UCU members in Sheffield, including a list of student signatures gathered by Socialist Students in support of the strikes
Sheffield Socialist Students supports UCU strikes
Joseph McHale, Sheffield Socialist Students
17 November was the first day of joint strike action by the University and College Union (UCU) at both the University of Sheffield (UoS) and Sheffield Hallam University. Hallam had also gone on strike a week earlier.
After a busy first morning of picketing – at least ten buildings at UoS – UCU members and supporters converged outside the City Hall for a joint union rally. Socialist Students members were in the crowd supporting the speakers.
The UCU strike action is happening due to the shocking cuts both universities are aggressively pursuing. UoS has over £200 million in reserves but is pursuing £50.7 million in cuts for the 2025-26 year!
Socialist Students at UoS has worked with the university’s anti-cuts coalition to make students aware of strike action, petitioning over the last three weeks. We continued our support on the picket lines.
The rally included speeches from both UoS and Hallam staff and a student, all highlighting the dire conditions that have forced staff to take this action.
Many of those speeches mirrored Socialist Students demands for fully funded and free education that is democratically run. This is imperative to improving the experience for both staff and students, which was well received at the rally.
The failed experiment of marketisation of our universities is acknowledged in the UCU bulletin. These cuts treat students as customers and staff as service providers, rather than appreciating the true value that they bring to education.
We need a fully publicly funded and democratically run university system, putting both the staff and students at the heart of it rather than soulless management and business interests. This is what Socialist Students will continue to fight for.
Socialist Students campaigning in support
A Socialist Students meeting was addressed by UCU branch officers recently, and members have already been out campaigning in support of the UCU. Socialist Students is part of the anti-cuts coalition which pushed for a student referendum last academic year, in which students overwhelmingly voted in support of staff strike action (83%) and for ‘no confidence’ in the University Executive Board (89%).
Socialist Students is linking the fight to their Funding Not Fees campaign – exposing the broken market-based higher education funding model which allows Hallam to borrow huge to build a satellite campus in London, and UoS to pay its vice chancellor £330,000 a year, while both universities cut courses and staff.
There are nearly 5,000 fewer international students across Sheffield than two years ago, causing budget deficits. UoS’s dependence on arms manufacturers has been highlighted by Palestine campaigners, and now Hallam is accused of trading one of its professor’s academic freedom (research into forced labour in China) for access to the Chinese student market. The need for full funding and an end to marketisation couldn’t be clearer.
Fighting course closures and redundancies at Leicester uni
Alanah Carey Peacher, Leicester Socialist Students
At the beginning of the summer, University of Leicester (UoL) management announced that they would be slashing the staffing budget at the university by £11 million. Several courses, including Environmental Sciences and Chemistry, are under threat as well as many jobs.
Since then, the university bosses have revealed phase one of their cruel redundancy programme. Modern Languages is being shut down, and a whole series of departments are being merged, which will threaten further courses. A total of 160 redundances are planned.
On 12 November, the University and College Union (UCU) held a rally in the city in protest at the cuts. Over 300 staff, students and UCU members from around the country, as well as Unite members and other trade unionists and supporters, marched up to the university campus to hear speeches from staff and students affected by the cuts.
Staff members from Geography expressed their heartbreak upon hearing the news and their concern for the current and future students. The chair of UoL UCU explained that there is no transparency about the cuts. The university has the funds to create a campus in Dubai but not to fund the education of students in the city where the university was founded!
Members asked all in attendance to vote no confidence in the governance of the university. Socialist Students members will continue to build solidarity.
Sofia Pandolfi, college student and Socialist Students member, gave an inspiring speech at Socialism 2025. Read what she had to say here!
Young people today have grown up in a world of crisis. We’ve seen governments increase university tuition fees, cut our youth services, attempt to strip away disability benefits for young people, and propose a future which gives us no hope.
Internationally, we’ve watched our government support the brutal genocide in Palestine, claiming it has no money to invest in our education and services.
Living under a system devoid of opportunities, and dependent on international exploitation, has fuelled anger and frustration.
But if we young people are to have a real future to look forward to, we need to transform our anger into action – by getting organised for a socialist alternative to capitalism, and the war, exploitation and oppression that this system produces.
That is what Socialist Students did when Donald Trump, an embodiment of capitalism in crisis, came to visit the UK on the invitation of Keir Starmer in September.
Socialists Students organised a campaign of youth walkouts against Trump to get young people organised against Trump and Starmer’s politics of war and division. To build for the walkouts in London, I helped to give out hundreds of leaflets, put up posters, and met with students to share ideas on how to protest against Trump’s visit.
Hundreds of students across the country, standing up to Trump and the brutal system he represents, walked out of their schools, colleges, and universities on the 17 September – the day Trump was in Windsor Castle feasting on a state banquet with Starmer, the King, and a guest list of billionaire tech CEOs.
It wasn’t easy. At one school in South London, we watched the headteacher rip leaflets out of students’ hands. At another school in East London, the management called the police to intimidate students into not protesting.
The youth walkouts against Trump were a chance to show that young people can fight back when we get organised. Socialist Students is now following up the walkouts with a campaign to get students in schools, sixth forms and colleges building our own students’ unions, as a way for young people to have an organised voice. Not just for one day, but always.
By getting organised as students, we can more effectively link up with the workers who keep our education and society running and build a united movement for the socialist change that we all need.
For that, young people also need a political voice through which we can fight alongside the organised working class. Your Party is an opportunity to do that.
Your Party could give a voice to young people’s anger by demanding fully funded free education, mass building of council houses and rent controls, as part of a socialist programme to transform the lives of working-class and young people.
Why not take that first step by having Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn, and other Your Party MPs in the Independent Alliance proposing an amendment to the upcoming budget – instead of Labour’s plans for more tuition fee rises, calling for the total abolition of fees, as well as the cancellation of student debt, and the immediate reintroduction of maintenance grants for all students?
Socialist Students members have joined Your Party and are fighting for socialism and working-class struggle to be at the heart of it.
In universities across the country, we’ve organised dozens of meetings discussing how Your Party can be a democratic voice for students. As a next step to building the party we need on campus, we will be inviting Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn and the other Independent Alliance MPs to be part of a Your Party speaking tour of universities and colleges.
If you want to help build a political voice which can help unite students and young people with the powerful struggles of the working class, then join Socialist Students at your school, college or university to help build the fightback.
Climate change has got the world hurtling towards disaster. The disarray flowing from capitalist governments across the globe has left a trail of destruction, with wildfires raging, sea levels rising, and a potentially very bleak future for young people on the horizon.
The internationally agreed target of capping global warming at 1.5% above preindustrial levels, deemed essential by climate scientists to prevent the worst effects of climate change, is looking dangerously out of reach, with the effects of climate change being no longer predictions of the future, but current events. In early 2025, the LA wildfires burned over 40,000 acres of land, resulting in the loss of the homes of tens of thousands of people. Around 40% of glaciers are already beyond saving and doomed to melt, which will have a massive impact on the billions of people reliant on glaciers to regulate the water used to grow food.
We have also been feeling the effects of climate change in the UK. The summer of 2022 saw temperatures hitting 40 degrees in the UK for the first time in history, leading to rail lines buckling, 20% of hospital operations being cancelled during the peak of the heatwave, and over 3000 people dying prematurely due to the heat. Following this, at the start of July 2023, the planet endured the two hottest days ever recorded.
No Climate Justice Under Capitalism
There is no solution to the climate crisis under capitalism. Capitalism, driven by competition and big business profits before all else, cannot deliver the coordinated, long-term planning required to address the climate crisis. In fact, 71% of all global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 can be traced to just 100 fossil fuel producers.
This Labour government defends the interests of capitalism, and has demonstrated its lack of willingness to fight the climate crisis head-on. Even before the election, Keir Starmer abandoned Labour’s policy of investing £28 billion into green investment funds, despite the ongoing climate crisis.
The same unwillingness to act can be seen in country after country, where capitalist governments prioritise the profits of ‘their’ capitalist class over the needs of ordinary people and the environment.
While many may hope that international climate agreements may offer a step in the right direction, this has been demonstrated to not be the case. Even if every commitment made at the 2016 Paris Agreement was met, global warming would still go beyond the 2-degree limit that the summit declared as an essential cap. Furthermore, not a single industrialised country is even on track to meet the commitment that it made in 2016.
Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is a clear indication that capitalist politicians are willing to abandon climate targets in favour of national interests and short-term profit motives. The US is a massive contributor to climate change, ranking second in the world after China, with the US still having a higher rate of emissions of planet-warming gases per capita.
Rather than attempting to tackle this problem, Trump is ignoring the scientific evidence and encouraging further acceleration of fossil fuel and oil extractions as part of his ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ pledge! The Trump administration has also launched attacks on universities, pulling funding from diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes, many of which are based around climate change, which will limit further research into environmental studies.
At a time when global cooperation to end the climate crisis is needed more than ever, Trump’s divisive politics and use of trade tariffs globally make him a clear example of the unplanned chaos that capitalism means for the world today.
Clearly we can’t trust our planet in the hands of the capitalists and their politicians. By fighting to take big businesses into public ownership, including nationalising polluting oil and gas companies under democratic workers’ control and management, the working class could run these industries for social need not profit, and focus on taking co-ordinated steps to make the switch towards environmentally friendly energy sources.
If workers had a democratic say in how society is run, a planned ‘green transition’ away from fossil fuels and towards environmentally friendly alternatives could be achieved without mass job losses for workers in those industries.
Workers’ control
The ‘Lucas Plan’ in the 1970s gives a glimpse of how workers currently employed in environmentally harmful industries could redirect their skills and expertise to lead the charge for a green transition.
Over fifty years ago, workers at Lucas Aerospace – a company making electronic systems for missiles – were threatened with mass redundancies due to deindustrialisation. Instead of accepting these losses, the workers, organised in trade unions, proposed a shift in production from military manufacturing to socially useful goods.
Over 150 ideas with detailed technical designs were included in the plan, offering a glimpse into the opportunities that can arise when workers are given the chance to repurpose their technical expertise into socially useful goods.
Tragically, due to resistance from the management and the lack of workers’ control in the company, the plan was ultimately blocked. Nonetheless, the Lucas Plan is perhaps relevant now more than ever before. It highlights why we need democratic, fighting trade unions to play a central role in the fight against climate change and towards a sustainable future.
The impact of war
This era of capitalist crisis means horror on end – not just seen in the deepening climate crisis, but also in increasing wars, including the genocidal horrors suffered by the Palestinians in Gaza.
War not only displaces millions of people and causes devastating loss of life. It also wreaks havoc on the climate. Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, has severely damaged biodiversity and inflicted lasting harm on Ukraine’s natural environment.
Examples of capitalist war’s devastating effects on the climate can also be seen throughout history. During the Vietnam War, over 5 million acres of forest and 500,000 acres of farmland were destroyed, with over 400,000 tons of the toxic chemical Napalm being sprayed over the Vietnamese countryside by the US. In Iraq, marshlands were reduced by 90% after President Saddam Hussein ordered major rivers be stopped in order to crush an uprising. Furthermore, Afghanistan has lost nearly 95% of its forest cover in recent decades.
Even during ‘peacetime’, militaries use vast amounts of dirty energy. For example, the US Department of Defense’s 566,000 buildings make up 40% of its fossil fuel consumption. These structures include training centres, dormitories, factories, and other facilities across the department’s nearly 800 bases worldwide. As nations continue to boost military spending in an increasingly multipolar and unstable world, the climate continues to bear the consequences.
Youth vs climate chaos
The message is clear: young people aren’t willing to pay the price for capitalism’s exploitation of the climate, and failure to give us a future. The climate crisis is pushing more and more students and young people into action. As well as countless grassroots youth-led campaigns taking shape in various communities, the ‘School Strike for Climate’ movement saw millions of students across the globe mobilise in protest against climate change, demonstrating that a new generation of young people have been pushed into action. After all, young people are now entering into a world of climate breakdown, increased militarisation, and vast economic inequality. Now, more than ever, young people are seeking an alternative system which can provide a genuine way forwards.
While many young people may have looked to the Green Party, hoping that they may provide an alternative, their actions have fallen short. For example, the party voted through £51 million in cuts to Bristol City Council, a move defended by Green council leader Tony Dyer as a necessity, as he explained in a BBC interview that they were simply having to “work within the constraints that are placed upon us.” This just exposes the Greens’ lack of a clear, transformative vision for a socialist society, which is vital for any party looking to stand up to the capitalist system and its demands that the working class pay for the bosses’ climate catastrophe.
As Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto included a £250 billion green transformation fund, a commitment to a publicly owned national grid, and for the “supply arms of the big six energy companies to be brought into public ownership”. His manifesto, which also included other bold policies such as the scrapping of tuition fees, electrified millions of young people.
Now Corbyn has joined Zarah Sultana in pledging to build a new party to take on Starmer’s Labour. Socialist Students welcomes this as a potential major step forward in fighting climate change and capitalism. As a bare minimum, Corbyn’s green policies from 2019 would be a starting point, from which a mass movement for socialist change, not climate change, could be built.
Under a socialist system, the banks and major industries – including the major energy companies – would be placed in the hands of workers, not the capitalist bosses. By cooperating and discussing together, it would be possible to democratically draw up a plan of production based on human need, including the need for a healthy environment. The world’s massive wealth, resources and technology could be steered towards ensuring we live sustainably. Millions of high-quality, eco-friendly jobs would be created as societies shift rapidly towards green energy. Decisions about where to locate renewable energy production could be made democratically, with proper community consultation.
Socialist Students campaigns at schools, colleges, and universities across the country – to allow young people to make their voices heard in the fight for a viable socialist future, in which the needs of people and the planet which we live on are no longer secondary to profit. If you agree, then join us this term.
Donald Trump has been ever-present in US and world politics for over a decade. Despite losing an election in 2020 he just refused to go away. Why is this? What does Trump represent within American society? And the inevitable question for socialists all around the world – how can Trump be defeated?
The capitalist system is deep in crisis – economic, social, political and environmental. Capitalist leaders across the world, from Trump to Starmer, look to make workers and young people pay for this, and they are hated for it. In the US, Biden’s administration represented price rises and falling wages. Voters rejected that – either by not voting or voting Trump to beat Biden.
Trump has not gone away because he is currently able to capitalise on the problems within American society. What are those problems? America is a society divided by class. Even though he presents as anti-establishment, Trump is a representative of the capitalist class of exploiters, a billionaire son of a millionaire property tycoon. On the other side sits the working class, whose interests are the opposite of the private profit-prioritising capitalist class – but who have no party of their own who can answer Trump’s division and build a united fightback against all his attacks.
Living standards are falling, and people do have a right to be angry because of this. For example, it was estimated by CBS News in August 2024 that 27.1 million have no healthcare coverage. 27.1 million people. This is larger than the population of 22 of the 27 EU member states and not far off 40% of the entire population of the UK.
The American working class has never had a mass party to lead it with a programme representing its needs, such as free healthcare and education. Amid this vacuum today, Trump, despite representing American capitalism, finds an echo among workers looking for an alternative to the current status quo. He does so partly by expressing rage against the establishment but links that with populist, reactionary messaging to divert the rightful anger of millions of Americans about their dire standards of living.
Trump promised American workers that he would improve their living standards, but his measures will not end the crisis of the capitalist system. In fact, he will accelerate the crises. For example, his tariffs have the aim of increasing America’s share of the world’s wealth, but they will increase the costs of goods for US workers. Tariffs and other policies will also ratchet up tensions and crisis across the world.
Trump blames immigrants, LGBT+ people and any other marginalised groups he can think of for the problems of American capitalist society. His mantra is to divide and rule to sow division within the working class so that he and his billionaire friends can continue to exploit without a fightback.
Trump does not answer the anger and frustrations millions of working-class Americans have. His programme of privatisation and tax cuts for the mega-rich only makes things worse.
Whereas former Democratic Presidents such as Obama and Biden would performatively act as ‘progressives’ while bombing innocent people in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., or enabling the genocide in Gaza, Trump and his acolytes will happily boast about turning Gaza into a ‘riviera’.
Role of the Democrats
The Democrats are no alternative within American society. They also aided the genocide in Gaza against the Palestinian people. They had a majority in both branches of Congress (the Senate and House of Representatives) from 2020-2022, and have held similar majorities many times previously. What have they delivered for the American working class? No universal, nationalised healthcare system. No codified abortion rights. No enshrined rights for all LGBT+ people. They bailed out the corrupt banks after they crashed the world economy in 2008 while workers faced job losses and poverty pay. Remember Kamala Harris had more billionaires supporting her (83) than Donald Trump (52) according to Forbes and the Independent. The Democrats are deeply wedded to the exploitation of the working class and poor both at home in the US and abroad.
Should socialists support the Democratic party as a lesser evil? It is understandable when faced with the stark reality of a Trump presidency many will say “vote the lesser evil.” But this is not a solution for the American working class. What is needed is the building of a party of the working class, which gives people something to actively want to support.
Self-described socialists have run within the Democratic party in the past, most famously Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and now Zohran Mamdani. Sanders in 2016 and 2020 ran for the presidential nomination and saw mass enthusiasm for his programme of free healthcare and education and a $15-an-hour minimum wage. What was the response of the Democratic party? To block him from being the presidential challenger who could have beaten Trump, and put up an establishment representative in Hilary Clinton instead.
Mamdani
It is important that the lessons are learned by the supporters of Zohran Mamdani. Zohran won the Democratic nomination for the Mayor of New York City in June 2025 with an incredible 570,000 votes.
Mamdani’s programme promises reforms that are hugely popular: a rent freeze, building public housing, a $30-an-hour minimum wage by 2030, free buses, free childcare, city-owned grocery stores with price caps, and increasing taxes on the rich. He has also been a prominent opponent of the Israeli state’s genocidal war on Gaza.
Significantly he won the votes in some districts that voted for Trump in last year’s presidential election, indicating the potential for socialist candidates to cut across support for Trump in the working class.
Since then, many high-profile Democratic party stalwarts have refused to endorse him. His main competitor in the primary Andrew Cuomo – a former Democratic Governor of the state of New York mired in scandal but still backed by a $25 million ‘super PAC’ and endorsed by Bill Clinton and hedge fund billionaires – has announced he will run as an independent candidate.
Yet again we see the capitalist establishment in the Democratic party attempting to sabotage anyone who dares to mention the word socialism. The capitalist establishment, including Trump, will do all in its power to prevent a radical reformer winning control of the biggest city in the US, the seat of all the main capitalist institutions – Wall Street and the financial centre. While many sections of big business have accommodated to Trump and his unorthodox approach, despite backing Harris in the election, the situation is very different when the anti-establishment challenge comes from the left.
This must be a fight for the building of an political voice of the working class, independent of big business interests. The pro-capitalist Democratic leadership will aim to either neutralise him by watering down his programme or will outright sabotage him.
Mamdani must mobilise the local workers’ movement in New York in support of this programme. This is crucial as the trade unions are the principal organisations of the working class. If elected, they have the ability to help carry out Mamdani’s programme by, for example, withdrawing their labour to emphasise their support for Mamdani.
An example for Mamdani is in Liverpool, when socialists led the city council in 1983-85 and fought Thatcher for millions of pounds to fund what the Liverpool working class needed – including 5,000 council homes, nurseries, sports facilities, and apprenticeships. The struggle included strikes as well as trade union and community delegates being central to determining council policy.
Workers fighting back
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are 14.3 million workers in trade unions in the US. Imagine the power of a party which brought together the millions of organised workers across the unions, giving them a unified political voice.
Even before Trump’s re-election there has been positive developments within the organised workers’ movement. In workplaces there have been strike action and trade union campaigns across the country in recent years. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in its most recent reports from the year 2023, 477,900 US workers took strike action, the largest number since 2018. This included a strike movement in Starbucks, which is still ongoing with Starbucks refusing to recognise the workers’ right to unionise; the SAG-AFTRA strike of film and TV workers in July-November 2023; and the September-October 2023 strike movement of the United Auto Workers against the three largest automaker companies: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.
It is significant that a number of workers in the US, before Trump’s re-election, took strike action for the first time. The consequence of this will be the development of new working-class organisers in union branches, workplaces and communities, and a greater confidence in the ability of the working class to fight independently in its own interests. A stronger basis exists therefore with these new working-class, battle-hardened activists to combat the attacks of the Trump government. The potential for victories can be seen with a January-February 2025 strike of the Oregon Nurses Association, with the workers there winning a 22% pay increase alongside better terms and conditions for employment.
In addition, on the streets we have seen three particularly noteworthy events in the only seven months since Trump’s inauguration. On 5 April 2025 there was a synchronised ‘day of action’ in all 50 states, comprising 1,300 demonstrations and events protesting the anti-working-class policies of the Trump administration. The ‘No Kings’ demonstrations (so titled because of Trump’s increasing use of executive power to push through legislation) on 14 June included 2,100 events and demonstrations, with an estimated five million taking part. There was also the uprising in California against ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on 6 June amidst raids against people of both legal and illegal migrant status in Los Angeles. All of this without an existing political party that can pull together all of the struggles of the working class! Imagine the potential if such a force, armed with a socialist programme, was able to lead the way.
The importance of the trade unions, and the millions they represent, is that they are the main organisations of the working class. A collective voice for the trade unions in a new party would put the working class in the driving seat.
The job of socialists in America is to fight for a mass party of the working class, which would be capable of providing the leadership to the millions of angry working class people in the US. We as socialists internationally can aid this fight by building mass parties of the working class in each of our respective countries, in doing so providing a potential model for US workers to follow.
In addition we can stand up against Trump by protesting him and the capitalist system in decline that he represents. Socialist Students is leading such a campaign across the country with our walkout and protest campaign against Trump’s September UK visit (see next page). The building of mass workers’ parties, the arming of the trade unions with a fighting strategy, and building an international socialist movement is what is necessary to defeat the barbarism of Trump and the chaos of capitalism that he represents.
Build ‘Your Party’ to fight for free education and socialism
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.
And what do students get? Not only are we set to graduate with even more student debt, our maintenance loans don’t even cover the cost of housing, let alone other essentials. Even those receiving the maximum maintenance loan this year would need to take 20 hours of paid work per week just to reach a basic standard of living.
Some vice chancellors are even looking at ‘mergers’ with other universities. But why should they get to decide this over the heads of thousands of students and staff? Their record is one of running our universities into the ground, in collaboration with successive Tory and Labour governments. We can’t trust any of them with our education, because they all accept a capitalist system that puts the profits of the super-rich before the needs of the vast majority – including the right to a decent education.
Workers have fought back – students can organise too!
By taking strike action last year, university workers were able to halt planned cuts in several universities. In Scotland and Wales, staff also won millions of pounds in extra government funding through their strikes.
Imagine how much more funding could be forced from the government if there was strike action on all campuses across the country! That’s why Socialist Students supports university workers taking strike action, including supporting a vote to strike in the current UK-wide strike ballots by four campus unions (UCU, Unison, Unite, EIS).
Socialist Students members will be on the picket line supporting staff in our shared struggle for funding, not fees and cuts. We campaign for student unions to be democratic, fighting organisations that give us a voice – including committing to building student solidarity whenever staff take strike action for better pay, conditions and funding.
As a step towards the national representation students really deserve, even a handful of SUs linking up nationwide to coordinate campaigns for proper funding – not more fees and cuts – could have a big impact.
We won’t accept their crisis
The university sector is in a deep funding crisis. But the only ‘solution’ offered by this pro-big business Labour government is to raise fees and encourage even more cuts, pushing the burden even further onto staff and students.
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.
If education was fully funded, university managements would not be incentivised to invest our tuition fees in arms manufacturers and other shady companies in order to boost income. They would have no justifications for making cuts. Student housing could be massively expanded and improved, with rent controls introduced to ensure no student is paying the majority of their income on a place to live.
Your Party must seriously fight for free education
Socialist Students initiated the Funding Not Fees campaign last year, 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, a key part of the campaign has been lobbying MPs – fighting for our movement to have a political voice.
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 offer of 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.
For a mass weekend demonstration against Labour austerity
Socialist Students is supporting trade union activists calling on the TUC (the organisation bringing together 5.5 million trade union members) to name the date for a mass weekend demonstration against Labour austerity – ideally Saturday 22 November, just before the Autumn Budget on Wednesday 26 November.
We think Corbyn, Sultana and Your Party members should amplify the call for such a weekend demonstration, which could act as a launchpad for sustained trade union action in defence of workers and young people – including against tuition fee rises and cuts to university jobs.
What better way to announce Your Party as force through which young people could fight for a real future, a week before the founding conference on November 29-30?
Build a movement for:
No fee rises! Scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt
Bring back maintenance grants for all students, rising with inflation
Stop all cuts and closures on campus
Rent controls in student accommodation
End low pay and precarious employment
Divestment from arms and big business – no place for profiteers from war and exploitation on our campus
A political voice for students that fights to take the wealth off the 1% and for socialism
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser
The Labour government has announced that it will bring back maintenance grants for tens of thousands of students from ‘low-income backgrounds’ who opt for so-called ‘priority courses’.
Labour has not yet announced how much grant money students would receive, nor whether the grants would be paid on top of the existing maintenance loan allowance. But if the introduction of grants means that some of the poorest students have more money in their pockets, and leave university or college with less debt, then that is a victory.
Reintroducing maintenance grants, even in this very limited current form, was mentioned nowhere in Labour’s general election manifesto last year. This latest announcement has to be seen as a concession to the widespread anger that has developed against Labour since then, as millions of working-class and young people correctly see Starmer’s government as doing nothing but continuing the Tories’ war and austerity agenda.
Jeremy Corbyn
Labour’s hand has also been forced by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ announcement. As leader of the Labour Party, Corbyn inspired millions of young people with his offer of free education: scrapping tuition fees and introducing maintenance grants for all. A new party fighting for free education as part of a socialist programme to transform young people’s lives today would gain massive youth support – and Labour knows it.
Just the prospect of a new party fighting ‘for the many, not the few’ has Labour under pressure. At the same time, there is the prospect of a new round of national strike action in further and higher education, as the University and College Union (UCU) launches ballots this month. Now is the time for students to join the fight – to go on the offensive and fight for what we need by making the super-rich pay, not workers and young people!
We could start by demanding the government rolls out its maintenance grant plans immediately, rather than waiting until ‘the end of the Parliament’ as is currently planned. We should also demand that grants are made available for all courses, not just so-called ‘priority courses’ deemed most important by big business and their politicians.
Another important battleground will be the level of grants paid to students. The current level of maintenance support for students is woefully inadequate, whether that comes in the form of a loan, or as a mixture of a loan and a grant (as is the case for Welsh students studying in Wales, for example). A student receiving the maximum maintenance loan would still need to work 20 hours per week to meet a “basic standard of income”, according to the Higher Education Policy Institute.
Explaining the targeted rollout of maintenance grants at Labour conference, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson declared: “Students’ time at college or university should be spent learning or training, not working every hour”. Great! In which case, let’s make sure that maintenance grants are made available to all students.
Let’s also make sure these new grants cover the full cost of living and studying. That would also stop student loans saddling us with a lifetime of debt after we graduate.
The shareholders of the FTSE100 companies get payouts of around £85 billion every year. Instead of charging a levy on international fees to provide grants to a fraction of ‘home’ students, students should unite in a mass movement to demand free, fully funded education for all, paid for by taking the wealth from the super-rich.
Funding Not Fees
These are the kinds of ideas Socialist Students societies will be fighting for on campus with the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign this term. As part of this, we will be organising lobbies of MPs ahead of the 26 November Budget, for them to raise an amendment calling for free, fully funded education, including the introduction of living maintenance grants for all students.
We will also be raising the campaign in Your Party meetings between now and the founding conference, to make sure the call for free education forms a key part of a new mass socialist party giving a voice to young people and the working class.
Lottie Young Cambridge Socialist Students Article taken from Autumn 2025 edition of the Socialist Student magazine
Sexism is an enduring problem in universities that has significant impacts on students. Sexual harassment, objectifying and misogynistic comments from classmates, drink spiking, and sexual assault are common. These attitudes are a product of and perpetuated by capitalism, which is a system based on exploitation and inequality. Today, women’s lives are vastly different from even a few decades ago. Struggles for personal autonomy, financial independence, and legal rights –such as equal pay and access to education – have made gains. At the same time, these gains are not conclusive, and the horrors of sexism can still be seen, such as the murder of Sarah Everard by an off-duty police officer.
A survey of 4,491 students by Revolt Sexual Assault found that 70% of female students had experienced sexual violence, with 25% of these students reporting that they skipped lectures, tutorials, or changed certain modules to avoid their attackers, and a shocking 16% ended their studies as a result of the violence and harassment they experienced.
It is clear that whilst attitudes towards women in universities have experienced some progress – with women now able to earn degrees, enter into careers in academia, and hold positions of leadership in universities – we are still incredibly far from the elimination of sexism and sexual violence within universities and wider society.
These shocking statistics come amidst the years of cuts to services and infrastructure for students, including campus lighting, night transport, counselling services, student bursaries, and the funding of programmes to tackle on-campus sexism. The fact that only 6% of respondents felt that they could report their assault to their university shows that current university services are not helping students to feel comfortable, safe, and supported on campus.
Fight for funding and control of our campuses
In 2023, the average salary for the vice chancellor across the UK’s twenty-four Russell Group universities exceeded £400,000 (with the vice chancellor of Oxford University earning a staggering £1,048,000), with more than two-thirds of them receiving pay rises. While students are left to deal with rising tuition fees, the cost-of-living crisis, and cuts to education – including the subsequent lack of prevention of sexual violence – the decision-makers are raking in the cash.
If we can’t trust the cutting university bosses to keep us safe, then students have to fight to guarantee this right ourselves. That should start with student unions linking up with trade unions to campaign against sexual harassment in schools, colleges and universities. Part of that should be campaigning for democratically elected committees of students and staff to be in charge of investigating reports of sexism and sexual violence on campus, ensuring that the processes are effectively implemented and accessible to those who need them.
The money is clearly there in society to create fundamental change for all students, but it is going into the pockets of a select few instead. Socialist Students has initiated the Funding not Fees campaign to build a movement for fully funded, free education – paid for by taking the wealth out the hands of the super-rich.
Imagine what we could do if we had all the resources we need for education. We could scrap tuition fees and introduce maintenance grants that actually cover the cost of living. There could be massive investment in things like campus lighting and secure student housing. We could make sure that every university campus had free-to-use, properly staffed creche facilities, so that parents with young children could attend classes.
How to take on ‘lad culture’
Many measures within universities to tackle sexism are aimed at quelling ‘lad culture’. This sees sexism and sexual violence as deriving from the behaviour of individual or groups of men, or a culture among young men which encourages sexism.
Misogynistc ideas exist across society, and can even become more prominent among sections. The Revolt Sexual Assault survey found 42% of respondents agreed that actions constituting sexual assault and harassment had become “normalised” at university. There are also stories of disgusting sexist messages shared on many student group chats. For example, a group chat of Durham University students included discussions of sleeping with ‘a different bird every night for a bed’ and ‘posh lads’ competing to sleep with the ‘poorest girl’.
Students absolutely have the right to ‘call out’ derogatory comments made by individual men, but what could most effectively stamp out sexism and misogyny on a campus- and society-wide basis is a mass movement against sexism and for the things we all need, uniting people of all genders in a common struggle. Today working-class and young people’s struggles against all forms of oppression have been pushed back. Previous generations were able to use their collective weight and joint interest in challenging reactionary ideas to make gains against sexism.
It is no coincidence that the propaganda of Andrew Tate and Co. has become more popular during the huge crisis of capitalism which exists today and the misery which comes with it. But limiting campaigning against sexism to opposing male ‘culture’ or individual sexist men, without acknowledging that the capitalism system embraces and promotes gender inequality and sexism, also doesn’t offer women a way forward. It can also subsequently repel men from participating in the fight against sexism (and thus capitalism) instead of uniting the working class in a mass struggle against oppression, both on campus and beyond.
A socialist alternative to sexism and capitalism
There are many examples of how capitalism benefits from promoting gender inequality and sexism. The notion that women should care for both the family and the home is promoted because it means that women will continue to do this unpaid work, subsequently saving the capitalist class billions, which would otherwise need to be spent on public services – like expanded childcare and social care – or on increased wages so that those services could be bought privately in the market. The objectification of women and unattainable beauty standards are promoted by the fashion industry to sell their products, continuously promising women that they can help them reach this ‘ideal’ form of attractiveness. And finally, sexism, which more often than not causes strain between men and women in society, is useful to the ruling class as it encourages the division of the working class.
To truly eliminate the sexist ideas and ‘culture’, the dismantling of capitalism and the socialist transformation of society is necessary, for it is capitalism that drives sexism and misogyny. A socialist society would be one in which public and state organisations and institutions (including universities) were under the democratic control of workers and service users; in which society was democratically planned for need not profit; and in which the idea of gender norms and inequality were no longer promoted.
Whilst this would not instantaneously eradicate gender norms that have been embedded in class society, the socialist transformation would dismantle the structures and means through which those ideas have been sustained, thus forming a society in which gender norms, sexist ideas, and gender-based power imbalances would no longer be relevant. Therefore, the ‘lad’ culture and the deeply ingrained sexist values within our society which significantly drive sexism on-campus would be eliminated.
Come to the Central London demo, Saturday 11 October
Join the Socialist Students contingent!
Meet from 11.30am for speeches before marching – Cleopatra’s Needle, by Embankment Station
Contact 07515921699 or socialistudents@gmail.com for more info
For two years the Israeli state has inflicted genocidal horror on the Palestinians, backed up by capitalist governments around the world, including Starmer’s Labour Party in Britain.
After collaborating in the killing of over 60,000 Palestinians, injuring hundreds of thousands, and reducing the Gaza strip to rubble, Donald Trump and the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have the nerve to now pronounce a ‘peace plan’ to end the war on Gaza.
What say do the Palestinian masses have in all this? Where is their right to democratically decide how to organise their society and fight for a future free from starvation, war and repression?
By linking up with the working classes throughout the region, the Palestinians could build a powerful movement to take wealth, resources and control of society out of the hands of the warmongering capitalist elites. That would lay the foundation for real ‘peace’ and the genuine right to self-determination.
Instead there is the devastating prospect of a ‘transitional authority’ in Gaza headed by Trump. This is the man who has talked about turning Gaza into a ‘riviera’ – a playground for the super-rich established through the continued expulsion, oppression and exploitation of the Palestinians.
Trump’s choice for right-hand man is fellow warmonger Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister who led the British invasion of Iraq – not to mention introducing tuition fees, privatising the NHS, selling off council homes, and handing over schools to big business academy trusts.
Clearly the Palestinians have no future in the hands of these capitalist leaders, whose priority is the profit interests of the super-rich and big business, and never the needs of working-class and young people. That’s why the global anti-war movement in solidarity with the Palestinians cannot let up.
Students have launched encampments on university campuses. School and college students have walked out of class to protest the slaughter in Gaza, including hundreds who took part in the Youth Walkouts against Trump when the US President came to the UK in September.
Socialist Students is calling on students to join our contingent on the next National March for Palestine on Saturday 11 October. We think young people need to get organised in the fight for socialism as the only way to end all war and deliver a decent future for all, in Britain and around the world. Joining our contingent will be a good starting point!
And after the contingent, get involved with Socialist Students in your school, college or university to continue the fight for a socialist future. Socialist Students is joining Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ this term to fight for an anti-war socialist voice for working-class and young people. We will also be campaigning for the funding needed for our education, including supporting workers’ strikes against redundancies and cuts to our courses.
Hundreds of school and college students walked out to protest Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK on 17 September. On the thousands-strong protest through central London, the Socialist Students contingent was by far the most lively, youthful and politically bold. Our chants and slogans were not just drawing attention to Trump and the role he is playing, but also to Keir Starmer’s complicity in war, genocide, and defending the profits of the billionaires.
In Liverpool 75 walked out, there were 25 in Leeds, 15 from a Sheffield sixth form, 30 from one college in Nuneaton, 25 in Preston, and many more at youth protests around the country. The Trump walkouts showed that we can take matters into our own hands and have a voice when we organise and fight back.
Our walkouts forced their way into the national media. The government had been doing their best to keep Trump’s visit under wraps, knowing the anger it would provoke. But our campaign got onto ITV and BBC, into the Independent newspaper, even over the pond into Time magazine – which has twice named Trump ‘Man of the year’!
Right to protest
Hundreds walked out against Trump, but it would have been many more if not for the police being called on students to try to intimidate us into not exercising our right to protest.
In west London, about a dozen police officers were waiting at the tube station to try to intercept students travelling to the central London demo. In south London, a headteacher called the police on us, as well as ripping up leaflets that students were being handed as they were going into school.
In east London, hundreds of students spilled out into the playground at lunch, ready to walk out and join the protests in central London. They were prevented from doing so by a police van as well as about a dozen police officers at the school gates.
In north London, headteachers in Enfield were communicating with each other and the police to try and clamp down on student exercising their right to protest. That didn’t stop nine students walking out at one school.
Despite all the obstacles, when we are organised, we can overcome all the barriers put in our way. We can have a say over what goes on in our lives.
Schools, colleges, sixth forms… our entire capitalist education system is designed to strip away young peoples’ confidence to take action: restrictive rules try to teach us from a young age to obey authority; there is a complete lack of a say over our curriculum and what we get taught; gates are locked to keep us in all day, trapping us in prison-like conditions; students are thrown into ‘isolation rooms’ as punishment, facing a wall in solitary confinement conditions. All this is designed to make us feel powerless. And it’s not accidental.
This capitalist system we live under is about making profit for a tiny few at the top of society, a super-rich minority, at the expense of everyone else. It means mega wealth for the billionaires while poverty, war, and climate destruction become the norm. Capitalism will look for all the ways it can to maintain this unequal arrangement, that includes trying to drill into us from a young age, while we are in school, that we can’t fight back to change things.
The youth walkouts against Trump were a way to show that we can fight back. We sent a clear message to Trump, Starmer and the capitalist class that we won’t accept their agenda.
Build students unions
As a first next step, Socialist Students is calling on young people to build our own students unions. These can be spaces where students in a school or college can come together to share ideas about how to fight back and to make a plan of action. Why not organise a meeting of everyone who is interested, including those who joined walkouts and other supporters?
The meeting could take place in the playground, or a quiet indoor space, or there might be sympathetic teachers who are be open to allowing us to meet in their classroom, for example. A starting point could be to find out which teachers are trade union reps for the education unions in your school.
Then the meeting can decide collectively what campaigning issues to take up. There might be anger at what is going on in the world – war, poverty, climate catastrophe. But locally there might be anger at canteen prices, the cost of school trips, uniform policies… At some schools, students have been told that they are unable to wear political badges, for example.
Once a main campaigning priority has been agreed on, one idea could be to write a short protest letter setting out the issues, getting as many students as possible to sign it, and to take a list of demands to the headteacher. That pressure could be increased by organising a protest at lunchtime or outside the gates after school. A march to the local council offices could lobby a meeting of local councillors to ask what they are going to do to address the issues. There could also be a lobby of a local MP.
Students in east London prevented from protesting plan to write to their local MP Dianne Abbott to ask for her support in demanding the right to protest.
Socialist Students groups can also get together to attend protests outside of school or college. Socialist Students will have a contingent on the 11 October Gaza demo in London, for example. In Liverpool on 27 September, there is a protest outside of Labour Party conference, which Socialist Students will be attending – exposing all of the ways in which the Labour government is attacking our futures.
A new party fighting for our future
Events across the whole of society shape the conditions which we grow up in. We have a Labour government hiking uni fees, cutting funding to schools and public services, that has attacked benefits for disabled people including getting rid of PIP for under-18s.
Outside of schools and colleges, young people need a political voice. Many have been enthused by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’. It is polling highest among 18 to 24-year-olds. Socialist Students calls for a new mass workers’ party that fights for a future for young people.
As leader of the Labour Party, Corbyn called for free education, mass council house building and a fully funded NHS, and many other policies to make the super-rich pay. Now young people again have a chance for a political party to fight for those things. There is the opportunity for a mass party that puts across an anti-war, socialist alternative to Labour, as well as to Reform. Socialist Students says any new party should be a democratic socialist party. We are holding meetings on 50+ university campuses across the country to discuss that.
Young people need a voice – our own students unions organising to fight in our collective interests. And a political voice, a party that links our struggles to those of other young people and the working class as a whole.
We have to fight for a future. That is linked to the struggle for a socialist society as an alternative to capitalism. That would be a system where the banks and major industries are owned and run by the working class, democratically discussing and collaborating to draw up a plan of how to use the wealth and resources in society to meet the needs of all. Internationally, that would lay the basis for an end to war and climate disaster. Join Socialist Students to fight for a future. Fight for socialist change.
More than half a million people signed up to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s call for a new party within a few days of its announcement, with hundreds of thousands more since. Polls show that support for the potential new party is highest among young people, and would win among 18 to 24-year-olds – and that’s before the party has even been formed!
And no wonder there has been this enthusiasm for a political alternative, when you look at the world on offer to young people today.
In Gaza, Palestinians are suffering genocidal horror. The number of people fleeing war and persecution globally has never been higher. Capitalist politicians and the billionaires they defend just sit on their hands, while the climate crisis threatens humanity.
As students, we face the soaring cost of living, dismal housing, and more and more student debt. The prospect of one day having a good job and a decent home that we can afford seems more distant than ever.
None of the establishment parties have any answers to this situation. They are all united in their defence of a capitalist system that puts big business profits before the needs of humanity and our planet.
After 14 years of brutal Tory austerity, Labour has only offered more of the same: cuts to benefits, attacks on trans people and other minority groups, raising tuition fees, and supporting the Israeli state’s slaughter. Starmer has clamped down on the right to protest, to try and prevent even more opposition to his rule, but so far he has only provoked more anger.
Reform UK have tried to cash in, cynically posing as an alternative. But all they do is pose as anti-establishment, while offering no alternative to austerity in local councils, and all the while stoking racism and division which weakens our ability to fight back.
OUR CHANCE FOR A POLITICAL VOICE
For the thousands of young people who have signed up to Corbyn and Sultana’s initiative – ‘Your Party’ – the prospect of a new party will therefore be a ray of hope in the fight for a better future: ‘Finally, our chance to have a political voice that fights for us, not the warmongers and the billionaires’!
When Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, there was huge enthusiasm among young people for his anti-austerity, anti-war policies. In the 2017 and 2019 general elections, Corbyn offered the chance for free education: an end to tuition fees, and maintenance grants instead of loans.
On election day, students literally queued around the block to vote for Corbyn. The capitalist media called it a ‘youthquake’ – not as praise, but out of fear of the mass movement that Corbyn’s programme generated.
Today, there is again the possibility of a major party that fights for free education, along with other policies that could make a real difference to our lives – like rent controls and mass council housebuilding, a minimum wage of at least £15-an-hour for all, and a massive ‘green transition’ away from fossil fuels. We could have a party that fights to defend the right to protest, and backs up movements fighting to end the Israeli state’s terror and occupation of the Palestinian territories.
To win all these things and more, the party will have to draw its strength from the mass mood to fight back that exists under this Labour government. By giving a lead to and reinforcing the collective action of working-class and young people, the party would be able to spearhead a movement capable of wrenching wealth, resources and control of society out of the hands of the super-rich and big business.
So if you want to discuss, campaign and fight now for a socialist alternative to the chaos facing our futures, then you should get involved in your local Socialist Students society this year.
But imagine how much further that fight would be strengthened if we had a new mass party giving a voice to student organisations, trade unions, anti-cuts campaigns, climate and anti-war movements, and more. A political voice linking our struggles as students to everyone else in society who is fighting back under this rotten capitalist system.
That’s why Socialist Students will be joining Corbyn and Sultana’s new party this year. And if you want to fight for this to be a democratic party, rooted in the struggles of working-class and young people, which fights for socialist policies – and join up with students in socialist societies on 50+ campuses doing the same! – then Socialist Students is the organisation for you.
Socialist Students 