Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/479/2199
From The Socialist newspaper, 22 March 2007
Greece
The struggle to defend free education
HUNDREDS OF occupied universities... striking university lecturers... demonstrations tens of thousands strong...; for ten months now Greek youth have fought against government attacks on the right to free education.
Ben Robinson
The strength of this movement has halted moves to allow private universities to be set up. Other attacks have gone through but lecturers and students are determined that they will not be implemented. Mass action of this kind could still see workers and youth victorious in removing the attacks, made law at the beginning of March.
In this struggle, strength is being drawn from the lessons of the French youth and workers' struggle in 2006 that forced the government to remove the hated CPE law, which threatened to destroy young people's rights at work.
Given the strength of opposition and willingness to struggle in Greece, these attacks could have been stopped before becoming law. However, a coherent plan to build the movement has not been put forward by the student leadership and, crucially, they have not seriously appealed to the workers' movement for solidarity action even though the potential is undoubtedly there.
Also, squabbling amongst left student organisations has resulted in impotence and violent anarchist actions have threatened to erase public support for the movement.
These problems need to be overcome for the movement to succeed. Xekinima, the CWI section in Greece, is calling for a continuation of the movement, properly co-ordinated together with joint action with workers, and for a united left election list that can remove the current right-wing leadership of the students' movement.
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In The Socialist 22 March 2007:
Labour's NHS plans: not what the doctors ordered!
Divisive forgery shocks health campaign
War and terrorism
Blair (and Tories) get their Trident vote
Socialist Party campaigns
May Day greetings - support the socialist
Keep the market out of education!
International Socialist Resistance
Socialist Party news and analysis
Passenger protests force some improvements
Budget: Who are the real scroungers?
Socialist Party women's day school a success
What we think
Private equity deals - fight free-market vultures
Marxist analysis: history
How was the slave trade abolished?
International socialist news and analysis
Rifondazione Comunista - its future?
"Bush out of Iraq and Lula out of Haiti"
Greece: The struggle to defend free education
Workplace news and analysis
Burslem postal workers continue the fight
Greenwich single status scandal
TUC try to cut conference childcare provision
Lobby for migrant workers' rights
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