Southampton Socialist Students members standing with UCU strikers on the picket line in November
The University and College Union (UCU) has announced 18 days of action in universities as part of its ongoing disputes over pay and conditions, and pensions.
These dates include 16 and 17 March, but do not include 15 March – Budget Day, when NEU has scheduled a nationwide teachers’ strike and demonstrations in London and Cardiff.
Socialist Students supports the call put out by socialists in the UCU for further days of coordinated action, including calling on the UCU leaders to amend the strike timetable to include striking on 15 March. The following is a model resolution, which students can support by forwarding to their university’s UCU branch.
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 Lluísat 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.
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%
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.
Campaigning at Coventry University
Building for the meeting at Leicester University with Prasad (right), one of the leaders of the Aragalaya
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.
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.
Students in 2023 are facing more cost of living crisis misery. Figures published by the ONS found that 91% of students at the end of last year were worried about living costs.
Rising costs aren’t only causing us stress and worry however – they’re having a direct effect on our ability to study. 29% of students reported they were skipping non-mandatory lectures or tutorials in order to save money, while around the same figure said they were choosing to study from home and attend lectures remotely.
Thousands of students have been forced to take on new debts just to get by – an indictment of the disgracefully low amount of financial support students have access to through student loans.
Under pressure from students, universities have been forced in some areas to commit extra funding to student hardship funds, and to pay small emergency energy grants to students living off campus, like at York University. The battle for genuine cost of living grants for all students, linked to the building of a movement which fights for the funding our universities need from central government, will be a key task for students who want to fight back against the cost of living crisis this term.
Despite the brief escape home many students will have enjoyed over the Christmas holidays, all of the worry and anger students felt last term will start anew in 2023. There is potential for this anger to be channelled into an organised fightback against the cost of living crisis and the marketisation of our universities.
In the fifth richest society on the planet, where the super-rich billionaires have increased their wealth by 1000% over the last three decades, the resources are there to scrap tuition fees and loans, and to replace them with living grants which are tied to the rate of inflation to provide every student with a high quality education. However those resources are in the hands of the bosses, put to work increasing their wealth instead of under the democratic control of workers and students for what we need.
Socialist Students is meeting this year on Saturday 18th March in Birmingham for its national conference. This conference will be open to any students and student societies who want to work to build a movement to say we will not be made to pay for the cost of living crisis. It will be a key event in the fight for cost of living grants, to end all cuts on campus and for free education.
Text from a leaflet produced by Socialist Students for International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November.
You can order or print this leaflet to help with your campaigning on campus here.
A recent National Union of Students (NUS) study showed at least 75% of female students have had an unwanted sexual experience while at university. One in four women in their lifetimes will be raped or sexually assaulted.
Huge gains have been won for women’s rights in recent decades, and all have had to be hard fought for. But these gains are not reflected in our experiences on campus at university, on nights out, or at work.
There is still a gender pay gap, including among university staff, which is one of the reasons for the recent strikes by the University and College Union (UCU). Women are more likely to be lower paid and in insecure employment.
During the pandemic, domestic violence was on the rise. Two women a week are still killed by a current or ex-partner.
Despite all the gains and struggles for better living conditions, against gender discrimination and for equality, sexist and misogynist attitudes still persist.
Discrimination, sexism and abuse are rooted in inequality and associated ideas about gender roles. The capitalist system we live in is based on inequalities of wealth and power that reinforces these ideas. Therefore we can’t trust capitalism, its political representatives or its institutions to end sexism.
On campus, it’s university management, intent on cutting costs, who make the decisions around procedures dealing with sexual harassment. We say its students and staff who make the university – not management. We demand a democratic say over how our universities are run, to make sure that all procedures are fit for purpose and under democratic oversight.
On nights out, Tory MPs suggest we should moderate our behaviour. Police suggest there should be more of them undercover in nightclubs. As if that would make anyone feel safe, given the recent WhatsApps between police officers which have been uncovered.
Whereas, a safer night out is possible if there is minimum staffing levels and proper training for staff to deal with different situations. But we can’t trust night club owners, looking to profit out of young people to protect us. We need a democratic say in safety and stewarding though trade unions, local communities and young people.
Also hospitality staff should feel safe and secure at work. They too shouldn’t experience sexism and should feel able to stand up to sexism at work, backed up by a trade union. We need a fully funded, free public transport network, so that people can get home safely.
We are campaigning to win these demands. Huge gains can still be made to make our lives easier and safer.
But to end sexism, gender violence and abuse means challenging the unequal and violent capitalist system. That means fighting all the forms of exploitation which exist today. From low-paid work, to the beauty industry, to care in the family and sexism.
Such a struggle will need to unite the mass of working-class people for a socialist alternative to capitalism. Huge wealth exists in society, in the hands of a tiny few. That wealth could be used to save the planet, liberate people from the daily struggles and offer a decent future for all.
That’s what Socialist Students is fighting for. Join us in that fight.
Lluis Bertolin, UCU member and PhD student, Birmingham
University staff are at breaking point.
What once used to be a prestigious profession, which offered good and secure working conditions, in the last decades has transformed into exploitative arrangements, spurred by the commercialisation of higher education.
Long, unpaid hours over contract. Fixed-term casualised contracts. Oppressive working conditions for working-class and young academics, who depend on their precarious university job to survive. A widening of the gender gap. All of these are the reality of working in higher education today.
The unwarranted threat on USS pensions is just the culmination of the contempt higher education bosses feel for their employees.
Bosses have escalated their attacks on our ability to live lives worth living, so the University and College Union (UCU) has also escalated, calling its most ambitious round of strikes yet.
I am striking because I want students to receive a proper education, delivered by lecturers who are secure in their working arrangements, and not on the brink of collapse. I am striking because I want the sector to be able to survive the greed and short-sightedness of the fat cat vice-chancellors.
Why students support the strike
Liverpool Socialist Students marching under the Trades Council banner in support of the UCU
Staff are struggling
George Phillips, Cardiff Socialist Students
This is the second time in my university life that the UCU has taken strike action, and the third time it has balloted. This shows nothing has changed – university management continues to ignore workers’ demands for fair pay, conditions and pensions.
Lecturers and postgraduate teachers are overworked, underpaid and treated as cogs in the university business machine. Postgrad teachers are on zero-hour contracts, and lecturers work 60+ hours a week, leaving them just 20 minutes on average to prepare for a lecture.
Cardiff University vice-chancellor Colin Riordan earns £289,275 a year, has use of a company car, accommodation, and up to £1,000 for private healthcare, alongside other benefits. All this while staff struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table.
Cardiff University has the money to pump millions of pounds into vanity projects, but not to pay its staff a reasonable wage. Students must stand in solidarity with striking workers, as their working conditions are our learning conditions. We must rise up together to demand better pay, conditions and free university education.
You have our full support
Noah Eden, Sheffield Socialist Students
For too long now, university staff have been subject to unfair working conditions and a below-inflation pay rise, which means a real-terms cut since 2009. This is just one of many injustices that they are fighting against.
They are also striking to end all unfair pay gaps based on race, gender and disability, to get rid of precarious employment, action to address excessive workload and unpaid work, which are further adding to the ongoing mental health crisis, and for standard weekly full-time employment contracts of 35 hours, with no loss of pay.
All these harmful policies towards staff, while vice-chancellors make obscene amounts of money, highlight how capitalism and the marketisation of universities is not fit to meet the needs of the workers. And this is why the UCU has full solidarity from Socialist Students.
This is our fight too
Matthew Bates, Northampton Socialist Students
We want to explain why students should get behind striking academic staff.
Firstly, this is our fight as students. With lecturing staff being unfairly paid and overworked, this means we aren’t getting the high-quality education we deserve and pay for in astronomical fees.
Secondly, Socialist Students backs all striking workers. This is a corrupt world of work we will be entering. We must demand a better deal for our future selves, as well as for those being taken advantage of right now.
Thirdly, university vice-chancellors are laughing with their own obscene pay deals. Under capitalism, the ruling class inflicts poorer conditions on workers, while enjoying an affluent lifestyle themselves.
Join the picket lines at your university, and show solidarity with striking staff. As Karl Marx said: “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”.
Join Socialist Students at the national UCU demo in London on November 30th!
Rally starts 1pm, King’s Cross Station, London N1 9AL
Support the UCU strikes – for joint student-worker struggle to end campus crisis!
Solidarity with 70,000 UCU members joining the strike wave and taking industrial action to defend their pay and conditions.
Give university staff an inflation-busting pay rise. Pay all staff a minimum wage of at least £15/hr. End and reverse casualisation.
Make the November 30th UCU demo in London a joint day of protest between all the unions taking or balloting for strike action. Student Unions should organise transport to London on the day.
Fight for free education. For universities to be 100% publicly funded. Make the super-rich pay.
Fight for socialist change to provide a future for workers and young people.
Socialist Students stands in solidarity with the University and Colleges Union (UCU) taking national strike action on 24, 25 and 30 November.
The UCU has been fighting for years against attacks to our universities by management and the Tories – cuts to courses, staff wages, working conditions and pensions.
But now the cost-of-living crisis threatens even further attacks. Workers and students are feeling prices go up everywhere, with our wages and maintenance loans not even coming close to covering the increase in the cost of living.
Inflation is further squeezing the income of universities, as every day running costs skyrocket. Socialist Students calls for a united struggle to scrap the tuition fee funding model, which is bringing universities to ruin.
Fully fund free education
Replace loans with grants, tied to inflation
Cancel student debt
All paid for by taking the wealth from the super-rich
We say building a common and united struggle between students and workers against cuts, and for the reintroduction of free education is central to ending the crisis we face on campus. That’s why Socialist Students is building the maximum possible student support for the UCU, including collecting the signatures of students supporting the strikes.
The 30 November march called by the UCU in London could be a key event to bring together workers taking strike action on and off campus – CWU and RMT strikers, plus civil service workers in PCS and nurses in RCN, which recently balloted successfully for strike action – with students as well.
That’s why Socialist Students is mobilising our members to that demo, and campaigning for student unions to arrange travel to London. The National Education Union (NEU) in sixth forms is taking strike action starting on 30 November, so the march that day is also a chance for sixth-form teachers and students to link up with university students in the struggle against education cuts.
Socialist Students will be visiting UCU picket lines and getting in touch with UCU branches to discuss how best to build student support for the strikes. But key now is that the different trade unions – either with live industrial ballots or currently balloting for strike action – meet to discuss coordinating action to get rid of the imploding Tory government.
Socialist Students also says that students ourselves need to get organised. This is key to building student support for the strikes, allowing us to more effectively link up with striking campus workers. It would also mean we can discuss the cost-of-living crisis that we as students face, what demands we need to fight for, and to appeal to striking university staff to support rent control, cost-of-living grants, and free education.
National UCU demo – November 30th, 1pm, King’s Cross Station, London N1 9AL
Two thirds of young people in Britain are socialists…
But what is socialism?
George Phillips, Cardiff Socialist Students
Capitalism is failing. Every section of society, with the exception of the elite capitalist class, is being squeezed and cut. Households face yet another increase in energy prices, driving millions more into poverty this winter. All this while Shell recorded profits of nearly £9.5 billion in the last three months. BP’s profits tripled to £6.9 billion, and the world’s five biggest oil companies shared profits of $100 billion in the first six months of 2022.
Billionaires’ wealth increased by $5 trillion to $13.8 trillion between March 2021 and the start of this year. The rich keep getting richer at our expense.
Unsurprisingly, in this world where prices continue to rise and pay doesn’t keep up, record heatwaves expose the climate emergency, workers’ strikes spread, war rumbles on in Ukraine and the Tory government is in chaos, interest in socialist ideas has exploded. 67% of young people aged 16-34 want to live in a socialist economic system, according to a poll by the Institute of Economic Affairs last year. But what is socialism, and how do we fight for it?
Under capitalism, the way society is currently organised, the overwhelming majority of wealth and resources – including the means of producing all the goods and services society needs – is privately owned by a small layer of individual capitalists. Decisions about what to produce and how to produce it are made with the objective of maximising profit for the bosses. The workers, who build and operate the machines and deliver services, receive just a fraction of the wealth they produce. An increasingly small fraction of this is invested in progressive technology and training, and the rest is hoarded by the capitalist bosses.
Socialism is about turning this arrangement on its head, by transferring ownership and control of the world’s wealth and resources into the hands of the many, not the few – so that production can be planned democratically to meet the needs of ordinary people.
But of course the capitalist class with all its wealth and power – including the backing of the capitalist state, the armed forces and police, and so on – is not about to hand over control without a fight! To change society in our interests means getting organised and building a mass movement.
And people are demonstrating that they are not prepared to allow private companies to continue to exploit us. Motivated by the struggle for secure, safe, and warm housing, food on the table and access to a decent standard of living, people are fighting back.
The “Enough Is Enough’ campaign, backed by the Communication Workers Union and RMT leader Mick Lynch, has set out its demands for: A real pay rise, the slashing of energy bills, the ending of food poverty, decent homes for all and taxing the rich.
But the biggest show of strength by working-class people has been the development of nationwide strike action by rail workers, postal workers, BT telecoms engineers, as well as countless local strikes. Workers in the public sector, like health workers, teachers and council staff, are voting on whether to strike this autumn.
By refusing to work, the source of the bosses’ profits is cut off. Already, the strikes have given a glimpse of workers’ potential power – the effects of no trains, bins not being collected and post undelivered is clear for all to see. Coordinating the strikes, with workers in different industries taking action together, would demonstrate that power further.
Fearful of strikes spreading, like they have to Amazon warehouses, the mainstream capitalist media has tried to turn the public against the strikes, but they are not getting their way! A recent poll found that nearly 75% of people supported the RMT rail strikers’ demands. RMT leader Mick Lynch has galvanised a layer of workers and youth with his media appearances taking down journalists and political commentators. The Trades Union Congress, which brings together the trade unions, reported a 700% increase in traffic on its ‘Join a Union’ webpage in June.
All of these strikes bring workers into conflict with their bosses. But politically, there is no mass party fighting on the side of working-class people. On top of the decade of cuts and privatisation, the Tories continue to push for more restrictive anti-trade union laws, adding to the existing ones kept in place by previous Labour governments. Labour leader Keir Starmer continues to stick two fingers up to workers, disciplining MPs for backing workers’ demands for pay rises and backtracking on every promise made in his leadership campaign. And Labour’s proposals to deal with the cost-of-living crisis fall short.
The root of Labour’s inadequacy is that it is unprepared to seriously dent the bosses’ profits, let alone call for re-nationalisation of the railways, Royal Mail and BT – among others.
The Labour Party no longer represents working-class and young people; like the Tories it serves the well-off in society and big business. A new mass workers’ party, with the backing and democratic involvement of the trade unions with their millions of members, could put up a challenge at the ballot box and popularise demands that would truly start to deal with the cost-of-living crisis. Fighting to build such a party is a crucial task in the fight for socialism.
The huge rallies in support of Jeremy Corbyn in his campaign to be leader of the Labour Party showed the potential for young and working-class people to be mobilised by demands such as a £15-an-hour minimum wage, rent control and free education. A new party could quickly grow. But to succeed in the long term it would need to be armed with a socialist programme.
Capitalism is in deep crisis and cannot afford substantial reforms. The bosses seek to claw back any limited concessions as soon as possible in their quest for profit; this is even more the case in periods of economic crisis. Look how quickly access to free Covid testing was withdrawn, or the extra £20 a-week Universal Credit during Covid!
The UK economy is falling into a recession that is predicted to last until at least the end of 2023 – the biggest economic downturn since the 2008 financial crisis – and for many young people, it’s not the first in our lifetime. Inflation, a measure of the increasing cost-of-living, is set to exceed 13%, heaping more misery on ordinary people.
Periodic crisis is inherent to capitalism. Only rational planning of the economy, made possible by nationalisation of the biggest companies and banks under democratic working-class control and management, can lay the basis for a decent future for us all.
Students are being hit by the cost-of-living crisis as much as workers. Maintenance loans are not enough to cover rent, bills, travel and food. One in ten students rely on food-banks, according to the NUS. In recent years there has been a 300% increase in the number of students owing over £100,000 in student debt. The Tory-imposed crisis in Higher Education funding fuels course closures, attacks on teaching staff and deteriorating learning conditions. In 2021, one student took their own life every four days. Students have no choice but to fight back.
Socialist Students is a campaigning organisation. We fight for demands that would transform students’ lives: free education, living maintenance grants, and rent caps. But we also make it clear that to win those demands on a permanent basis and secure a decent future, we need to bring about socialist change. Mass movements of students and young people together with the economically powerful working class, organised around a socialist political programme to take the wealth and power off the capitalist class, can achieve that change in Britain and internationally.
Students and workers unite to kick out the Tories and fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Link up with striking workers – build a movement to demand that the bosses are made to pay for the cost of living crisis
Replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation – cancel student debt, scrap fees, and make the super-rich pay
No to price rises on campuses, early closure of libraries or other campus spaces and any more cuts to our education, courses or jobs. No delays in access to student hardship funds for students in need
For third party halls to be immediately taken into the ownership and control of the university, as a step towards introducing democratic rent controls for students. Councils should use their powers to compulsorily register landlords to force action on dilapidated and overpriced student housing
In Scotland, the fight for independence has been a critical issue for many young people since the events of the 2014 independence referendum, which saw a 45-55 percentage split in favour of a ‘no’ vote. There was a massive youth turnout in the referendum, as many of us saw this as a tangible opportunity to change our lives. In the last few days before the referendum, young people filled and occupied city centres in large pro-independence rallies. Today, more than 60% of young people in Scotland support independence.
Those who voted YES in 2014 predominantly tended to be working class and young people, whereas those who voted NO tended to be older generations and the middle class. Crucially, a layer of working class people were understandably not convinced by the pro-capitalist vision of independence promoted by the Scottish National Party (SNP).
Now Scotland faces the prospect of a second independence referendum, dubbed ‘indyref2’. Recent polls on the potential result of this referendum have shown huge polarisation, with a small margin between YES and NO.
However, the Tories are refusing to allow this referendum. Against this backdrop, we call for a mass working-class movement for the democratic right to indyref2. We fight for an independent socialist Scotland as part of a voluntary socialist confederation with England, Wales and Ireland as a step towards a socialist Europe. As socialists, we stand for the right of all nations and peoples to self-determination, including the right to independence.
In fighting for self-determination and democratic rights, socialists stand for the maximum unity of workers and young people. In Scotland, the mood among both workers and young people for independence has been fed by a desire to escape Tory austerity and successive pro-business governments in Westminster.
Students must fight alongside workers to secure the right to a second independence referendum, while driving to fight out the Tories. The ongoing strike wave has demonstrated the potential power of the organised working class to fight for this. And as students, we could mobilise mass action in the form of strikes, walkouts, demonstrations and occupations to support such a movement. The mass student movement in 2010-11 has shown the potential for students to fight back, but we need democratic, fighting student organisations to lead this struggle across the UK.
With the ever-deepening cost of living crisis ripping through working-class communities, capitalism has shown its nature as a system for the rich that is in terminal decline. In 2014 the main campaign for a NO vote, ‘Better Together’, warned that Scottish independence would bring economic calamities like wildly increasing energy bills and spiralling inflation. But is this not the reality in Scotland – and the rest of the capitalist world – today?
The ‘Better Together’ campaign, also known as Project Fear, was widely supported by the Tories, Labour, and the majority of the ruling class internationally. Within Scotland these organisations – including Scottish Labour – have since collapsed in the eyes of many workers and young people, while the SNP have made enormous gains.
Fundamentally, the pro-capitalist SNP are fearful of working class mass organisation to secure the right to a second referendum. The threat of a workers’ movement that could challenge capitalism on the issue undoubtedly threatens their rule and their programme for an independent capitalist Scotland. The SNP’s 2013 White Paper and their recent Growth Commission are modelled on so-called “successful small capitalist countries” like New Zealand, Ireland, and Belgium. These are all countries that have implemented attacks on workers and youth.
The Sturgeon-led SNP leadership looked fearfully at the mass insurrectionary movement that developed in Catalonia in 2017, when an illegal independence referendum was called, and a republic briefly declared. There were general strikes of workers, mass demonstrations, and occupations by students. The movement was only defeated by violent repression by the capitalist Spanish state – backed up by the EU – and the lack of a mass workers’ party with a socialist programme.
In the face of the Tory government’s refusal to grant a section 30 order to allow indyref2, Sturgeon’s current strategy is to appeal to the UK Supreme Court. But the court judges will likely refuse the right to a referendum. Then the only plan for the SNP would be to urge people to vote for them in the next general election and secure another “democratic mandate” if they get over 50% of the vote.
What would a vote for the SNP mean for workers and young people? Currently the SNP is in a coalition-type government with the pro-independence Scottish Greens. Both parties have been more than eager to pass on Tory cuts and pay freezes for workers. And although the SNP have not brought back fees for Scottish students, they have never lived up to their promises to scrap debt and introduce a real living grant for students.
Workers and young people in Scotland hoping for an end to poverty, oppression and exploitation will find no solace in an independent capitalist Scotland, and this is clear from the pro-austerity, anti-worker policies being implemented by the SNP and Scottish Greens today. The grim reality of the paltry offerings provided by the parties of capitalism in Scotland can only be challenged along principled socialist lines.
The experience of 2014 and the large pro-independence marches since then have shown the potential of the Scottish working class and young people to be a force for social change. We have also seen recent mass strikes of rail workers, postal workers and Scottish local government workers, who have shut down major parts of the economy and society. This power can be utilised in a mass struggle for socialist change, including the right to a second independence referendum for the people of Scotland.
It is vital that we work towards the building of a new mass workers’ party in Scotland, which can act as a democratic vehicle of the working class and challenge the pro-capitalist parties in Holyrood and Westminster. Importantly, such a party could coordinate and provide a lead to a mass working-class movement for the democratic right to indyref2.
Scottish indepenedence would be a major blow to British capitalism, weakening the prestige of the UK ruling class internationally and inflaming national movements elsewhere. But only a socialist transformation of society where the major parts of the economy were brought into public ownership under the democratic control of the working class – including major industries, banks, oil, and gas – could meet the radical aspirations of workers and youth who are radicalised by the crisis of capitalism currently. It would be a society based on collaborative planning to meet everyone’s needs, not on what makes a profit. This is the kind of world that Socialist Students fights for. If you agree, join us today.
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