Fighting job losses at London’s Queen Mary University

Security at Queen Mary’s University of London in Mile End, East London, were told to lock all the doors to defend the university’s council from protesters.

We felt quite special that a small group of staff and students were so scary – but then of course we did represent hundreds of students and two union branches which are determined to fight the cuts.

Over 100 redundancies have been proposed at QMUL, including 26 library staff and 43 in the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

As QM Stop the Cuts and the Unison branch have complained, the consultation period for these cuts was during the summer when students and many staff were away.

QM is a financially stable university with reserves of £10 million. There is no need for cuts. Yet, while attempting to push through these drastic cuts, QMUL management have trebled student tuition fees to the maximum £9,000! So students pay much more for less.

QM’s Socialist Student Society has been out campaigning against the cuts and collecting signatures, which were handed in to the Council today, along with a letter from the Unison and UCU branches.

There were 440 signatures on the petition, collected by students and staff in just three weeks since term began.

We want to build unity between students and staff to fight the cuts, and to back up the staff in their aim to take strike action. Our small protest today was just the beginning!

Paula Mitchell