When he praised the students’ movement as “magnificent”, and credited it with setting an example for the rest of the left to follow in the battle against the Tory-Liberal austerity programme, Unite leader Len McCluskey spoke for a great many of the government’s opponents who drew real hope and encouragement from the protests and occupations of late 2010.

New Left Project, along with many others, takes the view that what we have seen these past few weeks should be ‘just the beginning’ of a large, sustained and powerful political campaign. In that spirit, we asked three people who played a substantial part in the recent protests to share with us their thoughts on the future of this nascent movement, and on what has happened so far.

For my part I will add two points. First, it has been said before but still bears repeating that this movement gains its particular strength and creativity from its lack of leaders, and from its ability not only to engage activists but to draw out their energies by not stifling them with overly hierarchical structures or formalised political lines. Guy Aitchison’s thoughtful contribution, below, elaborates on how these emerging trends might be taken forward.

Secondly, a note of caution. We are all familiar with the feeling of exhilaration generated by engaging in political activism and direct action. The experience of challenging sources of power that would prefer to see us rendered impotent is a liberating one; all the more so because of its real, historical importance. Talking-up what has been achieved so far – the damage done to the coalition, the emphatic insertion of the anti-cuts argument into political debate, the large numbers of young people brought into the campaign – is vital to maintaining morale and momentum, and the students movement has earnt the right to claim those acheivements as its own. But if we are serious about this movement and the real possibilities it offers, then we must be wary of the euphoria created by the actions of the past two months curdling into a kind of unearnt hubris.

The cold truth is that the students movement did not prevent the tuition fee vote from passing, and has not prevented any of the government’s other austerity measures being passed as yet. Therefore, in terms of its relations with the rest of the left, whilst the movement must continue to improve upon and learn from what has gone before, both good and bad - and whilst it must of course dispense with previous practices that have been proven not to work - this ought not to preclude a healthy respect for earlier and different incarnations of the left, which after all share the students’ values and concerns. Critique – a vital and necessary task – ought not to shade into contempt.

Like many on the left today, I personally take my cues more from people such as Noam Chomsky than from Karl Marx. But it is easy enough to acknowledge that the so-called “old left”, whether Marxist or otherwise, did achieve a few things in its time: like the vote, like rights in the workplace, like the welfare state, like the major part it played in the defeat of fascism. Compare the living conditions of the majority today with those in the Victorian era and you get an idea of the scale of what was accomplished. The “old left” could not prevent the rise of neoliberalism, but it is worth considering how much more suffering Thatcher would have been able to cause had it not been for the existence of the organised left at that time.

I hope the new forms of left activism continue to distinguish themselves as they have done in recent weeks. And I hope that all parts of the left spectrum can continue to learn from what present and past experience can teach us. At a time when so much is at stake, the students’ ethos of openness and inclusivity could not be more important, and nor could their resurrection of an idea whose time has come again - solidarity.

David Wearing is co-editor of New Left Project and a PhD student of Political Science at University College, London

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Guy Aitchison

The magnificent vitality of the student movement so far has been built on self-organisation and direct action. In the absence of leadership from a cowardly and co-opted NUS, thousands of students took control for themselves, organising political meetings, occupations and protests. Without doubt, the past few months have been an empowering and transformative political experience for thousands of young people, demonstrating what can be achieved when traditional hierarchies are bypassed and people start organising for themselves. Nonetheless, there are now calls to set up a new central organisation, a kind of shadow NUS to provide co-ordination and representation for the radical wing of the student movement.

This seems to be what James Meadway is after when he calls for an “alternative national leadership to Aaron Porter and the collapsing New Labour consensus” in his long, authoritative piece on the student revolt for the socialist group Counterfire.

Meadway is clearly not alone in viewing the “significant unevenness” in the student movement as a source of weakness, rather than strength, so it’s worth interrogating what centralisation would mean. How, for example, would a new central body be constituted? What authority would it have and in whose name would it speak? The danger we face is of creating a new tier of leaders who, however well-intentioned, seek to manage the movement and end up sapping it of its power, radicalism and creativity. They would come under intense institutional pressure to police the movement from within and dilute its aims – indeed, this is why the Met, the mainstream media and the political establishment have been craving for “leaders” to point the finger at.

We need to recognise that the student movement’s openness and pluralism is a political strength. Without it, it won’t succeed in bringing in the larger public. It would be a tragedy to now descend into ideological fetishism or for different factions of the far left to move in and try and appropriate the anger and energy to grow themselves at the expense of the wider cause. But this is the risk we run with centralised top-down structures.

Meadway argues that the ease of organising provided by ubiquitous social media reinforces the need for a credible central voice to prevent confusion and disintegration. “In a world in which everyone can organise a demonstration through Facebook,”, he says, ” it is absolutely vital that not everyone does so.” What this view ignores is the way in which a leaderless movement, organising through networks on and offline, constitutes its own sites of legitimacy and authority. The demonstrations called by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and the London Student Assembly, for example, saw huge turnouts precisely because these groups already had credibility within the movement built up through informal networks of fellow activists and the success of previous actions. By contrast, the fake demo on December 20th organised by an unknown individual with far right links, had almost zero attendance thanks to people warning each other not to attend by posting on their Facebook walls etc. Far from proving the need for central leadership, as Meadway argues, the incident demonstrated how communities of mutual trust and support even within a young movement help to guard against badly thought through or malicious actions.

Some campaigns will spring up, blossom, and then vanish; others will rise steadily and gain support. It’s the messy democracy of a mass movement - let’s embrace it. What we desperately want to avoid is a situation in which a central body, of dubious legitimacy, seeks to define which are the “real” protests (ones organised by them) and which aren’t (ones organised by rivals). Rather than setting themselves up as a central leadership, experienced activists should concentrate on disseminating skills and education within the movement. We need more people trained in organising demos and direct action, more people trained in legal observation, more people with the skills and self-confidence to deal with the press. Let’s have a situation in which the authorities have to keep on guessing where the next big mobilisation is going to come from.

The worst outcome would be to default back into the top-down model of mobilisation last seen with Stop the War. Although it had some successes in shifting public opinion, the anti-war movement never realised the huge potential it showed in the historic protest on the eve of the Iraq invasion because the means it adopted were crushingly dull and conventional, involving endless marches from Trafalgar Square through Whitehall to hear talks by the same old central cohort. Its top-down method of organisation left it exposed to the sectarianism and in-fighting which eventually pulled it apart.

Instead of submitting to the discipline of “leadership”, we should continue in the spirit of radical democracy and participation with which we have began. As we have seen, in the occupations and other sites of student resistance, this offers the best chance of harnessing the energy, creativity and talents of students and building a sense of shared identity and purpose. So, let us say “Yes” to more occupations and student assemblies, “Yes” to new campaign groups and organisations to add to the mix, but “No” to new central hierarchies which claim to know the interests of the movement, represent it and negotiate on its behalf.

Guy Aitchison was involved full-time in the occupation at UCL. He is a contributing editor at openDemocracy and a PhD student of Political Theory at UCL’s School of Public Policy

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Sophie Burge

On the 8th December, my high school in North London staged a 24-hour sit-in, to protest against spending and education cuts as well as the proposed tuition fee rises. We took inspiration from the many university occupations that had been happening around the country, feeling that the people directly affected by the fees rises should be taking more action to show their disdain and disgust towards the policy. We were absolutely delighted with the turnout, and with the public and media response. Over seventy people stayed the night at the school, and although the school management were not very pleased with our actions, and felt that we were ‘punishing the wrong people’, we had to politely disagree with them. We felt we were sending exactly the right message to the country and the government. Many of my peers objected to walking out of school to attend protests as it seemed silly to be complaining about education cuts and then not turn up to lessons. Staying in school for 24 hours, by contrast, demonstrated just how much we value our education.

On the evening that the sit-in took place, I appeared on Channel 4 News with Jon Snow to debate the tuition fees rise with the Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb, Chief Parliamentary and Political Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister. Although I was frozen to my seat with fear before going on air, the experience was amazing, as I finally had a chance to say what my friends and I had been debating for months and to really get our point across. It seems more than clear to us that the Lib Dem’s in the cabinet are truly blinded by power. They appear to have lost any idea of what the electorate want and the extent to which they have lost popular support. Lamb stuttered the same old rubbish about the fees rise being “progressive” and how the Lib Dems “didn’t win the election”. Really, Norman? I hadn’t noticed. But how does that excuse you breaking such a clear election pledge?

One of the biggest problems facing the student movement today is to be able to keep the moment going and keep this vast quantity of people engaged and inspired. After our 24-hour sit-in, many of my peers came up to me to ask just this. Although I could provide them with no clear-cut answer I found it very inspiring that these people who, frankly, six months ago couldn’t have cared less about politics, were now seriously and genuinely concerned that the movement would now just fizzle out. I think there is such strength of momentum behind the students that it would be almost impossible for it to halt here. The coalition government has successfully managed to radicalise a generation. When the leader of the Unite union recently announced his support for the student movement, I was astounded by the number of times the link to that story was shared around Facebook, and by whom it was being posted. Six moths ago it would have been X-Factor clips and football news.

The battle to defend the Educational Maintenance Allowace is fast approaching, and this has reignited students’ anger. I have heard many people argue that the cutting of EMA is even more unfair that the rise in tuition fees, because it will deny the poorest students the realistic chance of a good education at an even earlier stage, and because it affects the very poorest in society, while the tuition fee rise is largely a middle class argument.

I think the work of the student movement and the work of UK Uncut will begin to develop naturally into a generalized anti-cuts movement as the cuts really begin to bite and affect ever-larger portions of society.  UK Uncut is doing the anti-cuts movement a huge service by showing that there is a viable alternative to the government’s policies. It is startling just how many people have no idea that the super rich pay a smaller proportion of tax on their millions and billions then ordinary people pay on their £20,000 salaries.

Much of the population may have viewed the scenes of vandalism in Parliament Square with disdain. But it is hard to deny that those events were part of something far bigger.

Sophie Burge is an A-Level student at Camden High School for Girls

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Elly Badcock

The past three months have been an exhilarating, exciting and completely exhausting whirlwind of militant student activism,with 130,000 people walking out of colleges and universities, blocking roads, kettling town halls and voicing their anger all the way down to Parliament Square.

One might well ask, in these turbulent political times, where the head of our national union is to be found. As befits a position which has spawned such political greats as Jack Straw and Phil Woolas, we find him briefing the government on how to cut student grants, calling for the exclusion of ‘violent’ students (under Aaron Porter’s definition, windows and park benches are sentient objects capable of having violence inflicted upon them) and inciting sectarianism by referring to swathes of his own constituents as ‘idiots’. He is to be found enthusiastically voicing solidarity and promising support for student occupations one day, and reneging on this the next - students facing extortionate legal costs at University College London are left wanting by the NUS leadership, who promised ‘legal, political and financial support’. At this crucial time, it’s clear that students need a leadership which is willing to stand and fight rather than ‘spinelessly dither’ over whether they can support the biggest student movement in British history. SOAS and Birkbeck have already passed motions calling for a vote of no confidence in Porter; unions up and down the country should call Emergency General Meetings for the first week of term and do likewise.

It’s important, however, that this doesn’t detract from our vital fight against fees and cuts; a movement that must grow even bigger to continue its successes. We need a new wave of student occupations, including FE colleges and secondary schools, to place firm pressure on heads of schools, universities and colleges across the country; to make our centres of learning ungovernable and force our management to oppose fees and cuts. The last round of occupations showed that we can fight; the next must show that we can win.

A crucial aspect in the coming months will be the involvement of trade unions. If our movement is to win, then it is imperative that workers across every sector do more than support our struggle; they must be a part of it. At my own university, SOAS, lecturers and support staff were vital to our occupation, organising teach-ins and even offering to stay awake all night on security rotas when we were under threat of eviction. This is the kind of solidarity we must see on a national level; and it is a call that Len McLuskey has led the way in answering, stating that Unite’s “first task is to reach out to the student protestors”. 

This inspiring commitment should be welcomed; however, we need to be equally clear that it is one that must be replicated. The Union and Colleges Union refused to back a 35,000 strong march on the 9th of December, and instead lent their support to the quite frankly pathetic glowstick vigil along Victoria Embankment – with an estimated 200 in attendance. Actions like this are entirely unacceptable in such tumultuous political circumstances, and UCU activists should be firm in calling for a stronger response.

With all this in mind, students should gear up after the Christmas break for another frenzied term; another national demonstration has been called on the 29th of January, and this should surpass all demonstrations thus far. Many of these demonstrations have been co-ordinated by the London Student Assembly, a body set up to fight in the absence of the NUS; these student-led bodies should be replicated across the country to co-ordinate protests and do the vital work our national union is failing to.

Finally, the infectious flashmob protests which have sprung up in the last month against Topshop and Vodafone’s shocking tax-dodging has shown the extent to which the student movement is linking up with the wider anti-cuts struggle. With that in mind, students should join with the Coalition of Resistance in the week of action from the 14th-19th of February. United, we can bring the ConDem government to its knees.

Elly Badcock is a third-year Politics student at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She sits on the Editorial board of news and theory website Counterfire, and has contributed to Liberal Conspiracy and University of London paper The London Student

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Update: For more interesting discussion, partly in response to the above piece, see this excellent article by Jo Casserly at the UCL Occupation blog