WALKOUT 20 NOVEMBER

Scrolling online, we see the horror taking place in our world.

From the onslaught on Gaza to devastating wars in Ukraine and Iran. Climate chaos, pollution in our rivers, fire and extreme heat. As our planet spirals into chaos, companies that sell weapons or pollute our planet make record profits, at the expense of our future.

There’s little support for our mental health, made worse by repressive measures in schools and colleges, such as the locking of toilets or isolation, treating us like we’re prisoners, when we should be learning. Underfunding means lack of support, fewer specialist teachers, our school dinners becoming lower quality and unaffordable, fewer school trips and broken facilities that go for months without being fixed.

Outside of school and college, the high cost of living means we have to pay more and more for stationery, transport and food. Our youth spaces are being closed, and leisure centres costing more has meant we have little to do.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

The super-rich have their political parties, media and organisations to further their interests. Workers have trade unions where they discuss issues and take collective action to increase their living standards. If others can organise, why can’t we?

We need campaigning student unions in our schools and colleges, where we meet with our classmates and take action over the issues that affect us. Individually we can be angry but collectively we can take action.

We also need to organise against the profit-first capitalist system. Capitalism’s main incentive is to create as much profit as possible at the expense of our futures. We need a socialist society where working-class people collectively run society for the needs of all and the environment rather than the super-rich.

This is why Socialist Students in this country is a part of international youth walkouts on Friday 20 November. Socialist Students calls on school, college and university students to walk out of their institutions on 20 November to send a message that we will fight for our futures, against this capitalist system.

There are over 20 organisations across Europe involved in the international youth strikes. Those in Germany led a strike of over 50,000 school students walking out against conscription earlier in the year, and in Italy there have been tens of thousands of students taking action annually. This time we can be part of it. There are many issues affecting our future, the point is to take action on 20 November to change it!

Members of Socialist Students

Fight for socialist change

Becca Bayman, University of Liverpool Socialist Students

The consequences of climate change are blasting us in the face. Britain is in its fifth heatwave this year, drought conditions are spreading and temperatures soaring, again.

Wildfires are burning – stretching cut-back fire services, and farmers are harvesting smaller yields early. Around 3,000 excess deaths were associated with heatwaves in England during May and June, the UK Health Security Agency estimates.

Millions of workers are forced to work in sweltering heat and live in cramped, poorly ventilated homes. Unite-organised bus drivers in north and east London are set to strike over unsafe working conditions.

This is a world where extreme heat, flooding, and rising food costs are the ‘new normal’. Young people face our futures shadowed by the looming threats from climate change. 85% report being worried about climate change, 75% expressed fear for the future, according to research published by the European Youth Portal. We deserve a stake in our futures!

Yet those with their hands on the levers of power continue to put profits first. Oil giants Shell and BP doubled their profits in the last quarter as they hike prices for us.

Politicians serving the interests of the super-rich bosses have shown they will not act to save our futures. Labour prime minister Andy Burnham has told Donald Trump he is ‘open-minded’ about allowing fossil fuel giants to extend drilling in the North Sea.

If the energy companies were nationalised under democratic workers’ control, workers would be able to decide what is best for their industry, consumers, and the planet.

A transition away from fossil fuels must not mean throwing workers onto the fire through cuts to jobs and services. Their knowledge and experience should be used to plan the transition and build a new energy system without the need for profit – with jobs, pay, terms and conditions upheld with trade union agreement.

The technology and resources exist. We must take the wealth off the super-rich and use it to transform energy production and build clean, affordable energy for all.

And imagine if this was done in every sector. Instead of production being driven by profit, we could plan around what people need while protecting the planet. Ultimately, only a socialist transformation of society can make this possible.

Youth walkout 20 November

Mila Hughes, West Midlands Socialist Students

Young people can’t afford to wait around to see whether a new face in Downing Street changes anything. We have a new Labour prime minister, Andy Burnham, but we still have low pay, insecure work, and an increasing youth unemployment crisis. And his appointment of John Healey as his Chancellor, who resigned from Starmer’s government because cuts weren’t swift enough to pay for more war, sends a message about Burnham’s intentions.

Our future

We are told to accept a future of zero-hour contracts, short-term employment and dwindling pay. A ‘job’ that offers no guaranteed hours, security or way to comfortably think about their future is not a real job.

Employers have pushed to replace stability with precarious work so they can rake in megabucks in profits, paid for with our worsening pay and conditions. Real jobs mean permanent contracts, guaranteed hours, and decent conditions.

That’s why we’ve been out campaigning to raise the minimum wage to at least £15 an hour, as a start, with no age exemptions. On campaign stalls, we regularly hear that bills, food, fuel and the rest are all going up but wages seem to stay the same.

The demand for £15 an hour is not impossible; it’s the bare minimum needed to live in this cost-of-living crisis and it’s already the demand raised by trade unions. Paying young workers less for the same work is not a ‘starter wage’, it’s exploitation, and it exists only because bosses think young workers are less likely to fight back.

We are building a movement of young workers and students prepared to take action for real jobs and decent pay, standing together with workers already fighting the same battle in their workplaces

Get organised

Socialist Students will be helping young people to get organised to walk out of their classes and lectures on 20 November to “fight for our future, not their wars!” We call on all young people to join us. To fight further cuts and declining services, an unemployment and NEET crisis, and against ramping up bosses’ war and division. Join us to fight back for a better society – a socialist society in which the working class democratically makes the decisions, so society can provide a decent job, a good standard of living for all, not just look after the super-rich.

Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national chair

Ahead of the Young Greens Convention which took place on the 18-19 July, Socialist Students sent the following letter to the outgoing Young Greens co-chairs and Executive Committee, inviting the Young Greens to join the campaign for a day of international youth walkouts and mobilisations on Friday 20 November under the slogan, ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars!’

Socialist Students also produced the letter as a leaflet, which our members took along to the Young Greens Convention as a way of opening up discussion with Young Greens members about the 20 November campaign. Socialist Students members in the Green Party attended the convention and also helped to raise the international youth walkouts inside the conference.

Unfortunately, members of the outgoing Young Greens Executive asked venue security to move us on shortly after we set up our stall. But we were still able to have discussions with a big portion of attendees from the public pavement outside the venue, where we met overwhelming enthusiasm for the idea of the international youth walkouts. Socialist Students plans to re-circulate our letter to the newly elected Young Greens co-chairs and Executive Committee.

Socialist Students letter to Young Greens

We are writing to invite Young Greens to help build for an international day of youth walkouts against war and militarisation on Friday 20 November under the slogan, ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars!’

The call for a 20 November international youth strike under this slogan was issued by a Europe-wide assembly of anti-war youth and student organisations held in Cologne, Germany, last month. The international youth strike so far has support from more than twenty youth and student organisations across a dozen countries in Europe, from youth sections of left-wing political parties to national student unions and independent socialist youth organisations.

Socialist Students members attended the Cologne assembly as representatives from Britain. At the meeting of our national steering committee last week, we agreed to build for the biggest possible day of youth walkouts on 20 November, including by appealing to other anti-war youth organisations in Britain to join the campaign.

As the largest youth section of any political party in Britain, with over 50,000 members across England and Wales, we hope that Young Greens will throw its significant potential weight behind the international youth strike. We know that many young people have either joined or are looking towards the Green Party as a means of transforming society – for a future free of war, climate breakdown and constant insecurity. But we think that what is also needed is bold, socialist action to get all those young people organised in the fight for that alternative.

Seize moment and take lead

We therefore appeal to the Young Greens to seize this moment and take a lead in building for the 20 November international youth strike. Coinciding with the final scheduled date of this year’s COP Conference in Turkey – where the world’s elites will yet again get together for a talking shop on climate change – 20 November is a major opportunity to raise the level of organisation and confidence of young people to fight for our futures in this new world era of capitalist conflict and instability. It would also be a chance to ensure that the Green Party in England and Wales is committed to mobilising against war – and not, for instance, going down the road of the German Greens, who unfortunately instead helped to push through massive increases in military spending as part of a federal coalition government there.

We are hoping that your Convention, taking place in London this weekend, could discuss the possibility of Young Greens committing to build the international youth strike on November 20. And if Young Greens were to commit to the international youth walkouts, Socialist Students would welcome further discussion on how our organisations could best coordinate at a local level – e.g. hosting joint open meetings between Socialist Students societies and Young Greens groups on how best to build the walkouts and ‘fight for our futures, not their wars’ etc.

We look forward to your reply.

Youth walkout 20 November

Robbie Davidson, Manchester Socialist Students

In May, an estimated 50,000 students in Germany walked out in huge school strikes against military conscription. This was a marker for the fightback which could be posed across Europe – as young people face a myriad of crises in education, employment and the rising cost of living, while governments pour even more money into arms and militarisation. The German government is ramping up spending on militarisation. In Britain, Keir Starmer has followed suit, announcing a new rollout of austerity cuts to make way for an increase of £25 billion per year on the armed forces in the newly published Defence Investment Plan. And incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has said he will stick to it! They are both in agreement that the NHS, welfare, education and more should be on the chopping block to pay for their wars.

Starmer and Burnham’s plan is a single, but very telling, example of the bloodthirsty instability which plagues the global capitalist system. Bosses and politicians around the world are looking to shore up their interests while economies stagnate through direct imperialist interventions and war. Trump, the figurehead of this system,  has continued to try papering over the cracks of a declining superpower in the US, by invading Iran, beheading the Venezuelan regime, threatening Greenland and maintaining support for Israeli capitalism’s bloody slaughter of the Palestinians. However no attempt to reassert the dominance of US imperialism, nor British military strength, can provide a solution to the turgid living standards.

This is why Socialist Students will be joining the international youth day of action on the 20 November organising walkouts with the slogan ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars’. We call on all those in the anti-war movement to join us, as well as the masses of young people feeling the sharp end of the unemployment crisis, the decline of further and higher education, and cuts to schools and colleges – to launch a genuine youth fightback to win the resources for our jobs and education, not wasted on their wars!

Build for an international youth strike this Autumn

Becca Bayman, delegate to the assembly and Liverpool Socialist Students

On 14 June, members of Socialist Students attended a Youth and Student Anti-War Assembly in Cologne, Germany. Twelve organisations from eight countries across Europe took part, including socialist youth organisations, climate justice groups and anarchist student unions.

The initiative began in solidarity with youth campaigns against military conscription in Germany. As opposition to militarisation has grown across the continent, the discussion broadened into how young people and students can build a coordinated European movement against war, militarism and austerity.

Our invitation to the assembly reflected the work Socialist Students has carried out in Britain. We were able to draw on experiences from the student walkouts against Donald Trump’s visit last September, alongside local campaigns, to contribute to discussions on how youth can organise effectively.

The urgency of building an anti-war movement was clear throughout the meeting. Last year, the UK government spent £66 billion on defence, while pressure from the capitalist class continues to mount on the Labour government to increase military spending even further. Across Europe, governments are preparing for a new era of militarisation. The European Union has lifted debt restrictions for military expenditure while encouraging member states to impose austerity on working-class people to pay the bill.

Socialist Students argued that resistance to these policies is already beginning and that our task is to strengthen and develop this fightback. Young people face attacks on education, housing, and living standards, while the government tells us there is always money available for war. Therefore, we put forward the need to link the struggle against militarism to the struggle against capitalism at every level.

Socialist Students proposed the slogan ‘Fight for Our Futures, Not Their Wars’, which was adopted by the assembly. The slogan provides a common banner under which youth movements across Europe can unite while allowing organisations in different countries to connect the anti-war struggle to the issues facing students and young people locally.

To help the movement grow, the assembly agreed a federal structure. New organisations will be able to affiliate on the basis of agreement with the core principles set out in the assembly’s manifesto, which outlines the political aims and common positions shared by participating groups.

A written contribution from the German youth organisation Die Falken will be published, incorporating amendments discussed during the meeting, to form the basis of further debate and discussion among participating organisations. Working groups were also established to coordinate campaigning, communications and mobilisation work, with regular online meetings planned for the coming months.

Throughout the assembly, Socialist Students argued for the need for a clear programme against war and militarism. Opposition to war cannot be separated from opposition to the capitalist system. Therefore, we will continue to connect the struggle against militarisation to the workers’ movement and fight to build links between young people and workers across Europe.

We are entering a period of deep instability internationally. As governments continue to inflict austerity and enforce militarisation, cooperation between youth and student organisations across Europe represents an important step forward. The challenges we face are international, and the struggle against capitalism must be international too.

By the end of the assembly, all participating organisations agreed on the goal of building towards a Europe-wide youth strike on 20 November. This proposal will now be discussed within each affiliated organisation as preparations begin.