Jacks' protest politics won't win grants

STUDENTS have winning any least two years, Jacks, National He told the N US at Margate last night there had been 'a mi to resist hall fees and costs which absorb of grants.

Jacks, a Communist Party member, said students had to get away from 'pious resolutions' and 'actually do something for them' For Jacks, however, that was as far as it went. He made it clear there were too many obstacles in the path actually to win the campaign. 'None of this is going to be easy,' he told the first session of the conference, which represents 500,000 students.

He then revealed what was actually worrying him: The Tory government. 'We have a government wage freeze and other policies that are opposed to our interests.' What was needed was a well-organized campaign with 'maximum support from our own members, from trade unionists and from all those involved and concerned with Jacks admitted, however, that this pathetic apology for a fight against the Tories would win little, if anything.

We 'may be successful, he said. 'We must try and fight. However, in the end, all that we may have done is to lay the basis for a better conclusion to the 1974 triennial settlement than would otherwise have been achieved.' So while students' meagre grants are savaged OXFORD Thursday November 30 Marxism—the science of perspective.

SOUTH OXFORD COMMUNITY CENT Lake Street, 8 p.m. ectures given by i. Healy iLL national secretary LONDON Sunday November 26 Basic Essentials of Ma Sunday December 3 A theory of knowledge Sunday December 10 Opponents of Marxism BEAVER HALL at Mansion House 7.30 p.m.

Lectures given by G. Healy SLL national secretary LIVERPOOL Wednesday November 29 Stalinism 1932-1938 Wednesday December 6 Trotskylam and the founding the Fourth International COMMON HALL HACKINS HEY off Dale Street, 7.30 Lectures given by Tom Kemp (SLL Centra Committee)

little chance increase in grants for according to Digby Union of Students' annual conference that since October ajor determination other institutional excessive amounts by rising prices, hall fees and rents in private lodgings Digby Jacks plans only a protest campaign to head off the growing movement for bigger grants immediately which inevitably means a clash with the Tory Government. Instead, as he elaborated in his speech, the question was to get the government to change its mind and polices-exactly the line of the Stalinists, driven as they are by the perspective of peaceful co-exisDigby Jacks, NUS president and CP member, speaking at last year's conference. tence.

On graduate unemployment, rapidly increasing, Jacks could only say: I hope this government will not be seduced by facile arguments about unemployable students' What then? "The answer is a government policy which will solve the problem of unemployment.' With Jacks and the Stalinists in general fast becoming advisers to the Tories on economic questions- although he remained 'extremely sceptical' about their educational 'intentions'—it was not surprising that he ended with an attack on the students at Stirling University, now lighting a witch-hunt following the Queen's visit last month.

While claiming he was on their side, despite an NUS statement saying it was a 'non-event' at the time, Jacks asked:

'Why did a few students at Stirling offer a gift hostage to those who wanted one? Was the issue of such importance that it was justifiable to obtain hysterically abusive front-page headlines?' In a characteristic slander of the old Stalinist school he i concluded: I suggest that it was not necessary to give our enemies the ammunition with which to weaken us' Many students at the conference will now ask that with such 'friends' as Jacks and the CP, who actually needs enemies?