policies of the 'broad left' leadership of NUS which has curbed student action to the needs of sections of the labour bureaucracy.
Such a downturn is, however, a temporary phenomenum. Potentially the factors that created the radicalisation of the late sixties not only remain but will be increasingly aggravated by the economic recession. They are thus capable of drawing ever-wider layers of students into struggle, against the 'restraining' influence of their leadership, to defend grants, college facilities and jobs. The mass strike and 'sit-in' by student teachers in 1976 is an indication of the trends for the future.
Faced with such a perspective, the Ired university' strategy proposed by marxists becomes ever more valid. Such a strategy rejects the narrow limits 'imposed' on student struggles by groups such as the Communist Party which try to isolate them from broader social issues. It also rejects the position of groups such as the SWP which ignore the struggles of students as students and see them merely as adjuncts of workers' strugThe Ired university! strategy means mobilising students to occupy their universities to 1975 Students protest cuts in education actions in support of student demands and to link their struggles with 'broader! social struggles. The occupation of colleges by student teachers to protest unemployment or that by the Colchester students in 1972 - placing college facilities at the disposal of the striking miners - are concrete examples of its use.
The radicalisation process in Britain, over the past decade or so, has been both uneven and complex. Different sectors of the population have come into struggle in an often unpredictable way, giving vent to their pent-up grievances flowing from capitalist oppression and discrimination directed against their race, sex, nation or generation. The very diversity of the struggles that have opened up is a clear indication of the depth Student teachers occupy colleges to protest unemployment.
of the social crisis at present wracking British While these layers 'are capable of 'launching' defence of their rights, howeVe Timited by their own lack of social 'weight!. and winning notable concessions, they are Their struggles, in this sense, increasingly pose the need of winning allies in a broad anti-capit -alist offensive, mainly in the working class.
Unfortunately, at this stage, orationist policies of the trade union and Labour Party leaders offer no solutions to these layers and - in many cases - alienate them. The labour bureaucracy not only weighs down upon the workers' movement but equally on its potential allies since it prevents that movement throwing its full weight into the struggles against, for example, racism or sexism.
While this has, : on occasion, begun to be broken down - as in the Labour Party's support for abortion rights or, more recently, its anti-racist campaign - there exists at present no major current in the labour movement actively fighting for a programme that can show these diverse layers a long-term perspective for their struggles.
The fact that the labour movement has, so far, refused to pioneer and champion the demands of its potential allies explains why there are consstant down-turns in the struggles of such layers, why they can become ideologically confused and prey to anti-socialist solutions. This is particularly true of the womens' movement which, over the years, has seen tendencies toward 'counterinstitutions', 'self-help' or 'separatist currents' as a substitute for mass action campaigns.
The objective limitations that weigh upon these sectors in no way mars their importance or the necessity for continued independent action. Nor • does it downplay the fact that the 'issues' they have pioneered will be a constant - and central - factor in the continuing radicalisation process. What it does do is to explain the ebbs and flows in their development until they can begin to see a strategic solution to their problems in alliance with the 'decisivel social weight of the SOCIALIST ACTION