Student rights- a vital issue

THREE WEEKEND news items underline timely nature of the National Union of Stude vote in favour of affiliation to the Trades Un Congress.

What amounts to an interthreat to student 1,000-strong Margate NUS conference.

Copies of a confidential document signed by 150 British academics were distributed by York students at MARGATE on Saturday.

Drafted by Manchester's Professor Brian Cox, co-editor of the right-wing 'Black Papers on Education', it favours OUTLAWING of protest sit-ins, EXPULSION for persistent student rebels, and BINDING codes of conduct to be signed by every college entrant.

'INVASION'

While claiming that the document was intended for submission as a letter to "The Times' , Cox has turiously condemned its publication at Margate as 'an invasion of freedom'.

But he sticks by its message, describing the 'principle' involved as 'a matter of academic standards' which 'must be in the hands of people who have been trained to deal with them'.

Several British university top brass are apparently also members of a US-based International Committee on the University Emergency, according to reports from NEW YORK.

Partly financed by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the committeeclaiming stand for 'dignity and gentleness on the campus'will have a permanent secretariat at New York's Wendell Wilkie Foundation.

According to Columbia University Professor Charles Frankel, a former US Assistant

endorsement of the US 'peace plan' ', and its plan for an allEuropean Security Conference -that gives Nixon confidence to resume his, attacks on N Vietnam.

He knows that behind its obligatory smokescreen of anti-imperialist bluster, the Soviet bureaucracy will continue : to seek agreement with imperialism on the main issues of the day.

SOLIDARITY

It is therefore impossible to fight for effective political solidarity with the peoples of Indo-China without at the same time exposing Stalinism's counter-revolutionary role within the international workers' movement.

The struggle for revolutionary leadership against Stalinism- and every form of opportunism-is as necessary for the victory of the colonial peoples over imperialism as for the defence of the trade unions in Britain against the attacks of the Tories.

LATE NEWS "TOO EARLY' FOR STUDENT PAY (See page one photo and story)

A plan to give Britain's students a weekly wage was presented at the National Union of Students' weekend conference yesterday.

The idea came from a group of universities and colleges which wanted to scrap the entire grant system and replace it with a structure giving a minimum weekly wage to students.

The executive of the 450,000-strong union, accepted the plan in principle, but said that it was too early to begin negotiations on the plan.

Union president Mr Jack Straw said talks would begin shortly with Education Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, on the possibility of increasing mandatory grants for degree course students in universities.

After that, he said, union