In Anticipation...

Term has ended, and is segueing nicely into real politics. The next week will be a pretty eventful one, moving seemlessly from Industrial Action to bureaucracy and back to militant protest.

Firstly, we have the 28th March: 1.5 million Local Government workers will be on strike over pensions. Of these people two thirds will be women. This is the biggest strike since 1926, and the largest number of women striking ever. This promises to be fantastic, militant and achieve massive support; nine unions on strike, all with at least 70 percent voting yes. These people are a prime example of the growing resistance to New Labour's agenda, and I hope everyone attends the picket lines, offers support and helps boost confidence and drive the action forward.

If that's not enough, France will be on general strike; un jour de joie indeed.

So, where will the Student movement be on this fantastic day. Well, I'd like to say on the picket lines, but the reality is a fair proportion of it will be in Blackpool, for the stars have aligned in such a way that the 28th is also the first day of NUS Conference. Student Respect is, I hope, set to make a bit of a splash at Conference this year. We've only been around since the beginning of the academic year, but we already look set to have a pretty sizeable delegation, and we're standing three impressively strong candidates for the NEC: Suzy Wylie, Hanif Leylabi and Matt Collins. I'm not gonna make too many hackish predictions about what goes on at conference, but I will make this one: Student Respect will be the only group able to bring the experiences of the thousands of Students who protested against the war last weekend, and the workers on strike that day, on to conference floor. We'll be making the links between the war and the underfunding of pensions and education, and should present a contrast between the confidence and radicalism of these movements and the pathetic, pessimistic stagnation prevailing in NUS.

And, if that wasn't enough, we're all heading straight from Blackpool to Liverpool, because of this. It appears that everyone's favourite Northwest MP has invited Bush's favourite warmonger to come over to my home town for a chat and a night out. Jack Straw will be taking Condi to a concert at the Liverpool Philharmonic. Unsurprisingly, my old comrades in Merseyside Stop the War are not best pleased. There'll be a demo outside the Hall, and hopefully we can bring the spirit of '03 back to the streets of Liverpool. We're calling on performers to boycott the concert, and it seems to have at least got to Roger McGough. Basically, there's a simple principle behind this: The people that master-minded, executed and justified these vile imperial adventures should never be allowed to forget it. They should never be able to be in public without being reminded of it. Never.

So, hopefully you'll be on the pickets on Tuesday, or I'll see you in Blackpool, and I'll see you in Liverpool on Friday.