8/8/2019 No to Labour betrayal SAVE EMA

1/2

ALL OUT

Tues 18th January

Fight to SAVE EMA

DONT LET LABOURBETRAY OUR FUTUREBring Down the Coalition Government

Shut Down London

Build an Independent, Integrated, Mass,Youth & Student Lead Civil Rights Movement

The EMA is too important to our lives;Send a message to Labour: EMA is not your political football.

Fight to win - Delay the vote!

Stop the cuts and fee hikes Save EMA Fight for free, equal, quality education for all Fightracism & anti-immigrant bigotry Stop the deportations Sanctuary campuses now Full

Citizenship Rights for all immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, We are All the New Britain Novictimizations of activists Stop scapegoating the black, Asian, Muslim & immigrant communities

for the economic and social crisis Make the Equality Act Real!

We have the power to save the EMA. We possess the power to reverse the rise in fee hikes and stop the next round ofvicious cuts. To succeed we need our new student movement to get back on its feet and unite and lead the nation.

What is abundantly clear is that none of the political parties are fighting for us. The Labour Party has just announcedthat it intends to put the EMA up for a vote on Wednesday 19 th January. This plan is a cynical political manuever to

garner support for the Labour Party. It is aimed at blunting the power of the new student movement by cementing asecond defeat of our new movements struggle to defend public education.

Many students will be in the middle of exams when the sure-to-lose vote occurs. They will hear that EMA is lost beforethey could regroup and launch the fight to save it. If Labour insists on taking the vote now they will demoralize a sectionof our movement and strengthen the ability of the Government to make more cuts and to hold on to power for a longertime.

Labour sees the 19th January as a symbolic action that will educate the public on the importance of restoring EMA.This is a ridiculous argument. The students who are leading the movement know how important the EMA is. Ourmilitancy and determination to win conveys to those who are unfamiliar with the EMA how important it is to shaping ourlives. Weak and tame civil-disobedience symbolic actions only undercut our assertion that the EMA is vital to the futureof millions of young people.

Our mass actions in November and December had so much public support because everyone recognized that infighting to defeat the fee hikes and the elimination of EMA, we were fighting against all the cuts. Poor, working class andmiddle class communities saw our movement speaking and acting on behalf of them. We inspired others to stand upand fight because we made clear that there is a new political force in Britain that is fighting to win. What the LabourParty fears more than the loss of the EMA and other precious benefits is the ability of our new movement to raise theexpectations of so many and to arouse them to fight with us. The oppressed gaining political power frightens the LabourParty more than the terrible consequences that will occur if we lose. We want the oppressed to win.

Demonstrate and March to stop Labours betrayal of our futures Tuesday 18th JanOur first task to defend EMA is to stop Labour from putting EMA up for a vote on Wednesday, 19 th January. To achievethis we must mobilize and bring our protest to Labour HQ the day before the vote. We must express our anger and senda clear message to the Labour Party to abandon this cynical electoral maneuver. Labour must get the message before19th January that we will not accept or forget their betrayal. Our movement must put principles before party politics andassert its independence now. Holding a protest action on 19th January after the vote has occurred, will make our

1pm Tues 18th

Picket and Protest at

Labour Party HQ39 Victoria Street

Tube: Victoria, St James Park, WestminsterBuses: 148, 24, 211, 11

(WKC meet outside Grays Inn site 11am)

8/8/2019 No to Labour betrayal SAVE EMA

2/2

movement look weak and resigned to defeat. It will turn our movement into nothing more than an extension of theLabour Party. If we allow this to happen our new movement dies.

The fight to keep the EMA is a fight for our freedom, our dignity, our equality and our aspirations.644,000 students receive the 30 p/week EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) grant. The 16-19 year old studentswho are eligible to receive EMA are all in need of support and many will be forced to leave education if the grant ends.If we lose EMA and cannot reverse the fee hikes, generations of poor, working class and middle class students will losethe right to a public education and the opportunities that accompany attaining a degree.

The EMA was created to give black, Asian and other minority students who have been systematically denied equalaccess to higher education, an opportunity to go to college. It was a part of the Labour Governments response to therising anger of black and Asian communities. The EMA has made it possible for young Asian, Muslim and black womento get a higher education and to gain the freedom, independence, and self-worth that would have been impossible toattain without it. The attack on EMA is both an attack against the right of most young people in Britain to receive anykind of real education and a racist and sexist attack against the right of black, Asian, Muslim, immigrant, women andother specially oppressed youth to attain equality.

The students and youth who have the most to gain if we save EMA and the most to lose if it is eliminated will be ourmovements most determined fighters and leaders. It is crucial for our movement to go all out to organize black, Asian,Muslim, other minority and oppressed students at all levels of education. FE colleges and secondary schools mustbecome prime centres of organizing. We need FE colleges in primarily black and Asian areas- Brixton, Harrow, TowerHamlets, Hackney, etc, to turn out in greater numbers and play a greater role in our mass actions to have the necessarypolitical will, anger and determination to win.

BUILD THE NEW POLITCAL LEADERSHIP NEEDED TO WIN. BUILD MOVEMENT FOR JUSTICE

It is not surprising that the Tory/Lib Dem attempt to dismantle the social welfare state and destroy our societysegalitarian principles begins with an attack on the right of every young person to receive a publicly funded education.Education has always been the great equalizer, a cornerstone of democracy. The free market policies beingimplemented in Europe and the United States are premised on inequality, for the cream to rise to the top, the majoritymust be kept on the bottom. Defeating the rich and powerful forces is possible, but only if we have the kind ofcentralized coordinated conscious and collective leadership that is needed to defeat our enemies.

We cannot win relying on spontaneity. As great, exhilarating and just plain fun as our mass actions have been, we willcontinue to lose if our movement fails to develop a politically conscious and tactically bold leadership. Movement forJustice exists to build this new, desperately needed youth leadership. We must grow to make victory possible.

Unlike the rich and powerful, the oppressed must learn how to lead. We must come to believe that we can and shouldlead the whole society. Our new movement is a great teacher. We can learn a great deal about how to change thebalance of power and win by critically analyzing the lessons learned both through the actions themselves and what we

must do differently to win. By studying politics and history we can develop the tactics needed to win. Two of the mostimportant lessons our new movement must learn is to reject as leaders anyone who allows us to get kettled -we cannot shutdown London if we are kettled - and we must reject as leaders anyone who advocates for tacticsthat reduce our actions to weak moral protests instead of actions conceived of to build our power and win.

Movement for Justice is what our name connotes, an organization always pushing forward, determined to unite all themovements of the oppressed in action, fighting for the political program needed to win justice for all. We believe thatbuilding an independent, integrated, mass, youth-led civil rights movement is necessary to achieve this aim and for theoppressed to win. We are not afraid to stand on the truth. We speak the plain truth on racism. We are the onlyorganization that does not fear the anger of the oppressed, especially that of the black, Asian, and other minority youth.We want the oppressed to win, because this is the only way to achieve progress and prosperity.

The great majority of our society longs for a leadership that will fight for them and keep fighting until we win. Movementfor Justice is that leadership. We urge all of those who want to win to join us.

Join Movement for JusticeWe march today, we march tomorrow, and we keep marching to build a new Britain: diverse, integrated andequal. We aim to win. We tell the truth about racism, sexism and anti-gay bigotry and the growing inequalitieswithin our society. We believe that every human being is entitled to a job, to education, to food, shelter andthe other necessities of life, so that every one of us can live in dignity, proud to be who we are, encouragedand able to fulfill our hopes and aspirations.

Get in touch for details of our regular meetings, and to find out how you can help build the 18 th January, andto start an MFJ group at your school, college, sixth form or University.

Find us on FB: Movement for Justice by any means necessaryEmail: mail@movementforjustice.org.uk Call: 07930 30 22 63

mailto:mail@movementforjustice.org.ukmailto:mail@movementforjustice.org.uk