.

And charging with horses is wrong. These animals are large, fast and impossible to control entirely. The footage at London really is not as critical as it deserves, and the claims that this is the first time that this tactic has been used since the eighties are demonstrably false (despite what the Metropolitan Police would have you believe, with the official statements to the contrary).

The fact that the Metropolitan Police are happy to cover this up proves that it is not the purely the individual loose cannons that are the problem, but the organisation itself has questions to answer. Misrepresentation is everywhere, with very little being done to put it right. Were police officers "dragged off horses and beaten", as Cameron claims? No. Here the protesters are the "bad guys", and any incident must therefore been of their doing, whether it can be substantiated or not.

On the Today programme, the Met Commissioner praised the "restraint" of the firearms officers, suggesting that the shooting of protesters was an option, and only the moral judgements of individual officers saved bloodshed. This statement seems entirely contrary to the argument that it is the individuals who go wrong, whilst the force (or service) maintains the peace.

Time and again the police have shown these brutish tactics. The citations in this post are the most concrete evidence I could find of problems with the police, but the twitter feeds and live blogs from within kettles, or on the streets, go further still. I am glad that blind faith in the police is down, and if they really want our trust, then, like anybody or anything else, they must earn it.

This blog has been adapted from a comment left in response to this post. This comment is currently awaiting modification

The Tuition Fees Post

Oh, this one has been building for a while...

I've been a Liberal Democrat for pretty much all of my political life. I live in a Lib Dem constituency, and my local MP is Jeremy Browne. Since he's a Lib Dem, he signed the pledge saying he vote against any rise in Tuition Fees. Here he is, number 145 on the spreadsheet. Good for him.

Except he'll be voting in favour of raising the cap to £9,000 on Thursday. Here's his Facebook note on it, and if you can't click through, here's what he says:

This government is having to take dramatic steps to avoid a budget crisis.

The British government is already borrowing an extra £425 million every single day. We will soon be spending £1,000 million a week just on the interest on our debt – way more than the total education budget.

If we run away from this crisis it will make matters even worse. The budget for the NHS is being increased and the overall spending on schools is being protected. But other budgets are being reduced because Britain has to live within its means.

I wish the new government had inherited a budget surplus, but instead we are tackling a disastrous deficit.

The fact is that the Liberal Democrats did not win the election. Our manifesto contained the policy to end tuition fees over a six-year period, however that was not a policy we could deliver as the junior partners in a coalition with just 8% of the MPs in the House of Commons.

Instead, within very difficult budget constraints, we are making the new system of higher education funding as fair as possible. It would have been easy to stand on the sidelines and not get involved, but the right thing to do is to play a strong part in coming up with the best possible solution.

The Liberal Democrats have helped produce a genuinely fair and progressive system that will help people from poorer backgrounds go on to higher education. No one has to pay upfront fees. Graduates will make monthly payments based on their earnings and only after they are earning £21,000 (up from £15,000 today). These monthly payments will be lower than they are today in every case.

So for example, a care worker with a starting salary of £21,000 increasing to £27,000 in real terms over 20 years would pay an average of £7 a month over 30 years. Under the current system, they would be paying back at least £45 a month immediately.

Universities which have higher charges will have conditions placed on them to ensure that they reach out to children and families on low incomes. And we have created a much fairer deal for part-time students who have previously been discriminated against. Our reforms will actively encourage social mobility.

Everyone in Britain will need to contribute to reducing the ruinous budget deficit so we can get our country back on its feet. That is being done whilst protecting the excellence of out universities and ensuring fair access for all potential students.

Disappointed is not the word.

The Liberal Democrats have shown just how little they value their promises to constituents. It wasn't just a manifesto pledge, it was a signed pledge to the NUS, and a key identifying feature of Liberal Democrat policy, along with Proportional Representation and the abolition of Trident (how are those going by the way?). Instead, they place the coalition agreement and the promise of power over the voters who put them into government in the first place.

And it is the voters who have given the Lib Dems the chance to be in government. That 8% figure that Browne quotes (which, to be specific, is nearer 9% at 8.8%) looks tiny, but the other 92% is not all Conservative. In fact, it's less than 50% (47.2%), and that's why we have a coalition government, rather than a majority -- a coalition which the Liberal Democrats are part of. Take into account number of votes cast, rather than just MPs, and almost a quarter of the country voted Lib Dem (23%), giving them about 2/5 the popular vote in government.

And yet, they seem oblivious to this fact. They make it seem as if they're just making up the numbers of a Conservative government, and providing the convenient fall guys for the harsh reactions to the cuts -- ideological ones, rather than essential. I feel like it's a cliche to mention the banks at this point, but only because the countless cries to punish them for their mistakes, rather than the students who have done nothing towards this crisis (how can they? They're under 18!), seem to be falling on deaf ears.

I haven't even directly mentioned the proposal themselves yet. I feel I have little to add after Aaron Porter's 10 points comparing the government's scheme to that proposed by the NUS, other than to agree with him when he says that "It is ridiculous to assume that students won’t take the price of a course into account when choosing it". Simply the threat of £9,000 a year is enough to scare people out of Higher Education, because it looks like a gamble, and a lack of state support makes University Education appear an individual luxury, rather than the right, or the essential part of our society, that it is.

Jeremy Browne's constituency is marginal, and if recent polls are anything to go by, he will probably lose his seat, along with many other Lib Dems, in the next election. Why? Well, I voted Lib Dem expecting a difference should they get to power. I voted Lib Dem because of their stance on Tuition Fees, on Trident, on immigration. I voted Lib Dem because they weren't the Conservatives. Enough people felt like me to create a Hung Parliament, and I supported the ConDem coalition because the calming influence of the Liberal Democrats would take the sting out of the Tories. I was wrong. If the AV vote goes against them, there will be almost nothing to show for them except to expose them as spineless turncoats. How can I vote for a party I no longer trust?