National Student Week of Action

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National Student Week of Action

Atomic Hypocrisy

This week sees a Week of Action called by the National Union of Students (NUS), part of its priority campaign, "On course… for a fair future?" Variable top-up fees are planned for introduction this year. The current cap on those fees of £3,000 per year is scheduled for review in 2009; earlier this month, speculation was raised of a lift in the cap to perhaps £5,000 at that time (by Sir Howard Newby, the out-going chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, in an interview with the Times Higher Education Supplement).

The major event of the week is a national lobby of parliament, followed by a demonstration, on Wednesday. Throughout this week, students are organising events on campuses, such as holding debates. The NUS has advised students to "think about establishing a theme or question around which the debate can be framed. For example, 'how is increasing market forces in education going to affect the Government's aim of widening participation?'"

The Week of Action also precedes industrial action called by the lecturers' unions AUT and NATFHE, which have voted to strike on March 7. The NUS is supporting this action, and is encouraging students to engage with local trade union activity. The lecturers' unions are striking over pay, but are drawing attention to the contradiction between wages and the supposed extra money from the variable fees.

As the NUS explains, "Local action will encourage students and their unions to discuss how the changes will affect students in their area, and will involve local community members as well as institutions in generating a debate about what this will mean for all those who are likely to be affected."

Further, "National action in the form of a mass lobby of Parliament on 1st March will give students a chance to directly question their MP on his or her views. This will also provide us with an important opportunity to gauge feeling amongst parliamentarians about any lifting of the cap and make an important initial link with members of parliament." This both suggests the issue of accountability of government and parliament, and exposes the situation that students are reduced to a level of lobbying and "gauging feeling", making "initial links" with MPs, and so on; in other words, that students are totally marginalised from the decision-making process that directly affects them.

Writing in a personal capacity for Socialist Worker, NUS executive officer Suzie Wylie said, "Education is one of the key fronts in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's full spectrum neo-liberal offensive… Fees are the sharp end of a wider series of attacks on education. Years of underfunding of universities have led to the closure of courses, libraries, departments and campuses. Charges for accommodation in student halls of residence are spiralling. Increasingly student accommodation is being sold off to private companies. The 'profit before people' attitude of New Labour is shifting the financial burden onto ordinary students, contributing to soaring student debt."

She also explained, "On Thursday [16th February], 150 students at Sussex University took part in an angry demonstration against cuts. They are now planning to hold a teach-in to discuss the issues and plan the way forward. On Monday [20th], 200 students occupied the administration building at Swansea University following a demonstration against a library closure. Plans to close courses and privatise halls of residence added to the anger. The Swansea students were set to hold a further demonstration on Wednesday [22nd]."

Prior to these events, students from Further Education (FE) colleges across the country attended a lobby at the House of Commons on February 15 under the heading "Loud and Clear". Recent NUS research showed that a significant number of colleges are failing to provide even the basic mechanisms – such as a students' union or student governors – to ensure that students can have their say on college life.

WDIE wholeheartedly supports students in organising their Week of Action. In building a new wave of action in the run-up to the planned introduction of top-up fees, students are again asserting that Education is a Right! Furthermore, they are raising their demands for a say in the face of a system that marginalises them from political life and denies them any decision-making role. Students are informing themselves, developing their discussion and are raising key questions such as the issues of the role of market forces and the neo-liberal offensive. At the same time, students have to remain on their guard against the official ideology, which attempts to disorientate the discussion, along with other diversions from their aims.

We call on students not to be diverted from setting their own agenda, and to consolidate their aims, develop their own thinking and put that thinking into action. It is up to students, in working for a positive future for themselves and society, to ensure that their outlook is one of taking control of that future.

Tony Benn*, November 30, 2005, Guardian

Britain has played a leading role in the negotiations with Iran about its nuclear programme and the risk that it might lead to the development of an atomic bomb, and may well seek to take the matter to the UN security council.

Given that the prime minister himself is determined to upgrade Trident and appears to be committed to a new series of nuclear power stations, his position as the defender of the non-proliferation treaty is not very credible, and if we are to understand the depth of western hypocrisy on this question we should look back at the history, which has been conveniently forgotten.

Thirty years ago, on January 7 1976, as secretary of state for energy I went for a long discussion with the Shah in his palace in Tehran, and much of the time was spent discussing the plans he had to develop a major nuclear-power programme in Iran.

I had been well briefed on his proposals by Dr Akbar Etemad of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation, who had told me that he intended to build a 24 megawatt capacity by 1994, which was bigger than the programme Britain itself had at that time, and he expressed an interest in the centrifuges that are essential for reprocessing, while assuring me that he was anxious to avoid nuclear proliferation. My diary covering my talk to the Shah about the sources of his nuclear technology reveals that he told me that he was "getting it from the French and the Germans and might even get it from the Soviets – and why not?"

It was only a year later that Dr Walter Marshall of the Atomic Energy Authority, my own adviser, announced that he was also the Shah's adviser on nuclear policy, and had prepared a scheme under which the Shah would order the Westinghouse pressurised-water reactor (PWR) if Britain would do the same, and that Iran was prepared to put up the money – a plan that I was determined to fight. It was actually being suggested as part of this deal that Iran would become a 50% owner of our nuclear industry for the purpose of building the PWRs.

Marshall had, without any authority from me, apparently suggested that Britain abandon our advanced gas cooled reactors and order up to 20 PWRs, and I formed the impression that he took the view, as many in the nuclear industry did, that proliferation was inevitable and there was not much you could do about it. Indeed he almost said as much.

For all these reasons I was totally opposed to this whole idea, and what was most worrying to me was the virtual certainty that it would lead to nuclear proliferation and the development of atomic weapons by Iran. It was never approved. Sir Jack Rampton, my permanent secretary, who seemed to be as keen as Marshall on the adoption of the PWR, and who was directly consulted by the prime minister, was clearly pressing this approach, and Jim Callaghan himself wanted me to go along with it.

At a cabinet committee meeting held on May 4 1977, Jim, while expressing his concern about nuclear proliferation, argued that we should not reject the Iranian approach since he thought that either the Germans or the French would take it up.

An added complication arose when it turned out that since nuclear power was, under Euratom, seen by the Foreign Office as being within the legal competence of the European commission, the British government might be unable to take its own view.

Most astonishing of all, in the light of the present discussions, is that the problem of Iran developing such a huge nuclear capacity caused no problems for the Americans because, at that time, the Shah was seen as a strong ally, and had indeed been put on the throne with American help.

There could hardly be a clearer example of double standards than this, and it fits in with the arming of Saddam to attack Iran after the Shah had been toppled, and the complete silence over Israel's huge nuclear armoury, which is itself a breach of the non-proliferation treaty.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, were recently awarded the Nobel peace prize for their work on non-proliferation, but since that treaty provided that the nuclear-weapons states should negotiate their own disarmament agreement, which has not happened, it is clear that for them the NPT does not matter.

Now there is a proposal to report Iran to the UN and ElBaradei could find himself in the same position as was Hans Blix, the Iraq arms inspector who was used by Washington for its own purposes, with the US seeking a UN resolution to condemn Iran and then, if that fails, acting unilaterally using force, as in Iraq.

If the problems now being discussed can be dealt with in a practical way through the IAEA, there is a real chance of an agreed solution, and that is what we should be demanding since neither Bush nor Blair is in a position to take a high moral line.

As I am strongly opposed to nuclear weapons and civil nuclear power, these comments should not be taken as endorsing what Iran is doing; but Britain's past nuclear links with Iran should encourage us to be very cautious and oppose those whose arguments could be presented as justifying a case for war, which cannot be justified.

· Tony Benn was the secretary of state for energy from 1975-79