Dean Young, Liverpool Socialist Students

As a recent graduate attempting to find a reliable job, I took an interest in one of the hidden headlines in Labour’s Budget – graduates are being ‘stealth taxed’ £7.4 billion.

What is a ‘stealth tax’? The government is freezing the salary threshold at which graduates begin paying back their student loans.

This means, as wages rise with inflation, you are forced to pay back more of your student loan. The threshold was already kept low by the Tories, meaning more and more low-paid workers were forced to cough up.

Just like Labour’s income tax threshold freeze, once again, it’s an attack on low earners, working-class people, a political choice instead of going after tax-avoiding multinationals and big business.

This is little surprise. Labour is a party and government of big business and for big business. Certainly not for workers.

By the time the student loan thresholds are reviewed again in 2030, the Office for Budget Responsibility says the minimum wage for a full-time worker will be £28,995 a year. This is just £400 below the repayment threshold, meaning basically every single graduate in the country will be paying student loans back much quicker out of their pay packet. Masters and doctoral graduates repay 6% on earnings above just £21,000.

It is a bleak situation. It is hard enough to get a job when you graduate. Recently, there were 1.2 million graduate job applications for just 17,000 graduate jobs – 70 applicants per role.

It is little wonder increasing numbers of young people are desperately searching for a more radical solution to the crises of the capitalist economy. Labour has not delivered positive change. They’ve made things worse. Stealth taxes and increasing tuition fees being some of the ‘highlights’.

Capitalism cannot deliver the goods. It offers stagnation, squeezing of wages, and growing unemployment. Even after you spend years of hard work, doing things ‘by the book’.

We need socialist change to nationalise the commanding heights of the economy under democratic workers’ control, so it can be planned democratically, putting our skills and knowledge to good use.

A mass workers’ party, with the trade unions at its heart, armed with a socialist programme, is desperately needed to spearhead the fight for that. If you agree, please join Socialist Students in fighting for this.

• Socialist Students conference 2026 takes place Saturday 14 February at the University of Manchester

Niven Day, Liverpool Socialist Students

Socialist Students has engaged in a campaign to establish trade union recognition within the Liverpool Guild of Students.

The Guild hires over 200 staff. This includes bar staff, cleaners, baristas, and other roles. Despite having many commercial staff, there is a lack of a recognised trade union to represent the rights of said workers.

This is an issue, given the cuts to universities across the country, from the 100 voluntary redundancies in the University of Liverpool, to the redundancies in many universities, including Cardiff. There is a fear among workers within the Guild that these cuts may affect the Guild and its staff, and without any union representation, the workers will not be able to fight back.

There are issues that staff are facing within the Guild already. For example, many student staff are under zero-hour contracts, meaning that they are not guaranteed shifts every week, and that their pay will not be enough with the ever-increasing prices of food, washing and other necessities. There is also a lack of employer-provided travel for staff who work late nights, and may have to walk home to places like Smithdown Road or Greenbank, which is a safety concern given the distance that they would have to walk on their own.

Socialist Students has been campaigning on this issue with Unite, in order to establish it as the recognised union within the Guild. Other Guilds, such as the University of Birmingham, have Guild staff in Unison, so it can be done. We will continue to fight until the workers are represented not only in Liverpool, but nationally.

Louie Nardini, York Socialist Students

The marginalisation of working-class students continues with this latest round of cuts at the University of York. Socialist Students has been doing campaign stalls against the 50% cut to bursaries for poorer first-year students. Instead of £2,000, they now receive £1,000.

With university life already hard enough for low-income households, this adds further difficulties and fewer incentives. Education should be encouraged, regardless of income barriers.

That is why we advocate for fully funded, free education. That extra £1,000 belongs in the pockets of the students who make up the university, not its shareholders.

Liverpool students oppose right-wing Labour minister on visit

Jess O’Shaughnessy, Liverpool Hope Socialist Students

Liverpool Hope Socialist Students came out to protest against Labour minister Alison McGovern when she visited our uni on 21 November. McGovern has supported Labour maintaining the Tories’ two-child benefit cap, keeping hundreds of thousands of children in poverty. She also supports Labour’s disability benefit cuts.

We stood outside the main university building, explaining why we opposed her – putting forward the dire need for a new workers’ party. The students we spoke to agreed.

Hope University management considers Alison McGovern to be a worthwhile speaker, while the university itself continues through cuts and redundancies, and has not opposed rising tuition fees. Socialist Students launched the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign to demand that tuition fees be scrapped, with extra funding provided for education.

Morgan Tritton, Hertfordshire Socialist Students

Hertfordshire Socialist Students is campaigning for action and funding from university management and the student union to end sexism and violence against women on campus.

In April, Student Council passed a motion unanimously, mandating Herts Students’ Union to pressure the university to improve incident-reporting systems, introduce prevention and education campaigns, provide consent and anti-harassment training for all students, and consult students and staff on these changes.

But since launching the campaign, Socialist Students has faced delays, silence, and contradictory statements from both the student union and university, especially over the rollout of mandatory consent and anti-harassment training.

The national Office for Students introduced new requirements in August. Despite repeated assurances from the Dean of Students at Herts that training had been delivered, evidence gathered by Socialist Students showed inconsistent implementation, poor-quality material, and many students who had not received any training.

After months of ignored emails, minimal communication to staff, and attempts by the university to evade responsibility, students are escalating pressure. Socialist Students has collected evidence of inaction, raised the issue in every available forum, and run mass email and social media campaigns, with other societies.

This pressure has now forced the university to commit to holding an open student forum in December. The Dean of Students and senior management will attend to answer for the failed rollout of training, and wider inaction.

Who stands up for us?

Once the highest democratic student body passes a motion, students should be able to trust that those elected and employed to represent their interests will lobby the university to make urgent changes to defend student safety. Instead, this struggle has exposed how compromised Herts Students’ Union, beholden to university management, and reliant on maintaining the institution’s public image, is often unwilling to fight for students’ interests, when those interests do not align with management priorities. Socialist Students has been working to re-politicise Herts Students’ Union, pushing it to become a fighting, democratic body, unafraid to challenge cuts, closures, and managerial overreach.

Socialist Students has also communicated our campaign’s concerns to staff and members of the University and College Union (UCU), who share frustrations over the university’s failure to protect students. We will continue building a united movement of students and workers to hold the uni accountable, especially since the Student Council’s democratic mandate has been ignored. Backed by staff, Student Council, and requirements set by the regulator, Socialist Students demands an overhaul of the uni’s approach to sexual harassment and misconduct.

Our campaign is part of a wider struggle for a socialist alternative to the capitalist system that fuels sexism and misogyny, and for free, fully funded education – starting with building a strong democratic student union that promotes a political voice for students.

Socialist Students

Starmer’s Labour government has confirmed its plans for university tuition fees to go up every year. Left up to Labour, our fees will rise to well over £10,000 by 2029. That’s after fees have already gone up this term – the first rise in almost a decade.

Meanwhile, cuts to our education keep coming. Over half of universities are set to record ‘deficit budgets’ this year. Uni bosses have announced 15,000 job cuts in the last year, destroying thousands of courses and even entire departments in dozens of universities.

Why should we pay the price, at a time when the rich have never been richer? The FTSE 100 biggest corporations in Britain have been paying out around £85 billion annually to their shareholders. Students and staff need to unite in a movement that could put that wealth in our hands in order to fully fund education. That would include making education free for all, by abolishing tuition fees and providing maintenance grants that actually cover students’ living costs.

Socialist Students initiated the Funding Not Fees campaign as a means to get students organised alongside staff in a movement for fully funded, free education. As well as holding protests on dozens of campuses, and supporting workers striking back, a key part of the campaign has been lobbying MPs – fighting for our movement to have a political voice.

That fight could be massively boosted by the existence of Your Party, launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Over 800,000 signed up to find out more within a week of its announcement.

When Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, his anti-austerity, anti-war policies enthused hundreds of thousands of young people. A major reason for that was his policy for free education in the 2017 and 2019 general elections.

Now students have the chance for there to be a mass party that will fight fees and cuts, and fund education by making the super-rich pay.

Just the prospect of a new party fighting ‘for the many, not the few’ has Labour under pressure. At the same time as raising fees, the government has been forced to announce the reintroduction of maintenance grants for tens of thousands of students. While this is far from adequate, it is nonetheless a concession to the anger of millions of working-class and young people, who are desperately looking for a political alternative to Starmer’s war and austerity agenda.

Socialist Students members are joining Your Party and will do all we can for it to fight for free education, and a real socialist alternative to the misery that capitalism means for working-class and young people.

 Ben Golightly, Open University student

The issue of disability cuts may have dropped a little from current consciousness, following a major, if partial, retreat from the government, and the announcement that PIP changes will come only after the Timms review is “co-produced” by disabled people. We are all waiting to see exactly what that means.

 However, every indication so far is that the review is being rigged beyond even the most pessimistic estimates. This year, disabled students will have to organise to defend PIP, a benefit that supports and enables many.

 This may be a slow burning campaign, culminating in Autumn 2026, rather than a repeat of the pitched three-month battle over disability cuts that humbled the government in July. However, with time to prepare properly, it could be even more significant.

 The NUS so far has provided no lead at all. Socialist Students, as a campaigning organisation fighting to get students building the maximum fightback to this Labour government, can play an important role and support the development of Universities Against Disability Cuts (UADC).

 Socialist Students societies can start preparing now, in advance of the start of term, to link up with other societies, pass student union motions, and hold meetings on campus, led by disabled students, but also involving socialists, campus staff and trade unions, linking in all of the wider issues: university funding crises, rent and housing, fees, low pay, war, defence of trans students, an analysis of capitalism, the crisis in working class political representation, and the need for socialism.

These are already common ideas for many disabled people, and we want those people to be part of Socialist Students in fighting for a socialist world that meets the needs of everyone.