Red Pepper » Max Watson

A spanner in the works of university privatisation

admin — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:00:11 +0000

London Met Unison members celebrate victory over the university’s ‘shared services’ proposals. Photo: David Hardman
Since January 2012, London Metropolitan University Unison members have been engaged in an ongoing fight against wide-scale privatisation proposals. This autumn we won a huge battle against the university’s ‘shared services’ plans, and we can hold our heads high going into the next round of battles. We feel it is worth reflecting on how our successful fight against privatisation fits into the wider issues of what is happening across higher education (for more detailed background, see Andrew McGettigan’s article).
The universities minister David Willetts is like the Michael Gove of higher education but without the full support of the rest of the Tory right wing. He’s been encouraging greater outsourcing, more privatisation and so called ‘shared services’ initiatives, and London Met management has been dancing to this tune – much to our exasperation.
Why? Just after the general election in 2010 our vice chancellor, Malcolm Gillies, appointed David Willetts’ long-standing senior Tory adviser, Jonathan Woodhead (who did a masters degree in war studies at King’s College), on a £75,000 per annum contract as executive officer. A year later he appointed as deputy chief executive Paul Bowler, an ex-banker with a reputation as an asset stripper and with close connections in the City. It was Bowler who set to work on the shared services proposals, which were announced by the vice chancellor two days before the 2011 Christmas holidays.
With a history of struggle, it was inevitable that our Unison branch would resist these proposals and we threw everything we could into making them unworkable. As it turned out, another wing of the ‘nasty party’, represented by home secretary Theresa May, wasn’t on board with Willetts’ neoliberal experiment either. Her department threw a spanner in the works by taking away London Met’s licence to recruit international students in August because she wanted to cap migration numbers.
It was in this context that when the shared services proposals were finally dropped in October, our members were rightly celebrating the vindication of our campaign but at the same time worried about what is round the corner and shocked at the damage already caused by the international students fiasco.
Rather than simply try to negotiate a transfer to a new company, we had agreed to fight the proposals outright, which helped to delay and disrupt the plans until it was too late to implement them. It proved to be the right course of action. The university conceded on ‘admitted body status’ to the local government pension scheme, for example, only after a great deal of pressure from our campaign and only after we announced our intention to ballot our members for industrial action.
They knew we would win a resounding ‘yes’ vote and could take potentially very disruptive action short of a strike, as well as smart strike action, over their plans to change the identity of our employer. This was backed up by the recent landslide victory for the Unison candidate who stood for election to the board of governors on an anti-shared services platform.
This was the culmination of a long member-led campaign, in which we used everything we could from a union organiser’s toolbox and engaged the imagination and creativity of our members. Posters and fliers were pinned up all over campus. We covered up the university’s ‘Proud to be London Met’ marketing slogans and replaced them with Unison placards that read ‘Not allowed to be London Met’. An email campaign, which the university tried to block, gained the active support of more than 100 members. Local MP Jeremy Corbyn signed up to our cause. And we organised a ‘virtual lobby’ of the governing body, which involved 50 Unison members photographed individually wearing a campaign t-shirt and carrying a placard against privatisation that was sent as a slide show to the governors.
Our media campaign was successful too, ensuring we changed the narrative from ‘shared services’ to privatisation, which the university was keen to play down; and we called on the support of our allies in the University and College Union (UCU) and students’ union.
When the overseas students fiasco hit us we took the opportunity to link the issue to privatisation and insisted on the governors dropping their ‘shared services’ proposals in order for us to work together on that issue and get our house in order. Diane Abbott MP, among others, has acknowledged that our campaign was instrumental in winning a judicial review of the UK Border Agency revocation of the university’s licence to recruit international students and eventually the governors accepted that to focus on getting our licence back they had to drop their deeply unpopular privatisation proposals.
Union members recognise that we continue to face an uphill struggle and the university is financially weak but we are stronger and better prepared for battles ahead knowing that – against all the odds – we defeated the pet project of our government-backed vice chancellor.

Town hall riot?

James O'Nions — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:05:09 +0000

Monday 29 November was a turning point for the anti-cuts movement on two counts: Firstly, local students – who have recently been an inspiration to us all fighting the cuts – joined a local anti-cuts demo which was not about tuition fees, EMA or education cuts.

Secondly, the militant nature of the demo meant that it was the first time the riot police were called to defend a town hall meeting that was about to vote to implement Tory cuts. It was our own Millbank Tower moment, and it almost worked.

The student feeder march from Goldsmith’s quickly swelled to around 200 and by the time we got to Lewisham Town Hall, there were another 200 gathered from the community and local trade unionists.

Speakers at the rally included activists from NUT, UNISON, students and users of the community services that the Labour Council intended to cut (to the tune of £60million). Cuts already announced include five libraries, a children’s centre, the ‘Opening Doors’ employment centres whilst at the same time making 466 staff redundant.

Once it became clear to the crowd the council were refusing to let us into the public gallery – which they’re legally obliged to do – chants of ‘let us in’ soon drowned out the speeches, and a group rushed through doors and past security.

It almost became a local Millbank Tower moment, but the crowd didn’t quite have the momentum to all get in without a tussle. The police reaction then grew completely out of proportion. Riot police, some on horse back others with dogs, arrived on scene with shields and batons drawn. The cops were aggressive and violent – and several arrests were made.

Lewisham Town Hall sits on a main junction in Catford, and the entire block was closed off for a couple of hours whilst the police took control and appeared to prepare for a ‘kettle’ before the crowd quickly dispersed.

A few flares went off, a window got broken, and whilst the meeting was disrupted, and temporarily adjourned, it was almost but not quite ‘mission accomplished’. The vote on the cuts went ahead behind closed doors.

The town hall meeting behind closed doors meant that we had to force our way into the meeting: the response to the security refusing us entrance was magnificent. And with the large group of students who came down and swelled our numbers, we almost had the confidence to get in as a group.

The violent overreaction from the riot police meant that news (it was covered by BBC1) soon circulated: Labour controlled Lewisham Council tried to vote through a Tory cuts budget and they had to do so behind closed doors and with riot police protecting them… Every anti-cuts alliance in the country (and every Councillor) should take note!

For more info, and to get involved in Lewisham Anti-Cuts alliance, go to: lewishamanticutsalliance.wordpress.com

Max Watson is branch chair of London Metropolitan University UNISON (writing here in a personal capacity)

What can you do?

admin — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:05:00 +0000

First, join the boycott of Israeli goods and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Check the labels in shops: you’ll be surprised to see just how much food – fruit, herbs and vegetables in particular – we import from Israel. Make sure you tell the shop manager what you’re doing and why. M&S and Starbuck’s are among the high-profile companies to avoid. Visit the Boycott Israeli Goods website for further information.

There is also a specific campaign against the Caterpillar company, which supplies the armoured bulldozers used to clear Palestinian homes during army incursions, in reprisal demolitions and along the route of the so-called security wall. It was a Caterpillar bulldozer that crushed international peace activist Rachel Corrie to death as she tried to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes. For further information, visit Stop Caterpillar at www.catdestroyshomes.org.

More positively, try to buy Palestinian goods to support the Palestinian economy. For example, Zaytoun is a non-profit business established to support marginalised farming communities in Palestine. Use it for your olive oil supplies: details of stockists are on the Zaytoun website.

You can also shop online at the Olive Coop for fair-traded Palestinian goods. Goods on offer include books, candles, ceramics, glass, carved olive wood, soap, textiles and embroidery. The Olive Co-op also organises rewarding small-group guided tours around Palestine/Israel, enabling visitors to learn about the situation first-hand and meet inspiring Palestinian and Israeli groups working for peace and human rights. If, when you return, you want to set up more permanent links with a place you’ve visited, then consider the various twinning projects that are being established all over the country – Tower Hamlets is twinning with Jenin, Camden with Abu Dis, and Stirling University Students Association recently voted to twin with Berzeit university.

To keep yourself informed and get together with other campaigners, join your local Palestine Solidarity Campaign group. You’ll be part of a fast-growing movement that has a strong voice in the international struggle for Palestinian justice. If you are a trade union member the likelihood is that your national union is affiliated to the PSC and you should make sure that local branch activities reflect its policies.

For an alternative view of the news from Israel, Arab Media Watch might be worth hooking up with. The Stop the Wall campaign website is also an excellent source of regularly updated news about the campaign against the West Bank wall, grassroots activism and other events in the occupied territories.

If you are a Jew who wants to see an end to the occupation of Palestinian lands, then you may want to join up with Jews for Justice for Palestinians. And to get involved with nonviolent protest against the occupation join the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) campaign.

Since 2001, the ISM has attracted thousands of activists from all over the world to join and support Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the occupation; demonstrating against the Wall, against home demolitions, closures and curfews; joining in solidarity with prisoner hunger-strikes; accompanying ambulances through checkpoints; taking part in the removal of roadblocks; and generally supporting the Palestinian people in their struggle for survival.

On 16 March 2003, Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American, was crushed to death by an Israeli Caterpillar bulldozer as she tried to prevent it from demolishing a house in Rafah, Gaza. Two months later, another ISM volunteer, Tom Hurndall, from the UK, was lethally shot in the head by an Israeli sniper in Gaza as he shepherded children away from Israeli gunfire. Brian Avery, an American, was also shot in the face in Jenin but miraculously survived the ordeal.

Shortly afterwards, UK journalist James Miller was killed in another targeting of international observers in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, the Israeli military machine began systematic arrests and deportations of ISM volunteers. Countless hundreds of volunteers have since been prevented from entering the country.

Nevertheless, large numbers of volunteers have continued to arrive to support the ISM and they are prominent today in areas where Palestinians are resisting the seizure of their land with demonstrations and protests. New volunteers are always needed and training is provided by the London branch (details on the ISM London website).

While being aware of the risks, Red Pepper encourages readers to go to see with your own eyes the peaceful Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation. Send us your diaries clearly marked ‘for publication’ if you’d like to share your experiences with other readers.