The Party’s Not Over: Network politics and the 2010-11 UK Student Movement

In late 2010 a mass student movement emerged in the UK in a series of spectacular demonstrations and a wave of occupations in response to the trebling of university tuition fees and the education cuts of the Tory-LibDem coalition. There followed a debate about its organisational forms in which "organising without organisations", Internet organising and a leaderless movement of autonomous groups became prominent themes. This intervention uses examples from the movement to argue that this model cannot deal with a number of issues necessary if it is to be sustainable and effective in bringing about radical political change: forms of democracy and accountability; the determination and implementation of a political strategy; and the formation of political organisations that can attract long term commitment and go beyond individualised responses. This suggests limitations to this model as an organisational strategy for the movement. The movement [...] contestation and spontaneity – the force of the streets... this power, which lies outside of state power, was and remains the most real and active power... Such power however, has difficulty in constituting an