While workers in increasing numbers are taking strike action against the biggest cut to their living standards since the 1950s, students face our own cost -of-living squeeze.
Already inflation is creating a nightmare for students on the campuses. Prices everywhere are up – rent, bills, travel, food are all increasing well past the value of our student loans. Many of us now are missing classes to save money. Even before the spiralling of inflation, one in three students were left with £50 a month to live on after paying rent and bills.
And now the government has announced yet another massive attack to our living standards with a 2.8% increase to the maintenance loan for next year, a huge real-terms cut compared to inflation which peaked at 14% in November 2022. This is nothing but an attack on working class young people, many of whom will now be considering if they can afford to continue attending university, let alone starting at all.
But none of these attacks are inevitable. The richest 250 individuals alone in Britain now own £710 billion, up from £658 billion in 2021. The estimated cost of scrapping fees and introducing maintenance grants in Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto was £12 billion. So the wealth exists in society to provide every student with a free, fully funded and high quality education. The problem is that wealth isn’t under our control!
That’s the same reason why hundreds of thousands of workers from across the trade union movement have been taking strike action to demand above inflation pay rises, funded by taking the wealth off the super-rich.
February 1st was the biggest day of coordinated action so far involving five national trade unions – the NEU, UCU, PCS, RMT and ASLEF. That day saw 500,000 workers taking strike action collectively and was a huge show of strength.
But workers are already looking to what the next steps in building the strike wave could be. March 15th will be the Tory government’s budget day – when the Tories are expected to announce more attacks to workers and students to drive up the profits of big business. Trade union activists are fighting within their unions to tell their leaders to coordinate the various strikes on that day. If all workers with live ballots came out together on that day, joined as well by students, it would be a massive show of our strength as well as the Tories’ weakness.
But what voice do students and young people have in Parliament and the council chamber? Starmer has in his own words ‘wiped Labour’s slate clean’ of Corbyn’s pledges at the 2017 and 2019 general elections, which included the pledge to scrap tuition fees. That’s why Socialist Students says students and young people need a new political party.
March 15th could also be a day that students across the country walk out of their universities and protest shoulder to shoulder with workers to demand action on the student cost of living squeeze from university management and the Tories. By building a united movement of workers and students, we can win the funding students and our universities need to get through the cost of living crisis, and scrap fees altogether!
Join Socialist Students on March 15th to demand action on the student cost of living crisis – for emergency cost of living grants, for rent controls, and for free education.
Socialist Students says:
- No more cuts to education! Back the UCU strikes!
- For emergency cost-of-living grants available for all students who need them. Replace student loans with living grants, rising with the rate of inflation
- For subsidised university canteen meals for students struggling to feed themselves
- No early closures of campus spaces due to the energy cost crisis. For heated and safely staffed campus spaces available 24/7 to students and staff who need them
- Take third-party student halls under the control of our universities, as a step towards introducing democratic rent controls
- Campaign and fight for the funding our universities need from central government – fight for free education, and make the super-rich pay for it!
- Solidarity with students and young people in struggle internationally
- Kick out the Tories! We can’t trust Starmer’s Labour to fight for us. We need a new workers’ party.
- Fight for socialist change! For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Socialist Students 