About

About this site

The all-out attack on the living standards of ordinary people has started with higher education. Across the UK, universities are threatened by thousands of redundancies, withdrawal of courses and services. But education workers and students are organising resistance to the cuts.

This site aims to to link education workers and students organising against higher education cuts at different universities. As a first step we're collating news from the various campaigns - we're actively looking for contributors and contacts. Subscribers can also share resources, discuss with fellow workers and students, check how the press are reporting the attack on HE. In a second phase, we'd like to produce a regular newsletter based on online content that can be printed locally.
If you work or study in any of the universities under threat, please contribute to this site - just get in touch by emailing admin@stopthecuts.net or register as a user. The site is still under construction, so any feedback is very welcome - you can leave a message in the forum.

The site is sponsored by the Education Workers Network (EWN), an industrial network of the Solidarity Federation. We believe that we need to organise ourselves as education workers instead of putting our faith in political parties or the trade union bureaucracy. This means we need to take direct action - a national strike to stop public sector cuts.

EWN statement on the cuts

All workers face tough times ahead. Whichever government is in power there is going to be an attempt to drive down the living standards of ordinary people. But public sector workers face a particularly tough time. It is clear that, over the next few years, the government is going to try and impose public sector cuts of a scale never seen in Britain before.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has calculated that it will take a 16% cut in public spending to significantly reduce government debt. Cuts of this magnitude would decimate the education sector and lead to thousands of job losses, massive wage cuts and ever increasing work loads for those lucky enough to keep their jobs.

The obscenity lies in the reasons behind the cuts. Instead of directly investing money in public services, the government handed it over to the banks with no restriction on how it was to be used. Then they seemed shocked when the banks used it to boost profits and bonuses. As a result of the government’s stupidity and the bankers’ greed we now find our very livelihoods in jeopardy.

Well, we should send a clear message to the government. The financial crisis was created by the bankers, not us. If the government can borrow billions to save the necks of bankers, it can certainly borrow to invest in schools, universities and the public sector in general. This would not only create jobs, it would drag the economy out of recession, in the process boosting government revenue which could be used to pay off the debt.

But empty threats will not put a stop to spending cuts. It is going to take coordinated strike action, involving all public sector workers to force change on the government. And for us, the starting point for such a strike is to fight against every education cut that management try to impose on us and to link that fight to the wider struggle against public spending cuts. In this way we can build a broad based workplace campaign for a public sector strike that will put a stop to government attempts to decimate our jobs, our pay and our industry.

Here at the Education Workers’ Network we hope to play our part in the campaign for a public sector strike against cuts. If you are interested in being involved please contact us.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Education Workers Network?
The EWN is an anarcho-syndicalist union in-formation for workers in education. We believe that our power as education workers lies in collective industrial action, rather than grievance procedures or discussions with management. We want to build a union that is open to all workers employed within education, regardless of job, sector or workplace. We want collective decision-making by workplace meetings open to all union members; not by paid officials, lay representatives, committees, or branch meetings outside the workplace. Decisions should be carried out by mandated, recallable delegates elected from the workplace by their fellow workers. While fighting management for short term, “bread and butter” issues at work, we strive at the same time to help build a revolutionary opposition to capitalism and the state which ultimately destroys both, and ushers in workers control of industry and a stateless, classless, free, libertarian communist (anarchist) society. To find out more, you can read our pamphlet, Building a Revolutionary Union for Education Workers.

What’s special about education workers?
Nothing. Workers in all sectors of capitalist society are exploited and demoralised by wage slavery. EWN is an industrial network of the Solidarity Federation, the British section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers Association (IWA), established in 1922. You join an industrial network of the Solidarity Federation by joining your nearest SolFed local. Although anarcho-syndicalism is not well known in this country, it does have historical echoes in the British syndicalist movement of the early 20th century. Many other European countries (and throughout the world) have strong IWA sections, and a history of anarcho-syndicalist organisation. SolFed aims for the establishment of anarcho-syndicalist unions in Britain across all sectors. Find out more about the history of British Anarcho-syndicalismf.