ALL OUT Tues 18th January
Fight to SAVE EMA: Don’t let Labour Betray Our Future
Bring Down the Coalition Government
Shut Down London
Build an Independent, Integrated, Mass,
Youth & Student Led Civil Rights Movement
The EMA is too important to our lives;
Send a message to Labour: EMA is not your political football.
Fight to win – Delay the vote!
Stop the cuts and fee hikes – Save EMA – Fight for free, equal, quality education for all – Fight racism & anti-immigrant bigotry – Stop the deportations – Sanctuary campuses now – Full Citizenship Rights for all immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, We are All the New Britain – No victimizations of activists – Stop scapegoating the black, Asian, Muslim & immigrant communities for the economic and social crisis – Make the Equality Act Real!
1pm Tues 18th January
Picket and Protest at Labour Party HQ
39 Victoria Street
Tube: Victoria, St James Park, Westminster
Buses: 148, 24, 211, 11
(WKC meet outside Grays Inn site 11am)
We have the power to save the EMA. We possess the power to reverse the rise in fee hikes and stop the next round of vicious cuts. To succeed we need our new student movement to get back on its feet and unite and lead the nation.
What is abundantly clear is that none of the political parties are fighting for us. The Labour Party has just announced that it intends to put the EMA up for a vote on Wednesday 19th January. This plan is a cynical political manuever to garner support for the Labour Party. It is aimed at blunting the power of the new student movement by cementing a second defeat of our new movement’s struggle to defend public education.
Many students will be in the middle of exams when the sure-to-lose vote occurs. They will hear that EMA is lost before they could regroup and launch the fight to save it. If Labour insists on taking the vote now they will demoralize a section of our movement and strengthen the ability of the Government to make more cuts and to hold on to power for a longer time.
Labour sees the 19th January as a “symbolic” action that will “educate” the public on the importance of restoring EMA. This is a ridiculous argument. The students who are leading the movement know how important the EMA is. Our militancy and determination to win conveys to those who are unfamiliar with the EMA how important it is to shaping our lives. Weak and tame civil-disobedience “symbolic” actions only undercut our assertion that the EMA is vital to the future of millions of young people.
Our mass actions in November and December had so much public support because everyone recognized that in fighting to defeat the fee hikes and the elimination of EMA, we were fighting against all the cuts. Poor, working class and middle class communities saw our movement speaking and acting on behalf of them. We inspired others to stand up and fight because we made clear that there is a new political force in Britain that is fighting to win. What the Labour Party fears more than the loss of the EMA and other precious benefits is the ability of our new movement to raise the expectations of so many and to arouse them to fight with us. The oppressed gaining political power frightens the Labour Party more than the terrible consequences that will occur if we lose. We want the oppressed to win.
Demonstrate and March to stop Labour’s betrayal of our futures – Tuesday 18th Jan
Our first task to defend EMA is to stop Labour from putting EMA up for a vote on Wednesday, 19th January. To achieve this we must mobilize and bring our protest to Labour HQ the day before the vote. We must express our anger and send a clear message to the Labour Party to abandon this cynical electoral maneuver. Labour must get the message before 19th January that we will not accept or forget their betrayal. Our movement must put principles before party politics and assert its independence now. Holding a protest action on 19th January after the vote has occurred, will make our movement look weak and resigned to defeat. It will turn our movement into nothing more than an extension of the Labour Party. If we allow this to happen our new movement dies.
The fight to keep the EMA is a fight for our freedom, our dignity, our equality and our aspirations.
644,000 students receive the £30 p/week EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) grant. The 16-19 year old students who are eligible to receive EMA are all in need of support and many will be forced to leave education if the grant ends. If we lose EMA and cannot reverse the fee hikes, generations of poor, working class and middle class students will lose the right to a public education and the opportunities that accompany attaining a degree.
The EMA was created to give black, Asian and other minority students who have been systematically denied equal access to higher education, an opportunity to go to college. It was a part of the Labour Government’s response to the rising anger of black and Asian communities. The EMA has made it possible for young Asian, Muslim and black women to get a higher education and to gain the freedom, independence, and self-worth that would have been impossible to attain without it. The attack on EMA is both an attack against the right of most young people in Britain to receive any kind of real education and a racist and sexist attack against the right of black, Asian, Muslim, immigrant, women and other specially oppressed youth to attain equality.
The students and youth who have the most to gain if we save EMA and the most to lose if it is eliminated will be our movement’s most determined fighters and leaders. It is crucial for our movement to go all out to organize black, Asian, Muslim, other minority and oppressed students at all levels of education. FE colleges and secondary schools must become prime centres of organizing. We need FE colleges in primarily black and Asian areas- Brixton, Harrow, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, etc, to turn out in greater numbers and play a greater role in our mass actions to have the necessary political will, anger and determination to win.
BUILD THE NEW POLITICAL LEADERSHIP NEEDED TO WIN. BUILD MOVEMENT FOR JUSTICE
It is not surprising that the Tory/Lib Dem attempt to dismantle the social welfare state and destroy our society’s egalitarian principles begins with an attack on the right of every young person to receive a publicly funded education. Education has always been the great equalizer, a cornerstone of democracy. The free market policies being implemented in Europe and the United States are premised on inequality, for the “cream” to rise to the top, the majority must be kept on the bottom. Defeating the rich and powerful forces is possible, but only if we have the kind of centralized coordinated conscious and collective leadership that is needed to defeat our enemies.
We cannot win relying on spontaneity. As great, exhilarating and just plain fun as our mass actions have been, we will continue to lose if our movement fails to develop a politically conscious and tactically bold leadership. Movement for Justice exists to build this new, desperately needed youth leadership. We must grow to make victory possible.
Unlike the rich and powerful, the oppressed must learn how to lead. We must come to believe that we can and should lead the whole society. Our new movement is a great teacher. We can learn a great deal about how to change the balance of power and win by critically analyzing the lessons learned both through the actions themselves and what we must do differently to win. By studying politics and history we can develop the tactics needed to win. Two of the most important lessons our new movement must learn, are to reject as leaders anyone who allows us to get kettled – we cannot shutdown London if we are kettled – and we must reject as leaders anyone who advocates for tactics that reduce our actions to weak moral protests instead of actions conceived of to build our power and win.
Movement for Justice is what our name connotes, an organization always pushing forward, determined to unite all the movements of the oppressed in action, fighting for the political program needed to win justice for all. We believe that building an independent, integrated, mass, youth-led civil rights movement is necessary to achieve this aim and for the oppressed to win. We are not afraid to stand on the truth. We speak the plain truth on racism. We are the only organization that does not fear the anger of the oppressed, especially that of the black, Asian, and other minority youth. We want the oppressed to win, because this is the only way to achieve progress and prosperity.
The great majority of our society longs for a leadership that will fight for them and keep fighting until we win. Movement for Justice is that leadership. We urge all of those who want to win to join us.
Join Movement for Justice
We march today, we march tomorrow, and we keep marching to build a new Britain: diverse, integrated and equal. We aim to win. We tell the truth about racism, sexism and anti-gay bigotry and the growing inequalities within our society. We believe that every human being is entitled to a job, to education, to food, shelter and the other necessities of life, so that every one of us can live in dignity, proud to be who we are, encouraged and able to fulfill our hopes and aspirations.
Get in touch for details of our regular meetings, and to find out how you can help build the 18th January, and to start an MFJ group at your school, college, sixth form or University.
Find us on FB: ‘Movement for Justice by any means necessary’
Email: mail@movementforjustice.org.uk Call: 07930 30 22 63
