The overturn of Roe v Wade

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Photo: Mary Finch

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.

Two years on from the murder of George Floyd: United struggle against racism and capitalism still needed

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Ibrahim Yassin, Cardiff Socialist Students

The brutal extrajudicial killing of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 sent shockwaves around the world, with demonstrations of hundreds of millions of people globally against systemic racism and inequality inherent at the heart of the system of capitalism. It was a heartening glimpse of a mass international movement of working class youth united in common cause – the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Despite this mass demonstration of working-class anger, the leaders of BLM completely failed to direct the anger and outpouring of energy towards any specific concrete demand, such as democratic control of the police or the demilitarisation of state police forces in the US. In two years, the movement has achieved virtually no systemic change. Since George Floyd was murdered, high-profile killings of unarmed black people have continued at a virtually unchanged pace.

In 2020 at least 19 unarmed black people including George Floyd were killed by US law enforcement. In 2021, it was 17. In 2022 so far, this figure stands at eight as of 28 July. Possibly the most egregious of these was the killing of Jayland Walker on 26 June – where, during a routine traffic stop, Jayland was shot at more than 90 times, sustaining 60 gunshot wounds.

Of course, the UK is not innocent in this regard either, with two Black young men – Mouayed Bashir and Mohamud Hassan – dying in South Wales Police custody in 2021, and the recent notable case of Child Q, a black schoolgirl who in 2020 was strip searched by Metropolitan police with no other adults present and while menstruating, after being wrongly accused of carrying cannabis at her East London school. And just last week, an unarmed black man, Chris Kaba, was shot dead by police in South London.

Despite the relentless press of these harrowing events, there have been no demonstrations of the scale and energy seen in 2020. This isn’t a reflection however of the lack of willingness for a fight against racism and capitalism. The leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement failed to establish and develop 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.

The resultant lack of direction, strategy and concrete demands by the movement allowed the energy of the movement to dissipate into the ether, instead of being organised and directed at the ruling class to win improvements to the lives of BAME workers and youth. The initial BLM protests will have been the first marches for many who attended them, searching for a strategy to build the movement.

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 puts forward the demand that the police should be subject to democratic control and oversight by workers and the communities they claim to serve, including by the trade union movement. This would give workers and young people the power to set policing policy, as well as the powers of hiring or firing members of the service.

Unfortunately the problem goes deeper than policing. While poor and falling wages affect huge swathes of the working class, black people are often overrepresented in demographic markers of poverty, such as housing status, low pay, unemployment levels, and chronic underinvestment in their local areas. Fundamentally, these day-to-day class issues facing BAME workers and youth have remained unresolved.

How can concrete victories on these issues facing BAME workers and youth be achieved going forward? The summer has seen the development of a strike wave which has involved workers from across various sectors fighting for better pay and conditions. These strikes have been met with widespread support from workers and young people, leading to a domino effect where workers see others striking and winning, and decide to struggle for their own rights, pay and conditions.

It’s within the workplaces that workers from all manner of different backgrounds come together and interact on a day-to-day basis. The trade union movement therefore has a central role to play in the fight against racism – uniting workers regardless of race, religion, gender or sexuality in a common struggle for decent wages, jobs, homes and services for all, and cutting across the divide-and-rule tactics of the bourgeoisie.

But the struggle against racism cannot only be conducted on the industrial plane, but needs a political arm as well. In the heyday of Corbynism, many people of colour (in particular youth) turned to the Labour Party as a potential political vehicle to fight for Corbyn’s programme.

Following the defeat of Corbynism within Labour, Keir Starmer has made clear his thoughts when he described the demonstrations as a “moment, not a movement”. That’s why Socialist Students stands for the building of a new party for workers and young people. Such a party could act as a political voice for the majority – against inflation austerity, and for renationalisation of the energy companies, water, the railways, and major banks and monopolies to provide the majority with a decent future, and to bring the disaffected and discriminated members of society back into the fold by articulating the concerns of ethnic minorities and their communities.

Such a party could also act as a forum for discussion on how a mass movement against racism in the workplaces, in the places of education and within wider society could be built. Socialist Students says that the struggle to eradicate racism has to be linked to a struggle against the capitalist system which breeds racist division.

That’s why the struggle for a socialist society – with the democratic planning of wealth and resources to provide decent lives and futures for all people, regardless of their background – is necessary to most effectively unite workers and young people in a struggle against racism. Two years on from the death of George Floyd, and the reality for Black and ethnic minorities in the UK and across the world has not materially changed. We must unite in political struggle across the working class in order to more effectively fight for a fairer, better, socialist future.

Student cost of living crisis – build the socialist fightback!

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It is difficult to overstate the level of crisis shaking the world today. Capitalism has always meant crisis. But in 2022, it’s as if every new catastrophe is developing at a pace and scale not witnessed for generations.

We are still living with the effects of a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ global pandemic. The world economy is heading for a new recession. The war in Ukraine has brought mass conflict and human misery. Around the world, there are more people displaced by war, violence and persecution than ever before. And we cannot forget the ever-deepening climate disaster.

Young people in Britain are thinking: “What is going wrong with the world today?”. Everywhere we look, records are being set for food prices, energy bills, NHS wait times, low wages, high temperatures, food banks – the list goes on.

Socialists say that all these problems are the result of capitalism, as an anarchic economic system that permits a tiny minority of individuals to sow death, destruction and exploitation on a global scale to boost their own private profits.

Left to the mercy of the capitalist market, our universities have been plunged into crisis. The average maintenance loan falls hundreds of pounds short of monthly living costs, with 1 in 3 students having less than £50 to live on per month. Entire courses and departments have been cut. Many of our staff barely earn enough to live on.

This rotten Tory government has no answers to the crisis of cuts and marketisation blighting our universities, because this would require a 100% publicly funded higher education system – and that means making the super-rich pay.

The recent coup against Boris Johnson, and the subsequent Conservative leadership contest has laid bare the deep divisions within the Tories, as they butt heads over the way forward for the capitalist system they represent.

It was no coincidence that Boris Johnson resigned just two weeks after rail workers in the RMT union took strike action in June. We’ve seen the power of the trade unions in the current strike wave for the first time in our lives.

Socialist Students aims to be the group on campus that organises students in fighting side-by-side with workers.

But we want to be more than a solidarity group. Striking workers have shown that they can fight back and win against this weak and divided Tory government, and we think that students can do the same. 

Socialist Students campaigns for students to get organised in a movement of our own – for the scrapping of tuition fees, the writing-off of student debt, the introduction of living maintenance grants, and for universities to be 100% publicly funded by taking the wealth off the super-rich.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has abandoned workers and young people, going as far as banning its front-benchers from attending trade union picket lines. Labour wants to be the ‘second eleven’ for the British capitalist class, as reliable representatives of big business, just as they were under Tony Blair.

That’s why Socialist Students supports the building of a new party for workers and young people. We know that important victories can be won through mass campaigns and movements – especially strike action. But we also think that fighting without a political voice is like fighting with one arm tied behind your back. 

Because when trade union leaders call for nationalisation, for example, or the NUS calls for 100% publicly funded education, who can they expect to implement these demands?

A new mass workers’ party could be a voice for workers and young people in parliament and council chambers against the pro-big business politics of all the establishment parties. It could also help coordinate and lead struggles on the streets, in the workplaces, or in schools and universities. It would provide a mass forum for socialists to discuss and debate the way forward for everyone looking to change society.

As socialists, we say that the way forward is socialism, which would mean replacing the anarchic, crisis-ridden system of capitalism with public ownership and democratic workers’ planning of wealth and resources to meet the needs of everyone, instead of the private profits of a tiny minority. 

Capitalism will not be ‘reformed’ into socialism. We need fundamental change – revolution – which means the complete, democratic transfer of economic and social power to the working class and poor in Britain and on a global scale.

For students, the socialist fightback can start on campus. By linking up with university staff and organising now for a decent education, we can prepare ourselves for the struggle for socialism. That’s why you should join Socialist Students this year.

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.

UCU wins landmark victory against casualisation

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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).

——————————————————————————————————————–

Socialist Students groups will be organising campus meetings next term in solidarity with the UCU, as the union prepares to ballot 80,000 workers at 149 universities next month ahead of potential national strike action in November.

Get in touch to find out how you can organise with Socialist Students to support your local UCU branch in their fight against low wages, overwork, casualisation and discriminatory pay. Join us in the united student-worker fightback against the cost of living crisis and capitalism!

  • No to all job cuts and course closures on campuses. Students should link up with campus trade unions to fight all cuts.
  • Fight for free education – scrap tuition fees, cancel all student debt and introduce living grants for students. Make the 1% pay.
  • Build a national student movement – democratic and active – linked up with the campus trade unions and wider trade union movement.
  • Fight for a socialist alternative to capitalist chaos.
Socialist Students supporting striking UCU staff at Oxford Brookes University in March. Photo: Kris O’Sullivan.

Save English literature at Sheffield Hallam

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Jo Hall, English Literature student, Sheffield Hallam

Bristol University students marching against cuts last year

Don’t let Tories scrap my degree and others like it.

Sheffield Hallam University plans to scrap the stand alone English literature course for new entrants in 2023. From then on, it will only be buried in another degree course as a secondary module.

Sheffield Hallam has given no explanation beyond a ‘shake-up’ of how English is taught. This is part of a wider attack on the humanities.

The Tory government is planning new attacks. Universities could face penalties for courses where less than 60% of graduates are in study or professional jobs 15 months after completion.

Dr Mary Peace, an English literature lecturer at Sheffield Hallam, described these cuts as “cultural vandalism… what kind of society will we have if there is no place for people from all social classes and backgrounds to have the chance to read and think?”

The Tories’ Office for Students has threatened to cut funding for ‘low-value’ courses. By ‘value’, they mean what matters to the capitalists.

We face real dangers to education. Limited academic freedom is under attack, with the government’s focus on ‘financial return’. They want to keep the next generation right where they can.

Assault on poor students

This is an assault on working-class arts. Just over 40% of Hallam students are from poor economic backgrounds.

Michelle Donelan has now resigned as Tory education secretary. But when she was in the Tory government, she said: “Courses that do not lead students on to work or further study fail both the students, who pour their time and effort in, and the taxpayer, who picks up a substantial portion of the cost.”

It is true that graduate work for humanities and arts students is low-paid, with many courses under the Tories’ self-imposed thresholds for beginning to pay back student loans. But that is the fault of private companies as well as the government failing to create decent jobs.

Donelan claims certain courses will inevitably result in underemployment. However, it is only inevitable under one context: capitalism, which Donelan and peers want to protect.

The Tory government isn’t interested in education but, rather, what education can do for them – streamlining people into profit-making industries. The Tories don’t want the arts to be for us, despite it often being made by us. They want to keep it an elite pastime, not a legitimate working-class livelihood.

Students – unite with workers to fight the cost of living crisis!

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Noah Eden, Sheffield Socialist Students

Socialist Students at the NUS protest in March

One in ten students are having to use food banks, according to a recent survey by the National Union of Students (NUS). One in five students can’t afford toiletries, and a further one in ten can’t afford sanitary products when they need them. In June it was also reported that there has been a 3,000% increase in the number of graduates who owe more than £100,000 in student loan debts.

The fact of the matter is simple: student loans aren’t enough to provide students with the money that we need to survive. The average maintenance loan is £5,640 a year – nowhere near enough to cover typical extortionate rents, let alone buy food, energy, travel and the rest.

The NUS survey found that a third of students are being forced to live on less than £50 a month because of rent and bills, leaving many students unable to carry out proper weekly food shops and not being able to afford to travel into university.

Many of us take minimum wage jobs with dodgy contracts at the same time as being expected to carry out a ‘full-time’ degree.

The NUS has called on the government to provide a cost-of-living support package for students, and for maintenance loans and the apprentice minimum wage to be brought into line with the ‘National Living Wage’ – just £6.83 an hour for 18 to 20-year-olds, and £4.81 for under-18s.

But we need to go further than that. Demanding a decent living grant for all students is necessary, and could be linked to low-paid workers also struggling for a £15-an-hour minimum wage. But an increase in maintenance payments for students cannot be funded by simply plunging us further into debt. We must fight for maintenance grants, not loans! We also need to outline how it can be fought for and won. With the ongoing summer of workers’ strikes, and further strikes looking likely in the autumn, why doesn’t the NUS build on the March student demo, and organise students to take to the streets alongside striking workers? To bring together the fight for a £15-an-hour minimum wage, an end to zero-hour contracts and right for everyone to be able to attend university without the fear of a lifetime of financial burden.

Organise and fight against university cuts – no to redundancies and course closures!

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Birmingham Socialist Students member

University of Bristol students marching against cuts on campus last year

The management of the universities of Wolverhampton, Roehampton and De Montfort have unleashed a savage row of cuts to their programmes and their staff. Wolverhampton has stopped taking applicants for 138 distinct courses, mainly in Arts and Humanities (including its high-ranking fashion course), Roehampton is planning to lay off up to 226 academics after cutting many of its humanities courses, and De Montfort has announced the redundancy of 58 of its staff.

In a period when the cost-of-living crisis is making living in this country impossible for many, university staff are now seeing themselves made redundant and without an income. Socialist Students vehemently condemns these cuts and extends its solidarity to all students and staff affected by them.

These savage cuts have been approved by managements who see their institutions not as places of learning, but increasingly as businesses. Their attention is in massive infrastructure projects and business partnerships rather than the teaching and research that happens in their university. In their blind pursuit of “competitiveness” and “optimisation”, they are willing to cut even their best staff and their better programmes if they do not conform to the neo-liberal capitalist vision of society.

But these cuts are also a consequence of the unsustainable financial model of universities in this country. The lack of direct government funding encourages management to extort as much from students as possible in tuition fees, landing them in a lifetime of student debt. Because national tuition fees are not enough to compensate for the lack of funding, they rely heavily on international student fees, and a slight reduction of these students can make their whole financial model crumble, just as we saw during the COVID pandemic.

Another strategy deployed by universities is to pack as many students as possible into their courses to draw as much income as possible from them. Therefore, when a programme – no matter how prestigious or well-regarded – fails to attract corporate investment or is considered to not have enough students, it gets mercilessly cut, making the university all the more academically poorer.

As long as universities rely on a model of unrepayable student debt and class-packing, there will be more cuts and slashes to faculties, more laying off of staff, and a dramatic worsening of the quality of teaching and research. This is why Socialist Students campaigns for universities to be publicly funded by taking the wealth out the hands of the super-rich, for the scrapping of tuition fees and the introduction of living grants for students, open publication of the financial ledgers of the universities, and for the democratic control of universities by workers, trade unions and democratically elected student representatives.

The programme and staff cuts in Wolverhampton, Roehampton and De Montfort have clearly targeted humanities and arts courses. The reason for such a focus is that university bosses in their words want to focus on “developing programmes with practical skills and industry/employer engagements” – i.e., for meeting the needs of big business!

As well as fighting for free education, Socialist Students fights for decent jobs for all – including access to adult education, an end to bogus apprenticeship schemes combined with a guarantee of a job at the end of it, and the possibility of combining training for a trade and formal education.

We also say that the study of arts and humanities must not become the preserve of a small elite. Socialist Students fights for an education system run for the benefit of students, workers and wider society as a whole, not in the interests of the bosses and the super-rich.

This means struggling for a socialist alternative to the chaos of the system of capitalism. This includes the building of a mass movement of students and workers to fight for democratic workers’ control of society’s massive wealth and resources to ensure that everyone can study what they are interested in – not what is meted out to us by the Tories and the bosses.

We say – no to class divisions in university programmes! No to cuts in teaching and research! For free, high-quality and publicly funded education! Students need to organise and fight to ensure that what is transpiring at the universities of Wolverhampton, Roehampton and De Montfort cannot happen again.

Socialist Students conference – anger is growing, and we’re part of student fightback

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Kat Gwyther, Leeds Socialist Students

Socialist Students national conference – our first in person since the start of the Covid pandemic – was full of enthusiasm for building a fightback on campuses. Socialist Students national organiser Theo Sharieff opened the meeting.

Students face a degraded future. But anger has grown as the pandemic has exacerbated the broken system created by the continued marketisation of higher education.

Staff have taken sustained strike action and students have fought back – becoming a powerful voice against university bosses and the rotten capitalist system. The student fightback has taken place through rent strikes, protests against A-level results, and against ongoing violence against women on campuses and in society.

But our student voice has not been amplified at a national level. A key question at conference was ‘where is the National Union of Students (NUS)?’

The NUS has been mostly absent from the struggle. Local student unions and student groups have been left to fight alone.

Socialist Students has been vital in combating this isolation. We have been fighting alongside rent strikers, at protests, and have mobilised students in organised action – notably on 21 April 2021 at 24 campus protests calling for fee and rent refunds. But we cannot build the student fightback alone.

Strike

Prior to our meeting, the NUS had called a ‘national student strike’ for 2 March, timed with the last day of strike action by the University and College Union (UCU). The small turnout to the demo, which looked likely at the time of the conference, has nothing to do with the lack of appetite on the part of students for struggle, but is down the failure of the NUS leadership to mobilise effectively.

Socialist Students conference discussed and agreed that 2 March should be the beginning of reflecting on what the student movement needs next in the struggle for free education. Socialist Students calls on the NUS to set a date for a national meeting that brings together all organisations – student groups like Socialist Students, student unions, and campus workers’ trade unions – to discuss the next steps in the fight. Socialist Students will continue to play a key role in this process.

Also at Socialist Students conference, motions on fighting sexual harassment and violence on campus  and defending the right to protest were also discussed out democratically and voted on.

The day ended with an energetic rally that reinforced the need for youth and student organisation, in workplaces and on campuses, and for socialism, here and internationally.

The conference took place in Birmingham, and Socialist Party member Dave Nellist – Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidate standing in the Erdington by-election – also spoke. He set out the need for a new political voice for students and young workers.

Socialist Students conference took place only a few days after the Tory government announced its plans to make it harder for working-class students to reach higher education. The Tories’ proposed changes in England include a 40-year tuition fee repayment scheme and a grade threshold to qualify for student finance loans in the first place.

A 40-year repayment scheme benefits the rich, and will enormously impact graduates who earn less. On top of this, young workers have also been hit most by recent increases to national insurance. Instead of making the rich pay, young workers pay almost 50% of their income in taxes. A fight against the capitalist chaos that rules our society, and our education system, must take place. Building Socialist Students is a first step towards this.

Why I’m going to Socialist Students conference – sign up here!

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Sign up to come to Socialist Students’ conference, taking place in Birmingham at 11am on Saturday 26th February, here: socialiststudents.org.uk/sign-up-for-updates-about-socialist-students-2022-conference/

Noah Eden, Sheffield Socialist Students

The financial screws are tightening on students. The government is freezing the threshold when students start to repay their loans, as opposed to raising it in line with inflation, meaning they will have to pay more.

I have been an avid Socialist Students member since I joined – visiting and supporting strikes both on campus and outside of uni. Socialist Students conference, 26 February, is our chance to participate in the fight back against the unfair marketisation of universities, campaign for free, democratised and good quality higher education, and help organise the 2 March student walkout called by the National Union of Students (NUS).

Inflation is reducing the value of student loans, meaning that the government is unfairly taking £2.3 billion from students. The parental earnings threshold has been frozen at £25,000, when it should have risen to £34,000, so fewer students are receiving what they deserve in maintenance loans. On top of all this, maintenance loans are set to increase by 2.3%, which is below inflation, meaning another real-terms pay cut for students.

We can build a socialist fightback and end the conditions that we have had to endure from both Tory and Labour governments. Under Jeremy Corbyn, students got a glimmer of hope of what a fair and proper education system could look like. But Labour has returned to its Tory-lite policies under Keir Starmer.

The Socialist Students conference has moved to Birmingham. So we’ll also get a chance to campaign for Dave Nellist in the Birmingham Erdington by-election. Socialist Party member Dave Nellist is the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidate – standing to be a workers’ MP on a worker’s wage (see pages 8-9).

Sign up to Socialist Students’ 2022 conference here! Organise to fight for free education on March 2nd

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Theo Sharieff, Socialist Students national organiser

Students need a fightback! After nearly two years of Covid, the effect of Tory and New Labour marketisation of our university campuses has been laid bare.  In September 2020, students were lied to about in person teaching and then locked down on campuses across the country just so university management could keep our rent and tuition fee payments. This came on top of years of cuts to jobs, wages and conditions, and courses on campus, meaning a slow decline of the quality of education students receive while paying £9,250 a year fees.

Last year saw students organising rent strikes across the country, succeeding in winning millions of pounds in rent refunds. Far from just being a fight for compensation for the disruption to campuses caused by Covid, for many students the rents strikes were a first step towards fighting against marketisation, cuts on campuses, fees and student debt. It was during this time when the rent strike movement was in full swing that Socialist Students organised campus protests to demand tuition fee and rent refunds for students, funded by the government as the first step towards the complete scrapping of tuition fees.

Since then there have been further developments on campuses. The UCU took three days of strike action last term over attacks to staff pay and pensions, and is continuing with action short of strike this term with more possible strikes to come. And students have been protesting against the failures of management to effectively tackle the pandemic of sexual harassment and assault on campuses.

All of these events combined have been mounting pressure on the leaders of the NUS to act. The National Union of Students has launched its campaign for a ‘student strike for education’, calling for a national student demonstration in London on March 2nd. The NUS is demanding among other things “higher and further education to be funded by governments – free at the point of use for students – with proper pay, pensions and conditions for staff across education and beyond”.

Albeit a whole year after the campus rent strike movement developed, that the NUS has finally called for a national demonstration to stop these attacks is a welcome step. Given the depth of the crisis facing students, March 2nd could find a significant response from students looking to fight for free education.

However, guaranteeing the best possible turnout for such a demonstration will take a fighting campaign on the ground on campuses to link the day to day attacks on students and staff to the need for free education. This should include a campaign by Students’ Unions around the country to mobilise students, including the funding and organising of transport to London for students and staff.

This demonstration has been called at a time when rumours are swirling that the government are considering lowering the student debt repayment threshold, threatening to trap particularly working class students in a lifetimes worth of debt repayments. This is a prime opportunity for the NUS to put forward the cancellation of student debt, the replacement of loans with grants, as well as the scrapping of tuition fees, all funded by taking the wealth out of the hands of the super-rich.

Socialist Students is going to be organising local campus protests as part of the campaign to mobilise students for March 2nd, and will be demanding that Students’ Unions organise coaches for students to London.  March 2nd could be a significant step in building the fightback against marketisation of the universities and for free education. Socialist Students is holding its annual conference Saturday 26th February in London to discuss how to rebuild the student movement and what next after March 2nd – visit socialiststudents.org.uk/sign-up-for-updates-about-socialist-students-2022-conference to sign up for updates about the conference.