The working class is the most powerful force for change in society. How can students organise themselves to link up with workers in struggle and fight for socialism?

Jonathan Bennington, Swansea Socialist Students

Students this year are returning to the university campuses as a huge strike wave is spreading across Britain. Strikes throughout July and August by the National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT) and the train drivers’ union ASLEF are now the largest rail strike in the UK in thirty years involving over 40,000 workers in 14 different train operating companies. Around only one in five trains ran during the strike days, and many lines had to close completely close, causing disruption to millions of people around the country and to the bosses’ profits.

Since then, the floodgates have opened with more and more workers turning to strike action to hit back at on these historic attacks on our living standards. Postal and communications workers in the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) have recently taken action involving over 150,000 workers. And ballots in trade unions organising workers in the civil service, schools, buses, universites and local government are underway. Even barristers have been on strike!

As well as nationally, there has been the spreading like wildfire of local industrial disputes – including bin workers in Coventry who won a 12.9% pay rise in a six-months-long dispute against the Labour-led council who sub contracted agency workers and spent over £3 million in an attempt to break the strike.

It hasn’t only been within traditionally unionised sectors that industrial action has taken place. Strikes and action in the hospitality industry – an industry overwhelmingly made up of younger workers and students – by the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union and Unite have taken on unfair tipping policies in Pizza Express and TGI Fridays, and strikes at just two Wetherspoon’s pubs in Brighton led to a nation-wide pay increase for Wetherspoon’s night workers.

This includes workers in the very heart of big business greed, when Amazon warehouse workers took spontaneous wildcat strike action when news reached them that they were being offered a 35 pence an hour pay increase the same day inflation hit 13%! 

Overnight the strike wave lifted the mood and confidence of millions that a fightback against the Tories and their agenda of inflation austerity is possible. The general secretary of the RMT Mick Lynch has become a new popular symbol of resistance to the Tories on the bosses, not only speaking out in the media against low pay but the effects of years of capitalist driven austerity and the spiralling of massive levels of inequality in society.Google searches meanwhile for ‘join a union’ increased by 200% in the days after the railway strikes.

But there isn’t anything magical about strike action or why the effects of strike action are so powerful. It’s to do, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explained, with the unique position the working class occupies within capitalist society.

It’s working class people who are integral to the day to day functioning of society. From the production of goods – from essentials such as food and medicine, to other goods – to the distribution of those goods and services, it’s the working class that runs society day to day. If all the bosses of the railways, Royal Mail, BT etc decided amongst themselves not to turn up to work one day, very few people would notice – but when workers within these industries collectively withdraw their labour, people take notice!

This is what provides the working class with the collective strength to not only bring single workplaces to a halt, but when organised and coordinated, entire society to a halt as well.  By collectively withdrawing their labour, workers hit the big business bosses where it hurts the most – in their profits. Strike action is the most powerful tool working class people have at their disposal in the fight against the bosses and their political representatives, and for what we as the majority need.

No wonder then that the Tories are seeking to introduce even more legislation in attempt to curb the power of the trade unions. Against the backdrop of a massive crisis for world and British capitalism, the question posed is who in society is going to pay for this crisis? Will it be us, the working class majority – or them, the super-rich? Further attacks on the right to strike are the ruling class preparing for the massive class battles which are to come.

But if the working class is the most powerful force for change in society, what role then can students play in the growing strike wave and the struggle against the Tories, as well as the struggle to transform society itself?

On the basis of capitalism, a system totally incapable of offering any kind of decent future for young people, students and young people can be amongst some of the most energetic fighters against capitalism and austerity.

This has been the experience internationally in recent years, in countries such as Nigeria, Chile and Hong Kong. Most recently in Sri Lanka, where the combined forces of the workers and students have swept aside the corrupt Rajapaksa government (see pages 10 and 11), students protesting against government attacks on free education were some of the most prepared to confront the armed forces of the Sri Lankan state outside the presidential palace. A key task facing the leadership of the Sri Lankan student movement is to offer a programme capable of building further links with the broader Sri Lankan masses in the struggle to take the revolution forward.

Back in Britain, with the long term decline in the real terms value of student loans, growing numbers of university students are forced to enter part time work in order to make ends meet while studying? Socialist Students says that any students in work should join and get active in their workplace trade union.

Notwithstanding that, students do not carry the same social weight as the working class under capitalism – students are not central like the working class is to the day to day functioning of capitalist society. Separately from within the workplaces themselves, students cannot withdraw their labour in a strike like workers can.

But by getting organised, and crucially linking up with workers in struggle, students can be a powerful force in the struggle to transform society.

This begs the question however – how can students organise themselves to link up with workers in struggle, not only in the fight for above inflation pay rises, against austerity, but for what students need as well – including the fight for living grants for students and free education? 

Socialist Students stands for the building of mass student organisations on the university campuses, capable of offering a forum within which students can democratically discuss the attacks we collectively face, and to debate out the ideas, programme and strategy necessary to fight for students’ rights. Such organisations could discuss with workers in struggle and trade union bodies about the steps necessary to build joint workers and students’ actions to fight against the Tories.

And by linking up nationally, a mighty national student movement could be built in the fight for free education, the cancellation of student debt, affordable housing for students and young people, living grants and decent jobs for all – and to take the wealth out of the hands of the 1%.

Socialist Students says:

• 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
• Replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation – cancel student debt, scrap fees, and make the super-rich pay
• Link up with striking workers – build a movement to demand that the bosses are made to pay for the cost of living crisis
• 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

Tom Green, Birmingham Socialist Students

For socialists, the 1917 October Revolution in Russia remains one of the most important events in history. It was the first successful socialist revolution anywhere, overthrowing the pro-capitalist ‘Provisional Government’ to establish the first ever democratic workers’ state, in which Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin played a central role until his death in 1924.

Lenin had led the October Revolution together with Leon Trotsky. It was Lenin’s revolutionary ideas – forged through years of debate, discussion and experience of struggle within socialist organisations – that gave him the authority and ability to co-lead the Russian working class to power in October 1917.

When Lenin wrote his famous April Theses just a few months earlier, he stood in a minority within the Bolshevik Party, which in turn was followed only by a minority of the Russian working class. But the revolutionary programme he put forward succeeded in winning over the worker Bolsheviks, who in turn had authority among tens of thousands of Russian workers, which moved the Bolshevik Party as a whole to quickly align itself to Lenin’s ideas. It was this combining of a revolutionary programme with a mass party of the working class that provided the decisive ‘subjective factor’ for socialist revolution in Russia.

Under the newly formed workers’ state, millions of workers were freed from capitalist exploitation, while peasants who had previously suffered at the hands of feudal landlords benefited from sweeping land redistribution. The death penalty was abolished, and national minorities were allowed the right to self-determination in place of the old Tsarist russification policy, which had aimed to create a homogeneous Russian culture. Furthermore, suffrage was extended to women, abortion was legalised, marital rape was outlawed, and homosexuality was decriminalised.

To this day, capitalist historians, academics, politicians and the press continue to portray Lenin as a dictator and repressor. And yet the reality is that, until his death, Lenin had played a key role in the most democratic form of government in history, formed from the soviets – councils of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ delegates – which had sprung up from the 1905 Russian Revolution.

Lenin believed in a higher form of democracy than capitalist ‘liberal parliamentarianism’, which Karl Marx famously characterised as a system that allowed “the oppressed […] once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them”.

Instead, Lenin believed in worker’s democracy, which means workers discussing and democratically planning together how to run society so that the interests and needs of everyone can be met.

In practice, workers’ democracy meant putting all decision-making before a system of soviets at a local, regional and national level. Soviets had elections, with recallable delegates whose wages matched those of the workers they were representing, unlike many capitalist liberal democracies today.

Until his death, Lenin had played a key role in the most democratic form of government in history

Prior to the October Revolution, Lenin had built the Bolshevik Party, based on the principle of ‘democratic centralism’. This is the idea that, within an organisation, there is maximum debate and discussion until a decision is reached, at which point a united effort is made by the whole of the organisation to implement that decision.

There was a rich tradition of debate and disagreement within the Bolshevik party. But crucially, once a decision was made, the whole party got behind it and acted in unity. These methods of democratic centralism helped ensure that the Bolshevik Party could act in a decisive fashion when the time came to lead the Russian working class to victory.

So, given the democratic approach consistently prescribed by Lenin, why do capitalists and their representatives go to such lengths to portray Lenin as a dictator or tyrant?

In reality, such gross historical distortions are an attempt to discredit the ideas of genuine socialism, to dissuade workers and young people from socialist ideas by having them instinctively make a connection between Lenin and dictatorship.

It was only when Josef Stalin took power after Lenin’s death in 1924 that the Soviet Union took a turn towards dictatorship. Under Stalin the state apparatus was turned into what many typically think of when they hear about the Soviet Union: severe repression, purges, and the abolition of political rights.

Stalin’s counter-revolution did away with Lenin and Trotsky’s vision of mass democracy, along with expanded political rights and the institutions to protect them. Under Stalin, working people were once again barred from political participation, and the rights of national minorities that had been extended under Lenin were swiftly revoked. Contrast this to the stance taken by Lenin, who understood that the 1917 revolution could not take place with any element of suppression and extended the right of self-determination to all national groups who had been oppressed under Tsarism.

There was nothing inevitable about the development of Stalinism, which was a complete and conscious deviation from the workers’ revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky.

Trotsky explained that a socialist society cannot survive on a permanent basis surrounded by a world capitalist market, and fought for the revolution in Russia to spread to the working classes of the world, particularly in the more advanced capitalist countries like Germany.

Unfortunately, the revolution in Russia became isolated, producing the conditions for a bureaucratic clique around Stalin to take power – but only through a protracted period of bloody counter-revolution against those who opposed the bureaucracy and its disastrous policy of ‘socialism in one country’. These opponents most notably included Trotsky, who Stalin eventually had assassinated in Mexico in 1940.

Before his death, Lenin had warned against the growing influence of Stalin, even recommending in 1922 that the Bolshevik Party Congress “think about a way of removing Stalin [from his post as Secretary-General]”. This did not stop Stalin from falsely proclaiming that he was continuing the legacy of Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union, however. Illustrating the dishonesty in these claims, Lenin’s widow and fellow revolutionary, Nadezhda Krupskaya, famously stated in 1926 that if Lenin had lived, he would have been imprisoned by Stalin!

Stalin’s attempts to identify his brutal, undemocratic regime with the ideas of Lenin have been eagerly taken up by capitalist commentators looking to convince workers and youth of the infeasibility of a socialist world. Socialists today have to answer these distortions by “patiently explaining” what Lenin really stood for: a world where, on the basis of thorough debate, discussion and collaboration, things are democratically planned and the needs and interests of everyone are considered.

Lenin didn’t get everything right – for example, in 1901 Lenin was one-sided in asserting that the working class could only understand the need for socialism if it was explained to them by the revolutionary intelligentsia. Later, Lenin corrected this view. And it was Trotsky who realised earlier than Lenin the ideas of the ‘theory of permanent revolution’, in which Trotsky explained how the Russian working class would lead the peasantry to complete both the unfinished ‘bourgeois-democratic’ tasks of the capitalist revolution and the socialist revolution in one go.

Lenin admitted his mistakes and developed his ideas through collaboration and discussion. As we enter a new period of capitalist crisis today, it remains vitally important for socialists to be discussing and debating, as we work out our ideas and the next steps towards a socialist world. That’s why socialists need democratic, fighting organisations that allow us to prepare for the struggles ahead. If you are a student and a socialist, get involved in Socialist Students today.

Zakk Brown, Manchester Socialist Students

Universities UK – representing vice-chancellors – has called for student maintenance grants to be reintroduced to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis that we face. Our rent and bills are rising, but inadequate maintenance loans have failed to rise alongside this. Socialist Students says that maintenance grants are a solid alternative to higher loan repayments, and are fairer to working-class students.

VC pay

Where could the money come from? Are university vice-chancellors willing to part with their salaries, reaching above £250,000 a year, to aid the students who pay their wages? Not likely.

Socialist Students says take the wealth from the super-rich to not just fund student grants, but a 100% publicly owned education system. This would mean higher wages for staff, rent control, better university facilities, proper funding in subjects like the arts, and free tuition. No more punishing students from lower-income families with longer and harsher loan repayments, simply because they couldn’t afford to pay up front for an education.

NUS

How can students fight for this? Currently the only thing that the National Union of Students (NUS) is organising to demand action on the student cost-of-living crisis is a letter to the Tory education secretary. It doesn’t even call for maintenance grants! A letter to a Tory minister simply isn’t enough.

A mass movement of students, linking up with workers striking for a pay rise this autumn, like the University and College Union (UCU) balloting for action, can win maintenance grants that actually cover the cost of living. This is the movement Socialist Students is fighting to build.

Socialist Students says:

• For living grants tied to the rate of inflation, not loans and debt. Cancel student debt – no to the lowering of the student debt repayment threshold!
• No to rent increases or bill increases being passed onto students. For third party accommodation to be taken over by the university as a step towards the introduction of democratically set rent controls.
• No to price rises on campuses and to course closures. Build a national student movement to fight for the full funding our campuses need and free education.
• Solidarity with the strikes – students and workers unite!
• Make the rich pay for the cost of living crisis. Bring the energy companies, the banks and monopolies into democratic public ownership to provide us with a future.

Theo Sharieff, Socialist Students national organiser

The cost-of-living crisis is set to hit students incredibly hard this term. Inflation is effecting all the basic necessities of everyday living, with food, energy bills, and rent all on the increase.

Pay for the bosses of the top FTSE 100 companies jumped up by 39% in 2021, but wages for the majority of us stagnated as we face the biggest cost-of-living squeeze since the 1950s.

Students will not be isolated from this. With inflation now running well into double digits, the maintenance loan increase of just 2.3% will leave thousands of students facing hardship and crisis this term.

Even during the summer, one-in-three students were left with £50 a month to live on after paying rent and bills – to cover food, travel, and all the educational resources students are made to buy at the start of term, including textbooks. 11% of students use food banks, up from 5% at the start of the year.

As the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite, against the background of looming recession, the prospect of students running out of money altogether midway through term and going hungry is a very real. The average student maintenance loan falls £439 short, every month. The gap was £340 last year.

Student housing failure

Before even paying the first month’s rent, however, students will have already encountered the myriad of failures in student housing. With shortages, students at numerous universities have been forced to take accommodation in different cities, after being promised a place would be available for them. Some universities have outrageously written to students to request that they defer their studies for a year.

Even for students who have somewhere to live, there are extortionate rent rises and dodgy landlords offloading bill increases onto their shoulders. Socialist Students says that third-party student accommodation providers should immediately be taken into ownership and control of the universities, as a step towards introducing rent control, decided on by democratically elected committees involving students.

After years of cuts, universities can’t provide basics

All of these issues are a continuation of what students experienced during the Covid pandemic. Then university managements found themselves unable to provide the very basic necessities for students – including spaces to sit in lecture theatres – after years of doing the bidding of successive Tory and Labour governments in overseeing various cuts and failing to invest properly in our education.

Last year, the Tories announced cuts to funding for arts and humanities courses. This was the latest in a string of moves towards running the sector on a capitalist market model, starting with the introduction of tuition fees by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1998.

Workers are striking back

Despite the myriad of attacks we are facing, the new Liz Truss government is not strong. With the backing of just a third of her own MPs in the Tory leadership race, a record breaking low, Truss faces a perfect storm of challenges – the cost-of-living crisis, incoming economic recession and above all else, the challenge thrown down by workers taking strike action to fight back against her government’s agenda of inflation austerity.

Socialist Students stands in solidarity with unions representing university workers, like the University and College Union (UCU), who are balloting for strike action to fight back against further attacks to courses, jobs, wages and working conditions. Uni support staff in Unison union are also striking over an insulting pay offer.

This presents a massive opportunity for students to go on the offensive at the same time, and launch a struggle for what we need. Socialist Students demands that university managements pledge to make readily available access to student hardship funds, ensure no price increases on campus canteens and restaurants, keep university spaces such as 24-hour libraries open, do not limit campus lighting or heating, and make no more cuts to jobs or courses.

Representing university management, vice-chancellors have been resolute in carrying through vicious attacks to university workers’ wages and conditions, and overseeing the marketisation of higher education. Now even UUK – the body bringing together vice-chancellors – has called for the replacing of maintenance loans with grants, revealing the extent of the crisis.

What UUK doesn’t address is how replacing loans with grants could be won. Socialist Students says that building a mass national student movement, and linking up with workers struggling against attacks to their living standards, could force the Tories to concede.

The money exists in Britain – the fifth richest country on the planet – to fund universities properly, and to provide students with living grants, to cancel all student debt and scrap tuition fees.

Just look at the £170 billion Truss has borrowed to subsidise the profits of the major energy companies. This measure, however, hasn’t stopped energy bills doubling on average.

It would have cost a fraction of £170 billion to take the energy companies into democratic public ownership with compensation paid to the shareholders only on the basis of proven need, and not to the fat cats. On that basis – running production and distribution of energy on the basis of need instead of profit – our bills could be slashed.

The strike wave has demonstrated to millions of students and young people the potential power of the working class when organised. Many students watching the strike wave could draw confidence from the fightback being waged by workers against the cost of living squeeze to launch a fightback of their own.

The industrial fightback is still only in its early stages. The coming weeks could see many more workers joining the strike wave, with civil servants, teachers, lecturers, healthcare and council workers all being balloted currently. Rail, Royal Mail, BT and dock workers are already on strike.

Students need to get organised

But in order to fully capitalise on these opportunities students need to get organised ourselves. This means building democratic and open student organisations which could provide a mass forum for students to discuss and debate. Discussions could involve trade unions and workers to draw up a list of demands, outline what funding is needed during the current crisis, and launch a campaign to win back that money from central government.

Student organisations could link up nationally to rebuild a movement to fight for free education. And together with workers on strike, we can build a united struggle for our demands, in addition to the battle against the cost-of-living squeeze.

The absence of student organisations, however, will not prevent struggles among students breaking out, over the cost-of-living crisis, and other stark failures of the capitalist system to deliver for young people. Just look in recent years at the explosions of anger around Black Lives Matter, the climate, and sexual harassment and violence on the campuses.

During the pandemic, thousands of students at the University of Manchester marched and protested over the issue of the university’s handling of Covid. They succeeded in removing metal fences put up around student accommodation.

We need a new party

But what mass political force exists which would fight for students and young people? Keir Starmer has: “Wiped the slate clean” of Jeremy Corbyn’s pledges at the 2017 and 2019 general elections – which included the pledge to scrap tuition fees.

That’s why Socialist Students says students and young people need a new political party. A party which would be able to raise the struggle for free education in parliament, and raise demands for the rights of students, young people, and workers in the council chamber as well. This could include licensing powers councils have to register landlords and force them to take action on the rundown and unsafe living conditions many second and third-year students face.

Young people’s experience of capitalism – poverty, crisis and austerity – has led many to search for a socialist alternative to what is happening. Join Socialist Students to help build a movement against the student cost-of-living crisis, for free education, to campaign on campuses, and fight for socialism.

Tom Green, Birmingham Socialist Students

Many first-year students have been told that they cannot be provided accommodation in halls because they are filled to capacity. Students have accepted offers from these universities with the assurance that places in halls would be available to them.

Some students studying in Manchester have been forced to take residence in Liverpool or Huddersfield, both over 30 miles away. All while universities, which are facing unprecedented mental-health crises, consistently claim to be ensuring student wellbeing.

Nowhere to go

This is part of an ongoing housing crisis. Not only do students face the soaring cost of living, unsafe places to live, and extortionate rent, but many are also left without a place to live at all.

Universities have continued to sell their accommodation stock to private providers like Unite Students, leaving students open to exploitation from external companies. After living in halls, students are then in housing from cowboy landlords and exploitative letting agencies.

University managements are consistently pushing to increase student cohorts each year, without regard for capacity of accommodation. Increasing student numbers means more profit for universities, most of which will be used to line the pockets of management and investors.

Tuition fees

University vice-chancellors don’t want to spend the money made from tuition fees on pay rises for striking lecturers or university staff, but instead towards vanity projects and flashy new buildings to attract investment.

To solve the student housing crisis, universities must first bring all halls back in-house. Universities have the ability to provide affordable and safe student housing, but instead choose to wash their hands of this responsibility. Rent control must also be implemented to ensure students, most of whom are first-time renters, are not ripped-off or exploited by greedy landlords in private accommodation.

Socialist Students says:

• No to rent increases or bill increases being passed onto students. For third party accommodation to be taken over by the university as a step towards the introduction of democratically set rent controls.
• For living grants tied to the rate of inflation, not loans and debt. Cancel student debt – no to the lowering of the student debt repayment threshold!
• No to price rises on campuses and to course closures. Build a national student movement to fight for the full funding our campuses need and free education.
• Solidarity with the strikes – students and workers unite!
• Make the rich pay for the cost of living crisis. Bring the energy companies, the banks and monopolies into democratic public ownership to provide us with a future.

The US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the ruling on Roe v Wade, which recognised a constitutional right to abortion, has been met with protests across America and across the world. Echo Malkin from Cardiff Socialist Students spoke to Christine Thomas, author of ‘It Doesn’t Have to Be Like This: Women and the Struggle for Socialism’, about the way forward in the struggle for reproductive rights in the US and globally.

What are the immediate effects of the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US?

This is the biggest attack on women’s rights in the US for 50 years. Already one-third of women are living in states where abortion is banned, and that is set to spread, with up to 40 million women eventually affected. Because they don’t have the money to travel to states where abortion is still legal, it will be the poorest, working-class and minority ethnic women who will suffer the most. There have already been horror stories, like that of the ten-year-old rape victim who was denied an abortion in her home state. Unfortunately, those horrors are likely to get worse unless a movement is built to re-establish the right to abortion for all those who want one throughout the US.

In your article for Socialism Today you highlighted the surrounding social unrest of the period that led to the original ruling of Roe v Wade. Our current social climate is full of unrest from the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the Me Too and Times Up movement, to the increasingly urgent climate crisis as well as human rights crises like the overturning of Roe v Wade taking place in Poland and 23 other countries. Do you believe this social unrest will help the restoration of reproductive rights as it was able to in the 70s? How could such a movement be built?

There are obviously things that need to be done immediately to help women access abortions, and this is happening now. Women’s organisations are fundraising to help women travel to ‘sanctuary’ states, offering accommodation to those seeking an abortion, and providing access to abortion pills. This kind of mutual aid is vital, but it needs to go hand-in-hand with building a mass movement, with roots in the workplaces, universities, colleges, schools and local communities. That is how the right to abortion was won in the first place – through grassroots organising by women’s organisations at a time when US society was in ferment. As well as the women’s movement there was the movement for civil rights and black liberation, the mass protests against the war in Vietnam and strikes of workers. This was the backdrop which forced the Supreme Court, with a right-wing majority, and under the Republican anti-abortion president Richard Nixon, to grant a constitutional right to abortion.

The current attacks on abortion rights are taking place at a time when the living standards of ordinary Americans are also facing an onslaught from the cost-of-living crisis. What’s more, over two-thirds of Americans think that abortion should be legal. If the movement for abortion rights was to link up with workers in the workplaces and trade unions fighting for higher wages and better working conditions, with Black Lives Matter and those fighting to save the environment, a formidable movement could be built.
But for that to happen, the campaign for the ‘right to choose’ needs to be broadened from just fighting for the legal right to abortion to incorporating wider demands, including universal free health care, and easy access to abortion and health and reproduction clinics. Even before the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, thousands of poor women were denied an abortion because of the high costs or because there was no clinic in the area where they lived. Winning the legal right to abortion on its own is not sufficient if those who need an abortion don’t have the material means to exercise that right.

Also, ‘the right to choose’ is much more than the right to abortion. It means the right to access safe, reliable contraception, inclusive and non-judgemental sex education in schools, and the right to have children and bring them up free from poverty. By campaigning for jobs for all on a wage we can live on, free, quality, universal childcare, paid maternity, paternity and parental leave, decent social housing, etc. the link between the movement to defend and extend abortion rights could be forged with workplace struggles and other social movements, building a movement that could win.

Your article speaks of the importance of international solidarity in regard to reproductive rights. There have been a number of counter-protests of the overturning of Roe v Wade, not just in America but also in Australia, Mexico and Argentina, the last two being locations where many Americans have gone seeking abortions. Could you expand on the importance of international solidarity in a time such as this, when people’s reproductive rights are being threatened worldwide?

In the US the anti-abortionists started organising as soon as Roe v Wade was passed in 1973. They talk about the ‘right to life’ but for many right-wing conservatives it’s really about promoting traditional gender roles and the ‘sanctity of the family’. So they are opposed to contraception, LGBTQ+ rights and feminism. The anti-abortionists targeted the Republican party, and the Republicans have increasingly relied on the religious and anti-abortion right to mobilise the vote for them in elections. Trump’s nomination of anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court was his reward for that electoral support. But they won’t be satisfied with overturning Roe. They want abortion to be illegal in every state. And they will also be pushing for further attacks on women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights.

Unfortunately, the Democrats have consistently failed to legislate to defend and extend abortion rights. As a party of the big corporations they will resist any of the meaningful reforms that would be necessary for the real right to choose. The workers’ and social movements need their own party that will fight for their interests, not those of big business and the super-rich.

Internationally the situation is very contradictory. There have been big movements for the right to abortion in a number of countries, and victories have been won – in Ireland, in Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay etc. Since the 2008 financial crisis women have been taking to the streets in their tens of thousands to protest against gender violence, sexual harassment, sexism and denial of reproductive rights. Anger at gender and economic inequality has fused to create a combustible situation. But at the same time, the global economic crisis of capitalism has led to right-wing populists coming to power, in the US, Brazil, Poland etc, who have tried to win a social base by stoking anti-feminism, homophobia and transphobia. Even where those ideas are only supported by a minority in society they have been able to win elections, especially where there has been no viable alternative put forward by the left.

That’s why fighting to build a political alternative is so important, not just in the US but here in Britain and elsewhere. The US attack on the right to abortion has shown how, with capitalism in crisis, gains that have been won can be stripped away again. The movements for women’s rights, workers’ rights, LGBTQ+ rights, against racism and environmental destruction need their own political party, based on the economic power of the trade unions, which we have seen displayed in Britain over the past few months, and which fights for a socialist alternative to the inequality, oppression and destruction of the capitalist profit system.

Needed were democratic organisational structures, which would have been able to harness the energy of the huge marches which took place in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and provide a space to democratically debate out a programme of demands the movement could mobilise around, as well as a strategy for how to win them.

Socialist Students says:

• Fight for free education – scrap tuition fees, cancel all student debt and introduce living grants for students. Make the 1% pay.
• No to all job cuts and course closures on campuses. Students should link up with campus trade unions to fight all cuts.
• For rent controls! Bring all third party halls into ownership and control of the universities, as a step towards democratically set rents, decided on by elected committees including students.
• Build a national student movement – democratic and active.
• Make the 1% pay for the cost of living crisis. Nationalise the energy companies under democratic workers’ control and management to cut our energy bills.
• Build solidarity with workers and young people in struggle across the world.
• Fight for socialism. For democratic public ownership of major industry and the banks to provide us with a future.

Duncan Moore, Plymouth Socialist Party and UCU member (personal capacity)

UCU activists in the Open University branch have secured permanent contracts for 4800 teaching staff, the biggest decasualisation victory ever to take place in higher education. 

These staff will now benefit from enhanced job security, a pay uplift of between 10-15%, additional annual leave, and staff development allowances.

Casualisation is now rife across the tertiary education sector, with 46% of universities and 60% of colleges using zero hours contracts to deliver teaching, and 68% of research staff on short term contracts, with many more reliant on short-term funding for their projects. 

University bosses use fixed term contracts to stretch their staff to breaking point, exploiting the competition for the preciously small number of permanent positions by piling on extra teaching and marking responsibilities. The result is a toxic environment for staff, with one in five working up to 16 hours a week over their contracted hours, and most early-career academics having to reapply for their jobs and relocate to other institutions year after year. Little wonder that over half report signs of depression, a report by Education Support found last year. 

This win for OU tutors comes after years of hard negotiations and struggle with the university bosses, with the branch membership growing in size and militancy since the strikes against regional centre closures in 2016. 

Branches across the country can take confidence from this victory to push for the highest possible turnout in the national ballot over pay and conditions, launched today (10/08/2022).

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