Education Not for Sale
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Education Not for Sale (ENS) is a left-wing student campaign in the United Kingdom.
The name derives from the "European Education Not for Sale network" and was first used by socialist and other radical activists at the National Union of Students of the United Kingdom conference in April 2005, who wanted to organise a left-wing pole of attraction opposed to both what they saw as the "right-wing" NUS leadership's betrayals on top-up fees, etc. and to groups on the left which they felt had betrayed consistent left principles on issues such as universal human rights and cultural relativism.
The organisation was formally founded at a conference at the University of East London in September 2005.
Its main focus is advocating:
- An end to the privatisation of education,
- The abolition of tuition fees and
- The reintroduction of living, non-means-tested and tax-funded student grants in the UK
Activists are also involved in a variety of left-wing, solidarity and labour movement-oriented campaigns, such as Students Against Sweatshops/No Sweat and UK Students Against Coke and claims to support a united left in the British student movement and NUS.
ENS claims to be a successor to the Campaign for Free Education (CFE), although it involves very few of the same activists. Like CFE, it has the support of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, and it also involves activists from a variety of other left-wing political backgrounds and organisations, including the Green Party of England and Wales and the Communist Party of Great Britain (PCC).
ENS held a second activist gathering at the University of Sussex in May 2006, and on October 21 2006 its women's section held a feminist activist conference, Feminist Fightback, in central London, which was attended by around 220 people. A few days later, ENS supporters at Cambridge University organised the first occupation in the UK in protest at the introduction of top-up fees, occupying the Sidgwick Lecture Hall for 12 hours.
One member of ENS, Daniel Randall, was elected to the UK National Union of Students executive committee in 2005, and when he stood down in 2006 was replaced by two ENS members, Sofie Buckland and Joe Rooney. In 2007, Sofie Buckland was returned as a block of twelve member of the NEC.
