Sirio Canós-Donnay
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, 
WC1H 0PY London, sirio.donnay.09@ucl.ac.uk

Following the UK General Election in March last year, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition unveiled a programme of deficit-reducing measures. It included not just the most far-reaching set of public spending cuts since the 1920s, but also major marketising reforms to public services, including the National Health Service (NHS) and Education. The unfairness and ideological nature of these reforms, as well as the government's refusal to consider any just and more effective alternatives, prompted a wide social movement of rejection. This movement started in November with the student uprising, of which the University College London (UCL) occupation was a central pillar. From the UCL occupied Jeremy Bentham Room, we had a privileged perspective on the unfolding of the widest, most creative and vibrant grassroots protest movement of the last few decades in Britain.

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	....	Fig. 1: Main UCL building during the occupation
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The cuts

The 81bn UK pounds cuts package, including 7bn UK pounds out of the welfare budget, puts the welfare state and many other aspects of British society under threat, from selling of the forests, and closing of libraries and swimming pools, to the privatization of health provision. The Office for Budgetary Responsibility estimates that up to 500,000 public sector jobs could go by 2014/15 as a result. Reforms will disproportionally hit the poor and vulnerable, with cuts to disability living allowances, housing benefits, and the childcare element of working tax credits, to mention a few. The UK's poorest 10% will be hit 13 times harder than the richest 10%, suffering reductions in services equivalent to 20% of their household income, compared to the 1.5% experienced by the top 10%, according to a Trade Union Congress (TUC) report (www.tuc.org.uk/extras/wherethemoneygoes.pdf). 

Higher Education is not an exception to these patterns. Following the advice outlined in the Browne Review of Higher Education (written by John Browne, ex-head of BP), the Coalition has cut the totality of the government's direct public provision for teaching in the humanities, and 80% of university teaching revenues in general. In order to fund themselves, universities are allowed to charge up to 9000 UK pounds a year in undergraduate fees, and so far 3/4 of them have opted for the maximum. In addition, the University and College Union (UCU) believes that more than 15,000 posts - mostly academic - could disappear in the next few years. 

Although the new system comes with a slight increase in maintenance grants, such increase does not match the one in fees. Many students will thus face tuition fee debts of up to 27k UK pounds, while most of the programmes that assisted students from poorer backgrounds or with disabilities to continue in education after the age of 16 are abolished. In addition to severely undermining equality of opportunity and access, these reforms attempt to redefine the purpose of education itself. Education is no longer conceived as a liberating experience that teaches people to be critical citizens and influence society for the better, but purely as an investment made by individuals to increase their employment prospects. The notion of universities as platforms of debate, innovation, and knowledge, cultural institutions existing for the public good, is being replaced by a marketizing philosophy, in which universities exist only as degree providers, as businesses like any other where value is measured exclusively on economic and market terms. Oscar Wilde once talked of people who "know the price of everything but the value of nothing". I could not find a better example.

When market ideology is implemented and state funding withdrawn, it is always the arts and the humanities that lose the most, and archaeology is not an exception. In fact, because of its dependence on a combination of public institutions run by different government departments experiencing budget reductions in the domains of education, research and heritage, archaeology will be hit particularly hard. The Council for British Archaeology is to entirely lose its funding over the next five years and many county- and university-based archaeological services will disappear; among them Merseyside in Liverpool, Exeter Archaeological Unit, Birmingham Archaeology and University of Manchester Archaeological Unit. Some counties also expect to lose their archaeological officer, leaving nobody to advise on archaeological matters involved in planning building work and recording of sites. English Heritage, the government-funded body charged with managing the historical environment, is to lose up to 200 jobs and entirely close its outreach department. Museum closures and staff redundancies complete this gloomy picture, with over 20 confirmed closures and hundreds of job losses in universities, councils and heritage organizations already announced. More information about the cuts effect on archaeology and the specific institutions affected can be found at www.rescue-archaeology.org.uk/map4/.
 

Challenging the government's narrative

The government tells us that these deep, rapid cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit, that "we are all in this together", and that the reforms are inevitable. But this is certainly not the case for four reasons:

1) The cuts are unfair: Contrary to what the coalition's narrative says, we are not all in this together. Not only will the poor and the vulnerable be hit hardest, but they will be so to pay for a crisis from which others benefited. Since the banking crisis, and despite the launching of a banking system review, there has been no effective reform of the banks, which are back into profit and paying over 7bn UK pounds in bonuses. The final bill for the bankers bail out was 850 billion UK pounds; none of it has been paid back.

2) The cuts are economically counterproductive: The austerity programme, far from helping the economy, will seriously damage it. So say Economy Nobel Prize winners like Paul Krugman, Christopher Pissarides, and Joseph Stiglitz, as well as Martin Wolf (Financial Times chief economics writer) and a myriad of economists and university economy professors (for a comprehensive list check falseeconomy.org.uk). Firstly, far from reducing the deficit, the cuts will increase it. For example, the Office for Budget responsibility forecasts that the spending on loans for university students with the new fee system will add over 13bn UK pounds to the public sector net debt by 2015/16. Dealing with the economic stagnation and mass unemployment caused by the austerity measures will not be cheap either, especially in the context of decreasing tax revenues caused by the drop in general spending resulting from these measures. Secondly, although David Cameron tells us that spending cuts are necessary to maintain a high credit rating and to avoid capital flight, recent experience tells us that it is precisely those countries that cut too much and too fast, like Greece and Ireland, that get punished by bond markets.

3) The cuts are ideological: David Blanchflower, former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, and Professor of Economics, has described the government's program as "the biggest and riskiest macroeconomic experiment undertaken by any advanced country in living memory". David Cameron himself so acknowledged at the Conservative party Conference on 6 October 2010. He told members that his desire to privatize the public realm dated back to far before the crisis, and described his own government as "the radicals now breaking apart the old system".

4) There are just, effective, and viable alternatives: Investment in the economy that gets the unemployed into work without cutting benefits, a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions, and a crack-down on tax avoidance and evasion. According to the Treasury and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), tax evasion, tax-dodging, and unpaid tax cost the state around 120bn UK pounds annually. That is exactly 39bn UK pounds more than the highly damaging cuts package is expected to save over four years. A fairer tax system would not only reduce the deficit, it would do so in a progressive manner, respecting social welfare and hitting those who can afford it, rather than the poor and vulnerable.

Fig. 2: The people at the UCL occupation
 

The Winter Protests

On 10 November 2010 a student-initiated demonstration erupted into British politics. Over 50,000 demonstrators marched in London against the rise in tuition fees and the cuts to education funding. The day will be remembered, however, for the occupation of the Conservative Party headquarters at Millbank. Contrary to posterior acts of violence against property, the Millbank incidents were not a pre-planned action by a masked-up black-wearing minority, but a spontaneous act of rage by hundreds of college and university students that, marching in front of the Tory HQ, saw in this building the perfect symbol of the government they felt betrayed by. Considered as unlawful and counterproductive by some, and as a legitimate manifestation of rage by others, the Millbank incident sparked much debate and catapulted the student movement to national and international headlines.

The second march, on 24 November 2010, would become known for the police kettling of thousands of peaceful protesters (many of them 15 year-olds) for over 5 hours in Whitehall in one of the coldest days of the year. Kettling or "crowd containment" is a police tactic consisting in the formation of large cordons of police officers that contain protesters within a limited area, generally without access to food, water, or toilets; and the use of violence against any attempts of breaking such cordons. At the following march on 9 December 2010, kettling was repeated in Parliament Square and Westminster Bridge, with the addition of horse-mounted police against the peaceful crowd. While peaceful protesters were attacked, a violent minority was breaking the windows of the Treasury; the police did nothing to stop them, despite being present at the scene. The use of kettles as a police tactic is currently being reviewed in court; its use during the G20 protests last year has already been deemed illegal.

Fig. 3: Kettle forming in Whitehall 

These two marches were followed by an extraordinary month of demonstrations, campaigns, and actions. Over 30 universities all over the country went into occupation, including University College London (UCL), whose occupation would become one of the nerve centres of the movement. The occupation lasted 17 days, during which the Jeremy Bentham Room, usually used for corporate events, was turned not just into a student activist centre, but also into a truly free university, with a continuous schedule of seminars, debates and participatory lectures. The Occupation's main demand was that UCL management condemned the cuts to higher education and the rise in tuition fees. In addition to this, students also requested the implementation of a complete open books policy with regards to existing budget constraints, ensured no redundancies for teaching, research or support staff, as well as a full living wage package and a reversal in UCL's outsourcing policy for all cleaning, catering and security personnel.

During the almost three weeks of the occupation, we received the support of Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, the National Union of Journalists, Tariq Ali, the University and College Union, Mark Thomas, Billy Bragg, Polly Toynbee and Ken Livingstone to mention a few, some of which even came down to visit us. We also received thousands of messages of solidarity from teaching and support staff, UCL students and alumni, representatives from the media, trade unionists and the general public. From the occupation we organized flash-mobs and demonstrations against tax-dodgers such as Topshop, Barclays and Vodaphone; helped in the organization of demonstrations such as the 13 December "Save EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance) day" in which college and sixth-form students protested against the government plans to axe financial support that would leave many of them unable to continue their studies.

New technologies and social media were a key pillar of the occupation. Through Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Vimeo, Youtube, Skype, the website (www.ucloccupation.com) and the blog (blog.ucloccupation.com), the media team uploaded and updated the events, lectures, actions and discussions taking place in the occupied space, as well as our demands and the evolution of the negotiations with management. The occupation regularly featured in both national (BBC1, Channel 4 news, Radio 4, the Guardian, the Independent, The Times, the New Statesman, the Evening Standard) and international (the Economist, Libération) press. 

After almost three weeks of negotiation, UCL management accepted our main demand and a partial conditional implementation of some of the others requests. We tidied up and got ready to leave, yet management showed no sign of releasing the statement they had promised. This was two days before the vote in parliament, therefore timing was crucial. After threats of reoccupation and with a 24h delay, management finally released a statement that questioned education cuts and condemned the huge risk posed by this reform, but contrary to what had been agreed, avoided condemning the rise in fees. But we stuck to our word and left.

It is important to bear in mind that the UCL and the other occupations were just one part of a much wider movement that emerged before, and during, the winter protests. Other actors included groups focused on peaceful "flash-mob" style direct actions such as "UK Uncut", the "University for Strategic Optimism" or "Art against Cuts"; websites for discussion and study of the cuts' impact like "False Economy", as well as lobbying platforms like "38 Degrees" and broader networks like the "National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts". With actions ranging from "teach-ins" at the British Museum or Euston Station, auctions of public services at Sotheby's, brief occupations that turned banks and tax-dodging retailers into libraries and mock hospitals, and mass die-ins in front of the Health Department, to more traditional forms of protests such as petitions, lobbying and demonstrations, it is difficult to make justice to the diversity, vibrancy and imagination of this movement in the space of this article. 
 

The spring protests

Three important developments took place during the Christmas break: first, the government started implementing some of the cuts and announced a radical reform of the National Health Service (NHS). Second, the IT team of the UCL occupation developed "Sukey", a mapping and reporting internet tool to avoid kettling in non-violent demonstrations that would prove very useful in subsequent marches. Third, the slow machinery of the workers' unions started to move, with the general secretary of Unite - the largest trade union in the country - calling for an alliance between trade unionists and the "magnificent students' movement". This materialized a few weeks later with the Trade Unions' Council (TUC) announcement of a "March for the Alternative" demonstration of 26 March 2011. Concurrently, the University and College Union (UCU) - the largest lecturer and academic's trade union in the UK - voted for industrial action to protest for pay and pension reductions linked to the cuts.

A multiplicity of minor marches took place in preparation for 26 March. We demonstrated in front of Universities UK (the representative organization for UK universities) to protest for the rise in pay (up to 11%) of many of the UK vice-chancellors, while lecturers salaries and jobs were being cut, and students forced to pay up to 9000 UK pounds a year in fees. We supported the lecturer's strike on 22 and 24 March by occupying the UCL Registry for the duration of the strike. A group of students from various London Universities turned a central London Royal Holloway building into an "Anticuts Space", a centre for meetings, debates and the organization of the wider anticuts movement. Other universities across the country also went into occupation, but the wave was less widespread than the previous time. UK Uncut kept growing and organizing larger and larger actions in more places than ever. Its actions were no longer mainly organized and attended by students but also by families, pensioners and community associations. Local anti-cuts groups engaged in peaceful direct action to an unprecedented extent, specifically targeting local councils as they attempted to pass budgets for the coming year.

The organization of 26 March caused the widest wave of vibrant civic organization of the  last decade: pensioners associations made banners ("grandmas against greed" being my personal favourite), community organizations worked on chants, students planned flashmobs. Nearly 600 coaches were booked to come to the protest, which gathered over half a million people. In addition to the main A-to-B march, the day was packed with many other events. From 2pm large amounts of people made their way to Oxford street following a UKUncut call to "Occupy for the Alternative", peacefully closing down tax-dodging shops like Tesco, Topshop, Boots and Miss Selfridge, and later occupying the exclusive department store Fortnum & Mason. After 3h of peaceful occupation and a police guarantee that they would be free to go home, the 145 protesters left the building. They were immediately surrounded by the police and arrested. Concurrently, a large fast-moving Black Bloc was roaming the West End, smashing windows of banks and paint-bombing symbolic buildings and police vans. Only 10 of them were arrested. By this time, the remainder of the main march had congregated at Trafalgar Square, where just after 6pm about 200 were kettled by the police in the middle of the square until the early hours of the morning.

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	...	Fig. 4: Signs of protest in front of UCL
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Outcomes and prospects

Six months since the first march, it is time to pause and reflect on what we have achieved and what remains to be done. There have been some setbacks, such as losing the fees vote on parliament, but much has been won. Polls by the polling company YouGov show that by early 2010 66% of the population accepted the government's narrative; after these six months, only 33% believes in the fairness of the cuts. Tax-dodging, which did not even figure in the political map six months ago, is now taking the centre stage so much that the Treasury select committee has launched a public enquiry into the issue of corporate tax avoidance, in which executives of the most important companies will have to answer questions about their "tax-efficiency" practices. The forest's bill, which intended to sell Britain's forests to private hands, has been completely scrapped. The NHS reforms have been brought to a halt, with Andrew Lansley, the health secretary (and the first in his post to receive a no-confidence motion from the Royal College of Nursing) promising to reform the bill and to launch a 2-month "listening exercise".

In addition to hard-won political victories, these protests have also been the most inspiring, creative and empowering political movement of the last few decades. They have blown the political space wide open for ordinary people to engage in debates about education and society in general; about what should and should not be, about fairness and alternatives. 

However, much remains to be done. The cuts and the education reforms are still going ahead, and only an even wider movement of rejection, encompassing as many social sectors as possible, can stop them. Some archaeologists like Neil Faulkner, Umberto Albarella, and Brian Hole, have openly written and spoken against the cuts and their devastating impact on archaeology and society in general; and many joined the UCU strike in March. However, these remain individual efforts and more collective initiatives such as the "Archaeologists against the cuts" Facebook group have had limited success so far. If we are to stop the devastating effects of these reforms, we need to stand united, not just as individuals, but also collectively, since the lobbying of a group has a much deeper effect than that of the individuals that compose it, a clear example being the Royal College of Nursing's motion. As archaeologists we have a privileged long-term view of history and a duty towards its preservation. It is therefore our responsibility to show British society what these cuts will mean for our historical heritage, joining the voices of all the groups that have already done so in their field, in a plural discourse that exposes these cuts as the dangerous, ineffective, and ideological experiment they are.