Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser

With the UCU announcing its ongoing marking and assessment boycott at 145 UK universities from 20 April, many students will be looking on anxiously at how this action affects us.

Like the national strike action that has already hit universities this year, the current boycott will cause disruption to students. Work, including exams, will go unassessed for as long as the dispute between UCU and university bosses over staff pay and conditions continues – and UCU has already won an overwhelming mandate to continue action into the autumn if needed. This means that final-year students may be delayed from graduating for months to come.

It is therefore understandable for students to feel that, not for the first time, they aren’t getting the university experience they signed up for.

However, it would be a mistake for students to direct our frustration at underpaid and overworked university staff in UCU who, like millions of other striking workers, are simply fighting to stay afloat amid the cost-of-living crisis.

If university staff collectively were given a decent pay rise in line with inflation, with secure contracts and pensions protected, then they wouldn’t be taking this industrial action. Any disruption caused by the current marking and assessment boycott therefore falls squarely at the feet of university bosses and the Tories, who have presided over the deterioration of university workers’ living standards – and higher education generally – over many years.

Some vice-chancellors have said that universities can’t afford to meet UCU’s pay demands. Those universities should have their finances opened to democratic inspection by the campus trade unions, along with democratically elected committees of students. If a university genuinely can’t afford to give its staff at least what the UCU demands, then the government should step in to make up the difference, with money given to universities under trade union oversight. 

While still hugely inadequate, the fact that the Tories offer a central fund worth £276 million for universities to draw on to provide student hardship grants shows the potential for a similar fund to be developed for universities to settle the UCU strikes.

But would the settling of the current UCU dispute mean an end to the disruption students face? Of course not! We’ll still have to skip lectures to work part-time jobs, or forgo buying the books we need for our courses, or choose not to travel to campus some days, all because our maintenance loans don’t go far enough. And we’ll still face the prospect of future university strikes for as long as managements try to compensate for chronic underfunding by slashing staff pay and conditions. As the University of York vice-chancellor wrote in the Financial Times: “The current disputes will not end until undergraduate funding is fixed”.

The root cause of all the disruption students face in our day-to-day lives is  the lack of resources for higher education – whether that’s the wages staff need to live and work comfortably, the maintenance support students need to focus on getting a university education, or any other university service facing cuts. The ending of these strikes won’t mean our university experience is all fine again. Students are facing a major cost-of-living crisis of our own as inflation far outstrips our maintenance loans, with a record number of dropouts so far this year. And we leave university burdened with debt the majority of us will never pay off.

If UCU is defeated in the current dispute, the vice-chancellors and the Tories will only feel more emboldened to continue their attacks on students, staff and higher education.

That’s why students must do all we can to support the marking and assessment boycott. The best way to end this disruption is to support a speedy UCU victory on pay and conditions. Crucially, a UCU victory would force money from the vice-chancellors and the Tories, showing that more could be won in future through a mass campaign to fully publicly fund our universities and end marketisation – for free education.

But as long as university funding is decided by capitalist governments looking for spending to cut and avenues of profit to open up, our universities will always be at risk of attack. That’s why Socialist Students fights for a socialist society where we, the working-class majority, democratically plan where resources should go in order to meet people’s needs – including the need for a high-quality, fulfilling and free lifelong education.

Socialist Students says:

• Support the UCU marking and assessment boycott – don’t let university bosses pit students against staff! Demand that SUs publicly support UCU industrial action
• No punitive pay deductions for staff taking part in the boycott!
• Organise joint student-staff meetings on campus to discuss how we fight the attacks on our universities – and where next for our common struggle against the cost-of-living crisis?
• Fight for the funding our universities need to end disruption to students’ and workers’ lives. Fight for high-quality, free education – scrap fees, cancel student debt, and replace loans with living grants rising with inflation
• Build a new mass workers’ party to coordinate the struggles of students and workers in one fight against the bosses and their politicians
• Fight for socialist change – for democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future

Originally published in Socialism Today, issue 265

Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser

The current strike wave has come off the back of a historic cost-of-living crisis facing workers and their families, with real household income set to shrink by 7% in the next two years, the largest fall since records began.

For university students, this historic collapse in living standards has come at twice the pace. While inflation soared towards a 41-year high of 14% in the autumn, student maintenance loans for 2022/23 increased by just 2.3%. This amounts to a 7% cut in the value of maintenance support over one year. As a result, the average monthly shortfall between students’ loans and living costs has risen to £439 this year, up from £340 in 2021/22, and £223 in 2020/21.

With pay from part-time jobs and parents’ income also squeezed, an unprecedented number of students this year have been pushed to extremes to compensate for a record gap between government maintenance support and living costs. Sixty-two percent of students are now cutting back on essentials, while 52% are using their savings, and a staggering 25% have reported taking on new debt to finance their living costs. Polls have also consistently reported around 10% of students using food banks this year.

The stats suggest that, at this stage, the overwhelming mood of students is to ‘grin and bear it’, absorbing at least part of the increased cost of living through personal savings, debt and stripped-back spending. However, there are limits to how far students will be willing, or able, to sacrifice their current and future living standards in order to continue their studies, especially those from working-class families.

The student cost-of-living crisis therefore poses a sharp increase in university dropout rates. Indeed, the University of South Wales has already identified a “significant rise in non-returning students” this year, while the University of East Anglia has reported “a higher-than-average dropout rate”. By choosing not to raise student maintenance support at least in line with inflation, the government has effectively attacked working-class students’ ability to continue their education beyond the age of 18.

And these attacks are set to continue. The government announced in January that maintenance loans for over a million students in England will rise by just 2.8% next year. Following successive years of below-inflation rises to the loan allowance, this will leave the poorest university students with over £1,500 less than if they had applied for student finance three years ago. In fact, the Department for Education has admitted that maintenance support would need to go up by almost 14% to keep pace with the increased cost of living, and that a 2.8% rise “is unlikely to prevent a further erosion in purchasing power” for students next year. In other words, the collapse in students’ living conditions is set to go even further next year.

Despite the objective crisis facing students, however, this academic year has seen a virtual absence of student-led struggle in the universities. This is ultimately down to a lack of authoritative organisations giving any alternative to students, both on and off campus. The tendency for students at this stage to endure government attacks, as opposed to fighting back, is because the vast majority are not being given a lead to do otherwise.

The pivotal question of leadership was shown in the university walkouts that took place in Ireland last year against the cost-of-living crisis there. While those walkouts of 20,000 students were a display of the huge anger among students in Ireland generally, the national Union of Students in Ireland (USI), together with students’ unions on the ground, played the key role of publicising a date, time and set of demands for students to get organised around.

In contrast, the USI’s sister organisation in the UK, the National Union of Students (NUS), has limited its public campaigning this year to online petitions and social media propaganda. And yet UK students face the same crisis as students in Ireland. If the NUS called for a day of protest against the student cost-of-living crisis in cities around the country, using its links to hundreds of students’ unions to build for it, thousands of students would turn out. Publicising a date, time and place would allow groups of students to put pressure on their students’ unions to organise transport. The protests could be held jointly with striking workers, raising the idea of students and workers fighting together to win the money we need to live from this weak Tory government. And they would allow hundreds of angry students to link up and discuss forming new campaigns and organisations to tackle the crisis they face.

And what about university Labour clubs, at a time when the Tories are so hated on the campuses? In 2017, hundreds of thousands of young people queued at ballot boxes around the country to vote for Jeremy Corbyn and his anti-austerity programme, including his demand for free education. However, this massive enthusiasm found no organisational expression on the campuses, one of the many mistakes made under Corbyn’s Labour leadership. The situation now is shown by the fact that in last year’s Labour Students National Committee elections, only 504 votes were cast to elect a national chair. The candidates for the Scotland seat managed 36 votes between them. Sir Keir Starmer’s Tony Blair-style New Labour party is not attracting students to its banner.

So, while the Corbyn era showed the potential for an anti-austerity political voice to electrify students, it also underlined the need to establish broad and democratic campus organisations to mobilise students in support of those ideas. Such organisations would also have to answer how ideas like free education can be won. Corbyn costed the scrapping of tuition fees and the restoration of maintenance grants at £12 billion. For comparison, the University and College Union’s (UCU) demand of a 13.6% pay increase for university staff would cost around £1.5 billion. This indicates the scale of what would be required to win a higher education system that actually meets the needs of students. It would mean students linking up with workers in struggle – a task that is not solely the responsibility of students, but also of the workers’ movement as a whole. And the unions also have a responsibility to politically re-energise students in the way Corbyn’s programme did, by taking steps to build a new political voice that can represent workers, students and young people generally at the ballot box against the big business politics of the Tories and Starmer’s Labour.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that no authoritative force has yet emerged to lead students against Tory attacks on their living standards. The University of Manchester rent strike, which re-emerged at the start of this term, indicates how struggle will be thrown up by the crisis facing students. However, the rent strike groups in Manchester and elsewhere developed originally around a sudden spike in anger that spread among students over the Covid lockdowns, when students were lured back en masse to universities under false promises of in-person teaching. For many students, this year’s cost-of-living crisis might feel like less of a sudden collapse, and more like a gradual, albeit still painful, decline. It is therefore not automatic that a 2.8% ‘increase’ in maintenance loans would spark a new wave of student struggle, although it is adding to the tinderbox conditions on the campuses.

The money exists for a fully publicly funded higher education system, available to all in society. The richest 250 individuals alone in Britain now own £710 billion, up from £658 billion in 2021. However, in the absence of a political voice that will fight for free education, and given the current historically low level of student organisation, local student campaigns that fight even for limited concessions from university managements – such as emergency cost-of-living grants, or subsidised canteen meals – would be a step forward. At each stage though, such campaigns should raise the idea of a national student movement, linked to the fight for free education funded by taking the wealth and resources off the super-rich, and the building of a mass workers’ party with a socialist programme to fight for that.

Organising, fighting and striking back against the cost of living crisis

Socialist Students steering committee

Quinn Gray, Birkbeck University of London graduate

Birkbeck, University of London and the University of East Anglia (UEA) are proposing dramatic job and budget cuts to cope with deficits of millions of pounds. On the eve of its 200th anniversary, Birkbeck plans to cut 140 jobs by July 2023, with more to be announced, due to a deficit of £13 million. UEA has had a £13.9 million loss in 2021-22, and has proposed compulsory redundancies, savings across all departments and want services such as cleaning, libraries, security and student support to reduce budgets by 10-20%. UEA has also asked staff to temporarily reduce their hours, take unpaid career breaks, or voluntarily reduce their salary!

Birkbeck vice-chancellor Professor David Latchman is one of the best-paid university leaders in the country with a salary of more than £385,000. Both Birkbeck and UEA University and College Union (UCU) branches have passed a vote of no confidence in their senior leaderships.

UEA and Birkbeck have been suffering from falling student numbers in recent years. Birkbeck saw its intake fall more than 10 per cent in 2021-22 compared to the previous year. ‘Concrete’, UEA’s student newspaper, reported: “In 2022, UEA fell short by 8% of their entry targets (following a 17% shortfall in 2021) – which had… an ‘adverse financial impact of £6.4 million.’” Concrete also revealed: “Rising energy costs were… stated as a reason for the debt, standing at ‘circa £5 million in the last year.’” The cost-of-living crisis has been cited as a reason students are choosing not to go to university, in a recent article published by the Financial Times.

Entry requirements for some UEA courses have risen for the 2023-24 year, in part to deal with the increased competition among more prestigious universities. Birkbeck markets itself as ‘London’s evening university’, boasting accessibility for working students by hosting classes between 6-9pm.

I graduated from Birkbeck with my postgraduate degree in 2022, having to study online during a period of extreme turmoil in my life due to being a victim of domestic violence during the 2020 pandemic. I was working and studying to secure financial independence for myself. The academic and administrative staff were sympathetic towards my situation, and if it were not for their support I would not have chosen Birkbeck as my place of study. Cutting staff may solve these deficits in the short term, but will have long-term effects on their reputations and the quality of education students receive.

Socialist students calls for

• No redundancies, no course closures! Support university workers taking action to save jobs, courses and departments. To build fighting student organisations to link up with staff and campaign for the resources we need
• Fully funded, high-quality free education. Scrap tuition fees, take the wealth off the super-rich to fund education and living grants
• Nationalise the energy companies alongside the banks and big business to be run under democratic working-class control and end the cost-of-living crisis

Come to the Socialist Students conference in Birmingham on Saturday 18 March to discuss the next steps for building a renewed student movement against the cost-of-living crisis and marketisation. Register here.

While the UCU has now suspended planned strike action for the next two weeks – undemocratically bypassing discussion with members and reps – some national strike action did go ahead as planned last week. Here are some reports from Socialist Students members on the picket lines.

Cardiff: “Students need to be organised too” – walk out alongside workers on March 15

George Phillips, Cardiff Socialist Students

Each of my four years at Cardiff University has seen disruption from strikes, Covid or both. Students are understandably frustrated at more disruption. But the biggest disruption to our studies is the cost-of-living crisis.  Student maintenance loans are set to increase by just 2.8% in the 2023-24 year, compared to RPI inflation of 14% in November 2022.

Universities should not be run like profit-making businesses, they should be run by students and staff, for students and staff and wider society. Socialist Students campaigns for free education – scrapping tuition fees and the return of university grants, available to all and funded by the government. All third-party student accommodation must be brought into university ownership and rent controls put in place, so students are not being ripped off by money-grabbing landlords. The money is there but those in power make a choice not to use it.

Strike or no strike, many students do not feel we are getting the quality of education £9,000-plus a year warrants due to the conditions faced by staff. The learning conditions of students is directly related to staff working conditions. Lecturers and staff who are overworked and underpaid are not able to deliver the quality of teaching they desire and we deserve.

Students should join picket lines and show support for UCU members. Students need to be organised too, so we can more effectively link up with striking workers and fight for our own demands – for cost-of-living grants, free education and rent control.

On 15 March, Budget Day, the National Education Union has called its next nationwide strike day and is organising a mass protest in London, civil servants’ union PCS will also be taking national strike action. Other unions could join to have a day of strikes even bigger than that on 1 February. We are all on the same side, in the same fight against the bosses. Why not make this a massive day of coordinated action with students in schools and universities organising walkouts alongside striking workers?

Liverpool: Casualisation, low pay and underfunding offer me uncertain future

Chloe Hawryluk, Liverpool Socialist Students

At the University of Liverpool, we have an incredible student-staff solidarity presence; at picket lines I have not only made friends, but learned more about the poor working conditions of our lecturers. On Thursday, I was invited to speak at the student-staff solidarity rally, representing the University of Liverpool Feminist Society as their President. As a society, we have always supported the strikes, and this year is no different. 

Standing at the front of the rally, I spoke about how staff working conditions are student learning conditions, about how the higher education sector is second only to hospitality as the most casualised sector in the UK, and about how the fight for equal pay is somehow still going in 2023; the gender pay gap in UK universities is 16%, and the disability pay gap is 9%. In fact, in 2021 it was revealed that there were twice as many (66%) female staff at the University of Sheffield who are on zero-hours contracts than men. 

As a working-class student, the £9250 a year I pay will have a massive impact on me; I look ahead to years of debt, however that money isn’t going to the right people. Our lecturers; the ones who make our university experience, the ones who put hours of hard work into preparing lectures and seminars for us, are severely underpaid, under-appreciated, and overworked. University is becoming a place of exploitation and marketisation, not a place of learning. I want to progress to study at masters level and for a PhD; yet as a working-class, disabled, queer woman, the future doesn’t look too good to me, or anyone who wants a career in academia. And to my fellow students – don’t be angry at your lecturers for striking, be angry at the way that they’re being treated.

Many people question if the strikes are effective, but in 2021, strikes at the University of Liverpool ended 47 redundancies; so we know they work. Yet, the fight still goes on, and although UCU are entering into intensive negotiations with UCEA, the solidarity doesn’t stop here; who knows what the future holds? Perhaps the negotiations will fall through. Perhaps the negotiations will go well. But as a socialist student, I know I will always remain in solidarity with striking academic staff, as staff working conditions are student learning conditions, and the fight against the elite continues until we have justice for everyone.

Southampton: University management and government won’t distract us from real cause of strikes: their cuts

Thomas Priestley, Southampton Socialist Students

As students, University management and the government have done all they can to try and divide us from striking university staff. They try to convince us that what strikers are doing is somehow a waste of our fees and that we should take out our anger on them. However, it becomes increasingly important to note that the wellbeing of our educators is directly tied to the quality of our education we pay for, so should we not express concern and support for them?

While there are some who would have us believe this is an isolated issue of self-interested staff attempting to brute force their way into a fatter paycheck, this is in fact the result of years of pay reductions and decreases in job quality that we can only blame their employers and the Tory government for. Without our lecturers, there are no degrees.

I ask any students who are dissatisfied with their university experience to turn their attention to the true perpetrators and stand with their lecturers. I ask that we hold those who are truly responsible accountable and ensure that promises are kept and the staff that are essential for our education are treated with dignity. It is easy to scoff at the strikes and see them as the surface level inconvenience they may appear to be, but know that if they are successful, they serve to benefit us all.

While workers in increasing numbers are taking strike action against the biggest cut to their living standards since the 1950s, students face our own cost -of-living squeeze.

Already inflation is creating a nightmare for students on the campuses. Prices everywhere are up – rent, bills, travel, food are all increasing well past the value of our student loans. Many of us now are missing classes to save money. Even before the spiralling of inflation, one in three students were left with £50 a month to live on after paying rent and bills.

And now the government has announced yet another massive attack to our living standards with a 2.8% increase to the maintenance loan for next year, a huge real-terms cut compared to inflation which peaked at 14% in November 2022. This is nothing but an attack on working class young people, many of whom will now be considering if they can afford to continue attending university, let alone starting at all.

But none of these attacks are inevitable. The richest 250 individuals alone in Britain now own £710 billion, up from £658 billion in 2021. The estimated cost of scrapping fees and introducing maintenance grants in Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto was £12 billion. So the wealth exists in society to provide every student with a free, fully funded and high quality education. The problem is that wealth isn’t under our control!   

That’s the same reason why hundreds of thousands of workers from across the trade union movement have been taking strike action to demand above inflation pay rises, funded by taking the wealth off the super-rich.

February 1^st was the biggest day of coordinated action so far involving five national trade unions – the NEU, UCU, PCS, RMT and ASLEF. That day saw 500,000 workers taking strike action collectively and was a huge show of strength.

But workers are already looking to what the next steps in building the strike wave could be. March 15^th will be the Tory government’s budget day – when the Tories are expected to announce more attacks to workers and students to drive up the profits of big business. Trade union activists are fighting within their unions to tell their leaders to coordinate the various strikes on that day. If all workers with live ballots came out together on that day, joined as well by students, it would be a massive show of our strength as well as the Tories’ weakness.

But what voice do students and young people have in Parliament and the council chamber? Starmer has in his own words ‘wiped Labour’s slate clean’ of Corbyn’s pledges at the 2017 and 2019 general elections, which included the pledge to scrap tuition fees. That’s why Socialist Students says students and young people need a new political party.

March 15^th could also be a day that students across the country walk out of their universities and protest shoulder to shoulder with workers to demand action on the student cost of living squeeze from university management and the Tories. By building a united movement of workers and students, we can win the funding students and our universities need to get through the cost of living crisis, and scrap fees altogether!

Join Socialist Students on March 15^th to demand action on the student cost of living crisis – for emergency cost of living grants, for rent controls, and for free education.

Socialist Students says:

• No more cuts to education! Back the UCU strikes!
• For emergency cost-of-living grants available for all students who need them. Replace student loans with living grants, rising with the rate of inflation
• For subsidised university canteen meals for students struggling to feed themselves
• No early closures of campus spaces due to the energy cost crisis. For heated and safely staffed campus spaces available 24/7 to students and staff who need them
• Take third-party student halls under the control of our universities, as a step towards introducing democratic rent controls
• Campaign and fight for the funding our universities need from central government – fight for free education, and make the super-rich pay for it!
• Solidarity with students and young people in struggle internationally
• Kick out the Tories! We can’t trust Starmer’s Labour to fight for us. We need a new workers’ party.
• Fight for socialist change! For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future

This branch notes:

• The significant impact of the 1 February strikes, with five trade unions taking action nationally, including UCU, as part of their own timetables of substantial industrial action
• The potential of other trade unions also in national disputes, to join further days of coordinated action, in addition to those involved on 1 February
• That NEU has announced 15 March, the day the Tory government is set to announce its budget, as a nationwide teachers’ strike, to be accompanied by demonstrations in London and Cardiff

This branch believes:

• Coordinated action is a powerful tool, to be used alongside a timetable of escalating strike action 
• That UCU should do all it can to work with other campus trade unions, Unison and Unite, to discuss strategy and coordinate strike action where possible, maximising impact
• That another day of wider coordinated nationwide strike action would be a show of strength of the trade union movement, and show further opposition to new anti-trade union laws

This branch resolves:

• To call on the UCU leadership to modify the existing timetable of action to include 15 March as a strike day, in addition to or as an alternative date in the existing strike calendar 
• To call on the UCU leadership to publicly appeal to other trade unions to also strike on 15 March 
• To back further coordinated action beyond 15 March

Below is a recording and transcript of a speech given by Birmingham Socialist Students member Lluís at the NEU strike rally in Birmingham on February 1st

Hello everyone, my name is Lluis and I am a PhD student and teaching assistant at the University of Birmingham.

The effects of the cost-of-living crisis are biting students like never before. Some have had to go through this winter with almost no heating, with houses reaching as low as 7 degrees inside. Students must complement their meagre maintenance loan with one or two part-time casualised jobs. 29% of students around the country reported they were skipping non-mandatory lectures or tutorials to save money, while around the same figure said they were choosing to study from home and attend lectures remotely. All the while they receive an increasingly substandard education, thanks to management cutting every single corner when it comes to the workload, pay, and permanence of their staff. There comes a moment where all the passion, sacrifice, and enthusiasm for teaching of academic lecturers, however immense, is not sufficient to mitigate the effects of their appalling work conditions in their teaching.

All of this can happen because when you look at Westminster there is no voice battling for students. Labour introduced tuition fees in 1998, raised them in 2004, and the Tories and Libdems raised them again to absolutely unaffordable levels in 2010. These decisions force students to face a lifetime of unrepayable debt, only to be told that their “contribution” is not enough to maintain the budgets of unis. No, they depend on international students being fleeced even harder! They went to universities with grants and no debt, but to them the suffering of students is almost like an inevitability, like it is in our nature to live in squalid homes with dodgy landlords and worrying about how to pay for groceries. It should be possible in this country to both be a student and live in a modicum of dignity! No student and no worker in this country should be deprived of their dignity!  

And after their education, what can students expect? Casualised jobs with low pay and terrible working conditions! It is so encouraging to see you all striking, because in doing so you are not only protecting your work and life conditions, but you are also protecting the future work and life conditions of today’s students.

Lecturers will be striking for 17 days more in the next two months, and I hope that in many of those days they can be accompanied by the warmth of their striking peers in other unions, a fraternal warmth that is like hellfire to the employers. You all provide a living example to students, and hopefully your courage shall prove to be contagious. It is time to put a stopgap on the constant erosion of our living conditions and show politicians and businessmen who really makes the country go around. Enough excuses, enough dilly-dallying: students and workers united in struggle can and will reconquer their life conditions and their dignity.

The night they have plunged us into is dark, but now we are bringing in the dawn of a new day, let’s make it ours, let’s win our lives back together.  

What’s the socialist solution?

Amy Sage, Bristol Socialist Students

Student housing has reached crisis point. The number of UK students facing homelessness is on the rise. A study conducted by Student Beans – a discount website – revealed that one third of students face housing insecurity. Students are struggling to secure themselves a place to stay for their studies. Instead, they are being forced to live in Airbnbs or hotels, couchsurf, or even live in their cars. This is only set to get worse.

Since 2021, demand for university education has risen by 8%. There are now over two million full-time students currently studying at UK universities. Many universities, faced with a funding ‘black hole’ due to a fall in student numbers during 2020, have been desperate to cram more and more students onto courses, particularly more lucrative international students. However, they have been over-recruiting to courses knowing full well that they are unable to provide these students with residential accommodation.

There is a student housing shortage across all UK universities with an estimated shortfall of 207,000 student beds. For those fortunate enough to have found accommodation, one third say that they don’t think they will be able to afford next month’s rent. University students now spend between 68% and 74% of their student maintenance loan on accommodation (private and university-owned housing respectively) with rents rising faster than inflation. Leaving, on average, just £150 per month for food and other living expenses, it is forcing one in ten students to use food banks.

Quality housing needed

It is not just the price of housing that is an issue, however. Many students find themselves living in poor quality, unsafe accommodation. Problems with damp or mould, lack of water or heating, and rat and insect infestations are just some of the problems students face.

Others have found themselves forced to live far away from their university. In Bristol, for example, students have been offered accommodation in Newport – about an hour away from Bristol on the train. Of course, the stress and isolation this situation causes will only exacerbate the existing mental health crisis among students.

It is clear that there is a structural undersupply of student accommodation across the UK. This shortage of housing stock has allowed predatory pricing and exploitative practices by both private landlords and third-party student accommodation providers. Universities have a responsibility to provide good-quality, affordable housing to all their students.

An expansion of purpose-built student accommodation should not be done at the expense of local communities. To stop working-class people being priced out of their cities, and to reduce strain on austerity-hit local services such as bin collections, healthcare etc, we need a democratic plan. A socialist society based on democratic public ownership of big business and the banks would be able to plan and provide good-quality homes, jobs, and services for all, students and local residents alike.

It is also clear that students need a political voice. Starmer’s Labour has ditched its pledge to scrap tuition fees for university students and offers no clear solution to the problems faced by students and working-class people, including the housing crisis. Students and young people need a new political party that can fight for its interests and fight for a socialist alternative.

Socialist Students demands:

• Scrap fees, cancel student debt, and replace maintenance loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation
• Bring third-party halls into ownership and control of the university with compensation paid only on the basis of proven need
• Introduce rent controls in all student accommodation, to be decided by democratically elected committees including campus trade unions, staff and students
• For councils to use their powers to compulsorily register all private landlords as a means to improve housing standards and implement rent controls
• No evictions for students who can’t afford rent. Ensure access to emergency cost-of-living grants for all
• Ban agency and contract fees
• Launch a mass building programme of good quality, affordable student housing under the democratic oversight of students and local communities, alongside building the council housing people need
• For a fully funded higher education system to end the student housing crisis – take the wealth off the 1%

Séamus Smyth, Nottingham Socialist Students

The Aragalaya (Sinhalese for “struggle”) protests in Sri Lanka, fuelled by a cost-of-living crisis, inspired students and young people across the world. People saw images of masses of protesters taking over the presidential palace and swimming in the presidential pool! These protests led to the resignation and flight of the president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family.

But his replacement, President Ranil Wickremesinghe has announced more cuts and austerity measures. It is obvious that this new government holds no solution for the people of Sri Lanka. Rather than changing the economic situation after he was brought into power, he has intensified the crisis through further mass repression and financial instability. He is representing the interests of the bosses not the mass of workers and poor.

Ultimately, this reflects the rottenness of capitalism: a crisis of a profit-driven system where the vast majority of wealth is accumulated by a few, and the inflating prices of goods means that people can’t afford food, fuel, or energy. It’s a system in which former colonial countries are shouldered with massive debt from the advanced capitalist countries, and the masses pay the price.

Just like in Sri Lanka, workers and young people here in Britain and around the world are experiencing a cost-of-living crisis. In Britain, one in ten students has to rely on the use of food banks as they enter higher education.

In Sri Lanka, after the protests ebbed, the government turned to repression. Many have been detained under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). Among them, Wasantha Mudalige, convenor of the Inter University Students Federation (IUSF), the largest student’s union in Sri Lanka, has been detained for over 140 days.

Socialist Students has been campaigning in solidarity with the movement in Sri Lanka and those facing repression. We want to learn the lessons from the struggle to forward socialist ideas for workers and students fighting against brutal repression and the economic crisis.

We have organised stalls and public meetings where we put forward student and trade union motions which called for the release of protesters detained under the PTA, the repeal of all oppressive laws, and to fight for the freedom of assembly, free speech and protest.

At Nottingham Trent University, we organised stalls, and mobilised on campus when the IUSF called for an international day of action on 9 November.

Prasad Welikumbura, one of the leading organisers of the movement and a member of the United Socialist Party, came to Nottingham and Leicester as part of a national speaking tour and described how the movement was developing and how the government attempted to suppress the protests. Parallels can be drawn between the Tories’ plans for new anti-strike laws to try and head off the movement here.

Socialist Students will continue to campaign in solidarity with the workers and students in Sri Lanka. With further public meetings around the country, we will continue passing motions and raising this in the movement. The solidarity campaign will be a feature of the upcoming Socialist Students conference on 18 March.

We say that the only way for workers and young people to have any future, whether in Sri Lanka, Britain or internationally, is to fight for socialist change, where society can be free of continuous economic hardship and oppression.

• Visit the ‘Solidarity with the struggle in Sri Lanka’ homepage for more information on the campaign and how your student society can get involved