A-Infos (en) Anarkismo.net: The history of the Quebec student movement and combative unionism by Jerome Raza jerome

In September 2012, shortly after the end of the largest unlimited general student strike 
in the history of Quebec, several class-struggle anarchist organisations in Canada along 
with a few local chapters of the IWW put together a cross-country tour to bring the 
history and experiences of the Quebec student movement to students and activists outside 
the province. Stopping in over a dozen cities from Toronto, Ontario to Victoria, BC, the 
tour brought a participant in the 2012 student strike to audiences in colleges and 
universities as well as union halls and various cooperatives. The article that follows is 
based on this conference. Special thanks to Jonathan from Zabalaza for editing help! 
Promotional poster for the 2012 cross-Canada tour on the Quebec student movement
http://www.anarkismo.net/cache/imagecache/local/attachments/nov2012/460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_1cross_canada_net_promo_1.jpg

The student movement in Quebec has recently written an important chapter in its history. 
The strike that was launched back in February 2012, against the latest hike in university 
tuition turned into one of the largest social movements in the province's, and perhaps 
even Canada's, entire histories.

Of course, one of the interesting side-effects of the events of the last few months has 
been that news of the strike has spread outside the province, and many students and 
activists have taken notice.

We're not only happy that our struggle has inspired hope among the left about the ability 
of social movements to fight back in this difficult context where the state and business 
leaders seem to reign unchallenged. But we're especially excited to witness the fact that 
the strike in Quebec has sparked debates across borders about charting a way forward for 
the student movement.

Birth and early history of the student movement

The strike in Quebec didn't happen because we “just do things differently”. It didn't 
happen because there's anything inherently specific to francophone culture. If we want to 
help students and activists outside Quebec learn from our movement, we need to start by 
addressing the fog of “Quebec exceptionalism”. One way to do that is to talk history. It's 
an interesting starting point because right there, we've got something in common.

We're all surrounded by the history of Kings, Queens, conquests and statesmanship. The 
elite's history. Quebec isn't any different in that respect. History of popular movement 
and resistance is overlooked unless it plays into the nationalist narrative of dominant 
political discourse. What the Quebecois student movement does have, however, is a strong 
tradition of sharing the legacy of student struggles.

The birth of the student movement can be traced back to the mid-forties, not in Quebec, 
but in France.

At the outset of World War II, a number of students, some with links to the anti-fascist 
resistance, sought to give a new direction to the national student organisation. The 
apolitical / corporatist attitudes prevalent among student groups at the time gave rise to 
an ambiguous relationship with the Nazi occupiers during the war and so as a response, 
these students took on the task of transforming the student associations of the time into 
real student unions, modeled after labor unions.

In 1946, the National Union of French Students, or UNEF by its French acronym, adopted a 
founding document: the Charter of Student Syndicalism, later known as the “Charte de 
Grenoble”. It defines the student as a young intellectual worker with specific rights and 
responsibilities which ensue from this particular status.

• Article 4: “As a worker, the student has a right to work and rest in the best of 
conditions and in material independence, both personal and social, guaranteed by the free 
exercise of syndicalist rights.”
• Article 7: “As an intellectual, the student has a responsibility – to seek out, 
propagate and defend Truth which entails sharing and advancing culture as well as drawing 
the meaning of history – to defend liberty against all oppression, which constitutes, for 
the intellectual, his most sacred mission.”

In its beginnings, French student syndicalism took off around concrete issues of 
decolonisation and the Cold War. Those who upheld apolitical student associations were 
confronted.

Back in Quebec, the notion of student syndicalism didn’t catch on until the early sixties. 
At that time, student associations in the province were still apolitical and centred 
mostly around organising parties and providing student services. But in 1961, students in 
Université de Montréal, wanting to break with that tradition, wrote their own charter of 
student rights and responsibilities, inspired by the Charte de Grenoble.

It was a new ideological paradigm. Students, as young intellectual workers, developed a 
new awareness of their role in society as a whole. They were no longer content to concern 
themselves with student issues. They started getting involved in worker's struggles and 
identifying with the working class. As a result, more and more student activists 
subscribed to the idea of building student unions that could not only provide services but 
also organise struggles and thus take an active role in shaping society.

At the time, society was going through secularisation and the education system which was 
previously under the control of religious authorities came into the hands of the state. 
The old authoritarian reflexes of administrators and faculty weighed down on students' new 
sense of duty and responsibility. They wanted to participate in the important decisions 
that affected their institutions. The watchword became “student power”.

Another important factor is that there was only one francophone university in Montreal, 
the Université de Montréal. It was elitist, expensive, and being perched up Mount Royal, 
was far removed from French-speaking working class boroughs in the city. Combined with the 
fact that the much smaller English community could count on two prestigious universities 
(Concordia and McGill), the sentiment of injustice would become gradually stronger.

So around this fight to democratise access to higher education, students coalesced around 
new, militant student unions and helped drive the development of the syndicalist tendency. 
Combined with a general uproar in labour, feminist and nationalist struggles in society, 
the student movement quickly became a force to be reckoned with.

In 1964, conscious of the need to co-ordinate the struggle, conscious of the need to build 
the financial and organisational tools required to maintain a permanent balance of power 
vis-à-vis the state, syndicalist students created the General Quebec Students’ Union, or 
UGEQ by its French acronym.

Just a few years later, in 1968, as major students protest enflamed Europe, the upheaval 
crossed the Atlantic and reached Quebec. A huge wave of turmoil swept across the province 
and the fledgling student movement stepped in with the first unlimited general student 
strike in Quebec's history. Even though, in the aftermath of the strike, the government 
created a new public francophone university in Montreal, UQAM, along with the University 
of Quebec network and a brand new student financial aid program, the strike action was 
perceived as a failure. It was perceived as a failure simply because the result didn't 
come close to the huge expectations. Even though the revolt spread across countries and 
started to look like revolution in a few places, the social outburst eventually died down. 
That sentiment, shared widely among student militants, was about to have pretty dire 
consequences. In the following years, many local student unions were disbanded. The UGEQ, 
whose membership was based in the student unions, also disappeared.

It's not that student activists were massively abandoning the struggle, but because they 
saw student unions as too bureaucratic. They felt unions held back student's militancy and 
the potential for radicalisation. In disbanding student unions and reorganising in 
smaller, radical political groups, they hoped to be able to build a truly revolutionary 
movement. Even though these critiques weren't entirely baseless, the decision to kill off 
student unions was made rashly and without hindsight. Unsurprisingly, the loss of the only 
structures and resources that could mobilise a mass movement led to a collapse of the 
entire student movement. As an added consequence, whole areas of student life on campus, 
which were built and under the control of student unions, fell into the hands of 
administrations. Obviously not everyone in the student movement saw all this in a positive 
light. It sparked a big debate in the student movement about which forms of organisation 
were needed. Only 6 years later would the movement recover.

In 1974 the government announced plans to introduce university entry tests for francophone 
students. In response, a co-ordination of syndicalist student unions started organising 
for a new general strike. But the Liberal government wanted to prevent any reoccurrence of 
the events of 1968, especially on an issue it didn’t consider very important. Difficult 
negotiations with public sector unions made the prospect of a confrontation with students 
even less appealing. So it quietly retired its plans to introduce the tests, before the 
students got far ahead in the preparation of the strike.

Since the government's reversal was announced as temporary, students decided to press on. 
The feeling of empowerment from an easy victory inspired them to expand the platform of 
demands of the strike to include improvements to the student financial aid program. The 
strike got going with just a handful of student unions, but it quickly got much larger. In 
total, forty institutions, Cegeps and universities, participated in the strike. Four weeks 
into the struggle, the government announced an important set of concessions and the strike 
came to a close.

The success of that strike lead, the next year, in 1975, to the creation of a new, 
permanent, Quebec-wide, syndicalist student organisation: the National Association of 
Quebec Students, or ANEEQ. For the next twenty years, the debate between syndicalist 
unions and affinity groups was put to rest. By the time of the next large student 
mobilisation in 1978, ANEEQ eventually grew not into the main student union, but in fact 
the only student union and quite literally representative of the entire student movement. 
Most importantly, however, it remained true to its origins by actively promoting and 
developing rank-and–file control of student unions and combative militancy.

The Parti Quebecois era

The Parti Quebecois won the elections in 1976. At the time it was definitively a 
progressive party. Most importantly for the student movement, its political platform 
promised to abolish student debt, enact free tuition and implement a “pre-salary” 
programme. It's no surprise: lots of activists in ANEEQ, and activists that experienced 
and organised the strikes in 1968 and 1974, were involved in the party. The election of 
the PQ to the government created a wave of enthusiasm among the entire left. 
Unsurprisingly, however, this enthusiasm was short-lived : the party's progessive platform 
was quickly shelved.

By 1978, there was a rift within ANEEQ. On the one hand, the more radical activists wanted 
to start organising a general strike to try and force the PQ into implementing its own 
program. While on the other, you had activists loyal to the party, which defended a much 
more conciliatory stance towards the government, hoping to make progress on the issues by 
way of negotiation and dialogue.

Though both factions were about equal in numbers, the radicals, mostly Cegep students, won 
a crucial leadership election. Just a few days later, a single rural Cegep student union 
launched a general strike. Their demands: the PQ's own elections platform on accessibility 
to higher education. The strike gradually expanded, though not as fast as the previous 
one. After about three weeks, thirty Cegeps and a handful of university faculties were on 
strike. As the mobilisation seemed to start dying down, the large UQAM student union 
entered the strike. Again, the government was forced into concessions during the strike. 
After two distinct announcements of improvements to student financial aid, the strike 
ended. As students started going back to class however, ANEEQ launched a campaign of 
occupations of MP offices. In a single day, six offices were occupied.

With the positive results from the third general strike, a renewed feeling of empowerment 
helped consolidate ANEEQ's radical leadership. It remained as a symbol of radicalism and 
mass mobilisation until its very end. Advocates of conciliation and negotiation eventually 
formed their own, separate organisations.

In 1981, that happened when RAEU and the FAECQ were born. As brainchildren of PQ activists 
whose party held power, the new student unions were rapidly integrated in to the state's 
apparatus. Amazingly, they were also hostile to any form of mass mobilisation. Their 
rallying cry was “the strike, never again!”.

The 80's opened a gloomier chapter in the history not just of the student movement, but 
for the left in general. It was the era of the post-referendum, crisis inside the PQ, the 
worst economic recession since the Great Depression, the dissolution of revolutionary 
groups and difficult battles between the labour movement and the PQ's Rene Levesque 
government.

Internationally, Reagan and Thatcher ushered in the age neoliberalism. The welfare state 
was on its way out and policies of privatisation and massive cuts in social spending 
became the order of the day.

The austere eighties and the downfall of ANEEQ

In Quebec, the Liberal Party succeeded the PQ in 1985. Under pressure from their youth 
wing, however, the Liberals promised to maintain the freeze on tuition fees. This regime 
change was bad news for the RAEU and the FAECQ, whose bodies were entirely controlled by 
PQ activists. Both organisations eventually collapsed into irrelevance. The next year, in 
1986, the education minister declared that the tuition freeze should be abandoned. He went 
as far as saying there were “twice too many university students in Quebec”.

A few months later, ANEEQ, after a campaign of general assemblies and a 5000-strong 
demonstration on parliament hill, launched a general strike. The main demands, issued by 
GA's and adopted in a congress of ANEEQ members and non-members, were to force the 
government to promise to maintain the freeze, to dump university ancillary fees and again 
to improve student financial aid. Just two weeks into the strike in which about 25 unions 
participated, the education minister came out with a promise to maintain the freeze until 
the next election and temporarily abandon ancillary fees at UQAM. On the issue of student 
financial aid, he promised a series of meetings with students, in which the demands would 
be “considered”.

While the student unions decided to stop the strike, at least temporarily, a number of 
occupations of government buildings were organised the following year to keep up the 
pressure. Months went by and the negotiation meetings promised by the government didn’t 
produce any results for the students. So as a response, ANEEQ launched a call for a new 
general strike to try and materialise their demands for improvements to student financial 
aid. Unfortunately, the 1988 student strike never took off.

The Liberal party went on to be reelected, and in 1990 they announced a huge tuition fee 
hike, bringing them from $500 per year to more than $1200. At the same time, it gave 
universities the power to increase these fees by up to 10%.

Once again, ANEEQ's student unions set off plans for a general strike. During the strike 
campaign, the government hammered its justification for the hike by saying that better 
financial aid (bigger loans available) would compensate the effects of the hike on poorer 
students. At the same time, the student right got organised. A group of Cegep student 
unions opposed to the strike formed the FECQ and allied themselves with another recently 
formed university student federation, the FEUQ. As the successors of the pro-PQ, RAEU and 
FAECQ the two organisations promoted an essentially lobbyist strategy. Their hostility to 
mass mobilisation marked a new break with the student movement's legacy of syndicalism.

Unfortunately, the 1990 attempt to build a general student strike was a big failure. Three 
years later, pulled down by intense internal strife, ANEEQ was disbanded.

For the next six years, FECQ and FEUQ would have free reign over the student movement, 
allowing them ample time and space to enrol a sizeable chunk of local student unions. The 
student left would only get reorganised around opposition to the federal Axworthy reforms 
in 1994. The reforms proposed would see transfers to provinces for health and education 
slashed.

Renewal of student syndicalism

Common initiatives between a few local student unions (protest organising, a mobilisation 
committee and a radical student newspaper) eventually lead to the formation of the 
Mouvement pour le droit à l'éducation (Movement for the right to education), or MDE.

In 1996, Pauline Marois, the PQ education minister at the time, announced a hike in 
university tuition fees and Cegep ancillary fees. The MDE spearheaded a general strike 
movement which unions affiliated with FECQ and the FEUQ eventually joined. After about 
three weeks of strike, Marois announced she would scrap plans to hike the fees, but with a 
catch. She would implement a new “failure tax” on college students, (a form of taxation on 
students that fail classes) a measure proposed to her by the leadership of the FECQ! That 
move was immediately considered as treason by the radical activists and rank-and–file who 
helped build the movement that stopped the hike in tuition fees. A lot of people were 
convinced that the strength of the mobilisation could have gotten rid of the tuition fee 
hike, and that the trade-off was a move deliberately made to abort the strike quickly and 
help the FECQ get more credibility in the eyes of the government.

Even though this bittersweet victory consolidated the motivation of the student left to 
keep organising, the MDE had a difficult time escaping marginality and gaining a 
significant membership. It died off in 2000.

However, despite its relatively small membership, the MDE kept alive radical ideas and 
practices. Its whole existence relied on the need to distrust leaders, on rank-and-file 
syndicalism and direct action. For example, in the year following the 1996 strike and the 
FECQ-FEUQ's leaders sellout agreement with the PQ government, the MDE would continue to 
organise protests and occupations, demanding a substantial increase of minimum wage, a 
32-hour work week as well as free and quality health and education systems. As such, MDE 
contributed to preserve combative syndicalism and to oppose FECQ-FEUQ's lobbyist corporatism.

The prospective that the FECQ and the FEUQ would once again dominate the scene and that 
the student movement would gradually distance itself from its heritage as a combative and 
democratic force was too just hard to accept for many activists involved in the 1996 
strike and the anti-globalisation movement at the turn of the century. So in the hopes of 
helping the student movement return to its former glory, in 2001, several historically 
radical local student unions decided to unite under the banner of the Association pour une 
Solidarité Syndicale, which translates roughly to Association for Solidarity Among Student 
Unions. (Incidentally, the acronym, ASSÉ, in French is a play on words for “enough”.)

This overview of the birth of the student movement in Quebec, 1968, the first syndicalist 
student unions, the battles of the '70s, '80 and '90 should give a feel for where the 2012 
strike comes from. At this point, it's probably clear that there's a lot more to the 
origins of the strike in Quebec than mere spontaneity.

Furthermore, it's relevant to note that every student strike has been a major turning 
point in the development of the student movement. After '68 student unions were destroyed, 
the one in '74 gave rise to ANEEQ, in '78 we saw a new rift between radicals and 
lobbyists, after the success in '86 the lobbyists lost ground, the failure of '88 divided 
ANEEQ and the aftermath of another failed strike in '90 helped lobbyist student 
federations establish themselves permanently.

Quebec's student movement as it exists today was essentially shaped by mass, collective 
and syndicalist-type politics and action.

And yet, the student movement isn't homogenous, far from it. This vast general strike of 
last spring in Quebec gave an impression of a united front of the three main student 
unions : ASSÉ, FECQ and FEUQ. Underneath the media hype, the relationship between these 
organisation is a lot more complex – and caustic – than images of unitary student protests 
led on. But it isn't a parochial conflict : it's a question of fundamental disagreements 
on elements of both practices and political outlook.

Before adressing this aspect, it's worth looking more closely at ASSÉ's history. (ASSÉ is 
the Quebec-wide student union that created CLASSE by opening itself to unaffiliated unions 
to join temporarily). Those who followed the strike more closely already know that it's 
been the main force, the main protagonist of that struggle. Getting an understanding of 
ASSÉ's history is key to better understanding the origins of the strike.

A brief history of ASSÉ

On with 2001. The “failure tax”, inherited from the dealings of FECQ during the 1996 
strike, was taking it's toll on college students. A coalition of independent local student 
unions formed around the project to launch a campaign to abolish that tax. Here, a few 
things started working in favour of creating a new syndicalist student union.

First, it quickly became obvious how working outside of the formal structures of an 
organisation weighed down on the organising efforts of the campaign. How are the costs to 
be shared? How can the resources of each association be pooled? Who will track general 
progress between meetings? etc.

Second, while the student unions were confident they would be able to stir up a sizeable 
opposition movement (the failure tax was really hated), there was specific concern 
regarding the FECQ. As the group that agreed to the failure tax in the first place, the 
unions worried that it might appropriate the movement as its own and use it to negotiate 
another rotten outcome against the wishes of the rank-and-file.

Eventually, those preoccupations were confirmed when FECQ, who wasn’t taking part in 
mobilisations at all, negotiated “student performance contracts” in exchange for dumping 
the failure tax. Outside the student movement, there was the broader political context. In 
the 1990's the first half of the decade was dominated by the question of sovereignty, 
leading up to the 1995 referendum.

But the second half of that decade really set the tone. The PQ's obsession with 
zero-deficit resulted in cuts of nearly 2 billion dollars in education alone. In 2000, 
during a “Quebec Youth Summit”, the government agreed to re-inject public funds into 
education but under conditions to implement a series of reforms inspired by neoliberal, 
free-market policies. It was baptised “plan Legault” after the PQ's minister of education.

On a global level, negotiations by states for a multitude of international trade 
agreements on capital and services pointed to a new era in the globalisation of 
capitalism. Reports and investigations into these negotiations showed how far western 
states were ready to go to empower capital against people. At the same time, the WTO 
summit in Seattle revealed the extent of popular resistance.

Similar events happened in Washington, Genoa and Quebec city with the Summit of the 
Americas in 2001. ASSÉ's first activists were immersed in the anti-globalisation movement. 
In the first months of ASSÉ, it renamed its campaign against the “plan Legault” as a 
campaign “against the steering of education by market laws”. In doing so, it manifested a 
rejection of narrow and piecemeal understanding of state education policies. Instead by 
highlighting the role of “market laws”, it sought to tie together the various reforms 
being implemented in Cegeps and universities and it also linked those changes to the 
dynamics of international trade agreements and capitalist globalisation.

Even though it was off to a good start, the campaign ran out of steam. At this point ASSÉ 
was rather small and had only about a dozen member unions. It then decided to focus on 
opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The campaign rallied 
students all across the student movement. As it did, it forced the federations, FECQ and 
FEUQ to respond with their own campaign surrounding NAFTA. But they couldn’t bring 
themselves to get with a radical anti-NAFTA agenda, so they settled on a corporatist and 
responsible demand of “No to the inclusion of education in NAFTA”.

At a large meeting of local student unions from all affiliations, only a tiny fraction 
decided to follow the student federations' campaign while the vast majority rallied behind 
ASSÉ and a clear rejection of NAFTA. On October 31st 2002, 10 000 participated in a 
Montreal march against NAFTA.

In the first few years of ASSÉ's existence, its struggles were about global dynamics on 
which the student movement had very little grab. The fight against NAFTA wasn’t able to 
spark a mobilisation outside the student movement. While the 2003 antiwar movement against 
the intervention in Iraq had a popular character from its inception, the student unions 
weren’t able to underline any specific political objectives it could work towards. When it 
tackled the phenomenon of the “steering of education by market laws”, it was campaigning 
against nothing less than the vast neoliberal restructuring of education, which, at the 
same time, was fast becoming a fact.

Nonetheless, ASSÉ was still able to build its base of support among students. In the 
context of wide opposition to international summits (NAFTA, WTO, G8, G20...), the student 
body responded enthusiastically to calls for mobilisation. Through the experience of these 
first struggles, ASSÉ's activists were able to develop an open political vision and a deeper
understanding of issues.

A new frame of thinking made its way into the student movement: the roots of our 
day-to-day problems, including in education, could be found in the international economy – 
more specifically in the relationship that builds between human populations and capital. 
In 2003, however, the focus went from international to local with the election of a new 
Liberal government and its plans for “state reengineering”. It was a shock for the labor 
and community groups used to the PQ's smooth approach of concertation. The Liberals wasted 
no time in implementing anti-social reforms, including in education. ASSÉ put out a call 
for a general strike in 2003 against a hike in ancillary fees, but it ultimately failed to 
get more than a few unions on board.

The lessons learned through that campaign came in handy when the next year, in 2004, the 
government announced a reform of student financial aid, converting 103 million dollars 
from bursaries into loans. ASSÉ reacted by organising a wide consultation of student 
general assemblies in order to build a platform of demands and start building up momentum 
towards a strike action.

Tours of Cegeps and universities were organised, as well as massive distribution of 
material calling for the strike, demonstrations and even occupations of MP offices. 
Because it was conscious that a successful strike movement would necessarily need to 
include other unaffiliated student unions, ASSÉ began planning for a student strike 
coalition. The student federations, FECQ and FEUQ, adopted a wait-and-see approach to the 
strike. While ASSÉ activists were busy working at mobilising students on campuses across 
the province, FECQ and FEUQ were content with “representing” student interests at Liberal 
Party meetings and the “Generations Summit” orchestrated by the government.

To add insult to injury, the day the general strike was launched in February 2005, they 
went on the record declaring that it wasn't the appropriate time for student mobilisation 
and that they had no plans to join the strike. In fact, since the education minister had 
been replaced just a few weeks earlier, they wanted to “give him a chance”.

Well, the student movement didn’t concur. Within two weeks over 70 000 student were on 
strike in Quebec, including some from student unions affiliated with FECQ and FEUQ. The 
two federations were forced to join the strike or risk having some serious representation 
issues...

That about-face turned out to be a mixed blessing. While the strike kept expanding in the 
following weeks, the issue of negotiations came up. After one meeting of the ASSÉ strike 
coalition negotiations committee, the education minister declared he wouldn't pursue 
further negotiations with the student group before it renounced “violence”.

Of course, what he wanted the student unions to renounce was in fact occupation of 
offices, rowdy protests and blockades. In other words, the only tools at the disposal of 
students to effectively disrupt business as usual and force the government into 
negotiations. The issue was to create lots of debate among general assemblies and meetings 
of the strike coalition, but in the end, in part because of the involvement of anarchists 
and other radical student activists, the coalition maintained its commitment to combative 
militancy.

The student federations, on the other hand, immediately renounced violence and began 
closed negotiations with the government. At that time, the strike coalition represented 
about a third of the movement but also the longest striking unions, so the move created a 
lot of discontent, even among the rank-and-file of the student federations, some of whom 
launched a plea with their leadership to stop negotiating in the absence of delegates from 
the strike coalition.

Five weeks into the strike, the leaderships of FECQ and FEUQ announced an agreement to end 
the conflict. That agreement would see the cuts reversed, but only partially for a few 
years, with the full amount being reinvested later. By undermining the unity and 
determination of the movement, the move succeeded in putting an end to the strike, with 
the most resilient unions ending the strike after the seventh week. In a large part 
because of the insistence of ASSÉ, however, that in the interest of maintaining democratic 
control of the movement, any outcome of negotiations be put to a vote, a huge number of 
general assemblies rejected the agreement while at the same time voting off the strike.

There was a lot of anger at FECQ and FEUQ's leaderships during and after the strike. A lot 
of students from all quarters of the student movement felt they squandered the movement's 
largest mobilisation ever. Not only that, but the struggle made the political divide 
between the two poles of the movement obvious.

FEUQ eventually payed a high price. Between 2005 and 2007, three significant campus unions 
left the federation, including the huge McGill undergraduate student union. As is often 
the case when chapters of struggle come to a close, the 2005 strike left mixed feelings of 
victory and defeat. Victory, for one, because the strike happened, because it grew into 
the biggest student strike in history and because its power was enough to force the 
government into making a concession, however small. But defeat also, because the strike 
coalition built around ASSÉ wasn't strong enough to prevent FECQ and FEUQ from 
appropriating the movement and squandering the mobilisation in exchange for tiny concessions.

Even though the Liberals reluctantly agreed to reinvest some amount into financial aid, 
their next step couldn’t be more clear: a hike in university tuition fees. They didn’t 
wait five years, until 2012, to do it, though... They dropped the official announcement in 
2007: a hike of 30%, spread over five years, with a further hike down the road in 2012.

Unfortunately, 2007 was a much less glorious chapter than 2005. ASSÉ took a bold stand to 
launch a general strike with the main demand of free tuition, no less. No more than just a 
handful of student unions got a strike mandate. The failure to block the hike in 2007 was 
a big blow, but as the student movement in Quebec has shown, it's got an ability to 
evolve, learn from its mistakes and do better.

Lots of different things were highlighted as having contributed to the failure. Bad 
internal dynamics in ASSÉ, not enough mobilisation done on campuses, material not having 
been solid enough... The most significant element however, might have been the political 
miscalculation of having called for a general student strike on the basis of free tuition. 
In a way this was a break we can't help but notice that the largest and most successful 
struggles were given sets of realistic, immediate goals. In '68 you had the demand for 
democratisation of higher education, in the '70s and '80s students fought for adequate 
financial aid and against hikes in tuition fees, and so forth. It's through these kinds of 
objectives that the movement is able to mobilise and grow.

Part of the success of the student movement in Quebec is based on an ability to relate to 
the concerns of regular students, to speak to their day-to-day experience, while at the 
same time being able to articulate all this to a wider political analysis that seeks to 
address the issues at their root.

Student unions are relevant

All through the history of the student movement in Quebec, the syndicalist tendency 
maintained that students need to organise into unions. It was true then, and it's still 
true today.

For sure, students don't form a homogenous class in the same way workers do. In any given 
campus, students with a really wealthy background might rub shoulders with others who can 
barely make ends meets. But despite different socio-economic backgrounds, students do form 
a community and they do have a certain set of common interests, independently of their 
political, philosophical or religious opinions.

Chiefly there's the issue of accessibility to education. With tuition constantly 
increasing, students being pushed deeper and deeper into debt, being forced into 
precarious jobs to survive, the dream of higher education is fast becoming a nightmare. 
The gap between the myth of equality of chances and the reality of this lie is getting 
deeper. There's also matters of the quality of education, in terms of student-teacher 
ratio for example. Access to appropriate study equipment: good libraries, study space, etc.

There's also concern about corporate influence over the content of courses and how 
programs are structured, not to mention the orientation of research more and more towards 
the needs of big business while fundamental research (which doesn't serve industry 
profits) is gradually being abandoned. These are all issues that can cement support for 
student unions.

At the same time, lots of students are really deeply involved in different kinds of groups 
on campuses such as Public Interest Research Groups. They do a lot of hard work and they 
address important issues. But that kind of organising isn't a substitute for student 
unions. Political groups alone can't hope to build a movement of the same nature that 
we've seen in Quebec because their aim simply isn't to build unity among students.

Combative unionism

Now, of course most campuses these days already have some kind of student-led structure. 
So obviously, it's not enough for students to organise into unions. There are different 
types of unions and there's different unionisms too.

The success of the student strike is a product of a certain kind of unionism that's called 
“combative unionism”. In the context of Quebec, it's not something imagined by academics 
or dreamed up by industrial relations students. Combative unionism is the explicit 
strategy, and set of practices, promoted by the syndicalist tendency in the student 
movement. In a nutshell, it calls for democratic, combative and autonomous unions. This is 
what CLASSE is made of.

Democracy

First, combative unionism says a union should be run by its members, for its members, and 
the only way to do that is to practice direct democracy. It's a clear rejection of 
representative democracy. When disagreements and struggles are mediated by leaders who can 
act without grassroots support or consultation, it's inevitably the interests of 
authorities that are served, not the members.

The fundamental tool of direct democracy is the general assembly. Only in general 
assemblies can everyone voice their ideas on equal footing, and where these voices can 
produce collective decisions which are then binding on the whole union. These meetings are 
important because they allow students to engage each other and develop capacities for 
debate and critical thinking.

The power of executive boards is explicitly limited to implementing the decisions of the 
assemblies and running the day-to-day operations of the union. Unions which practice 
combative unionism also have minimal bureaucracy. Paid employees aren’t a substitute for 
anemic participation in the structures of a union and instead of fixing the problem, it 
merely makes it permanent (ASSÉ has always had one employee). Dealings with 
administrations or higher authorities isn't based on the power of representation, but on 
delegation. Delegates have a clear mandate of which positions to defend and have no 
authority to accept any compromise.

Information is also key to a healthy democracy, so combative unions rely on alternative 
and autonomous media to inform their members. Whether its through posters, leaflets or 
newspapers, a combative union will use the means at its disposal to make relevant news 
available to students and use those as opportunities to directly engage with them and get 
them involved. In the same vein, transparency, on all levels of organisation is made as 
real as possible.

Combativity

The second core idea of combative unionism, is, well, combativeness. Its militant tactics 
stem from an understanding that contrary to what the dominant ideology makes us think, the 
state isn't a neutral institution where all sectors of society have equal standing. In 
reality, the state is a tool in the hands of private business interests and completely 
submitted by the power of finance. As a result, we can't ever hope to shame or convince 
the government into accepting student demands.

That's why combative unionism, through mass mobilisation and the power in numbers, seeks 
to build itself as a permanent counter-power that can force the satisfaction of student 
demands.

The type of tactics it puts forth are a reflection of the unions themselves: by their 
members and for their members. In other words, direct action.

We have to reject the notion that direct action is necessarily violent or destructive. At 
its core, direct action is about the rank-and-file being at the forefront of all aspects, 
and not representatives or politicians. In the spirit of combative unionism, though, 
direct actions also need to be mass actions. The only way to do that is by taking into 
account the general state of consciousness among members of the unions and their 
commitment to the movement. In that sense, general assemblies need to have the larger role 
in debating and orienting tactics.

Combative unionism is also a refusal of confining methods of protest to the limits of 
legality. This flows from its ideas about the nature of the state. If the state is a tool 
in the hands of the few, it's only logical that the laws of the state are also designed to 
protect them. But it doesn't make illegality into a dogma either, only that different 
types of actions available to the movement should be judged based on their own merit and 
their usefulness to the cause, not whether or not they're sanctioned by the legal system. 
As a result of all this, a movement based on combative unionism will ally both common 
methods of protest like rallies, marches and strikes, with more vigorous actions such as 
occupations and blockades.

Autonomy

The third core idea of combative unionism is about autonomy.

In the interest of preventing alienation from its own organising by and for its members, 
combative unions need to promote and materialise their autonomy with regard to the state 
and political groups. Autonomy with regard to state structures because students don't 
stand to gain anything significant by participating, especially when the nature of their 
demands contradict the interests that control the state.

This also translates into a rejection of participation in summits and consultations, not 
least because these events are always used to legitimise future government decisions that 
run counter to the politics of the student movement.

Autonomy also with regard to political groups and political parties. Any political party 
which includes as part of its program certain demands of the student movement, once in 
power would inevitably have to face the politics of compromise which are often 
characteristic of the parliamentary system. As such, a party's political stance issued 
from demands of the student movement is always subject to be abandoned in the name of 
political realism. A number of historical examples confirm this.

Feminism

Those are the three core ideas of combative unionism, which have been part of the student 
movement since the very beginning.

Hopefully, through the decades these ideas have been enriched and one of the ways they 
have been is by the incorporation of feminist thought and practices.

It's often apparent, whether it’s in radical groups or mass organisations such as unions, 
that the voices of women are not heard as much as the men's or that more men tend to get 
involved in ways that bring them under the spotlight, while the involvement of women is 
often much more invisible.

Feminist women activists in the student movement have worked relentlessly through the 
years, often under much criticism of their men comrades, to integrate feminist analysis of 
student issues and to institutionalise feminist practices in the movement.

Today, that work is most visible, for example, by the existence of women's committees in 
ASSÉ and some student unions, the common rule of alternation between women and men 
speakers in all types of meetings, and the integration of a team of “vibe checkers” that 
keep tabs on tensions and hostilities and call out participants when they use stereotyped 
language.

Conclusion

Obviously, despite the best my efforts at synthesis, of more remains to be said about the 
issues raised in this article.

Many important periods in the history of the student movement, such as the year 1982 when 
unions fought back against legalislation framing student unions, are relevant in 
understanding the challenges facing student unions today.

This history of the 2012 strike itself, which isn't adressed at all, also remains to be 
written.

And lastly, much more can be said regarding the the principles and day-to-day practices of 
combative unionism in Quebec student unions. Though these were adressed during the 
conference tour with audiences, this crucial part is missing for the written record.

My hope is that an upcoming website which I'm working on along with several comrades of 
the 2012 student strike, titled “How we won the tuition fight”, will adress these aspects 
in a more satisfying manner. Stay tuned, it will be officially announced in the comment 
section of this article soon!

Sources

Benoit Lacoursière, Le Mouvement étudiant au Québec de 1983 à 2006 Montréal, Sabotart Éd., 
coll. « Mémoire & Luttes », 2007, 179 p. (link)
Jean-Philippe Warren, Une douce anarchie - Les années 68 au Québec, Montréal, Boréal, 
2008, 311 p. (link)
Pierre Bélanger, Le mouvement étudiant québécois : son passé, ses revendications et ses 
luttes, Montréal, ANEQ, 1984
Benoit Marsan, Pourquoi le syndicalisme étudiant? (link)
Recueil de textes sur l'histoire du mouvement étudiant (link)
Le syndicalisme étudiant de combat (link)

This conference tour was made possible by the work of :
Praire Struggle* http://www.prairiestruggle.org/
Common Cause* http://linchpin.ca/
Union communiste libertaire* http://www.causecommune.net/
Edmonton IWW http://edmonton.iww.ca/

* Anarkismo member groups
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