Hosted by the London School of Economics Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Society
Speakers: David Yaffe from Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! editor and LSE occupier in 1968, Juan Carlos from the London Living Wage Campaign and a representative from the student occupation at UCL.
The speeches began with David Yaffe looking in depth at the capitalist system and its crisis with particular reference to British imperialism.
David explained how the British government’s argument of extreme debt in Britain, used to justify the cuts and make the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism, is simple deceit. Many are profiting – in 1997 there were 37,000 millionaires in Britain, in 2009 there were 448,000. This huge increase of the numbers of extremely wealthy occurred mostly under a Labour government. The capitalist state serves and protects the ruling class.
In the heartlands of capitalism there is an over-accumulation of capital. Capital is not being invested because the return on that capital is not high enough. There are around 3000 billion dollars of surplus capital not being invested, yet the imperialist states of Europe, Britain and the US underwrote the biggest financial meltdown in history on a scale never seen before with 14,000 billion dollars, almost equivalent to a quarter of global GDP.
The Labour Party cannot credibly oppose the cuts. The Trade Union movement is unable and unwilling to do so. Instead the aim is to turn the working class against its own, picking on the unemployed with threats to take away their housing. The cuts are the refined cruelty of the British ruling class. Britain will spend 15 billion pounds on the war in Afghanistan over the next four years. And the bankers will continue to get obscene bonuses. David concluded that there is no capitalist solution to this crisis. We need socialism.
The next speaker, from the UCL occupation, pointed out that the overall cut to higher education will be 40 percent and there is increasing encroachment of the market into universities, which are made to compete with each other in the marketplace. There are multinational companies funding education, and research funding is allocated on how much profit can be made for private companies. This is the privatisation of education.
Within the student movement there are attempts to divert the anger. The NUS president stated that the sit-ins and occupations were a threat to the interests of students. In the self-proclaimed leadership people are moving towards the Labour Party, despite the its despicable actions instituting the cuts and allowing them to continue. The slogan of ‘Tory cuts’ diverts the issue. “It is not the leaders we want to change,” he said, “ but the system we have to change.”
Juan Carlos spoke about the experiences of people with no rights at work, exploitative wages, sexual harassment and all kinds of ill treatment because of being labeled as illegal. Immigrants with and without documents are being blamed for this crisis. In Colombia, British Petroleum pollutes the environment and persecutes trade unionists. People in Asia work 12 hours per day, seven days a week for 4 pounds per week. Africa continues to be a colony. And the immoral governments of Europe ask why people are migrating? Immigrants have no rights to health or education, yet not even one house is taken from the bankers. The students have been called savages, but what is savage are the measures that the government is introducing. Juan Carlos asserted: “The student movement has to retake its role as a defender of the people. Everyone should join their struggle… We need to light the torch of revolution in every city and every neighbourhood.”
In the discussion that followed people analysed the way in which the working class would be divided with certain sections literally being bought off, and privileged layers defending their standard of living. Socialist Worker has attacked people who criticise the Labour Party, claiming that to do so is to undermine unity. But we cannot unite with people who do not have the same interests. The struggle of teachers was highlighted, the plight of education whereby there can be just a five-day warning given before schools become academies and the school lease is given to a private company for 150 years. The salary of head teachers is at around £100,000, sowing division. Meanwhile 40,000 teachers are to lose their jobs.
It was voiced that in comparison to anything that happens here in the imperialist heartlands, it is always much worse in the ‘third world’. The imperialist countries literally plunder and steal from the rest of the world. Poorer countries are paying debt all the time and yet never pay it off.
People make the mistake that it is simply their employer who exploits them. We need to understand that it is the system. The struggle against capitalism is everywhere. The struggle of the students must move beyond the defence of the education system and towards its reconstruction, like in Germany in the 1960s when students interviewed professors to see if they were acceptable. In Britain we still have 30 infants in a class. The whole structure has to be challenged. In Cuba they spend a pittance of what is spent on education in Britain but still provide world-class education. Capitalism cannot even buy what they have in Cuba!
Juan Carlos rounded off the meeting with a call for everyone to mobilise for the student demonstrations the next day and affirmed: “Despite the beating that imperialism has given to the poor people, they cannot destroy our dignity.”
