The 1980s' free education campaign

November 13, 1996
Issue 

In the second in a three-part series on the history of the student movement in Australia, MARINA CAMERON spoke to JORGE JORQUERA about the lessons from the free education campaign in the 1980s. Jorquera was an activist in that campaign, secretary of the University of Queensland (UQ) student union in 1987 and a founding member of Left Alliance's national coordinating committee. The first article in this series was published in the November 6 issue of Green Left Weekly.

Question: How did the free education campaign begin?

The catalyst for the student upsurge in the 1980s was the introduction of the $250 Higher Education Administration Charge (HEAC) in 1986. It was recognised by students as the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of a push by the Labor federal government — as part of its general economic restructuring — to introduce user-pays.

The first student mobilisations were small and not well organised. No one turned up to the first organising meeting we called at UQ. But a focus for the campaign was provided by student council election campaigns in late '86. A lot of tickets ran against the Labor Party and won because of anger at HEAC. Through these elections we began to work with activists, setting up coalitions and action groups to run the campaign.

By early 1987, the campaign had grown into a wave of mass demonstrations, involving tens of thousands of students. Resistance was centrally involved at UQ. We won the positions of union secretary and treasurer, and began discussing how to use these to build the campaign.

We developed a boycott which began in 1987 and spread to 12 campuses around the country. More than half of the students at UQ boycotted the HEAC. At some smaller campuses 100% refused to pay. This helped to build large scale student involvement in the campaign.

Question: What was the state of the student left?

The Labor Party was marginalised, although still an important part of campus politics. The responsibility was on the student left to build up a campaign campus by campus, and develop a national leadership independent of Labor manipulation.

The student movement was a collection of disparate forces including the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) tertiary branches in Victoria and NSW, Resistance, activists around women's issues and other single-issue activists, and remnants of the Australian Union of Students.

Question: What were some of the debates?

In any mass campaign, there will be all sorts of debates. In the debates around boycotting the HEAC, for example, some focused on its supposed ability to inflict turmoil on the government; others opposed it because it detracted from the lobbying credibility of student politicians. Resistance saw it as one useful tactic in building the campaign.

The strategy that we pursued was to undertake any tactic that was going to develop the consciousness of students, their involvement in mobilisations, and campaign organisation. When the boycott was pursued outside of these broader goals, you had problems, such as at Curtin University where the administration suspended students and the campaign went into crisis and quickly died.

A less significant debate was with the International Socialist Organisation, which insisted that all occupations of buildings be pre-advertised on rally posters. Their aim was not to win more and more students to political militancy but to pitch themselves to the "left" of everyone else in order to "distil out a militant minority". Politically, in fact, they only tail-ended Labor.

The major strategic differences began to emerge at the first national meeting of left activists in January 1987 at Macquarie University.

We came from Queensland with a lot of activists expecting a discussion on the boycott and how to build the campaign further. However, other campuses, especially those dominated by the CPA, focused primarily on pushing the need for a "unified national voice" to replace AUS. Their strategy was fixated on "intervention" in government policy-making. They started by formulating "visionary" views of education, then developing a vehicle to carry such programs into government round-tables — a national student union.

While the CPA doffed its hat to the boycott, the only motion passed at the conference was for in principle support for a national student union. Many activists were frustrated that very few practical campaign plans came out of the conference.

Resistance's argument was that without mass mobilisations to show the political power of students we had no chance of influencing anything; even to ameliorate the worst aspects of government policy. The CPA caricatured our position as "rally after rally". Nevertheless, it had to parasite on the emerging student movement to secure a base in any national student union against Labor's bureaucratic base in the rump state unions left over from AUS.

The CPA strategy inevitably fell into the hands of the ALP, who were the natural vehicle for an "interventionist" strategy. The CPA increasingly drifted into making deals with Labor, turning its back on those who sought to continue building a mass student campaign.

Resistance initially participated, alongside the CPA, in the formation of Left Alliance, a national left coalition which had its founding conference at UQ in May, 1987. But it soon became clear that the CPA saw LA merely as a way of binding the student left to their negotiations with Labor.

The CPA argued hard for a binding caucus in LA, especially on issues around the National Union of Students. It used this rule at the NUS founding conference in December, 1987 to try to expel Resistance and the Network of Overseas Students Collectives Australia from LA.

A lot of activists who didn't agree with the fetishism of NUS began to pull out of the LA process and the CPA strategy of pulling the student movement in behind the Labor-dominated NUS eventually choked the life out of movement. When it eventually revived in Melbourne in 1989 (against HECS), it developed totally outside, in fact counter to the NUS framework.

Question: What are the lessons of those events for the movement today?

We got the Labor government to back off the HEAC, but we were unable to develop a movement that could hold that position. Nevertheless, we were able to radicalise hundreds of students, providing the base for the free education campaign's resurgence in 1989.

The isolation of students' struggle from any other community struggles against Labor's austerity drive also contributed to the campaign's decline. We put up the best fight on a national level, but there was no broader struggle that we could hook up with to win significant victories.

Throughout the '80s, most unions prioritised services. But at UQ we spent over $100,000 in 1987 on the education campaign. That might not have been efficient from the point of view of "servicing the market", but student unions should not just be about providing services (including advocacy, or "representation"), but should mobilise and organise students around all issues that effect them. This means encouraging campaigns, but also opening up the union to participation and control by students through committees or general meetings.

That's not to say it isn't worth developing the service side — management committees for refectories, student/staff control of union services, and so on. This is entirely consistent with the principle of involving students at all levels of the union.

Question: What are the differences between the campaigns against education cuts then and now?

We didn't have anything comparable to the current National Tertiary Education and Industry Union campaign. The union was dominated by the Labor Party in the '80s and didn't put up a fight. This is a very positive aspect today.

There isn't much difference in the general student body. We had to build things up from scratch. Like in the '80s, there isn't much of a student movement or student left today. One advantage now is that the CPA isn't around to block and divert any mass mobilisations that may occur. Also, the Labor Party is more discredited and less experienced in progressive movements.

There does seem to be a very low political and ideological level among the student left today, a retreat on even basic left principles like free eduction. But this can be built up through struggle. Overall, I think the situation is fairly similar — a small base to start from and the challenge of building up a leadership which can mobilise and organise students to win.

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