Our Stormont Representatives and the Right to Education

On Monday 1^st November, the Stormont MLAs debated a motion brought forward by the SDLP on the issue of student fees. The motion called for the assembly to oppose the recommendations of the Browne review which recommends increasing the fees which universities are able to charge. The motion also opposed to moves to increase the interest rate paid by students on their loans. 

"That this Assembly notes the publication of the Browne and Stuart reports on the funding of third-level education; calls on the Minister for Employment and Learning and the Executive to ensure that publicly funded higher education is based on the ability to learn, not the ability to pay; rejects any increase in the cost of student loans; and opposes the coalition Government’s plans to adopt the Browne proposal to remove the cap on student fees."

An amendment to the motion was proposed by Jonathon Bell of the DUP which completely diluted its effect  (deleting the words in bold above) and excluded any opposition to the Browne report. This amendment was eventually carried by a margin of 44 to 29 with both UUP and DUP voting for it and Sinn Fein, SDLP, Alliance, Green and ex-PUP MLAs voting against the increase in student fees. 

What is of immediate relevance to local voters is how the six local MLAs voted. Tom Elliott, Arlene Foster and Maurice Morrow all voted for the increase in student fees, Tommy Gallagher was alone in voting against them. Michelle Gildernew and Gerry McHugh didn’t bother to vote at all.

The Motion was Weak to Start off with

Of course the SDLP motion didn’t go any where near far enough, it reflected the opportunism of  that party in seeking to portray itself as a 'responsible' opposition to the onslaught on third level students. They seek to position themselves in relation to the growing campaigns of students and those in wider society who refuse to countenance a return to the situation where university education is the exclusive preserve of the wealthy. 

The motion did not even include the demand that university fees be entirely removed - which was the old position of both SDLP and Sinn Féin. There can be no justification for applying a cost to education; the  cost of free university education would easily be funded by just making sure that the richest people actually pay their fair share of taxes (most pay almost nothing at all as they pay sharp accountants and tax ‘advisers’ instead). The benefits of third-level qualifications in terms of the productive capacity of a country more than return the cost of providing it but that's not the way profit-makers see it.

Increasing the burden of a university education to the point where graduates will be saddled with a personal debt of about £30,000 and facing a world where finding a decent job is almost impossible is simply wrong and is clearly calculated to close the door to working class people going to university. Of course, the priorities of the ConDem government are not to educate large numbers of working class people who might then question the capitalist system and how it operates.

Local MLAs failed our children!

Notwithstanding this fundamental criticism of the SDLP motion, the performance of the local MLAs was abysmal: 5 out of 6 didn’t take the opportunity to oppose the Browne report and all three unionists effectively voted for cuts. I hope that readers of this blog will remember this in the next election. 

Working class people – both Catholic and Protestant - are not being represented at all at the Assembly. The UUP and DUP are competing to defend the interests of the well off; that’s their priority as they take their working class voters for granted. The performance of Sinn Fein, of whose 27 MLAs only 10 bothered to vote, was unforgivable considering that if all their MLAs had turned up to vote, the original motion would have been carried by a large margin and the Assembly would have at least on paper set its face against the attack on the right to education.

The Real Alternative

The voting in Stormont was perhaps largely an academic exercise, none of the Assembly parties has demonstrated any commitment to opposing the ConDem cuts in anything but words alone. The lessons of history are clear, only when people get organised and build strong popular campaigns will anti-working class policies be resisted. The parties in the Assembly share nothing with that agenda of change; their first and over-riding concern is to maintain their own electoral standing by playing on the sectarian divisions - the very thing that has been used repeatedly to weaken workers in struggle. Only by building cross-community campaigns involving workers, students and those in the wider community taking the brunt of the cuts can these neo-Thatcherite cuts be resisted.

The recent upsurge in protests involving students, the university occupations which are spreading across campuses in Britain, the growing industrial unrest and the the number of mass protests against the cuts are signs of that developing in our society. The recent crisis and how governments have dealt  with it has led to people seeing much more clearly today that the system is set up in the interests of those with billions not the ordinary citizen. All the political parties are just stooges to that agenda whether willingly or otherwise. 

Readers should consider that the fact that many parties have to be seen in the middle of those protests illustrates the political weakness of the professional class of politicians who will administrate neo-liberalism in our society. 

More and more people are understanding the need for fundamental change in society, let us re-dedicate ourselves to  reaching out to them and building towards the opposition that can bring that about.