Solomon Clare - Springtime: The New Student Rebellions

First published in English by Verso 2011

The collection Verso 2011

Individual contributions The contributors 2011

Translation, Section 2 Arianna Bov and Pier Paolo Frassinelli

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We Felt Liberated
Clare Solomon

The Rebellion in Context
James Meadway

Flashback: Capitalisms Discontents
Eric Hobsbawm

Education Cuts, Class and Racism
Kanja Sessay

Past and Present: The London School of Economics
Ashok Kumar

Lecturers, Defend Your Students!
Nina Power

Albion Rose
Susan Matthews

Rebirth of Student Activism
Hesham Yafai

A New Strategy Is Needed for a Brutal New Era
Peter Hallward

Flashback: Kettling, Berlin style 1967
Fritz Teufel

Who Can Pay for the Deficit?
John Rees

We Will March
Noel Douglas

Flashback: The Changing Role of the Bourgeois University
Ernest Mandel

SOAS: School of Activism Studies
Elly Badcock

The Significance of Millbank
James Haywood

The Art of Occupation
Jo Casserly

My Wheelchair Is the Beginning
Jody McIntyre

Further Education
Joe Harvey, Kaity Squires, Stuart OReilly and Adam Toulmin

Cambridge, Day X One
Amy Gilligan

The Factory of Precarious Workers
Giulio Calella

There Is Something New in the Air
Marco Bascetta and Benedetto Vecchi

An Afternoon of Guerrilla Activity
Giacomo Russo Spena

Photo Essay: Occupied Department of Literature, La Sapienza University, Rome
Martina Cirese

From the University in Revolt: A Students Letter to Berlusconi
Elisa Albanesi

Who Is the Black Block? Where Is the Black Block?
Autonomous University Collective

Flashback: Struggle Against Capitalism in Italy: A Political Manifesto
Vittorio Rieser

Introduction
Evan Calder Williams

From Hanoi to the Magic Kingdom, and Back Again (Puerto Rico)
Jos Laguarta

French Lessons: The Struggle Goes On
Sebastian Budgen

Flashback: Strategy and Revolution in France
Andr Glucksmann

New Class Struggles in France
Larry Portis

Update
Richard Greeman

Flashback: 1968
Angelo Quattrocchi

Photo Essay: Springtime in France
Lea Guzzo

The First Big Wave: 200607
Spyros Dritsas and Giorgos Kalampokas

The Second Wave: 201011
Ilias Kefalas

The December Explosion
Eirini Gaitanou

Youth Unrest in Greece
Panagiotis Sotiris

He Who Cultivates Thorns Will Reap Wounds
Leila Basmoudi

The Uprising of Tunisias Young People Is a Real Political Rebellion
Taoufik Ben Brik

The Tunisian Revolution: a Source of Inspiration to Our Quartiers
Parti des Indignes de la Rpublique

A Mafia-like Dictatorship
Moncez Marzouki

The Revolution of Dignity
Sadri Khiari

Social Revolts in Algeria and Tunisia
Yassin Temlali

A New Era, or More of the Same?
Yassin Temlali

Radicalization of the Youth Movement in Algeria
Omar Kitani

An Open Letter
Amin Allal

Photo Essay: Tunis, January 2011
Nasser Nouri

Postscript: Egypt Awakens Mubarak, Your Plane is Waiting
Adam Shatz

Our rulers thought that now was the perfect moment drastically to restructure higher education (and much else besides) by institutionalizing a form of specialization that simultaneously imparted ignorance and knowledge, and restricted higher education by imposing a financial bar. They hoped that students would drown in specialized research and ignore the fact that their intellectual development was being stunted. Education has never been delinked from the overall structures and needs of a society, whatever its character, but students have often transcended the limitations imposed on them. Western universities changed dramatically over the last sixty years as the postSecond World War period ushered in reforms that included the right to a free education for all, paving the way for a huge expansion of the universities.

Before the twentieth century, the British state (and its peers elsewhere) had existed to protect property and privilege, and educated those who agreed to do the same. Unsurprisingly, education was a preserve of the well-off and the church orders that buttressed and spiritually nourished injustice and inequality. The democratic rights fought for by the Chartists and the suffragettes for over a hundred years included the right to vote. Free education came later and now, theyre taking it away again. The resulting tension has produced an opposition from below, a resistance that is also premonitory. For if a good education is once again to become the preserve of a few, might this not herald a further hollowing out of the democratic process itself, already in a bad way with moderate Republicanism an agreed consensus in the States, and its equivalents in Britain and in Europe? The students who marched on the streets to protect their rights are fighting for something larger.

The governors of Britain were not prepared for the response that greeted its austerity measures. This book that Verso is proud to publish consists largely of accounts by student participants in the wave of struggles that have stretched from the West Coast of the United States to much of Western Europe. It is a chronicle, but not just a chronicle. It is the formulation of an experience. We hope that its cumulative impact will be to develop alternatives that challenge the priorities of capitalist society. What is this society that, having promised and for a time provided its citizens many satisfactions, now threatens to turn around and crush them if they demand rights that were once taken for granted?

It is too early yet to draw any definitive conclusions as to the final outcome of the resistance against capitalisms assault on students and the underprivileged, but the fact that a new generation is learning, through its own experiences, the priorities of the world in which they live, augurs well for the future. We no longer live in a time where capitalism guarantees full employment. Many who graduate will be without work and thus difficult to integrate as was the case with the student generation of the 1960s and 1970s. Times are much harsher now, not because they need to be, but because Capital determines the conditions under which we live.