Students must get organised!

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LEAKED confidential papers from the Environment Department show the full extent of the Thatcher government's attack on the education system. Between 1981 and 1984 an estimated 100,000 jobs in education are to go - including 50,000 teachers and lecturers.

The figures are realistically likely to be greater -as they are based on the government's own pie-inthe-sky forecasts; inflation is now running 2% above target and education spending 3% above target.

This 'overspending' is likely to be the excuse for more savage cuts by the Government in the future.

It is absolutely clear that the Tories are embarking on the full scale destruction of the education system. Students have to be roused from apathy into joining a working class fightback defence of our own independent interests.

Just more protests However the recently imposed cut of 2,000 university places and the annual erosion of the real value of grants has provoked no clear lead for students from the NUS leadership.

An endless round of innocuous protests, pray-ins and picnics is all that is on offer.

Socialist Organiser has always pointed out the reactionary role of the Communist Party in selling out industrial struggles.

The calibre of the CP faithful in the student field is shown up by SDP recruit Sue Slipman, who resigned from the Communist Party after many years in its leadership because she thought the SDP had more of a chance of implementing 'The British Road to Socialist Organiser students are committed to transforming NOLS into a campaigning students' organisation based on revolutionary politics.

This means not only a students start fighting win? relentless struggle against the "Clause Four" leadership of NOLS and its bureaucratic rule, but also against the fake-Trotskyist Militant Tendency with its sterile propaganda approach, backward positions on women and gays and a profoundly British chauvinist position on the question of Ireland and the Republican hunger strikers.

It is against this background that the first national Socialist Organiser Student Caucus is being convened. Open to student members and supporters of SO, it will agree our programme and activity for the next year, based on qur experiences in fighting for revolutionary politics in NOLS, the SSA, NUS and the Labour Party.

SO STUDENT'S CAUCUS Saturday 22nd August at Barnes Wallis Building, UMIST, Manchester. Pooled fare. Ring Bradford 666629 for further details.

JANUS MANDO INCk

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KINGSTON POLYTECHNIC STUDENTS UNION ENGTH