Naked Punch Statement of Support For Protesters Against 'Austerity Measures'.

Statement of Support We stand in firm solidarity with those taking action, both nationally and internationally – students, lecturers, workers and anarchists - in the fight against the so-called “austerity measures”.

We reject the rhetoric of “austerity” and “sustainability”, which is being used to obscure the ideological character of these cuts: under the guise of ‘harsh, but necessary’ fiscal measures, the government is currently laying the foundations for a very long-term process of socio-economic restructuring. Beneath the suggested neutrality of these cuts – in their being a ‘necessity’ and as “we’re all in this together” – the restructuring is directed, transparently - towards the benefit of big business, the UK’s competitiveness in the world market and towards global capitalism, more generally. This means that it is directed away from the public, collective good.

We strongly oppose the increasing transformation of higher education institutions into engines that drive innovation and economic growth, into research laboratories for the “war on terror” and for surveillance markets and into machines for the mass production of an exploitable workforce. The trebling of tuition fees is an outrageous condemnation of our future generations to a lifetime of even greater debt, as well as amounting to an overt attack on the working classes. Education is a right (not a luxury commodity), for everybody (not for wealthy individuals).

We stand in solidarity with those victimised or arrested following the recent London demonstration. We reject the “absolute condemnation” by the so-called “representative” of the student Left – his right honourable Aaron Porter – of what he publicly referred to as the “despicable” actions of a “small minority”, which ruined a perfectly peaceful protest. Such predictable, kneejerk moral positioning is counter-productive, divisive in fact, to our cause, in addition to being simply a total misrepresentation of the real character of that day.

We call upon all sections of society affected by job losses and budget cuts to rise up and take direct action, in the form of protests, strikes and occupations and to join in the national ‘Day of Direct Action’ on 24th November. Direct and collective action will not only strengthen and intensify national and international struggles, but more crucially, is the only viable response to the assumption that we will remain passive spectators of the loss of our public services.

To strike and to occupy is not only to rupture everyday relations of wage-labour and private property, but are also ways of transforming the relations between people, of transforming people.