Greater Manchester Respect

On Thursday, 9 December, MPs will vote on the ConDem proposal for tuition fee rises that will make it impossible for working class children to attend university.

The ConDems are scrapping Aim Higher, Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and reducing every other initiative that is part of the ladder for our children to pursue education.

Every parent should be encouraged to join these demonstrations and support the occupations of the colleges. Just the rise in tuition fees is enough to choke off the future for most children. Parents with a five year old child that save £100 each month (how many of us can do that now?) until the child is 18 will still be unable to pay for these fees. Yet the millionaires, public school boys and baronets running the ConDem government received free university education but now want to deny it to working class people.

But the situation is worse than £9,000 per year tuition fees. The abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), the Aim Higher scheme and the slashing of the Future Jobs Fund and Young Person’s Guarantee worsen the position of any working class teenager wanting to study. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition is kicking away the ladder for our children in education and creating a new elite system. The future is not education but attempts to find work at a time of mass unemployment and lower incomes.

We know that the Conservative Party is populated by public school boys from wealthy backgrounds. We know that many ministers went to schools such as Eton and then on to Oxford and Cambridge where they did not pay a penny for their education. Worse, we now know how much energy these ministers put into avoiding tax and pushing money offshore to make themselves richer while making the country poorer.

The Liberal Democrats pledged to oppose a rise in tuition fees before the 2010 general election knowing they had already planned to ditch the pledge if entering government. They campaigned for anti-Tory support and then joined the Tories in government. To do so, the Liberal Democrats sold the future of our children. The Labour Party has fared little better, having been left in the pathetic position of being unable to effectively oppose the rises after it brought in tuition fees, ditching its own 1997 pledge.

Salma Yaqoob, Respect Party leader explained that ‘The student protests are piling the pressure on our hypocritical politicians. They are an inspiration to everyone to make their voices heard. It is a disgrace that politicians, who got their university education for free, along with a grant for living expenses that they did not have to pay back, should now deny this to the student generation of today.’

This is why we should support the students and join them in protesting. These protests are about giving our children a future and so are protests for us all. We cannot let the ConDems kick away the ladder for our children. Greater Manchester Respect will be marching with students, FE college students and school children to stop the ConDems kicking away the ladder.