The Trade Union and Labour student societies at the University of Manchester hosted a Q&A with Labour MP Richard Burgon. Burgon supported Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour leader.
Burgon voted against Keir Starmer’s government, opposing the two-child benefit cap, which leaves hundreds of thousands of people in poverty. He was suspended as a Labour MP for this, but let back in the day before the meeting.
We submitted a question, asking Burgon to take the demand for free education and an end to tuition fees into Parliament. But the question was blocked by the groups at the head of the Q&A.
Instead, the MP was asked simply if he believed in free education, to which he comfortably answered “yes”, whilst avoiding how he would act on his belief with a fighting plan.
Our members used the more open segment of the event to ask Burgon, given his suspension and the weakness of Labour’s base in the working class, if it was now time to look towards an alternative party, built on the trade unions, with socialist policies. His answer was simple, a resounding “no”.
The dozens of students in the room were asked to keep faith in the ‘broad church’ of the Labour Party. Is Burgon walking on egg shells with Keir Starmer to protect his job in Parliament?
We were not alone in our criticisms of Labour. One young person left Burgon fumbling for words, asking: “Should we vote for right-wing Labour candidates over pro-working-class independents, like Jeremy Corbyn?”
Socialist Students continues to fight for political representation for trade unions and working-class people – a fight Burgon is welcome to join us in.
Cardiff students rally against job cuts. Photo: Rhydian Witts
Aris Prevost, Cardiff Socialist Students
Cardiff Students Against Cuts hosted a rally outside of the Main Building at the Cathays Campus on 12 February to demand that Cardiff uni vice-chancellor Wendy Larner and the University Executive Board stop the 400 proposed job cuts.
Preceding the rally was a town hall meeting between students and the vice-chancellor, which was predictably a farce. Larner over run in her initial speech, dodging every single question that was asked, and left 15 minutes early.
While Larner showed the cowardice of the higher-ups in the Cardiff uni management, the rally showed the resilience and solidarity that the students, staff, and trade unions have. While it was a cold and slightly wet affair, over 100 people turned up, with several speakers including students and staff from courses being cut completely. It also heard from the Vice President of the Cardiff University and College Union (UCU) branch, as well as representatives from Unite and the Trades Union Council, who are both Socialist Party members. A strong theme running throughout the rally was how vital the cut courses were for Cardiff, especially music in the Wales, the ‘Land of Song’.
Staff-student solidarity
Socialist Party member Dave Reid rounded off the speeches. He urged students to fight back against the cuts through solidarity between the students and the workers, backed by the trade council.
Cardiff UCU is balloting for industrial action. It is vital that if and when they go on strike, that us students stand on the picket line with staff. It is only through class solidarity that we can mount a fightback and stop these cuts.
Only the beginning
This rally is only the beginning, we are having weekly meetings hosted by Cardiff Socialist Students to decide our next steps campaigning.
We demand that Cardiff University stops the 400 job cuts, for the vice-chancellor and executive board to be sacked and replaced with workers who understand the day-to-day workings of the University. We call on the Labour governments in Cardiff and Westminster to treat education like a public good and to fully fund higher education.
We demand:
No job losses, no course closures at Cardiff University
The university board to use available reserves to plug the current gap and demand sufficient funding from the UK government to maintain courses and departments at Cardiff University
Open the books at Cardiff University to see where the income is being spent and the investments made
End the commercialisation of university education – return it to a public service rather than a profit-making business
Democratise the university. For a board to be elected by university workers, students, the local community and trade unions. And for the vice-chancellor to be on the same wage as a head of department.
Proper funding for all universities, take the wealth off the super-rich
Eliminate tuition fees, and reintroduce maintenance grants for all
End low pay, job cuts, and ‘casualisation’ of higher education workers
Over 100 students met in the Highfields Community Centre in Leicester for Socialist Students annual conference on 8 February. School, college and university students, as well as young workers in attendance, contributed to a lively and serious discussion. It was inspiring to see newly established Socialist Students groups sending delegations to this year’s conference, including from Hertfordshire, York, Aberystwyth, Manchester, Sussex, and Brunel Universities, joining those societies who have already begun to sink roots.
The conference took place just months after Labour announced an increase in tuition fees for the first time since 2017. Socialist Students launched the Funding Not Fees campaign last autumn in anticipation of the new wave of cuts and attacks on students and staff on campuses in the pipeline from the new Labour government.
The conference discussed and agreed a national campaigning strategy for fighting Starmer’s tuition fee hike, including organising a calendar of campaign action in the run-up to Labour’s summer spending review. Socialist Students delegates discussed building campaigns alongside anti-cuts groups, local trade union branches, tenants organisations, and students’ union officers and course reps. A lively discussion confirmed the need to demand university managements don’t implement any future increases to fees, and to organise lobbies of local MPs to demand they put forward free education amendments in Parliament to the summer spending review – all linked to building a movement to win the funding necessary for the higher education sector as a whole.
Campaigning
That isn’t to mention the campaigns Socialist Students is already leading on campuses, linked to the question of funding not fees. Like for example, Cardiff students against the cuts, campaigning against 400 planned redundancies at Cardiff University. Manchester and Southampton Socialist Student groups are fighting against sky-high student rents. At Queen Mary University, Socialist Students are campaigning for funding gender-neutral changing facilities in the students’ union. And York Socialist Students are protesting against the Reform UK society recently registered at York uni, who offer no solution to the uni funding crisis, just division.
The conference provided a forum for discussion on the instability and chaos writ large by capitalism globally, a system in a state of rot and decay. Trump’s presidency in the US is just another confirmation of this – introducing a fresh dose of chaos into capitalist world relations, and fresh threats of attacks on some of the most oppressed in society and the environment, as well as the working class as a whole.
Mass fightback
But Socialist Students conference also discussed the potential for a mass fightback of students and workers against Trump and all pro-capitalist politicians and parties attempting to play the divide-and-rule game around the world, including here in Britain. In the US, public support for trade unions is at an all-time high, with working-class struggle on the increase. This points towards the key missing ingredient in the situation globally – mass working-class political parties, armed with a socialist programme to unite workers and young people of all different backgrounds in a common struggle against racist division and against the bosses’ system.
This was a feature of the final rally too. The closing rally was addressed by students covering issues from the slaughter in Gaza to the crisis and attacks on democratic rights in Nigeria, to fight the far right as well as fighting for free education and a socialist alternative to capitalism. The rally was pleased to welcome Independent MP for Leicester South, Shockat Adam, who spoke movingly about the slaughter in Gaza and the wave of revolt against the Labour Party for its support for the war on which he was elected.
Socialist Students speakers on the platform welcomed the stance Shockat has taken on the war, and highlighted the role he and the other sitting independent MPs could play in providing a political voice not only to the anti-war movement, but also to the struggles of students and workers on campuses against cuts and fees.
Rally speakers invited Shockat to continue to work with Socialist Students and be part of the Funding Not Fees campaign in Parliament – which includes scrapping tuition fees, cancelling student debt and replacing loans with living grants for students, all funded by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as a step towards building that working-class political opposition to all the attacks of Starmer’s Labour.
Flash points for struggle
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser, introduced the discussions. We print edited extracts of his speech
The Tories were booted out at the general election last year, suffering their worst ever defeat. When you look back it’s no wonder. Life just kept on getting worse for the vast majority of people under the Tories, all while the richest individuals, the capitalists and the financial speculators, were allowed to line their pockets. Of course, MPs also got a tidy pay rise, not to mention the university vice chancellors, the academy heads, the college executives and others.
The Tories’ fate is a warning to any party that seeks to rule on behalf of an increasingly sick capitalist system, including Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Because at the same time, there is also a growing layer of working-class and young people who are refusing to accept the horrors of this system.
Opposition to capitalist governments is growing globally, including with it the reemergence of working class struggle in many countries, taking strike action at a level not seen in a generation.
Look at Serbia where there’s an ongoing movement led by students which has so far brought down a prime minister, and the movement keeps going. Similarly, there was the mass movement in Bangladesh last year which brought down the hated prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Revolution
Many will have seen the latest findings from a Channel 4 survey which says 47% of 13 to 27-year-olds in Britain think the “entire way our society is organized must be radically changed through revolution”.
Socialist Students is very clear about what type of revolution we think is needed. We call for the socialist transformation of society to put wealth, resources and technology into the hands of working-class people. And on that basis, draw up a democratic plan for how to meet the needs of all, including the need to protect our environment. Through socialist revolutions taking place internationally, working-class collaboration globally could replace the competition, conflict and war between capitalist states that exists currently.
Socialist Students sets ourselves the target of finding and organising the young people in schools, colleges and universities who want to fight for that kind of socialist world.
This Labour government will prove utterly incapable of meeting the aspirations of millions of workers and young people, laying the ground for numerous battles against it.
Starmer’s first budget in October was proof. Just take the example of colleges and schools. Labour’s spending plans will do nothing to stop the epidemic of cuts and the recruitment crisis in education. The crises of overcrowded classes and students being left without the support they need. £300 million to further education does not touch the sides of what is needed. £1.4 billion to schools will not stop a situation where most secondary schools are not able to meet costs next year.
Corbyn and Starmer
What a difference five years makes. Up until 2019, the Labour Party was under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who drew the hatred of big business and the capitalist class for putting forward a hugely popular programme of reforms to British capitalism: anti-austerity and including the call for free education for all.
It wasn’t Corbyn the mild-mannered man that struck fear into the hearts of big business, but rather the movement that he had the potential to mobilise.
Unfortunately however, he did not sufficiently mobilise his support base to stand up to the right wing of the Labour Party, the Tories, and the capitalist class behind them. And with that, Starmer has been able to rescue the Labour Party as a ‘second eleven’ for British capitalism. While initially Starmer was compelled to adapt to aspects of Corbyn’s manifesto, all of that has now gone.
There was a glimpse already in the general election, of the potential for the fight to be taken to this government. At the same time as Labour coming to power, five anti-war MPs were voted in based on a mood of disgust against Labour and Tory support for the Israeli state’s war on Gaza. Those five independent MPs included Jeremy Corbyn and Shockat Adam, MP for Leicester South, who is speaking at our rally today.
We would like to see these independent MPs, as well as the now three MPs who are still suspended from the Labour Party, to go much further and to come out as a clear parliamentary voice giving expression to all the struggles that are going to break out against this government.
Gaza
Many will be horrified watching on at Trump’s warmongering rhetoric about turning the Gaza Strip into a ‘riviera of the Middle East’. Socialist Students demands an immediate end to the Israeli state’s war, and a withdrawal, right now, of the Israeli military from all occupied territories.
There are going to be battles on our campuses from students and workers too. Well over half of universities now are making cuts to courses, redundancies to the tune of hundreds. 400 at Cardiff University, for example, is a sign of what is to come elsewhere. Socialist Students has been able to take part in and lead a campaign in Cardiff, we called a meeting on Monday attended by over 70 students and members of staff.
We also have to expect further movements over the climate catastrophe, including for many of those to be spearheaded by young people.
The invaluable lesson that a new generation of young people has learned from the strike wave is that striking works, and nationwide strikes will break out against the Labour government at some stage too.
Right to protest
In the face of growing opposition, Starmer has already shown he has no problem using heavy-handed measures to put down protest. On his watch we’ve seen the heaviest ever prison sentences for direct action given to Just Stop Oil climate activists, as well as the arrest of over 60 on the last national Gaza demo in London. A crackdown on the right to protest can also become a further accelerator of opposition against this government.
These are just some of the flash points where battles will erupt under this government. The discussions at this conference are vital to discuss the next steps to develop Socialist Students as an organisation, and prepare to fight for our socialist ideas in the movements that are to come.
“Since capitalism benefits from perpetuating gender inequality, individuals are constantly being bombarded with ideas that reinforce sexism and misogyny. Sexism is a systemic issue, and requires systemic solutions.
Socialist Students recognises that the fight to end sexism and misogyny is not separate from the fight to bring an end to the capitalist system as a whole and for the socialist transformation of society.“
Liverpool Socialist Students members on a ‘Reclaim the Night’ march last term
Roza Kwiecinska, East London college student
Universities might champion themselves as places of liberal freedom and advocate for human rights and feminism. But the experience of staff and students is very different. When it comes to providing fair job opportunities for everyone, regardless of gender, and protecting women from sexual assault, universities still fail.
On campus, sexism is a problem that takes many forms. From unfair grading of assessments based on gender, to comments about women students’ appearance, clothing and makeup. There is no inherent biological advantage for male students, but there is a huge underestimation of women students.
Education has the third-highest gender pay gap out of all the UK sectors, worse than manufacturing, mining and retail. Although women make up around half of university lecturers, they are significantly outnumbered in higher academic positions. Only 24% of professors are women. Even fewer women hold top roles, with just 18% as vice-chancellors or principals.
Women students also experience shockingly high levels of sexual harassment and sexual violence, both on and off the university campus. From ‘casual’ teasing to online trolling, harassment and physical attacks.
Campus should be a safe space for all students, no matter their gender, sexual orientation or race. It should not only be a place of learning, but also a place of integration, friendships and discovering yourself.
One terrifying statistic is that 97% of young women (18-24) in the UK have been sexually harassed. Many of these incidents happen in education and learning environments. This shows that right now, for many people, university is not that safe a place.
Research by the Young Women’s Trust found that young women who endure sexism in the UK are “five times more likely to suffer from clinical depression” and that “younger women who had experienced sexism were more likely to report greater psychological distress even four years following a sexist experience.”
University is a place where students are not only stressed about grades, additional jobs they have to do, finding an apartment, but where women are exposed to sexism, leaving long-lasting impacts, including on mental health.
Universities are not doing enough to tackle sexism and sexual harassment. 72% of students don’t know or are unsure about where to report or seek support. When women are brave enough to speak out, many find that it backfires. Women face diminishment or silencing: it is disgraceful that universities in England have used non-disclosure agreements to silence those who have experienced sexual harassment and violence.
Procedures for reporting sexual harassment should be managed by committees led by trade unions and students. This would ensure that the processes are effectively implemented and accessible to those who need them, fostering a zero-tolerance policy for harassment and abuse on campus.
For too long, the universities have overlooked survivors, enabled a ‘rape culture’, and prioritised profits over the safety of students. There has to be increased funding and support for student services, and a commitment to taking action against violent behaviours.
Seemingly small things like improved lighting around campus and housing at night, and accessible transport links to campus are important too. The safety of women students is priceless and should not be compromised. We need a fully funded, free public transport network, so that people can get home safely. Socialist Students has led campaigns to fight for these measures, such as the campaign to save the Liverpool night bus.
It is mindblowing that students not only have to pay huge sums of money for education, but also are exposed to harassment and sexism. Building a movement for free education is essential – scrapping fees and debt and introducing living student grants. We fight for full government funding to provide a safe and free education for all.
These problems are not new. In 2010, the National Union of Students (NUS) published a report finding: “One in seven respondents had experienced a serious physical or sexual assault during their time as a student, 12% had been stalked while at university or college, and 68% had been a victim of one or more kinds of sexual harassment while they were at university.”
Following the report, NUS strategy focused on promoting ‘zero-tolerance’ policies in students union bars. But like the ‘Ask for Angela’ scheme, unions have been accredited without investing in the training for staff and bouncers, or staffing levels, to make it enforceable.
There has also been a focus on educating students about consent, often working alongside university management.
It is essential to focus on education and training; we must confront prejudices, gender stereotypes, and sexist behaviour whenever we encounter them. Though who delivers it and how is important.
However, education alone has clearly not been enough to solve the problem. One problem is that strategies based on ‘raising awareness’ can reduce the issue to just an individual problem or behaviour. Socialist Students understands that individual behaviour is influenced by the broader economic and social system we live in, which is capitalism.
Since capitalism benefits from perpetuating gender inequality, individuals are constantly being bombarded with ideas that reinforce sexism and misogyny. Sexism is a systemic issue, and requires systemic solutions.
Take social media, for example. We live in a world where the impact of social media is massive. Misogynistic messages are targeted at boys and young men. Social media has been monetised to make huge profits for social media companies as well as individual ‘influencers’. Individuals like Andrew Tate or Ben Shapiro have made millions from using sexist rhetoric to explain the economic crisis and ‘crisis of masculinity’. And they prefer to blame minorities, immigrants and women for the effects of a capitalist world – propping up capitalism through reactionary ideas.
Additionally, access to online pornography has left children and young people, especially young men, with a misguided representation of women, men, and what sexual relationships look like. Porn created under a capitalist system reinforces harmful stereotypes and objectifies women and doesn’t show the act of consent, which is crucial in any relationship. As much as 90% of it is violent – normalising sexual violence against women.
Education can cut through these ideas, but it won’t stop them being promoted in the first place. Socialist Students calls for the social media companies to be brought into public ownership to remove the profit incentive behind the spread of misogynistic and divisive ideas, and for them to be run and controlled democratically. For example, by subjecting algorithms to scrutiny by trade unions, young people, educators and others. The same goes for all of the major corporations and businesses that also profit from sexism.
This is why Socialist Students recognises that the fight to end sexism and misogyny is not separate from the fight to bring an end to the capitalist system as a whole and for the socialist transformation of society.
Manchester Socialist Students members protesting alongside trade union campaigners last term
Robbie Davidson Manchester Socialist Students
The University of Manchester has announced that the rents will more than double at three student housing complexes in Fallowfield: Oak House, Owen’s Park, and Woolton Hall.
Following the success of last year’s student rent strike in Manchester, rents in Fallowfield were reduced by 30%, standing out against the cost-of-living crisis.
The complex also hosts the cheapest venue for students in the city by far, Squirrels Bar. Squirrels will also be demolished, chipping away at our ability to socialise affordably.
Labour disgrace
Combined with Labour’s disgraceful hike in tuition fees, the rent hike means students in Oak House will pay almost £5,000 more per year. This is amidst already brutal conditions for many young people, with average expenditure far exceeding student loans.
Food bank use amongst students stands at record highs, as do the rates of self-harm and suicide. But the bosses at the University of Manchester are using the people they are supposed to look after as a tool to close the funding gap left by a decade and a half of austerity.
Socialist Students is demanding that rents are not doubled, and that they remain at a fixed, stable rate. We believe that high-quality, affordable housing must be made available to all, overseen by a democratic body of students, staff, and the community, who decide how our homes are priced.
The rent rises will come after the student blocks are redeveloped. Regeneration of the complex is necessary, it is falling apart. Students face regular infestations, broken amenities, and share a few dozen washing machines between thousands of people.
Multimillion privatisation
Regeneration, while keeping rents stable, is not possible with a multimillion pound contract with a private construction company. But a nationalised building service, under the democratic control of working people, would be able to do that.
We demand that Squirrels, and other affordable venues, are protected, allowing students to relax and socialise, without further straining our cost of living.
This attack can only be fought by a unified response, bringing together students, trade unions, and campus activist groups. To achieve this, Socialist Students is calling for a general meeting that everyone can attend to discuss the fight back – not just to protect a few blocks, but to fight for the funding our universities need, out of the pockets of the super-rich.
Manchester Socialist Students meeting: How can socialists fight the housing crisis?
Wednesday 29th January, 4pm University of ManchesterStudents’ Union, Room 2.1
The Welsh Labour government announced recently that it would be following the Labour government in Westminster by raising university tuition fees. From September 2025, Welsh students in Wales will be charged £9,535 a year, an increase of £285. Fees had already been raised by £250 this September.
The changes bring the university sector in Wales in line with the English system, though key differences still remain.
The university system and its finances have been in the hands of the Welsh Government since the creation of the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) in 1998. The Senedd can set the tuition fee cap for Welsh universities and set out funding and loans that students can get to help with finance.
In England, students receive a tuition fee loan to pay off tuition fees, and a maintenance loan to help with living expenses while at university. The amount a student gets depends on how much their family earns. In Wales, maintenance loans and grants work differently. All students get the same amount, but family earnings determine how much is a grant versus a loan. In addition, maintenance loans in Wales are higher than in England. English students living outside of London get up to £9,978 a year. Welsh students who live outside of London are entitled to £11,720.
Better deal?
Generally, the Welsh government has offered a marginally better deal for students. This would not have been the case were it not for students and organisers fighting to put pressure on the Welsh government.
Now these concessions are coming under threat.
The Welsh government is looking for ways to solve the lack of higher education funding, and trying to solve its own money problems. The solution it is choosing is to charge students more money while allowing universities to cut courses and staff members.
This is why the Funding Not Fees campaign and Socialist Students are so important, to fight back against the cuts that students in Wales have hard fought.
We demand the Welsh government immediately reverse the planned fees increase, and campaign alongside students in England for free, fully funded education with liveable maintenance grants, funded by the super-rich.
On Thursday November 28th, Tuesday 3rd and Wednesday 4th December further education workers in the National Education Union (NEU) will be taking industrial action in sixth form colleges for funding and pay. NEU members voted overwhelmingly to take strike action. 97% voted in favor of taking this action with a 62% turnout.
Socialist Students understands the importance of workers taking action to fight for better pay, funding and conditions. Socialist Students sends solidarity to the NEU and all workers taking strike action on college and sixth form campuses. Socialist Students members will be on the picket lines speaking to workers about their dispute. We call on all students to support staff and lecturers on strike.
These conditions that our staff are teaching us in are also our learning environment, with crumbling buildings, overworked staff and high fees for further education students who are 19 before the start of their course. If you want to fight for funding, not only to get better conditions for our staff but also to fight for free education, student grants and a safer learning environment, then join Socialist Students. Link in bio for more information
Socialist Students at De Montfort University (DMU) in Leicester have been campaigning against the vice-chancellor’s plans to make cuts in academic staff and increase tuition fees. The vice-chancellor Katie Normington emailed staff to inform them that she “cannot rule out” redundancies in the light of financial difficulties, only two years after the last round of redundancies. She has warned that if voluntary redundancies are not forthcoming then there would be ‘formal’ (i.e. compulsory) redundancies. Her salary is £249,000 in 2022-23 according to DMU’s own annual accounts
Cuts in academic staff could mean fewer courses on offer and/or an increase in workload for the remaining staff.
DMU is claiming that its spending will be greater than its income, and it will have to use cash reserves to balance the books. Socialist Students says ‘open the books, let’s see how much is in the cash reserves and where money is being spent’. University and College Union (UCU) members are claiming that DMU has invested in an expansion of operations in London and Dubai. It is thought that around £10 million was invested. DMU has also invested in Cambodia and Kazakhstan.
The Leicester Mercury quoted one UCU member as saying that the university has turned into an “unrecognisable corporate franchising operation”.
But why should education be run like a commercial business? Britain is the sixth-wealthiest nation in the world. Education should be fully funded and free to students. Education workers, students and the wider working class should decide how universities are run and funded.
DMU Socialist Students will be stepping up the campaign to scrap tuition fees, cancel student debt and replace student loans with living grants. We will also be contacting the UCU and the students union to suggest a joint campaign to defend jobs and against a rise in tuition fees.
Students are standing up against Labour’s new hike of tuition fees. With Bob Marley music being blasted and megaphone chanting, people stopped to talk to us at our protest at York uni.
One student asked how it would be funded. We stated that a 1% wealth tax could easily generate £25 billion, and that a push for higher corporation tax and a decrease in income tax on ordinary people could easily lift the burden on many working students. We also talked to the York Vision student magazine and gave leaflets to passers-by about Labour’s proposals, and why they should not be trusted by students.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women 2024
Isis Smyth, Liverpool Socialist Students
The cost-of-living crisis is hitting young people and students particularly hard. 25% of young people are skipping at least one meal every day, and often a lot more than that, in order to save money.
We can feel the disregard the ruling class has for the working class, and it’s vile. But even more outrageous is the double oppression that working-class women are forced to endure.
Not only are working-class women students going hungry, but they are also experiencing an epidemic of sexual assault on the very campuses of the universities leaving them in thousands of pounds in debt.
A survey by Revolt Sexual Assault in 2018 found that, of those who responded, 62% of students and graduates had experienced an act of sexual violence in universities across the UK. The fact that these were disproportionately women makes what we already know clear: sexual violence is overwhelmingly an attack on women.
Disgracefully only 2% of those felt they could report it to the universities and could say they were satisfied with the measures taken in response. Most occurrences of sexual misconduct happen in halls of residence and on-campus social spaces like student union bars. These are places where students are supposed to feel safe. And a quarter said they skipped lectures, changed modules or have taken other measures to avoid the perpetrator, with 16% dropping out of university as a result of their attack.
Women are being denied the right to safety and to higher education. A third of unis have been found to silence victims using non-disclosure agreements.
Violence against women was endemic under the Tories and Labour’s policies are going to change nothing. Keir Starmer recently pledged to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, but he is totally incapable of doing this.
Nothing on violence against women and girls was mentioned in Labour’s recent Budget and, of the minimal first steps Starmer had announced in his plan to tackle this violence, universities were not mentioned once, despite women university students and other young women being more likely than any other age group to experience sexual violence. It’s been reported that 97% of women between ages 18-24 had experienced sexual harassment or assault. When I spoke to my friends about this, a lot of them said they expected it to be higher.
Universities are run like profit-seeking companies and Starmer has no ambition to change this. To university management, the lining of their own pockets is more important than women’s safety and far too little funding is being put into keeping women safe on campus. But this is simply the reality of capitalism in which women’s bodies are objectified and commodified.
Socialist Students says that universities should be publicly owned and under democratic workers’ and students’ control. This is the only way that universities will be accessible and safe for all. We advocate for special elected and accountable committees of students and campus trade unions to oversee issues of sexual misconduct on campus.
But this alone won’t end the issue of sexual violence. Huge gains in recent decades have been won, advancing women’s rights. But the problem still persists. When the amount of sexual misconduct reports that the police and universities are receiving is growing, and when a woman is still killed by a man every three days in England and Wales – likely a huge underestimate – it’s clear that something needs to change.
Movements to tackle violence against women must be led with the understanding that capitalism is the core issue. Because women’s oppression was created in a class society, it just cannot be eradicated under one. We need socialist change to create a world where women’s safety isn’t sacrificed for profit, and where equality and peace can prevail. We need socialist change to rid the world of the dehumanizing idea that women are objects to be bought and sold, picked up and put down whenever powerful men want.
That’s why every year on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Socialist Students hold a national day of action. So join us on 25 November to kick sexism off campus and rally in solidarity against capitalism.
This is adapted from a speech delivered at the Funding Not Fees closing rally for Socialism2024, 10 November, London
Socialist Students 