Dept of Business | >Re-PHOTO

Brexit, Fair Tips & Deported Cleaners – 2018

Brexit, Fair Tips & Deported Cleaners: On Tuesday 12 June 2018 after photographing the Stand of Defiance European Movement continuing protest outside Parliament I went on to a protest at the Business ministry calling for restaurant staff to receive all of the tips that clients add to their bills. Finally I went to SOAS where a rally was taking place on the 9th anniversary of the management conspiring with the Border Agency in a despicable anti-union move to deport nine of the cleaners who worked there.

Stop Brexit ‘Pies Not Lies’

Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Brexit, Fair Tips & Deported Cleaners - 2018

Steven Bray’s Stand of Defiance European Movement, SODEM, were continuing their protests outside Parliament every day it was in session.

This protest was a part of their ‘Pies Not Lies Remainathon‘ and was taking place as parliament were debating the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.

They continue to point out that he public was misled by deliberate lies and say that Brexit does not reflect the will of the people as few if any of the 52% actually voted for the kind of hard Brexit that the government is pursuing.

Stop Brexit ‘Pies Not Lies’

Unite TGI Fridays demand Fair Tips & Fair Pay

Dept of Business etc, Victoria St

Striking Unite members from TGI Fridays along with others from the Unite Restaurant, Catering and Bar Workers Branch and Unite Community came to the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy to protest against restaurant owners taking part of the tips that customers give to staff on their credit cards.

The workers say TGI Fridays use the tips to drive down the pay of staff in kitchens, and demand to keep the tips they have earned and for proper pay for all restaurant staff.

One of the protesters was dressed as a giant burger. After half an hour of noisy protest, a deputation tried to go in to deliver a letter to business secretary Greg Clark, but were stopped at the door, where their letter was taken with a promise it would be delivered to him.

Two years earlier then then Business minister Sajid Javid had promised to take action to end this malpractice but had done nothing. Five years later The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 made it law that all tips should go to the workers and a code of practice for this was issued in July 2024.

I left as the protest at the ministry was ending and the group were going on to protest outside branches of TGI Fridays.

TGI Fridays demand Fair Tips & Fair Pay

‘SOAS 9’ deported cleaners remembered

SOAS University of London

On 12th June 2009, after the cleaners at SOAS had begun to campaign for the London Living Wage, SOAS managers called them to an ’emergency meeting’ at 6:30am.

*Consuela, one of the cleaner’s shop stewards*

A few minutes after the start of the ‘meeting’, agents of the UK Border Agency rushed in, handcuffed all the cleaners and held them for questioning. Nine were then deported.

The was part of the despicable ‘hostile environment’ for migrant workers, begun by the Labour government, but severely ratcheted up by Theresa May as Home Secretary.

People stood at the rally in front of SOAS holding the names of the 9 deported cleaners – Alberto, Carlos, Heidy, Laura, Lucia, Manuel, Marina, Milton and Rosa – while people told the story of that grim day and about the long fight by cleaners to get a Living Wage, decent conditions of service and to be treated with dignity and respect.

*Sandy Nicoll, SOAS Unison Branch Secretary*

In 2018 that ten year ‘one workplace, one workforce’ struggle to bring the cleaners ‘in house’, directly employed by the university, had just been won in principle and negotiations were continuing on its implementation.

After the rally there was to be a showing of the documentary film ‘Limpiadores’ about the SOAS cleaners and the Borders Agency raid with a panel discussion, but I couldn’t stay. I don’t think the film is still available.

‘SOAS 9’ deported cleaners remembered

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Students March for Free Education – 2015

Students March for Free Education. On Wednesday 4th November 2015 students, led by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) marched through central London against the abolition of maintenance grants calling for free education without fees and huge student debts and an end to turning higher education into a market system impoverishing staff and students.

Back in the distant past when I was a student, UK students paid no tuition fees at UK universities and I got a grant of around £300 a year which was then just about enough to pay my living expenses, at least for the three terms I was away from each year, paid by my local authority.

Because my family income was low, I got a full grant, while some of my friends from wealthier families got lower grants and had to rely on their parents to give them a ‘parental contribution’ – and not all did, though some others were more than generous.

More recently, my two sons also benefited from maintenance grants and no fees, my younger son just squeezing into the final year before student fees came in. By then my salary as a teacher – our sole household income at the time – meant we were assessed to make a small parental contribution to his maintenance.

Since then things have got a lot tougher for students, with loans for both tuition fees and their living expenses. New Labour brought in tuition fees in 1998, means-tested at £1000 per year, then tightened the screw in 2004 when they tripled to £3000 and poorer families now had to pay the full amount.

In 2012 the Tory-led coalition tripled the fee yet again, setting a maximum of £9000 – and I think all universities charged more or less that maximum. Currently they are frozen after being rasied to £9250 in 2017, but are expected to rise with inflation from 2025 if no further changes are made. For a few years in opposition Labour promised to remove tuition fees, but that promise seems to have been quickly forgotten after Starmer became leader.

It was Thatcher who first introduced student loans for maintenance but these were in addition to maintenance grants for those who did not get full grants. It was again New Labour in 1998 that abolished maintenance grants for all but the poorest students – and these went in 2016.

Student loans have operated under several systems since 1990, with the first major change taking place in 1998 and the next in 2012, when the first Income-Contingent Repayment Plan 1 was introduced. Students this year are on the 5th version of this, with a new version for those starting in 2023.

Martin Lewis summarises the 1923 changes in a clear graphic. Students who started in 2023 pay 9% of their income when they earn over £25,000 a year and keep paying for 40 years after they left university. Inflation-linked interest is added to the amount on loan, typically now around £60,000 for a three-year course.

Most students now also have to supplement their income with part time jobs, as estimates for the income needed to take a full part in three years of university life together with tuition fees come to more than £80,000. It’s a far cry from back when I was at university when students taking paid work during term-time was frowned upon or prohibited by the university authorities.

The 2015 protest formed up at Malet Street outside what had until 2013 been the University of London Union where there were speeched, then marched to Parliament Square . From there it went on the Home Office and Dept of Business, Innovation & Skills and became more chaotic, with a black bloc of students took over and police rather fragmented the march.

You can read about it and see many more pictures – and also of the celebration going on in Parliament Square following the release of the last British resident, Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo on My London Diary.

Free Education – No Barriers, Borders or Business
Students at Home Office and BIS
‘Welcome Home Shaker’ celebration

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Free Education and Welcome Home Shaker

Free Education – No Barriers, Borders or Business – Wed 4 Nov 2015

I and many others in my generation and class were the first in their families to gain a university education, enabled to do so by maintenance grants. I got a full grant as my family earnings were under the limit where financial contributions were required. There were then no fees for university courses and I left university penniless (well almost – my total wealth was actually £5 8/6d in the post office bank) but with no debts, taking up a job at a salary more than my father had ever earned.

Fortunate too were my two sons, who both just managed to enter higher education when grants were still available (though I was then earning enough to have to pay a relatively trivial sum to make up their maintenance grants) and there were still no fees for UK students.

Now in 2022, the typical student leaves university in England with a debt of £45,000 and if my wife and I took the same courses as we did in the 1960s our combined debt would be in excess of £100,000. Of course we have had rather a lot of inflation since then, so this would equate to around £5,000. It would have seemed an unimaginable sum to me at the time, and I would certainly have gone out to work rather than continuing my studies.

As well as the fees, the students were also protesting at other changes in particular the way that education has become a market-led system, no longer led by knowledge and curiosity but by returns on investment with many courses in what are seen as unproductive areas being cut and research increasingly limited to topics which can be financially exploited.

Of course universities back in the 60s were not entirely ivory towers. Back in the 1940s they played an important part in the war effort, and one of my lecturers told us how his desk back then was made of planks across between two stacks of high explosive as he studied ways to improve the effectiveness of explosions. My own research, though driven by an unlikely theoretical hypothesis (which it demolished) was funded – as I only found out later – by a notorious US chemical company who had clearly been persuaded by my professor that it could be of considerable use to them (it wasn’t.) But he was a great con-artist.

I have mixed feelings about my university education. I was taught by people who were leading researchers in their fields but in the main had little idea about how to teach, and sometimes made it clear they were not really engaged with the task. Now much teaching seems to be done by graduate students on zero hours contracts who are equally unprepared for the job, though I think may well do it better.

The protest met in Malet St, outside the former University of London Union, shut down by the University management for its political activities – including support of protests by low paid workers who perform essential duties such as cooking, cleaning, portering and security in the university, and replaced by management-run Student Central – and this in turn closed by the university in 2021.

The rally there had a number of speeches by student leaders, staff supporters and others including Shadow Chancellor John McDonald and Antonia Bright of Movement for Justice. As well as the issues of student fees and loans and university issues, they also called for an end to borders and the scapegoating of immigrants.

As the rally ended the march was augmented by around a hundred black clad and masked students in an autonomous bloc at the rear, led by a ‘book bloc’, a line of protesters with large polystyrene padded posters with the names of left wing and anarchist classic books on them or slogans such as ‘Rise, Riot, Revolt.

Free Education – No Barriers, Borders or Business

Students at Home Office and BIS – Westminster, London, Wed 4 Nov 2015

After reaching Parliament Square the student march continued to the Home Office, where I caught up with them after pausing to photograph another event. By the time I got there the air was full of coloured smoke and there were a large number of police around it.

Soon the students marched off, with the black block and its large police escort soon following them on to the Dept of Business, Innovation & Science, now responsible for the universities which are no longer seen by government as a part of education.

The students were standing around in the road in front of the building and I was wandering through the crowd taking pictures when I heard a loud roar and turned around to see the black bloc charging the line of police in an attempt to enter the Deptartment.

The charge lacked conviction with most behind the front couple of rows standing back and watching as the police stopped the charge. Soon more police arrived and the black bloc were pushed forcibly back, with several photographers and bystanders being grabbed by the police.

The protesters tried to move away down Victoria St, but were stopped by more police, who moved in, preventing those who had remained peaceful from moving away. The students were now kettled and I decided I’d had enough and tried to leave the protest, showing my press card. At first police refused to let me through the line, but after a while I found an officer who let me through and walked away down a side road. As I did so heard a lot of noise as the students swept through the police line and ran along the street. But I was tired and went home.

Students at Home Office and BIS

‘Welcome Home Shaker’ celebration – Parliament Square, London. Wed 4 Nov 2015

Earlier as the student march had moved through Parliament Square I had stopped briefly to talk with campaigners from the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign who had mounted a weekly vigil for his release opposite Parliament every Wednesday when Parliament was sitting.

Today they had come to celebrate the news of his release from Guantanamo and were holding signs saying ‘Welcome Home Shaker AAmer’ and ‘Free At Last’. He had been taken there after torture in Afghanistan, arriving on 14 February 2002 and was released and flown to Britain on 30 October 2015. He continued to be held and regularly tortured there despite the US government having acknowledged it had no evidence against him and clearing him for transfer in 2007.

‘Welcome Home Shaker’ celebration