Organising the fight for a socialist world in schools, colleges and universities
Queen Mary Socialist Students member addressing the conference(Photo: Berkay Kartav)
Nearly 100 young socialists met in Birmingham on Saturday 10 February for Socialist Students national conference. Held annually to decide the political direction of Socialist Students for the coming year, the conference brought together student organisers from over 30 university and college campuses, as well as young workers and trade unionists bringing solidarity as visitors.
This year’s conference took place in the midst of the huge protest movement against Israel’s brutal onslaught on Gaza, which has seen thousands of students across the UK protesting. Delegates from a number of Socialist Students groups reported on successful protests and walkouts they had organised in their colleges and universities. Conference agreed unanimously that Socialist Students should “continue its campaigning to build a young, socialist pole of attraction within the current anti-war movement”.
The importance of building support for socialist ideas to end war was underlined in the opening discussion on the global crisis of capitalism, which outlined the growing fault lines for conflict around the world. Added to the deepening environmental crisis, the soaring cost of living and attacks to our democratic rights, the recent outbreak of major wars – first in Ukraine and then in Gaza – shows the dystopian character of capitalism today. That’s why delegates voted for Socialist Students to “reaffirm our commitment to fighting for a socialist world, free of exploitation and oppression”.
The rest of the conference was all about how Socialist Students groups go about doing just that – practically putting forward what steps we can take now to organise the fight for a socialist world within our schools, colleges and universities.
Socialist Students organisers reported different initiatives that they had taken, or were planning to take, on their campuses – campaigning for things such as rent controls in student housing and standing candidates in student areas in the upcoming local elections. Speakers emphasised the need to link our immediate campaigning demands to the fight for a socialist system, as the only way for improvements to our lives to be won on a stable basis.
All of those demands – whether it’s defending our right to protest, or ensuring we can afford to keep a roof over our head – point to the need for a political voice to fight in the interests of students and young people in parliament and the council chambers. This year’s conference identified the upcoming general election as a crucial opportunity for Socialist Students to organise a political fightback among students – not just to kick out the Tories, but also to offer a socialist alternative to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
Multiple speakers reminded conference about Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour leader, which saw the biggest youth movement of the past decade in support of his left, anti-austerity policies – including the call for free university education.
Socialist Students organisers have previously stood as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in local elections. This year, conference decided that Socialist Students should approach TUSC about affiliating nationally, as the best way to coordinate with other groups putting forward a “working-class challenge to the pro-austerity and pro-capitalist parties at the next election”.
The mood of delegates throughout the day was determined and optimistic. There was a real back-and-forth exchange of ideas among all the young people gathered, which continued into the breaks and the post-conference evening social. Dozens of speakers came in to speak throughout the day, including many attending their first Socialist Students conference. The sense among organisers was that we’ve got work to do now, and a world to win – and this year’s conference has put us in the strongest possible position to do that.
The wealthiest 1% hope to make social change seem like an impossible goal. But the various capitalist crises are taking their toll on young and working-class people in a way that cannot be ignored. This is why more and more young people consider themselves socialists.
This is why the Socialist Students conference is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to get involved, but doesn’t know where to start. It is an opportunity to link up with others to share and develop ideas.
It is very easy to feel politically isolated, that every effort made to fix the system is meaningless. By attending Socialist Students conference you get to see how a democratic organisation operates.
It is also a great opportunity to meet and socialise with other young socialists from up and down the country.
Socialist Students groups have a lot to prepare for.
As the Tories continue to splinter and break apart, Keir Starmer’s Labour looks set to run the country. This government will not be run in the interests of students. Starmer has shown himself to be no friend of the working class.
It’s imperative that we discuss how best to tackle capitalist policies, and defend our right to an education that doesn’t cause a mountain of debt once we’re finished.
Starmer’s Labour doesn’t just threaten students. His refusal to promise to scrap all the Tory anti-union laws means that workers will still find their rights under attack. Students and workers need to link our causes together.
The majority of Labour MPs voted with the Tories against a ceasefire in the brutal and relentless war on Gaza. Many MPs that did back a ceasefire, only did so because of the immense pressure felt by the continuous protests.
Rishi Sunak was also forced to sack ultra-right-wing home secretary Suella Braverman. This proves our actions have results. The next step forward is to discuss what we can do to put pressure on this government, with student walkouts and more.
Teachers can’t teach lessons properly because they are way too overworked and underpaid. Because there aren’t enough teachers, PhD students are heavily relied on, which drives the wages even lower.
Students enter higher education to experience what it is like to live like an adult for the first time, and to discover themselves. But they can’t even afford that. At 18 years old, they have to take a loan, almost equivalent to a downpayment for a house. It’s a predatory practice.
They then have to deal with accommodation. In the first year, you are lucky if you get a place that doesn’t smell of mould, or isn’t the size of a coat closet.
After that, you have to fight every year to get a basic room that won’t cost you your life savings. Almost all educational institutes in the UK give no support to students either, from meals or tutoring, that the teachers have to do off-hours. The system has beaten everyone. This is why students should be socialists.
As energy bills and other running costs soar to unprecedented levels, universities across the country plunge head first into a funding crisis. The Tory government stands by and watches.
Domestic tuition fees have been maintained at £9,250, so universities will rely more on international students, who can be charged more, to make up the shortfall from rising costs from record-high inflation. Top universities, including York, have resorted to lowering grade boundaries for international students in an attempt to make up this funding deficit.
The Tories are preventing international graduate students bringing their families to the UK, reviewing cutting the international students two-year window in the UK after graduation to find work, and cracking down on ‘low-value courses’.
This places a new Starmer-led government in a position where inaction will be catastrophic for the university system. Their plan of “fiscal responsibility” means course closures, staff layoffs, and universities turning to increasing accommodation rents to try and bridge the funding gap.
Without pressure from students organising across the country, Labour will be able to shirk their responsibility of fixing the higher education system. Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour stood for free education, so a record number of young people turned up to support him. For higher education to be accessible to all, we need a complete funding overhaul before there is irreversible damage.
Socialist Students calls for a free higher education system, which is properly funded, based on what universities actually need. Not based on the number of students they can cram into a lecture hall.
This would allow us to replace tuition fees with grants that we can all actually live on, end predatory rents in university-owned accommodation, and introduce fair pay and working conditions for all university staff.
Let’s make these policies a reality. We need to build a student movement that aligns itself with the struggle of the working class to demand that the Labour government fix what the Tories have left broken.
On Saturday 10 February, Socialist Students will hold our annual conference in Birmingham. A key discussion session will be ‘How should students prepare for the general election and a Starmer-led government?’
If you think we need to take action on a broken education system, if you can’t trust the Tories and Labour to fix this financial mess, if you think free education is something worth fighting for, then come to the conference. And let’s build a movement in the interest of students and the working class to stand up for us when no one else will.
The COP28 climate summit, an annual conference for countries to discuss the ongoing climate crisis and attempt to agree concrete steps that they can take to combat it, began last week.
As reports emerge that this year’s COP president, Sultan Al-Jaber, has planned to use the conference to broker business deals with his state-run oil company, it looks as if this year’s COP summit will be no different to the same capitalist talking shops that have come before.
In this article written for the Socialist Students magazine in September, Manchester Socialist Students member Sam Hey asks: what is really needed to save the planet from catastrophic climate change?
The planet is burning. July 2023 was just the latest month to be dubbed ‘hottest in history’. Wildfires have engulfed Canada, putting over 50 million people under air quality alerts. Similar fires have raged through Europe, North Africa and Hawaii this year.
Meanwhile, the British government has announced over one hundred new fossil fuel licenses to extract as much oil and gas from the North Sea as possible, in a move that Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak claims is “entirely consistent with our plan to get to net zero”!
How can we trust pro-capitalist politicians like Sunak to save us from this real-life dystopian nightmare? To reverse the impact of climate change a coordinated global effort is needed, but while we live in a capitalist system that promotes competition over collaboration, short-term profits will always come before people’s lives and the planet. Based on competition between nation-states, each acting in the interests of their own capitalist class, capitalism cannot foster the level of coordination and cooperation necessary to reverse the impact it has already made.
According to a report by the One for One campaign, banks could need as much as $4.9tn in international bailouts if net zero emissions were achieved by 2030. This would be due to what are known as ‘stranded assets’, infrastructure and resources that would become virtually worthless if fossil fuels stopped being used for generating electricity. These stranded assets present another obstacle to putting the brakes on the climate emergency, as different capitalist governments seek to prevent financial crisis while also protecting the fossil fuel assets of their country’s energy companies, banks and financial institutions.
The climate emergency confronts capitalism with an inescapable dilemma. If governments continue to sit by and allow the environment to collapse further, then they risk trillions of dollars of infrastructure being swallowed up by rising sea levels, or rendered unusable due to heat. But if they move towards seriously reducing greenhouse gas emissions, then they still stand to lose trillions of dollars in stranded assets! In either scenario, the capitalists and their politicians would try to make ordinary people pay for their lost profits. We cannot leave control over stopping the climate crisis in their hands.
We need a socialist alternative
Just look at Britain. When it comes to the ballot box, the choice is between broken climate promises in blue, or broken climate promises in red. Labour have scaled back their pledge to invest £28bn a year into green jobs and industry under the guise of ‘fiscal responsibility’. Under Keir Starmer, the Labour Party has abandoned the working class.
Capitalist parties like the Tories and Starmer’s Labour have no solutions to the climate crisis. The only solution to this crisis is a socialist one. Under a socialist system, all banks, major industries – including the major energy companies – and the monopolies would be placed in the hands of workers, not the capitalists. 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.
Achieving a socialist transformation along these lines would require mass movements, based on the working class, to overthrow capitalism internationally. However, that does not mean that workers and young people cannot fight for measures right now, which could at least slow the pace of environmental degradation. At the same time, by linking our immediate demands around climate change to the need to ultimately overthrow capitalism and replace it with a democratically planned socialist system, socialists can build support for revolutionary ideas within the climate and wider workers’ movement.
For example, Socialist Students calls now for a free, integrated, publicly owned transport system, run democratically, to help reduce environmental pollution. Because most public transport is run privately for profit, or operated by unaccountable local authorities looking to supplement budget cuts by charging rip-off fares, a large number of workers have no other option than to use their own car. Currently, many working-class people are being fined for using their cars due to so-called ‘Clean Air Zones’. But a public transport system run by workers and services users can be expansive, reliable, affordable, and much more environmentally conscious. This would actually lay the foundation for a massive shift away from individual vehicle usage.
How we process and purchase our food also has an immense environmental impact. Socialist Students stands for a food processing and retail industry under democratic control and management by consumers, small farmers and workers involved in the production, processing, distribution and retail of food. Through this we can produce food and reduce overproduction to minimise the environmental impact of wasted food and overfarming.
Socialist Students also calls for the nationalisation of the energy companies, under democratic workers’ control and management, alongside a publicly funded insulation and energy transition plan for existing housing stock, which could dramatically reduce our energy consumption quickly and cheaply. The Tories promised to insulate homes as part of a policy that committed them to net zero, but they failed to deliver. Their own Climate Change Committee said: “the UK continues to have some of the leakiest homes in Europe and installations of insulation remain at rock bottom.” It is clear, as the big energy companies continue to achieve record profits, that the Conservatives have no intention of carrying out any green policies that would impact on these, and therein lies the problem at the heart of the government’s inaction.
Build a mass party that fights for us
All of these demands also point to the need for a political party that could begin to implement them. 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. However, Corbyn’s anti-austerity programme has been ripped up by Starmer and his Blairite leadership, which is now firmly in control of the Labour Party. That’s why Socialist Students calls for a new mass workers’ party, armed with a socialist programme, which stands for a very different agenda than just lining the pockets of the capitalists.
It cannot be overstated how devastating the climate crisis will become if left to the hands of capitalism. Socialist Students wants to take the issue of the climate crisis into workplaces, trade union branches, and universities, and organise around it. We want to work with any groups who want to fight climate change – for example, holding joint meetings, debates on the way forward, and organising protests together. We say that the only way to end climate change is through socialist change. If you agree, then join us!
Get the latest issue of Socialist Student, the magazine of Socialist Students, to read this article and more. Written and edited by members of Socialist Students.
Available from our resources page, or to purchase from your local Socialist Students group
Build the student walkouts against Israeli state terror!
Join young socialists against war!
Thousands of young people have been part of the millions who have marched in recent weeks against the murderous siege of Gaza by the Israeli state.
We’re furious at the hypocrisy of the Tories, Starmer’s Labour Party and pro-capitalist governments around the world which claim to stand for peace and democracy, yet support the brutal onslaught of the Israeli state against innocent Palestinians because it suits their interests. This is on top of them turning a blind eye to the daily oppression and persecution the Palestinian masses have suffered for decades.
Now, students are taking the struggle back to their schools and colleges. Thousands have walked out of classes and marched to demand an end to the onslaught on Gaza. Students in Bristol and London marched to the offices of their local MPs to voice their anger at the Israeli state’s bombardment of Palestinians.
The fact that some Labour MPs, under mass pressure from their constituents, were forced to vote for a ceasefire in Parliament against Labour leader Keir Starmer’s orders shows that when they think their cushy parliamentary careers are on the line, they can be pushed back!
It also shows the role that students and young people can play in building the struggle for Palestinian liberation here in Britain. That’s why we need to build our movement, organising gate protests and marches locally to keep up the pressure on and expose all politicians who support war and cutbacks.
A key way to strengthen our movement would be the establishment of students unions at our schools and colleges. Such organisations could provide a democratic forum through which students could come together to discuss how to most effectively build the movement against the siege of Gaza, help mobilise and protect students from any attempts to restrict our right to protest, and to organise future campaigns against attacks to our futures and education here in Britain.
Alongside getting organised in our schools and colleges, students need a political fightback as well. As the vote in Parliament on the question of a ceasefire demonstrated, all the establishment parties back war and the capitalist system which demands it. We can’t put any trust in Starmer, or the other parties which represent capitalism, to stand up for the oppressed Palestinian masses or working class and young people here in Britain.
That’s why we need to challenge them at the next general election – part of the struggle to build a new mass political party that fights for socialist change and stands on the side of the oppressed masses in Palestine and the working class internationally.
The truth is that no capitalist governments or institutions can win liberation for the Palestinian masses or establish lasting peace in the region, because they all represent and defend the profit-before-all-else system of capitalism, which relies on division and oppression to maintain its rule.
But the global mass movement in support of the Palestinian masses points towards the force capable of ending this rotten capitalist system – the working class – and the need to establish a new socialist society based on the democratic public ownership of society’s wealth and resources, and solidarity and cooperation, not profit and war. Join the socialists to be part of that fight.
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students
Over ten thousand slaughtered at the hands of the Israeli state in Gaza. It’s no wonder that the demos across Britain and the world have been so big.
Young people have been spearheading the movement, motivated by anger at what the Israeli state is doing, but also anger at the hypocrisy of politicians, Tories and Labour.
Suella Braverman tried to stop us from protesting, she tried to brand the marches as ‘hate marches’, but now she is out of her job. The Tories are there for the taking. We don’t have to stop at getting Braverman out, we can get the whole lot out!
Thousands of students have already walked out of their classes to protest against the war on Gaza. We want to see more of that, and discussion about the ideas needed to end war and oppression.
We want to see protests outside of school gates, marches to local MPs’ offices or a lobby to demand they explain their position on the Israeli state’s onslaught in Gaza.
We should say to those politicians that if they are unprepared to stand against war and to fight for a decent future for young people, then we are going to organise to stand candidates against them.
We have to continue to build this movement against war and capitalism. Young people can be the fiercest fighters for that kind of movement and for a socialist future. Because we have only ever known capitalism as a system in crisis – with a lack of affordable housing, cost of living rising and our education system crumbling.
Black Lives Matter, the Sarah Everard protests, and now over Gaza – young people are fighting back against racism, sexism and war. We need to fight for an end to the system that produces and reproduces all these horrors.
That’s why Socialist Students is joining Young Socialists in campaigning to build a socialist youth movement against war – centred on schools, colleges and universities.
Students at the University of Northampton are coming out in protest against appalling conditions and extortionate rent. As part of our campaign led by Socialist Students, we are preparing to protest to voice our anger and disgust at the housing crisis.
St John’s Halls is a university-owned block of flats, many of which are in dire condition. Students have to pay £153 a week to live in unsafe, unsanitary flats. The campaign’s key demand is that the university takes immediate action to improve living conditions at St John’s Halls and across all student accommodation.
Already, this campaign has been successful in winning one of its demands. At the start of the academic year, the University of Northampton charged an extra week’s rent to students living in St John’s Halls. There was no prior notification and it was not mentioned in the contracts. But a groundswell of student anger forced the university to reverse their decision and repay all St John’s residents in full. It’s obvious that university management is afraid of this campaign and it shows what we can do when we organise.
Although we won the rent refund, we will continue to fight for better living conditions. Many flats have no running water, hobs and ovens don’t work (which the bosses fail to fix) and there are wide gaps underneath doors – a major issue for fire safety and privacy. Students complain of showers not working, poor heating and broken plug sockets. You have to question where the extortionate rent we pay actually goes?
At the last meeting of Socialist Students, campaigners came together in preparation for a protest, making placards, writing speeches and coming up with chants for the big day. The university has already been forced to roll back one of its greedy attacks on student living conditions. With mass coordinated action, just think what could be achieved. Join us in the fight for decent living conditions.
The protest took place on Wednesday 8th November outside the Northampton University SU building. Read local news coverage of the protest here:
Socialist Students is calling for protests on Tuesday 7 November, the day of the King’s Speech in which the Tories will announce even more attacks on the working class and the futures of young people.
This year’s King’s Speech comes during the horrific war on Gaza in the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of young people have been marching across the country and internationally to demand an end to the war and Israeli state terror. Socialist Students has been campaigning on campuses, calling for a mass united working class struggle to stop the war on Gaza and to fight for socialist transformation in the region, and a new mass political voice in Britain that stands for socialism and internationalism.
So join Socialist Students on a university campus or college near you to protest the King’s Speech, to kick out the Tories and fight for socialist change to end war and oppression. For information about a local protest, get in touch using the details below!
Being a student is meant to be one of the best periods of your life. Sure, there is the stress of whether you can finish your essays in time, but that is supposed to be the side dish to three or more years of growing up, enjoying not having the responsibilities of a full-time job and thus avoiding being eaten up by the exploitative capitalist system.
But in reality, students are seen as commodities by universities desperate for our fees, and with maintenance grants replaced by loans that don’t cover the cost of living. What does this look like for students? It means having to work to survive; over 50% of students now work, unable to fully focus on their studies.
It means having an average debt upon graduating in 2023 of £44,730, if you study in England. I’m a third-year student and would like to do a Masters degree. That’s another £12,000 or more of debt to be paid off separately to my undergraduate loan.
Students hardly ever pay this debt off, with the interest rates at ludicrous levels. Instead we are burdened by a stealth tax, costing graduates thousands upon thousands of pounds across their working lives. Paying off the debt from a Masters degree is an additional 6% of your income above a much lower threshold of £21,000. So if you enjoy education, good luck to your bank account!
…to worse
Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party and graduate
The Tories have snuck through a massive change in student finance. ‘Plan 5’ loans apply to new students from August this year and, crucially, they lower the salary threshold at which graduates start paying back their loans from £27,295 to £25,000.
That means far more low-wage graduate workers will have to start paying back, squeezing poorer graduates’ incomes from the start. If you were earning £30,000 a year, your student loan repayments go up from £243 a year to £450.
The debt is also written off after 40 years instead of the previous 30, leaving these 21-year-old graduates in debt almost until retirement, unless they’re one of the few graduates lucky (or well-connected) enough to land a big salary.
Also, if a student’s family income is just £25,000 or more, they cannot get the full maintenance loan for living costs. The maximum loan available to students is just £9,978 for those living away from home – far from enough to live on.
My parents saved up over years so that I could go to uni under Blair’s tuition fees. When the Con-Dem government tripled tuition fees, even with those savings and a student loan, I still had to get a part-time job after my first year. I typically worked 20 hours a week – time I should have been able to spend studying!
Students from wealthier families don’t have to worry about that. Those that can afford to pay the tuition fees from the start and can fund three years of living aren’t burdened with work or debt. From the start, the entire student loans system has been grossly unfair on working-class students. Poorer students pay more than the rich, then study less than the rich, and so get worse grades and less out of university than the rich.
It is a clearly flawed and unfair system, and students and working graduates must fight to write off the debt and for free education.
When students were paid to go to university
Roger Bannister, Liverpool Socialist Party
I was brought up in one of 36 terraced houses in a working-class cul-de-sac in Manchester. In 1970, when I went to Bristol University, I was the first person from there to go to university. My parents were both low paid, at that time my dad was earning around £600 a year, and my mum even less as a part-time typist. To get things into perspective, a newly qualified teacher then would be paid around £940 a year. If things were as they are now, with inadequate maintenance loans and massive tuition fees to pay afterwards, there is no way that I could have gone to university.
But back then, as a result of legislation from the mid-1960s, local authorities were obliged by law to pay all university fees (including student union membership) and pay all but the children of rich parents a maintenance grant. In 1970 the full grant was £340 a year, but it was means-tested according to parental income and certain outgoings. I remember that in my first year my grant was £309, my parents having to make up the difference, which they still struggled to do.
The grant was never lavish, but we could survive within a culture of frugality. Rather than buy a small loaf, two of us would buy a large one, and we would have half each, which worked out cheaper! A couple of weeks’ work on the Christmas post and a summer holiday job in a local brewery made a big difference. During the Easter holiday, when temporary jobs were rare, I used to sign on as unemployed, which students were allowed to do then, and get paid unemployment benefit.
This all meant that life at university was free from worries about money. I did not know any students that worked during term time, so we could concentrate on our studies, buying our textbooks out of our grants, and even managing to have a bit of recreational spending at weekends.
One other difference between then and now was that the National Union of Students (NUS) was more militant. National student strikes were called to defend grants or to push the case to have them increased. I was surprised that when grants were ended, and tuition fees introduced by the New Labour Blair government, there seemed very little action from the NUS. Socialist Party members, as part of the campaign ‘Save Free Education’, pushed for the NUS to act to prevent the fees-based model, expanded upon by Tory-led governments decades later.
Socialist Students fights to:
Stop the Tory stealth fees attack. Cancel all student debt, scrap tuition fees and take the wealth off the 1% to fund it
End the student cost-of-living crisis. Replace maintenance loans with grants students can actually live on, rising with costs
Students and campus workers unite to fight for the funding our universities need
End the student housing crisis, for third-party halls to be brought back in-house, with democratic control to make sure student quality is good-quality and affordable
Racism in Britain today takes many forms; whether physical or verbal abuse, disparities in the workplace, discrimination in education, inequality in housing, or antagonism from all branches of the law, countless people fall victim to the plague that capitalism has enabled to fester.
For socialists the question is how we fight to rid society of the grotesque stain of racism. We take inspiration from Black Panther leader Fred Hampton’s demand that to finally eradicate racism, poverty and inequality, socialist change is needed: “We’re going to fight racism not with racism but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism but we’re going to fight it with socialism.”
Capitalism is a system based on exploitation and oppression. Racism was intrinsic to the development of British capitalism through the Atlantic slave trade. Racism and racist ideas are used to maintain capitalism today, as a means of attempting to sow division within the working class as the bosses seek to attack the wages and living conditions of workers from all different backgrounds.
For socialists, the fight against racism is bound up with the struggle to end the system of capitalism which perpetuates racist division. Socialists fight to unite workers of different backgrounds in a common struggle against big business and their system of capitalism through a socialist programme. Studying previous movements against racism is vital and must include the work of the Black Panther Party.
The Black Panther Party, initially The Black Panther Party for Self-Defence, was founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was described by the FBI’s infamous J. Edgar Hoover – witch-hunter of socialists, trade unionists, Black activists, LGBTQ+ workers (so-called enemies of the US capitalist state) – described the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” in 1969.
Racism, poverty, and capitalist hypocrisy
The Black Panthers’ inception was preceded by the migration of over five million Black people from the Southern states to the Northeast, Midwest, and West during the Second World War. With this came the harsh revelation of the hypocrisy behind the US government’s war propaganda. While the American ruling class preached of a crusade against the racism of the Nazis, within the US, continued the subjection of the Black population, many of whom would have been veterans of the war themselves or families of its victims. From segregation under Jim Crow laws, to abject poverty, discrimination and bigotry of the bosses, and continued brutal violence at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, racism remained a tool in the hands of the American ruling class.
Frustrations exploded in the 1954-68 civil rights movement. Partially inspired by liberation movements against Western imperialism worldwide, Black people across the US were roused to action against their continued disenfranchisement under US law. The efforts of this movement urged the gradual repeal of many of the laws that had previously allowed racial segregation and discrimination, culminating most prominently in the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which banned, on paper, discrimination on the basis of race in areas such as education, business, and housing.
Despite this victory in the legal arena, the economic realities of Black Americans’ lives saw little to no improvement in the following years. Black unemployment continued to steadily increase during the late 1950s and early 60s, 32% of Black Americans remained firmly below the poverty line, 20% had spent time in prison by 1971, and were generally victims of violence at the hands of the police and groups like the Third Ku Klux Klan.
The Black Power movement
Against this backdrop, among a new politicised generation of young Black people, the civil rights movement was succeeded by that of Black Power. Prominent activists in the late 60s and early 70s, including some heads of the civil rights movement, rejected what were perceived to be the more moderate tactics of the civil rights movement, with some even adopting socialist ideas in the recognition of capitalism’s role in the continued oppression of the Black population.
Malcolm X in particular, whose ideas are often misrepresented in official historical narratives of the civil rights movement, increasingly developed interest in socialist ideas during the later years of his life. Previously following the Black nationalist ideas of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became more specifically critical of capitalism. “You can’t have capitalism without racism” Malcolm X said, drawing the links between the divide and rule tactics of the capitalist system.
The wider Black Power movement had in large part adopted the ideology of Black nationalism, inspired by organisations like the Nation of Islam and Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA), the latter having seen its heyday in the late 1910s. Black nationalism argued for the organisation of Black people fighting racism, separate and in isolation from workers and young people of different backgrounds. In reality, these ideas served to potentially strengthen divisions amongst workers and cut across the building of a united working-class fightback against racism and capitalism.
The UNIA’s popularity after the mid-1920s declined as an increased tempo of class struggle, particularly in the 1960s, united workers of different backgrounds in a common struggle against the bosses and capitalism.
What made the Panthers different was its direct engagement with the material realities of working class Black Americans and through placing their grievances within the context of class struggle – Bobby Seale famously evoked strike action when discussing the necessity of a wider workers’ movement to dismantle the “boss class”, declaring that “unity is strength”, as he decried those “[obscuring] the struggle with ethnic differences [as]…aiding and maintaining the exploitation of the masses.”
These ambitions were limited to an extent by the continued exclusion of Black people from some areas of the wider labour movement, hence the Panthers’ encouragement of political organisation solely within Black communities. But their commitment to building a united movement with workers of different backgrounds was demonstrated in their collaboration with political bodies representing other ethnic groups, such as the Puerto Rican Young Lords of New York or the Southern white Young Patriots of Chicago, as well as their work with white activists during the Vietnam War.
Class demands and community defence
The Panthers’ down-to-earth commitment to issues facing working-class Black people was exemplified in their policy and action. Their ten-point programme included demands for full employment, decent housing, free healthcare, education reform, an end to all wars of aggression, prison abolition, and “an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our Black and oppressed communities.”
To those Black nationalists who refused to participate with the Panthers, and who accused them of being ‘engrossed with oppressor country radicals, or white people, or honkies’, Hampton replied with an unequivocal class response: “First of all we say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class… It was one class, the oppressed class, versus those other classes, the oppressor. And it’s a universal fact…Those who don’t admit to that are those who don’t want to get involved in a revolution, because they know as long as they’re dealing with a race thing, they’ll never be involved in a revolution”.
The party’s chief activity was the defence of Black communities against the brutality of the police – monitoring officers while armed to ensure that Black people’s civil rights were respected – but they also made major efforts towards the establishment of free food, clothing, and healthcare programmes in poor communities. The Panthers also ensured the inclusion of women in their activism and organisation.
The Panthers reached the peak of their influence in 1970, leading the US ruling class to increase its use of police repression – thirty-nine Panthers, most famously Fred Hampton and Bobby Hutton, were killed by police and many hundreds more arrested. Sabotage by the FBI’s illegal COINTELPRO projects also fomented much of the infighting that plagued the party in its later years until its dissolution in 1982.
While state repression undoubtedly played a large part in the downfall of the party, it is necessary to recognise that it had its own political and organisational shortcomings as well. Although it had considerable influence in Black communities, the party was not oriented consistently to the working class, instead mostly targeting the unemployed. This meant that, despite the party’s valuable work, it sank little roots amongst the organised working class and within the workplaces, weakening their ability to build a powerful united working class movement to really challenge American capitalism.
This was combined with a tendency to substitute mass organisation for the Black Panthers’ own activities, in particular its armed demonstrations. As Huey P. Newton later reflected, the result was a “revolutionary vanguard” with little interest in involving or encouraging the masses in its work, with the party often “operating outside the…fabric” of the communities that it occupied.
The experience of the Black Panthers provides vital lessons for those looking to build a mass movement to defeat racism and capitalism today. The explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 in the US, Britain and internationally demonstrated a new generation of young people drawing the links between the racism Black and Asian people face on a daily basis and the profit-driven capitalist system.
Socialist Students stands for the building of a united and common working-class struggle against the capitalist system which has racism woven into its DNA, and the struggle for a socialist world free from all forms of racism, bigotry and division.
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Sexual violence and harassment are endemic at UK Universities. In a national survey conducted by The Student Room and Revolt Sexual Assault between 2017 and 2018, 62% of students and recent graduates reported that they had experienced some form of sexual violence. While sexual violence is not an issue that exclusively affects women, female students reported much higher rates of harassment and assault than male students.
In a more recent survey, it was revealed that 370 allegations of sexual assault on university premises and 320 reports of rape had been made to the police since 2019 – averaging over three a week! Given what we know about how underreported incidents of this type are, this is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Despite these staggeringly high numbers, however, many students feel they cannot report their experiences. In the Revolt report, only 6% of those who had experienced sexual assault or harassment reported the incident to either the police or the university. When asked why, students stated that they either didn’t know how to report it or expressed fears that they would not be taken seriously.
Such fears are not surprising when you consider the case of one female student at the University of Bristol who reported rape by a fellow student, reported in the Independent. She reported the assault to the university and, rather than taking action against her alleged attacker, they simply told her not to go near or contact him. This inaction on the part of Bristol University meant that the female student kept running into her attacker and was even forced to take an examination in the same exam hall as him.
It is not just students who are experiencing sexual violence on the campuses, however. One survey found that one in ten college and university staff have experienced workplace sexual violence in the last five years, the majority responding that they did not report it to their employer. Where reports were made to the employer, some described being pressured to resolve complaints informally to avoid reputational damage.
This response highlights a pattern of behaviour by some university bosses where, rather than acknowledging the scale of the problem, they try to minimise or conceal the extent of sexual misconduct on campus. One third of universities have been found to use Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) which silence student complaints about sexual misconduct, harassment and bullying, allowing Higher Education institutions to prioritise their reputation over student and staff safety.
Union and student-led inquiry
We urgently need a trade union and student-led inquiry into the true extent of sexual misconduct on the campuses. Trade unions should be demanding that universities end their use of NDAs in cases involving allegations of sexual misconduct, which are used only to conceal the extent of the problem and avoid taking responsibility for the issue.
We also need democratically organised and controlled committees, involving staff, students and specialist support services that can properly investigate allegations of sexual violence involving students and university staff, both on and off campuses.
There are also practical measures that can be implemented to improve student safety, including accessible and trusted campus wardens; chaperoned night transport; zero-tolerance policies in university facilities; adopting a community bystander training programme, giving anyone witnessing abusive or discriminatory behaviours the confidence to intervene or offer help. Specialist services offering support to those who have experienced sexual misconduct, which have been decimated by capitalist austerity, need considerable investment so that they are able to offer vital services to those who need them.
However, it is also important to understand where gender oppression and violence against women come from. Research conducted in 2020, ‘Unsafe Spaces’, highlighted the role of a ‘lad culture’, prevalent particularly in student sports clubs, in the rise in incidents of male sexual violence against women. They argued that it created a ‘toxic atmosphere’ which leads to sexual assault and harassment.
While the impact of this cannot be denied, we have to look more broadly at the causes of violence against women. Ultimately, individual attitudes are shaped by the social and economic context in which we live. Capitalist class society is the root cause of today’s sexism and sexist ideas as its structures and ideology perpetuate the idea that women are inferior and their bodies are commodities or objects.
Ultimately, to tackle the root causes of violence against women, both on and off the campus, a complete overturn of the existing social and economic structure of society is necessary, to replace the rotten capitalist system with socialism. A system based on democratic workers’ control of what we need, not divisive competitive capitalism.
Socialist Students demands:
A student and trade union-led inquiry into the full extent of sexual violence and harassment on campus
An end to the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements in cases involving allegations of sexual misconduct
Democratically organised and controlled committees, involving staff, students and specialist support services to investigate allegations of sexual violence involving students, both on and off university campuses
Fully funded services on campus to ensure staff and student safety, including support services, campus lighting, safe transport and non-exploitative, affordable housing
End the capitalist system that maintains and promotes sexist ideas. Fight for a socialist alternative
Get the latest issue of Socialist Student, the magazine of Socialist Students, to read this article and more. Written and edited by members of Socialist Students.
Available from our resources page, or to purchase from your local Socialist Students group
Socialist Students 