No to Tory attacks on young peoples’ future

The Tories are set to announce their latest spending plans on 6 March, budget day. It will be yet another budget for the super-rich, enacted in the interests of big business and the banks.

Of course, the Tories will do nothing to solve the crises facing students and young people – a broken housing market, the sky-high cost of living, decaying public services, climate breakdown – the list seems endless.

So it’s no wonder the Tories are so hated. Plagued by infighting and scandals, they are headed for disaster in the next general election, which has to be called this year.

But who else can we vote for?

Many will look to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party as the best tool to get the Tories out, albeit as the ‘lesser of two evils’. Starmer has made clear that his Labour Party will rule in the same capitalist interests as the Tories, repeating his catchphrase of ‘fiscal discipline’ – a not-so-subtle codeword for more cuts and privatisation.

Starmer has transformed the Labour Party into a ‘safe pair of hands’ for big business, which puts capitalist profit-making before the lives of ordinary people, and young people’s futures. How can we trust a Labour leader, who has backed the slaughter of Palestinians, to defend young people and workers in Britain?

Socialist Students supports any election candidates prepared to make an anti-war, pro-working-class stand against the Tories, Starmer’s Labour, and all the other establishment parties. We also want to help stand student candidates in the general election, who put forward socialist demands to give young people a future – including free education, rent control, and a real living wage for all.

Socialist Students says:

• Tories out! But Starmer’s Labour doesn’t fight for us
• We need election candidates who stand against poverty, war and oppression
• Build a new workers’ party with socialist policies
• Prepare to build a new student movement against a future Starmer government
• Fight for the socialist transformation of society in Britain, and across the world

Get campaigning 👇

Queen Mary Socialist Students

Queen Mary university security raided the campus office of the University and College Union (UCU), on 20 February, on the orders of uni management. They removed all posters and messages around the office showing support and solidarity with the people of Palestine and Gaza.

The previous day, management had requested access to the office. Management claimed the posters were having a “chilling effect on freedom of speech”.

The UCU agreed to allow them in, but explicitly said that all the posters and material should be left alone.

But instead, campus security broke into the office without permission and, before proper access was arranged, tore down any material in support of Palestinians or a ceasefire, damaging the office in the process.

Management’s defence was that prominently displayed signs may be misconstrued as the stance of the university itself, rather than the UCU. This is not even possible, as all these posters had a clear UCU logo on them.

This is a blatant attack on freedom of speech and freedom of association. Queen Mary management is infamous for its continuous attack on the rights of staff and students.

Just last year, Queen Mary management threatened to deduct 100% of pay from teachers taking part in a marking boycott, just one part of their job, and tried to have students snitch on striking lecturers. Queen Mary has a history of intimidating and threatening students protesting during rent strikes.

Queen Mary plays a national role for universities in testing and pushing these types of attacks. This serves managements on other campuses. They can say: ‘We’re only docking 50% pay, we’re not invading your union offices. So you should accept our ‘milder’ attacks’.

Students have been protesting Queen Mary university’s complicity in the slaughter in Gaza. Queen Mary invests in Barclays, a bank that provides financial services to arms companies supplying the Israeli army. In many on-campus student-organised protests, students have continuously called for our institution to divest funds from Barclays, and formally condemn what is being perpetrated by the Israeli state.

Of course, management just dance around these demands, and claim that this would be a ‘conflict of interest’, and that any condemnation of the Israeli state could be seen as antisemitic.

The Tory government has openly tried to stop students on campus from even talking about Israel-Palestine, not to mention protesting about it. And many institutions are following in their footsteps. SOAS university in London suspended several students who organised and participated in a rally in solidarity with Palestinians, before management was forced to back down.

This is a very clear attack on the democratic right of workers to organise. Rash and extreme acts such as this show just how worried university management and the Tories are by the collective efforts of students and unions.

We will not stand idly by as they try and strip us of these rights. Jo Grady, general secretary of the UCU, has recently launched the union’s ‘Exposed’ campaign, in order to challenge right-wing and Tory government attacks on free speech in education.

Jo Grady should go to Queen Mary, and tell the UCU branch that the whole of the union is behind them. Jo Grady should immediately release a statement, through the union, condemning this attack.

The UCU leadership should call and mobilise for a national demonstration in support of the Queen Mary branch, and against ongoing attacks on trade union organising rights and freedom of speech, as well as coordinating a solidarity campaign across the whole union. The student union should add its voice to mobilising people to oppose this attack too.

Queen Mary management can’t be allowed to succeed in this attack, and the whole of the student and workers’ movement must come to defend the UCU.

Solidarity with Queen Mary UCU!

Queen Mary management can’t be allowed to succeed in anti-union attacks on right to protest!

• UCU leadership should call and mobilise for a national demonstration in support of QMUCU branch, and show the branch that the whole union is behind them
• QMUL students’ union must mobilise students against this attack too – and appeal to the NUS and other students’ unions nationally to add their voice against this attack
• Defend the right to protest and show solidarity with the people of Palestine and Gaza

Socialist Students statement: Tory hypocrites clamp down on students’ right to discuss Palestinian liberation

16th Oct 2023

The following article has been adapted from a discussion document submitted to this year’s Socialist Students national conference by the Socialist Students national steering committee.

Capitalism today is a system in turmoil, marked by mounting instability and increased upheaval everywhere. Life for billions of people is increasingly fraught with war, environmental breakdown, falling living standards and failing social infrastructure.

The dystopian character of this era of capitalism is epitomised by the catastrophic situation currently unfolding in the Middle East. The ongoing slaughter of the Palestinian population in Gaza – and increasingly in the West Bank – by the Israeli state is a step up even from its past brutal attacks on the Palestinians. Over 1% of the population of Gaza has been wiped out since October 2023. The Israeli military onslaught aims not only to displace the people of Gaza through mass, indiscriminate acts of terror, but to destroy the infrastructure necessary for maintaining a functioning society in this area.

At the same time, the Israeli state’s onslaught on Gaza has provoked huge anger among vast swathes of the world’s population. There have been massive anti-war protests in cities around the world, most significantly in the Arab and Muslim world. There is not only outrage towards the barbaric actions of the Israeli state, but also towards the role of capitalist governments in backing up or failing to oppose Israel.

Added to the equation, there is fear among the capitalist ruling classes that Israel’s onslaught could ignite a major regional war, which would have devastating consequences for profit-making in the Middle East and internationally. It would spell a further collapse in living conditions for millions of people in the region, bringing mass death and suffering. A widespread mood against war could quickly develop into a generalised mass movement. The staunchly pro-capitalist Arab governments are terrified of being overthrown by a movement like the one that developed in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 – the ‘Arab Spring’, which deposed dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.

Nonetheless, attempts by different capitalist powers to prevent the spread of the conflict have failed to this point. Not only has the Israeli onslaught not stopped, but the US government – backed up by the Tory government and Labour opposition here – has launched air strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. US imperialism has desperately hoped to stem the development of a regional war yet has taken measures which could have the exact opposite effect! This situation illustrates the weakening control that the capitalist class now wields over developments within its system.

New multipolar world

In particular, the recent increase in national conflicts and war globally – most strikingly illustrated first in Ukraine, then in Gaza – marks the end of an era in which the US was the completely dominant ‘superpower’ following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Stalinist states in Eastern Europe.

The Stalinist regimes were brutal dictatorships which bore no resemblance to genuine socialism, but they were based on planned economies which for a time took the productive forces forward, even despite their gross bureaucratic mismanagement. It thus represented an alternative system to capitalism and acted as a counterweight to US imperialism. After the collapse of Stalinism from the late 1980s, western capitalism – led by the US – went on the offensive, restoring profits by stepping up its exploitation of the working class globally. It did so through a ‘two-pronged’ attack: materially benefiting from the integration of 1.2 billion extra workers into the world capitalist economy; and ideologically gaining from the seeming triumph of capitalism as the ‘only possible system’. Both ‘prongs’ in turn reinforced one another, leading to a collapse in workers’ consciousness and organisation.

That brief ‘unipolar’ period of US dominance has now given way to a multipolar world of growing tensions between different national capitalist classes. The growing prospect of war globally has led to a dramatic increase in arms spending across the capitalist world.

Added to the growing threat of military destruction, there is the deepening environmental crisis, which threatens to destroy life and resources, and make vast parts of the world uninhabitable. The recent spike in inflation globally, accompanied by soaring interest rates, has significantly increased the cost of simply existing from day to day. This is especially the case in the neo-colonial world, but also in supposedly ‘advanced’ capitalist countries like Britain, where living standards have fallen at their sharpest rate since the 1950s. Beneath all these trends, economic growth across the whole capitalist system is slowing – and there is no prospect of a new, sustained period of economic growth.

Search for an alternative system

The capitalist system is being hit by a series of multiple crises – economic, political, environmental, geopolitical – which all impact on and exacerbate one another. All of this has meant further misery and suffering for the vast majority of the world’s population.

It is therefore increasingly difficult to not draw the conclusion that something is fundamentally wrong with the way that the world is currently organised. There is a widespread sense that the world is being dragged backwards. Large numbers of young people especially look upon the future with, at best, little to no enthusiasm. At worst, the outlook is one of despair. Capitalism itself is laying the basis for the ideas of socialism to gain mass appeal among workers and young people in the coming period.

Ultimately, capitalism will not collapse under the weight of its own crises; it will need to be overthrown. The capitalist class and ruling elites have a stake in maintaining this system, which grants them power and material comfort via profit. They will fight tooth-and-nail against any perceived threat to capitalism, even if that means inflicting further attacks on the living conditions of the world’s majority.

However, the tools at the disposal of the capitalists for doing so are severely rusted. They find themselves with an increasingly unreliable and unstable pool of political representatives, as many of the ‘traditional’ parties they used in previous periods have declined or collapsed. This process of decline will continue to threaten all parties who seek to work within capitalism, as they will be unable to deliver any substantial reforms.

The exceptional period of capitalist boom after the second world war, in which social-democratic and ‘communist’ (now former) mass workers’ parties were able to win reforms in the name of the working class, is not coming back. Now, the capitalist class is forced to rely on increasingly authoritarian measures; they are far less willing to offer concessions to the working class as they did in the past, because profits are much less reliable.

However, the capitalists are not guaranteed to get their way. A heavier use of repressive laws can only invite more social explosions. This was shown recently by the massive year-long movement that developed in Israel against the Netanyahu government’s judicial reforms. International youth-led movements like the school climate strikes and BLM movement are also increasingly likely to break out, and students will also find ourselves pushed into struggle. The mass movement in Sri Lanka in 2022, which swept aside the corrupt presidency of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, gives a glimpse of the important role that young people and students can play within political uprisings.

Students and workers unite

Moreover, the working class in a number of countries has re-entered the scene of history at a level not seen in a generation. In Britain, hundreds of thousands of workers have taken strike action and “refused to be poor”, in the words of RMT general secretary Mick Lynch. In the US, there were 4.5 million days lost due to work stoppages in October – the highest of any month for four decades. The significance of these developments is hard to overstate. While these strikes represent only the beginning of a process of the working class internationally finding its collective strength, they are the music of the future, as a capitalist system in crisis continues to provoke the working class into fighting back to defend its interests.

The working class is the only social force capable of leading the socialist transformation of society. In order to play this role, it will need its own mass parties, equipped with a socialist programme to take over the commanding heights of the economy – the banks, major industries and monopolies – and collectively run society through a democratic plan of the economy aimed at fulfilling all people’s needs. An island of socialism cannot survive surrounded by a sea of capitalism, so this socialist transformation would have to take place internationally.

Young people and students have a vital role to play in these processes. As people who have the rest of our lives ahead of us, we can be some of the most determined fighters for socialism. We also have to fight now to defend against every attack by the capitalists on our living standards and win what we need for a decent life. That includes helping to build movements against all the horrors of capitalism – war, climate change, sexism, racism, and all other forms of oppression – and linking all these issues to the wider need to transform society along socialist lines.

Any questions or comments about what you’ve read? Want to discuss more with a Socialist Students group near you? Get in touch using the form below

Sam Hey, Manchester Socialist Students

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.

Sam Hey
Manchester Socialist Students

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!

It doesn’t have to be like this – we need a socialist world!

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.

Get in touch, join us, and help build the socialist movement against war and oppression in your area.

Northampton Socialist Students

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:

https://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/people/angry-university-of-northampton-students-protest-against-prison-like-halls-of-residence-home-to-hundreds-in-town-4402992

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-67362219

Socialist Students is demanding that the University of Northampton:

• Take immediate action to improve living conditions
• Introduce rent controls in all student accommodation
• Launch a mass building programme with the local council of good-quality, affordable housing for students and local people
• No evictions for students who can’t afford rent
• Emergency cost-of-living grants for all
• Ban agency and contract fees