Over the weekend, the Young Greens held their national convention where motions are deliberated and voted on and internal elections are held alongside discussion sessions and knowledge-sharing between activists and groups. Outside the convention, members of Socialist Students held a stall where we had an overwhelmingly positive response from the majority of Young Greens who supported our stall calling for them to work with the trade unions and join the international student walk-outs against militarisation on November 20th.
In the convention, motions were passed encouraging more cooperation with the trade unions and advocating for the Young Greens to adopt more left-wing policies. Unfortunately, a motion on adding a ’Trade Union Liaison Officer’ to the Executive Committee did not come to the floor due to time constraints but it will be appearing again at the winter convention. Efforts to add new roles are also being worked on by the Green Party Trade Union Group.
Bringing together the largest non-party political youth and student organisation with the largest party-political youth and student organisation would demonstrate that young people can unite around common struggles; opposing militarisation and war, strengthening the trade union movement, and fighting for socialism.
This convention, the first since the meteoric rise of the Green Party and Young Greens, has shown there is a growing appetite for stronger leadership and a wider mobilisation across the country, moving beyond environmental issues and advocating for anti-zionism, workers’ rights, fighting austerity and other crucial areas where common ground with Socialist Students can be found.
The newly elected co-chairs, who identify as socialists and anti-zionists, have already expressed an interest in cooperation with Socialist Students and joining the international student walk-outs against militarisation on November 20th.
Needless to say, we congratulate everybody who won their new portfolios on the Executive Committee, Democracy and Accountability Committee and International Committee and we look forward to increased cooperation and communication between Socialist Students and the Young Greens to fight for a liberated Palestine, more militant trade unions and a democratic socialist transformation of society.
Socialist Students members organised a campaign stall near Stoke Newington School & Sixth Form, speaking to students about the issues affecting them. Large groups of students stopped to ask questions, discuss politics, and find out more.
Conversations focused on lack of job opportunities, pressures in education, and that establishment politicians offer little real change. Students showed an interest in socialist ideas, and how collective organisation can provide a way to challenge inequality and give young people a voice.
We distributed our ‘No to Reform – get organised’ leaflet. We oppose Reform’s division. Working-class people, regardless of background, have common interests that can only be advanced through collective action.
Students were particularly receptive to the call for stronger organisation in schools and colleges, including student unions and campaign groups that can fight for affordable and quality meals, accessible trips and activities, democratic rights for students, and support for staff striking for better conditions.
Tower Hamlets – striking workers and youth getting organised
Adam Gillman, Socialist Students
Staff at St Paul’s Way sixth form have been striking against job cuts. National Education Union (NEU) members were enthused by Socialist Students campaigning to organise school and college students, and were supportive of us leafleting the sixth form.
We held a stall outside to build for the east London youth day of action on 26 July and the international youth walkout on 20 November.
Students were receptive on the issue of youth unemployment. One had applied for tons of jobs, with no reply.
We spoke in favour of funding public services to ensure high-quality jobs that have trade union-agreed rates of pay. This chimed with students too.
The issue of war also got students taking leaflets. We also had a groups of students taking leaflets after seeing our Socialist paper back page: ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars – youth walkout on 20 November’.
Waltham Forest protesting racism, climate change, and war
James Ivens, Waltham Forest Socialist Students
There was a good response to our material against Reform and interest in the 20 November international youth walkout at Walthamstow School for Girls. One person, who had taken part in Socialist Students’ anti-Trump walkouts, gave their details and is interested in doing more.
A passerby also gave his details after seeing what we were doing. I was using the slogan – “School students are protesting this year against racism, climate change, and war” – and that got a lot of interest.
Schools have now broken up for the summer. So now we’re campaigning, meeting youth in shopping areas and parks. Then we’ll be back campaigning at schools in September.
Young people can’t afford to wait around to see whether a new face in Downing Street changes anything. We have a new Labour prime minister, Andy Burnham, but we still have low pay, insecure work, and an increasing youth unemployment crisis. And his appointment of John Healey as his Chancellor, who resigned from Starmer’s government because cuts weren’t swift enough to pay for more war, sends a message about Burnham’s intentions.
Our future
We are told to accept a future of zero-hour contracts, short-term employment and dwindling pay. A ‘job’ that offers no guaranteed hours, security or way to comfortably think about their future is not a real job.
Employers have pushed to replace stability with precarious work so they can rake in megabucks in profits, paid for with our worsening pay and conditions. Real jobs mean permanent contracts, guaranteed hours, and decent conditions.
That’s why we’ve been out campaigning to raise the minimum wage to at least £15 an hour, as a start, with no age exemptions. On campaign stalls, we regularly hear that bills, food, fuel and the rest are all going up but wages seem to stay the same.
The demand for £15 an hour is not impossible; it’s the bare minimum needed to live in this cost-of-living crisis and it’s already the demand raised by trade unions. Paying young workers less for the same work is not a ‘starter wage’, it’s exploitation, and it exists only because bosses think young workers are less likely to fight back.
We are building a movement of young workers and students prepared to take action for real jobs and decent pay, standing together with workers already fighting the same battle in their workplaces
Get organised
Socialist Students will be helping young people to get organised to walk out of their classes and lectures on 20 November to “fight for our future, not their wars!” We call on all young people to join us. To fight further cuts and declining services, an unemployment and NEET crisis, and against ramping up bosses’ war and division. Join us to fight back for a better society – a socialist society in which the working class democratically makes the decisions, so society can provide a decent job, a good standard of living for all, not just look after the super-rich.
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national chair
Ahead of the Young Greens Convention which took place on the 18-19 July, Socialist Students sent the following letter to the outgoing Young Greens co-chairs and Executive Committee, inviting the Young Greens to join the campaign for a day of international youth walkouts and mobilisations on Friday 20 November under the slogan, ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars!’
Socialist Students also produced the letter as a leaflet, which our members took along to the Young Greens Convention as a way of opening up discussion with Young Greens members about the 20 November campaign. Socialist Students members in the Green Party attended the convention and also helped to raise the international youth walkouts inside the conference.
Unfortunately, members of the outgoing Young Greens Executive asked venue security to move us on shortly after we set up our stall. But we were still able to have discussions with a big portion of attendees from the public pavement outside the venue, where we met overwhelming enthusiasm for the idea of the international youth walkouts. Socialist Students plans to re-circulate our letter to the newly elected Young Greens co-chairs and Executive Committee.
Socialist Students letter to Young Greens
We are writing to invite Young Greens to help build for an international day of youth walkouts against war and militarisation on Friday 20 November under the slogan, ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars!’
The call for a 20 November international youth strike under this slogan was issued by a Europe-wide assembly of anti-war youth and student organisations held in Cologne, Germany, last month. The international youth strike so far has support from more than twenty youth and student organisations across a dozen countries in Europe, from youth sections of left-wing political parties to national student unions and independent socialist youth organisations.
Socialist Students members attended the Cologne assembly as representatives from Britain. At the meeting of our national steering committee last week, we agreed to build for the biggest possible day of youth walkouts on 20 November, including by appealing to other anti-war youth organisations in Britain to join the campaign.
As the largest youth section of any political party in Britain, with over 50,000 members across England and Wales, we hope that Young Greens will throw its significant potential weight behind the international youth strike. We know that many young people have either joined or are looking towards the Green Party as a means of transforming society – for a future free of war, climate breakdown and constant insecurity. But we think that what is also needed is bold, socialist action to get all those young people organised in the fight for that alternative.
Seize moment and take lead
We therefore appeal to the Young Greens to seize this moment and take a lead in building for the 20 November international youth strike. Coinciding with the final scheduled date of this year’s COP Conference in Turkey – where the world’s elites will yet again get together for a talking shop on climate change – 20 November is a major opportunity to raise the level of organisation and confidence of young people to fight for our futures in this new world era of capitalist conflict and instability. It would also be a chance to ensure that the Green Party in England and Wales is committed to mobilising against war – and not, for instance, going down the road of the German Greens, who unfortunately instead helped to push through massive increases in military spending as part of a federal coalition government there.
We are hoping that your Convention, taking place in London this weekend, could discuss the possibility of Young Greens committing to build the international youth strike on November 20. And if Young Greens were to commit to the international youth walkouts, Socialist Students would welcome further discussion on how our organisations could best coordinate at a local level – e.g. hosting joint open meetings between Socialist Students societies and Young Greens groups on how best to build the walkouts and ‘fight for our futures, not their wars’ etc.
Socialist Students members have launched a campaign calling for free bus travel for all in West Yorkshire, starting immediately with under-25s. Route cuts should be reversed, services expanded, and SEND (special educational needs and disability) transport fully funded.
The entire bus network should be brought into public ownership, under the democratic control of workers and service users. We have run campaign stalls, taking our petition across Leeds, targeting popular student and residential areas, and sixth-form colleges. And online too.
West Yorkshire Labour mayor Tracy Brabin had previously stood and won election as an MP when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader. Then, Corbyn pledged free bus travel for under-25s. So why can’t this be implemented now she’s mayor?
We built for a public meeting, inviting supporters of our campaign and users of the network to speak on the issues they face. The campaign didn’t stop after our meeting.
We took part in a protest outside Tracy Brabin’s offices, organised by Better Buses West Yorkshire. They staged a ‘People’s Question Time’ to highlight that there is no public consultation on changes to our bus network.
Speeches took place, and this allowed Socialist students members to raise our demands for genuine public ownership. We also raised campaigning with bus drivers in Unite the Union. Franchising leaves their terms and conditions in the hands of private companies.
Brabin did come out to briefly address the crowd, and agreed to a public mayoral ‘question time’ at an unspecified date. Our campaign activity will continue throughout the summer. And, in September, we’ll have the opportunity to raise it with the next cohort of students at freshers’ week.
In May, an estimated 50,000 students in Germany walked out in huge school strikes against military conscription. This was a marker for the fightback which could be posed across Europe – as young people face a myriad of crises in education, employment and the rising cost of living, while governments pour even more money into arms and militarisation. The German government is ramping up spending on militarisation. In Britain, Keir Starmer has followed suit, announcing a new rollout of austerity cuts to make way for an increase of £25 billion per year on the armed forces in the newly published Defence Investment Plan. And incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has said he will stick to it! They are both in agreement that the NHS, welfare, education and more should be on the chopping block to pay for their wars.
Starmer and Burnham’s plan is a single, but very telling, example of the bloodthirsty instability which plagues the global capitalist system. Bosses and politicians around the world are looking to shore up their interests while economies stagnate through direct imperialist interventions and war. Trump, the figurehead of this system, has continued to try papering over the cracks of a declining superpower in the US, by invading Iran, beheading the Venezuelan regime, threatening Greenland and maintaining support for Israeli capitalism’s bloody slaughter of the Palestinians. However no attempt to reassert the dominance of US imperialism, nor British military strength, can provide a solution to the turgid living standards.
This is why Socialist Students will be joining the international youth day of action on the 20 November organising walkouts with the slogan ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars’. We call on all those in the anti-war movement to join us, as well as the masses of young people feeling the sharp end of the unemployment crisis, the decline of further and higher education, and cuts to schools and colleges – to launch a genuine youth fightback to win the resources for our jobs and education, not wasted on their wars!
For the second academic year in a row, the government is poised to cut £100 million of university funding from high-cost and priority subjects, including nursing.
The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that the strategic priorities grant will be cut to £1.25 billion (£1.45 billion in 2024-25), in a move that pushes the burden of funding higher education even more firmly onto individual students through their fees and a lifetime of debt.
The Russell Group, 24 prestigious research universities, have responded by calling into question how this latest cut will impact the government’s stated aim of growth. They amplify the role universities can play in “delivering much needed economic growth, innovation and jobs.”
The £336 million in capital funding promised by DfE shows a fundamental misunderstanding of higher education. Universities aren’t renovated buildings, they are made up by the people working, teaching and studying there. New buildings and equipment won’t bring back redundant staff or convince working-class students to get a degree.
Like required reading, few students ever read the contract they sign with student finance, but a recent NUS survey suggests that a third of students now believe getting a degree is not worth the time and money.
These students have recognised that, after the impact of funding cuts and increased debts, their degrees have simultaneously risen in cost and fallen in value over successive years.
Many universities are now faced with a choice: how will they make up the shortfall? A favoured target to cut is student services and welfare programmes, seen as non-academic non-essential services. At my university, Brunel, in 2022 an engineering student Jos Winfield took his own life, resulting from poor mental health brought on by the pressures of university life. His father is adamant the university should have done more. The budget for student welfare has decreased markedly since that time.
One thing is clear, as the funding model for higher education places more strain on students mentally and financially, many more students will be placed into an even more vulnerable and precarious position.
We say:
We need free education, with full funding not more fees! Scrap student debt and provide maintenance grants we can live on
No course closures and job cuts. Take the wealth off the super-rich to provide decent education for all, with university staff paid what they deserve
Young people in Britain today experience the bleak reality of what capitalism has to offer us – almost one in six young people not in education, employment or training. Amidst the crisis of youth unemployment, those who do find a job experience low pay and poor conditions.
This Labour government offers no solution to this crisis. Instead, it has backtracked on its promise to give 18-20 year olds the full minimum wage, arguing that employers will not hire young people if they are paid the same as workers 21 and over.
With no evidence that a rise in pay leads to higher unemployment, it’s no surprise that the government is prioritising the profits of the capitalist bosses over our needs.
Labour has also announced a plan to introduce new ‘work placements’ for young people. We will receive only benefit payments, not pay, for work under these schemes.
Continuing to be underpaid – or in some cases not paid at all – will not resolve the issues of employment, housing, and education faced by young people.
Nor will these issues simply be resolved by changing the Labour Party leader, despite attempts to present Andy Burnham as a left-wing alternative to Keir Starmer. We must organise, campaign, and demand that Andy Burnham implements the policies that young people need.
Our voice
What we need is a real political voice, a party that does not attack our living standards, but instead fights back with young and working-class people. This includes taking action to demand an increase in the minimum wage to £15 an hour, regardless of age, as a step towards a real living wage.
Trade unions can play a crucial role putting forward this demand, and mobilising young workers to take action for better jobs, training, and opportunities for all of us.
Over the summer and into the academic year, Socialist Students will be campaigning in schools, colleges, and universities. Young people look with frustration at the future of low pay, debt, and unaffordable housing that awaits us.
A few weeks ago, Socialist Students also met with other youth organisations from eight different countries in Europe to discuss how to build the anti-war movement (see page 4). That meeting agreed to organise an international youth strike on 20 November across Europe – building the youth fightback internationally.
Through a widespread youth movement, we can mobilise young people against war, division, and austerity. Whether you’re a young worker or student, by getting organised we can fight for better jobs and opportunities, for public investment in our education and services, and for the socialist change we need.
Build for an international youth strike this Autumn
Becca Bayman, delegate to the assembly and Liverpool Socialist Students
On 14 June, members of Socialist Students attended a Youth and Student Anti-War Assembly in Cologne, Germany. Twelve organisations from eight countries across Europe took part, including socialist youth organisations, climate justice groups and anarchist student unions.
The initiative began in solidarity with youth campaigns against military conscription in Germany. As opposition to militarisation has grown across the continent, the discussion broadened into how young people and students can build a coordinated European movement against war, militarism and austerity.
Our invitation to the assembly reflected the work Socialist Students has carried out in Britain. We were able to draw on experiences from the student walkouts against Donald Trump’s visit last September, alongside local campaigns, to contribute to discussions on how youth can organise effectively.
The urgency of building an anti-war movement was clear throughout the meeting. Last year, the UK government spent £66 billion on defence, while pressure from the capitalist class continues to mount on the Labour government to increase military spending even further. Across Europe, governments are preparing for a new era of militarisation. The European Union has lifted debt restrictions for military expenditure while encouraging member states to impose austerity on working-class people to pay the bill.
Socialist Students argued that resistance to these policies is already beginning and that our task is to strengthen and develop this fightback. Young people face attacks on education, housing, and living standards, while the government tells us there is always money available for war. Therefore, we put forward the need to link the struggle against militarism to the struggle against capitalism at every level.
Socialist Students proposed the slogan ‘Fight for Our Futures, Not Their Wars’, which was adopted by the assembly. The slogan provides a common banner under which youth movements across Europe can unite while allowing organisations in different countries to connect the anti-war struggle to the issues facing students and young people locally.
To help the movement grow, the assembly agreed a federal structure. New organisations will be able to affiliate on the basis of agreement with the core principles set out in the assembly’s manifesto, which outlines the political aims and common positions shared by participating groups.
A written contribution from the German youth organisation Die Falken will be published, incorporating amendments discussed during the meeting, to form the basis of further debate and discussion among participating organisations. Working groups were also established to coordinate campaigning, communications and mobilisation work, with regular online meetings planned for the coming months.
Throughout the assembly, Socialist Students argued for the need for a clear programme against war and militarism. Opposition to war cannot be separated from opposition to the capitalist system. Therefore, we will continue to connect the struggle against militarisation to the workers’ movement and fight to build links between young people and workers across Europe.
We are entering a period of deep instability internationally. As governments continue to inflict austerity and enforce militarisation, cooperation between youth and student organisations across Europe represents an important step forward. The challenges we face are international, and the struggle against capitalism must be international too.
By the end of the assembly, all participating organisations agreed on the goal of building towards a Europe-wide youth strike on 20 November. This proposal will now be discussed within each affiliated organisation as preparations begin.
One million young people thrown on the scrap heap.
That’s what the government announced last week, with new figures showing that one in eight 16 to 24-year-olds are currently not in education, employment or training.
Keir Starmer and the big business politicians pretend to care. But they don’t know what it’s like to compete with one thousand other applicants for a single entry-level job. They don’t know what it’s like to apply for hundreds of jobs without success or even a reply from a human, as society gradually convinces you there isn’t a place for you.
On their £100k salaries and MPs’ expenses, Starmer and his Labour government just make things worse. Take their decision to increase university tuition fees – how is that going to get more young people into education?
Now Labour is saying they’ll shelve their manifesto pledge to bring the minimum wage for 18 to 20-year-olds in line with the national minimum wage for over-21s. Why should anyone be paid less money for doing the same work?
And Labour also wants to bring in 300,000 unpaid ‘work experience’ placements for young people seeking work, which would force us to work in return for measly benefit payments. Free, publicly subsidised labour for the bosses, and poverty ‘wages’ for the young!
Ever since Labour was elected in 2024, they have tried to rule on behalf of the capitalist elites, attempting to maximise the bosses’ profits by attacking the living standards of young people and the working class. No wonder Labour is crashing and burning in office just like the Tories before them.
It is clear that Labour and the capitalists want to exploit the crisis facing young people in order to carry out even more attacks on our futures, and to boost big business profits even further.
Nigel Farage and Reform UK pretend to stand against the ‘establishment’. But what kind of ‘anti-establishment’ party welcomes in five former Tory MPs, with an ex-banker leader who accepted a £5 million ‘gift’ from a crypto billionaire? Reform just pose as an alternative, stoking racist division in an attempt to exploit the mass anger at Labour’s austerity.
Labour, Reform and all the establishment parties – they stand for the super-rich and their capitalist system. None of them have solutions to the crisis of mass youth unemployment and underfunded education, because that would require massive investment, which the capitalists are not willing to concede in an era of stagnating economic growth, rising inflation, and historically high levels of public and private debt.
The bosses and their politicians are going on the offensive. Our side, the working class, has to do the same – pointing to the enormous wealth, resources and technology that exist in Britain and internationally, and fighting for that to be in our hands so that we could democratically develop a socialist plan to provide a decent future for all young people.
During the strike wave in 2022-23, workers in Britain took strike action through their trade unions at a level not seen for three decades, forcing money into workers’ pockets that the Tories – and behind them, the capitalists – said was not there.
As rising inflation once again threatens to further erode the conditions of all workers, there is an urgent need for united trade union action that links the fight against the cost-of-living crisis to the fight for good jobs, apprenticeships and education for all.
Young people getting organised as part of this would have an enormous impact. Any young person in work should join and get active in a trade union, to be part of a collective fightback against Labour and the bosses.
Socialist Students wants to unite the fightback in schools, colleges and university campuses with Socialist Students. We are a student-led socialist organisation which our members help to build in over forty institutions across the UK.
School and college students could also join the fightback by building fighting student unions. A student union is a group of students who want to get organised to change things. By bringing students together in the fight for a decent future, a union can harness students’ collective strength and help get students organised alongside young workers and the wider working class.
We initiated the Youth Walkout Against Trump campaign in September 2025, with the aim of getting young people organised in the fight for a socialist future free of war, austerity, and the constant instability and uncertainty of capitalism. We have also helped to build the national Funding Not Fees campaign for fully funded, free education – not cuts, tuition fees and a lifetime of student debt.
If you are a young person looking for a socialist programme and organisation to fight for a real socialist plan for our futures, join us!
Socialist Students 