Lancaster: Five Lancaster: Five Students Expelled

Scan page 7

Lisbon: May Day 1974.

In 1884 an obscure American one Federation o Organised the name Trade and Labour Unions issued a call for a legal eight hour day and for a general strike if this was no obtained within two years. Many eration of labour, to which most unions were affiliated at the time, took up the call for further action if there were no concessions by Ist May 1890. In 1889 when the Socialist (second) International was set up, one of the first motions it right tone orderati an une being viciously fought by the university authorities, with the full backing of the Labour A clear example of this is the wholesale victimisation of student militants at Lancaster University, where five students (including the Union President, Dick Soper) have been expelled and eight suspended for a year. The charges arise from an occupation of the administration block, which developed from their rent strike action in the struggle for increased grants. The occumatior was broken up by police gfr 12 days. The victimisations are intend.

ed to intimidate the student movefurther action. further action.

At the same time as these savage sentences were announced by the kangaroo court of the Lancaster Disciplinary Committee, the occupation continued at Warwick University against the withholding of grant cheques and as an escalation of their continuing rent strike.

NATIONAL Yet, as shown in Socialist Press (17.4.75) the rent strike policy is national policy of the NUS and it is an obligation on the national leadership to generalise these corrcct and necessary struggles. The danger to individual students arises from the abdication of leadership within the NUS, and from the way the grants struggle has been restricted to simply a "student" issue. It is class to defend free education, and class to detena tree education, and against the reactionary policies of the Labour government on wages, jobs and public spending.

Students must therefore take every opportunity to force their leadership into carrying through the official NUS policy with the full strength of the union, at the same time in every area carrying out an active struggle to win support from the trade union move ment. In developing this fight, the linked demands for a sliding scale of grants and for a sliding scale of education spending linked to the rising cost of living are vital to defend jobs in education and the living standards of students and workers. But central to the fight now is the defence of the victimised Lancaster students and their full reinstatement by the University