By Louisa Worrell

The student movement in Quebec has won a major victory: we have forced the incoming government to promise to stop the tuition fee hike and to nullify the anti-constitutional Law 12, a law created to break the student movement.

After 6 long months of being on strike and hundreds of thousands of people regularly taking to the streets throughout the struggle, we have made it clear that we are a force to be reckoned with.

The liberal government of Charest was hell bent on crushing the student movement and pushing through with the tuition fee hike. They first, imposed Law 12 which made the way we protested illegal and suspended classes. Then, the liberal government called for provincial elections as a way to attempt to redirect the energies of the student movement away from the streets and into the electoral arena.

The liberal government found it was a better bet to potentially lose an election and lose some of their relative power as an elite group that controls capital than to continue down this road and face definite defeat by the student movement. This defeat would have meant losing a more absolute chunk of capital’s power, as opposed to the simple changing of hands of who’s going to control the state.

The initial call for the provincial elections did have a dissuasive effect on the student movement. Within 2 weeks of being ordered back to class on August 13, all the CEGEPS (colleges) had gone back to school. That loss accounted for nearly half of the students on strike. From the various general assemblies, which had relatively high participation rates, the general feeling was that students were tired. These were moments of great sadness for the many activists who had worked hard to build the movement.

The universities voted next, while some of the student associations voted to remain on strike, a majority voted to go back to class.

The students who voted to remain on strike wanted to maintain the pressure on the government to block the tuition hikes and stop the increasing privatization and commercialisation of post-secondary education.

Despite the return to classes, the students will continue to put pressure on the new government, holding national demonstrations on the 22 of each month, to ensure that the tuition fee hike is cancelled.

In addition, more and more student associations are voting to join the student union ASSE (CLASSE) and are moving away from the mainstream unions.

We have lost much. we have lost time and money.  Some of our comrades have lost eyes, have broken limbs.  But we have won what we started fighting for, and we won by working together, staying focused and organised.