Greetings from UCD,

As many of you are already aware before Christmas thousands of students and academic staff across Europe went on strike, occupying their colleges and schools in opposition to the EU’s support for the General Agreement On Trade in Services. The largest demonstrations took place in Italy and Spain where students and teachers marched in their hundreds of thousands. In Berlin a mass occupation of a university was violently evicted by police, resulting in scores of arrests, similar occupations happened in Halle and Bochum in Germany and in Zurich. The largest mobilisations occurred in Italy and Spain, both countries where the neo-liberal agenda is really starting to decimate the education system as what was once a valued public service is now cannibalised for profit
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In 1998 the European Ministers of Education signed the Bologna Declaration, outlining their vision of a future of more cohesive and uniform system of education throughout Europe and taking key steps, which will enable that progression. The Bologna Declaration and the Bologna Process is a movement towards the privatisation of European Education. It is the agenda of GATS, seeking the adoption of measures that will ease the eventual attempt to carry through the measures entailed in GATS. If we are progressing towards a uniform system of European education, then the recent developments in Spain and Italy, the devastating pillage of education, the wide scale privatisation, the attacks on grants and state subsidisation, attacks on workers rights and throat slitting of funds for education is something that will happen in Ireland. It is simply a matter of time.

Soon the Higher Education Authority and the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities will publish a report into the Irish Education system. This Skilbeck report calls for increased links between education and industry, increased mobility among academic staff and students, the reintroduction of tuition fees, opening up education to the global market and increased cooperation between private sector education providers and state ones. We are quickly descending towards the same massive offensive against education already undertaken on the continent.

In March, the EU ministers for education will gather in Salamanca, Spain to discuss the future of education and how to speed up the Bologna process and introduction of Neo liberalism in Education. As mentioned in a previous email to this list, Spanish students are already mobilising for a protest in Spain against the meeting. Across Europe calls are being made for another series of mass protests, similar to those before Christmas to coincide with the meeting in Salamanca and the EU summit in Spain in June.

In UCD members of the Global Action Society have been pondering over answering that call and attempting some sort of concerted campaign of action against the attack on education during the designated European wide days of action. As yet we are unsure of what we can do…it could be something as simple as sticking a huge ‘for sale sign’ in the grass at the front of UCD and setting up a toll booth at the entrance to highlight the dangerous absurdity of GATS or something as fantastic as a ‘reclaim education’ party in a college building. We have no idea of what we can organise and how many people we can pull into it. We are already exerting pressure on our Union to act on GATS and a motion has been passed demanding it conducts research into GATS and how it affects us. But the attitude of the Fianna Fail union leadership is that GATS is international politics and doesn’t concern the union. Someday we will wake up and find our grants have been disbanded and education is been run by McDonalds…maybe then they’ll give a shit. The UCD Academic branch of SIPTU are having an open meeting on the Skilbeck report, so a few of us are going to attend that and see is there anything that can come from it, maybe forge an alliance…who knows. We need to take preventative action and organise at a grass roots level to oppose this agenda as well as fighting with in our union.

In UCD, we are discussing ideas for the days of action. We want to put a call out for people to form some sort of network of students around Ireland and discuss some sort of nationwide campaign for the days of action in March. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we could pull something off? I think that GATS, when it is made real and relevant to people is something that can spark off an anti-capitalist mood in Irish campuses. It is something that is staring us in the face and we need to act now. It will fuck with all of our lives. We have to point out the connections between our non-existent grants and GATS, franchises on campus and GATS, accommodation and GATS…etc. Think global and act local.

If people are interested in discussing the idea of a network and preparation for the EU wide Days of Action…then please contact me! Spread the word.

In Revolution and Solidarity.
James Redmond, Global Action UCD.

‘The first man who having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying “this is mine” and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind by pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditch and crying to his fellows: “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if once forget that the fruits of the earth belong us all and the earth itself to nobody?’
Rousseau