Students are standing up against Labour’s new hike of tuition fees. With Bob Marley music being blasted and megaphone chanting, people stopped to talk to us at our protest at York uni.
One student asked how it would be funded. We stated that a 1% wealth tax could easily generate £25 billion, and that a push for higher corporation tax and a decrease in income tax on ordinary people could easily lift the burden on many working students. We also talked to the York Vision student magazine and gave leaflets to passers-by about Labour’s proposals, and why they should not be trusted by students.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women 2024
Isis Smyth, Liverpool Socialist Students
The cost-of-living crisis is hitting young people and students particularly hard. 25% of young people are skipping at least one meal every day, and often a lot more than that, in order to save money.
We can feel the disregard the ruling class has for the working class, and it’s vile. But even more outrageous is the double oppression that working-class women are forced to endure.
Not only are working-class women students going hungry, but they are also experiencing an epidemic of sexual assault on the very campuses of the universities leaving them in thousands of pounds in debt.
A survey by Revolt Sexual Assault in 2018 found that, of those who responded, 62% of students and graduates had experienced an act of sexual violence in universities across the UK. The fact that these were disproportionately women makes what we already know clear: sexual violence is overwhelmingly an attack on women.
Disgracefully only 2% of those felt they could report it to the universities and could say they were satisfied with the measures taken in response. Most occurrences of sexual misconduct happen in halls of residence and on-campus social spaces like student union bars. These are places where students are supposed to feel safe. And a quarter said they skipped lectures, changed modules or have taken other measures to avoid the perpetrator, with 16% dropping out of university as a result of their attack.
Women are being denied the right to safety and to higher education. A third of unis have been found to silence victims using non-disclosure agreements.
Violence against women was endemic under the Tories and Labour’s policies are going to change nothing. Keir Starmer recently pledged to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, but he is totally incapable of doing this.
Nothing on violence against women and girls was mentioned in Labour’s recent Budget and, of the minimal first steps Starmer had announced in his plan to tackle this violence, universities were not mentioned once, despite women university students and other young women being more likely than any other age group to experience sexual violence. It’s been reported that 97% of women between ages 18-24 had experienced sexual harassment or assault. When I spoke to my friends about this, a lot of them said they expected it to be higher.
Universities are run like profit-seeking companies and Starmer has no ambition to change this. To university management, the lining of their own pockets is more important than women’s safety and far too little funding is being put into keeping women safe on campus. But this is simply the reality of capitalism in which women’s bodies are objectified and commodified.
Socialist Students says that universities should be publicly owned and under democratic workers’ and students’ control. This is the only way that universities will be accessible and safe for all. We advocate for special elected and accountable committees of students and campus trade unions to oversee issues of sexual misconduct on campus.
But this alone won’t end the issue of sexual violence. Huge gains in recent decades have been won, advancing women’s rights. But the problem still persists. When the amount of sexual misconduct reports that the police and universities are receiving is growing, and when a woman is still killed by a man every three days in England and Wales – likely a huge underestimate – it’s clear that something needs to change.
Movements to tackle violence against women must be led with the understanding that capitalism is the core issue. Because women’s oppression was created in a class society, it just cannot be eradicated under one. We need socialist change to create a world where women’s safety isn’t sacrificed for profit, and where equality and peace can prevail. We need socialist change to rid the world of the dehumanizing idea that women are objects to be bought and sold, picked up and put down whenever powerful men want.
That’s why every year on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Socialist Students hold a national day of action. So join us on 25 November to kick sexism off campus and rally in solidarity against capitalism.
This is adapted from a speech delivered at the Funding Not Fees closing rally for Socialism2024, 10 November, London
Following years of financial decline amongst universities in the UK, it appears that bosses are facing a new low. The uni regulator ‘Office for Students’ is projecting economic trouble for nearly three-quarters of universities by 2025-26.
While the propaganda arm of the capitalist class acts as if this is a shocking new development, students and workers have been experiencing the consequences of this downturn for a long time, with growing class sizes, wage cuts, course closures and redundancies. All of which are set to escalate, unless we fight back.
This downturn hasn’t been felt in the pockets of management. But ordinary young people have been hit with a rise in tuition fees and the worst student cost-of-living crisis in history.
Rents, students working alongside their full-time degree, student food bank use, and the percentage of students dropping out, are all at their highest rates ever. Now we are being threatened with further course closures and university mergers to make ends meet.
The answer is clear, and is resonating with many on campuses. It’s time our education, and our future livelihoods, were run in our interests – paid for by the £21 trillion in new wealth that the richest 1% worldwide got their hands on in the last four years alone.
This is why we have taken to the streets raising the demands of our ‘Funding not Fees’ campaign, and received a positive response. Few students disagree with an end to tuition fees, grants not loans, cancelling debt or fair pay to all, and many will be prepared to rally against the university bosses when more attacks come in the future.
The ‘Funding Not Fees’ closing rally, hosted by Socialist Students, was full of young people getting organised – against the tuition fee hike, and all the issues blighting young people’s lives.
Robbie Davidson from Manchester Socialist Students outlined the dismal living conditions facing university students. But students in Manchester are fighting back: this term, Socialist Students has set up official societies at two Manchester universities.
Mihaela Ivanova from Queen Mary Socialist Students highlighted how the university funding crisis has also incentivised managements to make money off arms companies that fuel war in Gaza and internationally. Mihaela argued that what students need is not just full public funding for education, but also a democratic say, alongside staff, over where that funding goes.
The need for resources and democratic student-staff control was reinforced by Isis Smyth, from Liverpool Socialist Students, as the way to tackle the epidemic of sexual violence on campuses. Students in Liverpool will be joining Socialist Students groups protesting around the country on 25 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
How all these issues are also playing out internationally, often in an even more acute form, was underlined by Tom Porter-Brown from Birmingham Socialist Students. Tom raised the inspiring examples of students fighting back in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.
Capitalism can only offer young people falling living standards and a future wrought by uncertainty. Summing up the rally, Socialist Students national organiser Adam Powell-Davies pressed home the need for students to get organised now to fight for a socialist future.
Rally chair Adam Gillman, Socialist Party youth organiser, ended by calling on everyone to build the Funding Not Fees campaign – to stop next year’s tuition fee hike, and fight for free education with living grants for all.
We are required to take on tens of thousands of pounds of debt to receive a university education, an education that politicians like Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves never had to pay for
After paying ridiculous amounts, we enter into university and are faced with budget cuts and course closures.
Like many other young people, until this July, a Conservative government was all I had ever known and all I could remember.
This July, despite my best efforts, I deep down had a little bit of hope that maybe things could get better. But let me be clear, my hopes, and hopes of all students across this country, were shattered. Not three months into power, this government broke their election promises and raised tuition fees.
We don’t just stand against this latest rise in tuition fees, we call for all tuition fees for both university and college students to be scrapped, and for student debt to be cancelled immediately.
We call for the reintroduction of living grants not maintenance loans, and for them to rise properly with inflation each year.
We also stand in solidarity with university workers to end low pay, job insecurity, and bad working conditions.
At the end of the day, what we call for and what students need is for universities to be properly and democratically funded, paid for by taking it from the super-rich, not by raising the bill for students.
Just days after the budget, the so-called Labour government announced a rise in tuition fees to £9,535, coming into effect in the 2025-26 academic year. This will not only affect students starting university in 2025, but also returning students.
The fee hike will anger many already stressed, outraged students. Young people are already facing a cost-of-living crisis, massive debts, and cuts to their services and courses.
Some people say that if you’re low paid after studying you won’t have to pay it back, but if you are a graduate working full-time on just next year’s minimum wage you will still have to start to pay it off.
The budget had already contained attacks on young people, such as the increase in the bus fare cap to £3, making it more expensive for students and young people to travel.
The Labour government is testing to see what it can get away with without triggering a mass movement.
This is why Socialist Students has initiated the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign with other groups on campus. To fight to scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt, for fully funded education, with living grants not loans. To fight for rent controls in student accommodation, to end low pay and unstable contracts for staff, and to stop all cuts and closures on campus.
Socialist Students groups will be writing to student unions and trade union branches to ask to speak at their branch meetings and to ask them to support the campaign.
Funding Not Fees will also be lobbying MPs to see if they are on the side of students or of rotten university managements and a government that wants to make students pay for the university funding crisis rather than the super-rich.
We have ten months till this fee rise will be implemented, so we have to get out there and fight back to show the government that students will not just accept attacks.
It’s not just on the universities where young people are angry. We face the devastating effects of cuts to our public services, such as youth services and schools, which are making life harder for millions.
If you are interested in campaigning for funding not fees, if you want to fight back against cutbacks and for socialist change, then join the socialists today!
Socialist Students says
No fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fight for socialist policies
Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Charley Lincoln, Northampton Socialist Party and Socialist Students
Student rents have risen more than inflation. Student loans have not. There is a massive gap. The average monthly rent for a student in 2024 is £689.43, 16.5% higher than the year before. In London the average is a whopping £1,032 a month. A student getting the maximum maintenance loan and living away from parents outside of London can borrow £10,227 a year, £852 a month.
No wonder 69% of students now work alongside their studies, according to the National Union of Students. The negative impact is not limited to academic achievement but also health and social outcomes. 78% of students surveyed say they are suffering ‘significant stress’ over money.
Most students with more wealthy parents willing and able to pay don’t face the same stress. Increasingly, access to higher education is becoming the privilege of a wealthy few, deepening economic inequality as working-class and poorer young people are forced to forego education and take low-paid jobs with little chance of long-term progression.
Socialist Students fights for free, fully funded education for all. Rather than being saddled with a lifetime of debt, student loans should be replaced by living grants that rise with the cost of living.
Students are a ‘captive market’ for landlords – be it the university itself, private halls or private renting. All know the level of student maintenance loans, and all hike rents to maximise income. Student housing has become even more competitive than the housing market in general.
University halls
Around one in five students live in university-owned halls of residence. Increasingly, access to this is limited to first-years, postgraduates and international students. These three groups typically bring in the most cash and unis are motivated to get students enrolled (and paying fees) with as few hurdles as possible.
Halls typically have very limited provisions for students who have families, or for disabled students. Often when attempts are made to accommodate disabled students, it is not as thought-through. There are problems such as push-door buttons on one side only, or even behind non-accessible internal doors in the way of the accessible one, or needing an able-bodied person to place a ramp down.
Licensing for halls is viewed in the same way as for residential homes. Each room is treated as an individual dwelling, instead of looking at the whole building. Therefore halls do not have to meet the same fire safety standards as other high-rise residential buildings. In England, more than one residential hall has been found to use the same flammable cladding as Grenfell.
End rip-off rents – give students and university workers democratic control over rent levels, maintenance and repairs
Invest to provide high-quality, safe, and accessible accommodation, including to meet the specific needs of disabled students, and those with families
Private halls
Building private student halls is big business. The largest provider, Unite Housing, is listed on the FTSE 100 biggest companies on the London Stock Exchange. Unlike traditional housing, when halls of residence are sold, they are sold as a whole building, not as individual flats. Since 2013, the ‘block’ selling of student halls has increased.
That marked the start of a student accommodation investment boom, and led national and international investors to build new property portfolios. As investors sought to consolidate scale and drive down operational costs, England has seen levels of investment steadily at around £3.2 billion a year. The selling of IQ student accommodation company to Blackstone in 2020 was for £4.7 billion, which is the highest seen in England so far.
Investment isn’t planned to meet the needs of students. Instead, private hall owners invest in what they think will be profitable.
It’s also worth mentioning that this building type is difficult to repurpose when it needs to be sold (normally due to oversupply). The standardised nature of typical purpose-built halls, along with small room size, makes changes to residential use difficult.
Some cities have attempted to use the rise of co-living integration in the workplace, living environment, and social space as a product for students and young professionals. Still, reports of negative experiences living in this set-up are rampant. People have felt unsafe and forgotten.
Socialist Party member Marcelin shared her experience of a co-living accommodation: “The entrance to the building did not lock even when pushed closed; it was on the street with heavy footfall. Random non-residents would let themselves in, and there have been issues that led to police turning up. The property was meant to be pet-free, but one neighbour had six dogs that would be allowed to roam unsupervised in the hallways.” When both issues were raised, she was told nothing could be done. Previously, she had lived in halls and a shared house, but was priced out.
Student accommodation does not have to comply with affordable housing requirements. At the same time, any housed student can count towards meeting a local authority’s housing targets. In other words, each rented bedroom can be counted as a single home, misrepresenting reality. This means councils can claim they are tackling homelessness while not actually taking action, and instead exploiting students.
Stringent council licensing of student housing providers, with the direct democratic involvement of students
For democratic rent controls, quality and safety standards in-line with university-owned halls
Private-rented accommodation
Second-years and beyond are largely left to fend for themselves securing housing on the private market in competition with groups of other students. Landlords and agents exploit the shortage of housing (and using fearmongering about scarcity too) to charge maximum rents and get contracts signed months in advance. To maximise income, bedrooms are crammed into homes designed for a single family.
Similar to the boom of landlords looking to profit through Airbnb in tourist hotspots, in student areas landlords buy up family homes to convert into student accommodation, further reducing the supply of available housing for families, this drives up the cost of rent for everyone.
Housing contracts for students are not fit for purpose. They often do not provide year-round accommodation, assuming you have a family that can support you during the holidays. They are also not flexible enough to account for the realities of student life. If a student has to drop out, they will no longer have the student loan to pay rent, putting themselves and often their housemates at risk due to them being locked into their contract.
Invasive landlords often take advantage of the inexperience of student tenants, often turning up un-announced for inspections, maintenance and property viewings for the next tenants. This creates a lack of privacy as well as emphasising how replaceable tenants are.
The requirement for guarantors and security deposits, often on a yearly basis, assumes again that the student has a family that is able to provide this support, excluding poorer students from a working-class background from this kind of housing, as well as excluding those with complicated home lives. Students often lose hundreds of pounds every year to landlords manufacturing reasons to take security deposits.
Compulsory licensing for all landlords, including subject to quality and safety inspection from local council authorities and student representatives, and to end security deposit theft
Democratic rent controls for all rental properties, student or otherwise
Access to secure tenancies, including flexibility that accounts for student term dates and other issues. Include Student Finance England as guarantor for students excluded or forced to leave courses early
A programme of mass council house building to meet the needs of all
Damp, mould and rip-off rents
Frankie Sell, Southampton Socialist Students
From the extortionate rates charged by both university and private student halls to omnipresent mould and botched renovations, it feels as if the crisis of student housing is inescapable.
Student halls in particular can cause tremendous headaches as many students’ first experience of living away from home. For instance, in my first year I lived in the cheapest ensuite room stocked with just a single bed and desk. This now costs £6,646.92 for a 41-week contract (an increase of about £500 since 2022). When you consider that the maximum student loan is just £9,672.00 per year, this leaves students with just £250 per month after rent.
This is clearly unsustainable. Like many students, I opted for cheaper student housing with a private landlord going into my second year; however this came with its own problems. The only bathroom and shower I had access to was a converted storage closet under the stairs, it was barely large enough to stand in and had constant issues with damp and mould that were never dealt with. The ceiling in the living room would occasionally start pouring water. The landlords attempted (unsuccessfully) to fix this problem but eventually gave up trying towards the end of the tenancy.
Then, the following year, there were large cracks in the walls (an external consultant informed me these were likely caused by structural damage) which took over three months to repair. There is also heavy staining in the carpets and walls, which have still been largely ignored four months into the tenancy.
Unsurprisingly to any students reading this, these examples are common in the industry of student housing, and are by no means the worst that I have heard in my time as a student.
Why should students be paying more than 50% of their income on rents? Rents should be capped, and maintenance standards regulated, including with maximum time frames for repairs.
The Funding Not Fees campaign demands that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers. We call for fully publicly funded higher education, paid for by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as the means to:
After fifteen years of Tory austerity attacking our jobs, homes and services, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have made clear to the bosses their government won’t be a radical departure. And, hearing about difficult decisions to be made on things including education funding, students are preparing for the worst.
Already, the university cost of living is at an all-time high. And the money we need to live on – once maintenance grants now transformed into loans – has not risen with inflation.
And its not just students. Lecturers and university staff are being exploited ever more – with low pay and longer hours. They have organised in their unions against poor pay and conditions during the strike wave and against redundancies now.
Students at this point in time, however, do not have the same level of organisation to match our growing frustration. For most of us, the students union is nothing more than a cafe and bar. Socialist Students members in freshers’ weeks across the country have raised the need to fill that void with democratic fighting student organisations.
Free education should be a right for all, and this can only be achieved by taking it back into our hands. We’ve been told to tighten our belts by the six-figure salary bosses at the core of the marketised system. But its time the super-rich bosses and corporations are made to pay
The University and College Union (UCU) has called for an education levy on big business to pay for an end to tuition fees. We believe students and workers should have a democratic say over how university funding is spent and our universities are run. At our public meetings and stalls we found that our programme for free education chimes with students.
When they tripled tuition fees in 2010, the ensuing outrage lacked the organisation to sustain a proper movement against them. We will be prepared this time! Join Socialist Students today to get involved in the fightback.
Socialist Students says:
No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice – build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fight for socialism
Fight for socialist change – for democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
For full public funding and an end to marketisation
Free education for all!
Students are once again in the firing line! A statement released by Universities UK (UUK) at the start of the Autumn term has called on the government to increase tuition fees in line with inflation – again passing the cost of the ongoing crisis of the capitalist system onto the shoulders of students and young people. UUK has said that each student now costs a university between £12,000 to £13,000 to educate.
One in five universities is in deficit. The government and so-called experts say the problem is fees being frozen and not keeping up with inflation. So they want us to pay more – and face cuts and closures on campus. But in reality, our universities have gone underfunded for years.
Since the introduction of tuition fees, and their trebling by the Tories and Lib Dems in 2010, government funding for universities has been continuously slashed. Students and campus unions have had to fight vicious cut-backs by management – cuts to entire courses, jobs, and attacks on staff terms and conditions.
Meanwhile the student cost-of-living crisis rages on. The rents we pay on average are more expensive than the average available loan – so how are we supposed to be able to live, especially considering inflation has pushed up the prices of food, travel, educational resources and other cost of living essentials?
But it doesn’t have to be like this. Socialist Students is fighting to build a mass movement to win the funding that our universities and students need – to reverse the cuts which have taken place on our campuses, replace inadequate loans with genuine living grants for students tied to the cost of living, and to scrap the broken tuition fee funding model altogether. Education should be free, fully publicly funded, with grants re-introduced.
When Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, the party’s manifesto estimated that scrapping fees and re-introducing grants would cost about £12bn. Starmer’s Labour government has made it absolutely clear that it does not intend to cough up the funding our universities need. That’s because, just like the Tories, Labour now represents the interests of the rich and powerful in society.
Why should education be run like a commercial business? Britain is the sixth wealthiest nation on the planet. The FTSE 100 biggest corporations have been paying around £85bn annually in dividends to their shareholders. The University and College Union (UCU) has called for a £17 billion “education levy” on “profiteering businesses”.
That’s a good start – but why leave so much wealth and power in the hands of big business, which puts profit before need? If the enormous wealth in society was democratically owned and controlled by the working-class majority, we could plan society to meet all our needs. That includes education – how it’s funded and how it’s run should be determined by education workers and students and the wider working class, not fat-cat vice-chancellors.
The recent strike wave showed how governments can be forced to pay more than they intended – and those lessons need to be built on. Mass organised action is needed to build the fight for free education. Building a student movement starts with getting organised on campus with democratic decision-making, linking up with campus trade unions and local college students.
But students also need a mass political voice to give expression to our campaigns and movements, as do working class and young people more generally. If the Tories and Labour both speak for the interests of the super-rich, then we need a new mass political voice to speak for what we’re fighting for – including against attacks on our education, against war internationally, and for a socialist world.
As part of our movement, at the upcoming ‘painful’ (in Starmer’s words) budget on October 30, Jeremy Corbyn and the four other independent MPs, as well as the suspended seven Labour MPs, could use their voice in Parliament to propose full public funding of education for all.
No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and No closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and wider working class to fight the funding our universities need.
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war and occupation and profiteering and exploitation while guaranteering jobs and funding.
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers party that will stand up for students and workers that fights for socialist policies.
Fight for socialist change – For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future.
We have witnessed a year of brutal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, and increasingly in the West Bank too.
It has exposed to the world how capitalist politicians do not value human life, despite what they say about wanting an end to the conflict. Many people here in the UK have felt anger at the situation in Gaza, and taken to the streets to protest.
Many students have also taken things into their own hands, protesting against their university bosses, calling for divestment from arms companies and companies that prop up Israeli state terror.
School and college students have organised walkouts and protests in solidarity with the Palestinians. Towards the end of last term, student encampments were organised up and down the country, exposing universities’ links to arms companies and banks. Socialist Students members were involved with many of these.
We fight for the 7-million-strong trade union movement to be central. It is the threat of workers getting organised and fighting back that terrifies the capitalist world leaders, including in the Middle East.
It is a mass movement of workers and poor people, democratically organised and fighting for socialist change, in Palestine and across the region, that can point the way forward to an end to war and national oppression.
We call for an end to the marketisation of higher education and an end of the tuition-fee funding model. Universities are becoming ever more reliant on money from big business, including from arms companies such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, due to cuts in funding from government. University education should be free for all, and fully publicly funded by making the super-rich pay.
The huge determined protests against the slaughter in Gaza have defied attempts by politicians and police to intimidate them. That defiance led to the hated Suella Braverman being sacked as home secretary.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners standing in the general election had a huge effect in a whole number of constituencies. Jeremy Corbyn was reelected, in addition to another four anti-war independent MPs.
That must be built on to deliver the new workers’ party needed to give a voice to the anti-war, socialist opposition to Starmer. Student protests this term can have a big effect too – and Socialist Students is determined to make them as effective as possible.
If you want to be part of the fightback, get involved!
What Ideas should students get organised around?
DISCLOSE ALL FINANCES!
Universities should open their books to a democratic inquiry by elected students’ representatives and the campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war and occupation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding.
END MARKETISATION!
The government must fully fund education to disincentivise universities from gambling our fees on dodgy companies and ‘vanity projects’. Scrap tuition fees, cancel student debt, and reintroduce living grants for all students.
WE NEED A POLITICAL VOICE!
Winning a free, democratic, and genuinely ethical education system means fighting to take wealth and power off the capitalist elites. Starmer’s Labour government won’t even begin to fight for this. We need a mass workers’ party, with a socialist programme to end the capitalist system that breeds war and oppression.
MAXIMISE OUR STRENGTH!
Our movement would be strengthened if more students and workers joined. Socialist Students is calling for students to join us with:
• Mass meetings open to all who want to discuss how we can build a movement against war, oppression and capitalism • Stalls and leafleting sessions, where we can talk to other students about any upcoming protests and action, and encourage them to join • A rally with speakers invited from local trade union branches, and students from other universities, colleges and schools nearby • A lobby of our local MP or councillors alongside other students, workers and trade unionists, to demand they explain their position on the Israeli state’s onslaught in Gaza
Socialist Students 