York students protest £1,000 bursary cut

Louie Nardini, York Socialist Students

Socialist Students organised a demonstration with the York uni Your Party society, opposing the bursary cut put forward by the university management. The £1,000 cut affects working-class students and others, struggling to keep up with the cost-of-living crisis.

But it also affects medical students and refugee students, who also face severe cutbacks. Refugee students were receiving £3,000, as an incentive for higher education. Now it’s £2,000.

Medical students receiving a HYMS bursary would be getting £1,400 less for every year at university. For students with a residual household income of less than £25,000, they used to be eligible for £2,400 per year. Now it’s down to £1,000. This adds up to £7,000 of student entitlements over five years of study that is now completely missing!

At the protest, we had speakers from the University and College Union (UCU) and York Rent Strike 2025.

We all know that Labour is not going to pay a penny to fund universities, unless it is forced to under pressure. Student protest can build the pressure. So can the struggles of university workers, organised in their trade unions. A new mass workers’ party – fighting for free, fully funded education – would strengthen our fight too.

Come to Socialist Students conference

Youth get organised – Fight for socialist change

University of Manchester, 14 February 2026

The genocidal siege of Gaza. Climate breakdown that threatens the existence of life on our planet. Governments whipping up racism, sexism, and all forms of division. Attacks on the right to protest and more authoritarian laws. There is no shortage of issues pushing students and young people into the fore of mass movements, taking action for an alternative.

Internationally, the past year has unleashed a wave of mass protests and uprisings spearheaded by young people, from Indonesia to Nepal, Madagascar to the Philippines. In Britain, young people have continued to march in our hundreds and thousands to demand an end to Israeli state terror and war in the Middle East.

But despite the heroic preparedness of young people and the working class to fight back, the politicians, institutions, and the ‘profit-before-all’ system they uphold – capitalism – remain in place. And so the nightmare of war, poverty, and climate destruction continues, as our futures are sacrificed for the profits of a super-rich few.

What needs to be done to put an end to this nightmare? That is the key question that the Socialist Students conference 2026 is setting itself.

Socialist Students is a democratic, national organisation of students fighting for a socialist alternative to capitalism. We are active in schools, colleges and universities across the UK. Our conference is open to all students and young people who want to discuss, debate and make a collective plan of action for how to build a socialist youth movement in Britain today.

There will be plenty to discuss, including:

  • How can we build a mass socialist party to give students a voice in the fight against Labour and Reform? What role could Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party play? What about Zack Polanski and the Green Party?
  • How can students support workers in education fighting against cuts and low pay, and build a united movement to make the super-rich pay for the funding we need?
  • Why are so many student unions not on our side? And how can students build democratic student organisations that actually fight in our interests?

If you are a student or student/youth organisation that wants to be part of this discussion, get in touch and register your interest in attending here: socialiststudents.org.uk/socialist-students-conference-2026/

Graduates attacked by stealth

Dean Young, Liverpool Socialist Students

As a recent graduate attempting to find a reliable job, I took an interest in one of the hidden headlines in Labour’s Budget – graduates are being ‘stealth taxed’ £7.4 billion.

What is a ‘stealth tax’? The government is freezing the salary threshold at which graduates begin paying back their student loans.

This means, as wages rise with inflation, you are forced to pay back more of your student loan. The threshold was already kept low by the Tories, meaning more and more low-paid workers were forced to cough up.

Just like Labour’s income tax threshold freeze, once again, it’s an attack on low earners, working-class people, a political choice instead of going after tax-avoiding multinationals and big business.

This is little surprise. Labour is a party and government of big business and for big business. Certainly not for workers.

By the time the student loan thresholds are reviewed again in 2030, the Office for Budget Responsibility says the minimum wage for a full-time worker will be £28,995 a year. This is just £400 below the repayment threshold, meaning basically every single graduate in the country will be paying student loans back much quicker out of their pay packet. Masters and doctoral graduates repay 6% on earnings above just £21,000.

It is a bleak situation. It is hard enough to get a job when you graduate. Recently, there were 1.2 million graduate job applications for just 17,000 graduate jobs – 70 applicants per role.

It is little wonder increasing numbers of young people are desperately searching for a more radical solution to the crises of the capitalist economy. Labour has not delivered positive change. They’ve made things worse. Stealth taxes and increasing tuition fees being some of the ‘highlights’.

Capitalism cannot deliver the goods. It offers stagnation, squeezing of wages, and growing unemployment. Even after you spend years of hard work, doing things ‘by the book’.

We need socialist change to nationalise the commanding heights of the economy under democratic workers’ control, so it can be planned democratically, putting our skills and knowledge to good use.

A mass workers’ party, with the trade unions at its heart, armed with a socialist programme, is desperately needed to spearhead the fight for that. If you agree, please join Socialist Students in fighting for this.

  • Socialist Students conference 2026 takes place Saturday 14 February at the University of Manchester

Liverpool students’ Guild unionisation campaign

Niven Day, Liverpool Socialist Students

Socialist Students has engaged in a campaign to establish trade union recognition within the Liverpool Guild of Students.

The Guild hires over 200 staff. This includes bar staff, cleaners, baristas, and other roles. Despite having many commercial staff, there is a lack of a recognised trade union to represent the rights of said workers.

This is an issue, given the cuts to universities across the country, from the 100 voluntary redundancies in the University of Liverpool, to the redundancies in many universities, including Cardiff. There is a fear among workers within the Guild that these cuts may affect the Guild and its staff, and without any union representation, the workers will not be able to fight back.

There are issues that staff are facing within the Guild already. For example, many student staff are under zero-hour contracts, meaning that they are not guaranteed shifts every week, and that their pay will not be enough with the ever-increasing prices of food, washing and other necessities. There is also a lack of employer-provided travel for staff who work late nights, and may have to walk home to places like Smithdown Road or Greenbank, which is a safety concern given the distance that they would have to walk on their own.

Socialist Students has been campaigning on this issue with Unite, in order to establish it as the recognised union within the Guild. Other Guilds, such as the University of Birmingham, have Guild staff in Unison, so it can be done. We will continue to fight until the workers are represented not only in Liverpool, but nationally.

Campaign update: York uni cuts bursaries by 50% and Liverpool students protest

Louie Nardini, York Socialist Students

The marginalisation of working-class students continues with this latest round of cuts at the University of York. Socialist Students has been doing campaign stalls against the 50% cut to bursaries for poorer first-year students. Instead of £2,000, they now receive £1,000.

With university life already hard enough for low-income households, this adds further difficulties and fewer incentives. Education should be encouraged, regardless of income barriers.

That is why we advocate for fully funded, free education. That extra £1,000 belongs in the pockets of the students who make up the university, not its shareholders.


Liverpool students oppose right-wing Labour minister on visit

Jess O’Shaughnessy, Liverpool Hope Socialist Students

Liverpool Hope Socialist Students came out to protest against Labour minister Alison McGovern when she visited our uni on 21 November. McGovern has supported Labour maintaining the Tories’ two-child benefit cap, keeping hundreds of thousands of children in poverty. She also supports Labour’s disability benefit cuts.

We stood outside the main university building, explaining why we opposed her – putting forward the dire need for a new workers’ party. The students we spoke to agreed.

Hope University management considers Alison McGovern to be a worthwhile speaker, while the university itself continues through cuts and redundancies, and has not opposed rising tuition fees. Socialist Students launched the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign to demand that tuition fees be scrapped, with extra funding provided for education.

Solidarity with Linksjugend

Opposing the capitalist Israeli state is not antisemitism

Defend the right to debate the way forward in the Middle East

Socialist Students steering committee

Socialist Students sends our solidarity to members of Linksjugend [‘solid] – the youth section of the German left party Die Linke – who have been subjected to vicious public attacks for their criticism of the Israeli state.

Shamefully, these attacks have come not just from the capitalist media in Germany, but also from the leadership of Die Linke itself.

At the federal conference of Linksjugend in early November, delegates voted in support of a motion on the Middle East that referenced the “colonial and racist character of the Israeli state project… from its beginnings to the present day”.

If anything, this characterisation is vague on the policies of mass expulsion, occupation, and state terror carried out by Israeli capitalist governments ever since the foundation of the Israeli state.

But the motion was still seized upon by the billionaire-owned press in Germany to spread accusations of antisemitism, in an attempt to defame Die Linke and its youth wing, and the global movement in solidarity with the Palestinians that has resurged in the past two years.

Unfortunately, the Die Linke co-leaders have responded by assisting in a witch hunt of its own young members in Linksjugend. They have asserted that “one cannot question the protection of Jewish life” – in other words, claiming that by opposing the Israeli capitalist state, Linksjugend members are undermining the safety of Jewish people.

But the opposite is true. It is the Israeli ruling class, and their staunch defence of an unequal capitalist system based on exploitation and oppression for private profit, which poses the biggest threat to the lives of Jewish people in Israel.

By ramping up war throughout the Middle East, the Netanyahu government has only increased fears and unease of most people living in Israel. Currently one-in-five Jewish Israeli children grow up below the poverty line. That’s before mentioning the genocidal policy of the Israeli government in Palestine, which in two years has claimed over 60,000 Palestinian lives and laid waste to Gaza – intensifying the national conflict and Palestinian suffering, and not bringing greater security to Israelis.

Socialist Students believes that the building of a movement for socialist change in Israel – which would include replacing the current capitalist Israeli state with a democratic workers’ government – will be a key part of the struggle for a socialist Middle East. That is the only way to finally end poverty, war, and oppression in the region. In opposing the current Israeli state in this way, socialists are the foremost defenders of the right of Jewish and all people to a genuinely safe and decent life.

As a socialist youth organisation, Socialist Students defends the right of all young people to discuss and debate a way out of the horror that capitalism means for billions around the globe. That includes the right to debate how the current nightmare in Palestine and the Middle East could be ended. We send solidarity to members of Linksjugend who, by adding to this debate, have faced vicious smears by agents of the capitalist class in Germany, both inside and outside Die Linke.

Herts students challenge uni and SU inaction on sexism

Morgan Tritton, Hertfordshire Socialist Students

Hertfordshire Socialist Students is campaigning for action and funding from university management and the student union to end sexism and violence against women on campus.

In April, Student Council passed a motion unanimously, mandating Herts Students’ Union to pressure the university to improve incident-reporting systems, introduce prevention and education campaigns, provide consent and anti-harassment training for all students, and consult students and staff on these changes.

But since launching the campaign, Socialist Students has faced delays, silence, and contradictory statements from both the student union and university, especially over the rollout of mandatory consent and anti-harassment training.

The national Office for Students introduced new requirements in August. Despite repeated assurances from the Dean of Students at Herts that training had been delivered, evidence gathered by Socialist Students showed inconsistent implementation, poor-quality material, and many students who had not received any training.

After months of ignored emails, minimal communication to staff, and attempts by the university to evade responsibility, students are escalating pressure. Socialist Students has collected evidence of inaction, raised the issue in every available forum, and run mass email and social media campaigns, with other societies.

This pressure has now forced the university to commit to holding an open student forum in December. The Dean of Students and senior management will attend to answer for the failed rollout of training, and wider inaction.

Who stands up for us?

Once the highest democratic student body passes a motion, students should be able to trust that those elected and employed to represent their interests will lobby the university to make urgent changes to defend student safety. Instead, this struggle has exposed how compromised Herts Students’ Union, beholden to university management, and reliant on maintaining the institution’s public image, is often unwilling to fight for students’ interests, when those interests do not align with management priorities. Socialist Students has been working to re-politicise Herts Students’ Union, pushing it to become a fighting, democratic body, unafraid to challenge cuts, closures, and managerial overreach.

Socialist Students has also communicated our campaign’s concerns to staff and members of the University and College Union (UCU), who share frustrations over the university’s failure to protect students. We will continue building a united movement of students and workers to hold the uni accountable, especially since the Student Council’s democratic mandate has been ignored. Backed by staff, Student Council, and requirements set by the regulator, Socialist Students demands an overhaul of the uni’s approach to sexual harassment and misconduct.

Our campaign is part of a wider struggle for a socialist alternative to the capitalist system that fuels sexism and misogyny, and for free, fully funded education – starting with building a strong democratic student union that promotes a political voice for students.

Socialist Students supporting strikes against uni cuts

UCU members in Sheffield, including a list of student signatures gathered by Socialist Students in support of the strikes

Sheffield Socialist Students supports UCU strikes

Joseph McHale, Sheffield Socialist Students

17 November was the first day of joint strike action by the University and College Union (UCU) at both the University of Sheffield (UoS) and Sheffield Hallam University. Hallam had also gone on strike a week earlier.

After a busy first morning of picketing – at least ten buildings at UoS – UCU members and supporters converged outside the City Hall for a joint union rally. Socialist Students members were in the crowd supporting the speakers. 

The UCU strike action is happening due to the shocking cuts both universities are aggressively pursuing. UoS has over £200 million in reserves but is pursuing £50.7 million in cuts for the 2025-26 year!

Socialist Students at UoS has worked with the university’s anti-cuts coalition to make students aware of strike action, petitioning over the last three weeks. We continued our support on the picket lines.

The rally included speeches from both UoS and Hallam staff and a student, all highlighting the dire conditions that have forced staff to take this action. 

Many of those speeches mirrored Socialist Students demands for fully funded and free education that is democratically run. This is imperative to improving the experience for both staff and students, which was well received at the rally.

The failed experiment of marketisation of our universities is acknowledged in the UCU bulletin. These cuts treat students as customers and staff as service providers, rather than appreciating the true value that they bring to education.

We need a fully publicly funded and democratically run university system, putting both the staff and students at the heart of it rather than soulless management and business interests. This is what Socialist Students will continue to fight for.

Socialist Students campaigning in support

A Socialist Students meeting was addressed by UCU branch officers recently, and members have already been out campaigning in support of the UCU. Socialist Students is part of the anti-cuts coalition which pushed for a student referendum last academic year, in which students overwhelmingly voted in support of staff strike action (83%) and for ‘no confidence’ in the University Executive Board (89%).

Socialist Students is linking the fight to their Funding Not Fees campaign – exposing the broken market-based higher education funding model which allows Hallam to borrow huge to build a satellite campus in London, and UoS to pay its vice chancellor £330,000 a year, while both universities cut courses and staff.

There are nearly 5,000 fewer international students across Sheffield than two years ago, causing budget deficits. UoS’s dependence on arms manufacturers has been highlighted by Palestine campaigners, and now Hallam is accused of trading one of its professor’s academic freedom (research into forced labour in China) for access to the Chinese student market. The need for full funding and an end to marketisation couldn’t be clearer.


Fighting course closures and redundancies at Leicester uni

Alanah Carey Peacher, Leicester Socialist Students

At the beginning of the summer, University of Leicester (UoL) management announced that they would be slashing the staffing budget at the university by £11 million. Several courses, including Environmental Sciences and Chemistry, are under threat as well as many jobs.

Since then, the university bosses have revealed phase one of their cruel redundancy programme. Modern Languages is being shut down, and a whole series of departments are being merged, which will threaten further courses. A total of 160 redundances are planned.

On 12 November, the University and College Union (UCU) held a rally in the city in protest at the cuts. Over 300 staff, students and UCU members from around the country, as well as Unite members and other trade unionists and supporters, marched up to the university campus to hear speeches from staff and students affected by the cuts.

Staff members from Geography expressed their heartbreak upon hearing the news and their concern for the current and future students. The chair of UoL UCU explained that there is no transparency about the cuts. The university has the funds to create a campus in Dubai but not to fund the education of students in the city where the university was founded!

Members asked all in attendance to vote no confidence in the governance of the university. Socialist Students members will continue to build solidarity.

Socialist Students speech at Socialism 2025

Sofia Pandolfi, college student and Socialist Students member, gave an inspiring speech at Socialism 2025. Read what she had to say here!


Young people today have grown up in a world of crisis. We’ve seen governments increase university tuition fees, cut our youth services, attempt to strip away disability benefits for young people, and propose a future which gives us no hope.

Internationally, we’ve watched our government support the brutal genocide in Palestine, claiming it has no money to invest in our education and services.

Living under a system devoid of opportunities, and dependent on international exploitation, has fuelled anger and frustration.

But if we young people are to have a real future to look forward to, we need to transform our anger into action – by getting organised for a socialist alternative to capitalism, and the war, exploitation and oppression that this system produces.

That is what Socialist Students did when Donald Trump, an embodiment of capitalism in crisis, came to visit the UK on the invitation of Keir Starmer in September.

Socialists Students organised a campaign of youth walkouts against Trump to get young people organised against Trump and Starmer’s politics of war and division. To build for the walkouts in London, I helped to give out hundreds of leaflets, put up posters, and met with students to share ideas on how to protest against Trump’s visit.

Hundreds of students across the country, standing up to Trump and the brutal system he represents, walked out of their schools, colleges, and universities on the 17 September – the day Trump was in Windsor Castle feasting on a state banquet with Starmer, the King, and a guest list of billionaire tech CEOs.

It wasn’t easy. At one school in South London, we watched the headteacher rip leaflets out of students’ hands. At another school in East London, the management called the police to intimidate students into not protesting.

The youth walkouts against Trump were a chance to show that young people can fight back when we get organised. Socialist Students is now following up the walkouts with a campaign to get students in schools, sixth forms and colleges building our own students’ unions, as a way for young people to have an organised voice. Not just for one day, but always.

By getting organised as students, we can more effectively link up with the workers who keep our education and society running and build a united movement for the socialist change that we all need.

For that, young people also need a political voice through which we can fight alongside the organised working class. Your Party is an opportunity to do that.

Your Party could give a voice to young people’s anger by demanding fully funded free education, mass building of council houses and rent controls, as part of a socialist programme to transform the lives of working-class and young people.

Why not take that first step by having Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn, and other Your Party MPs in the Independent Alliance proposing an amendment to the upcoming budget – instead of Labour’s plans for more tuition fee rises, calling for the total abolition of fees, as well as the cancellation of student debt, and the immediate reintroduction of maintenance grants for all students?

Socialist Students members have joined Your Party and are fighting for socialism and working-class struggle to be at the heart of it.

In universities across the country, we’ve organised dozens of meetings discussing how Your Party can be a democratic voice for students. As a next step to building the party we need on campus, we will be inviting Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn and the other Independent Alliance MPs to be part of a Your Party speaking tour of universities and colleges.

If you want to help build a political voice which can help unite students and young people with the powerful struggles of the working class, then join Socialist Students at your school, college or university to help build the fightback.

Is it too late for socialist change to end climate change?

Hannah Ponting, Liverpool Socialist Students
Originally published in the Autumn 2025 edition of Socialist Student


Climate change has got the world hurtling towards disaster. The disarray flowing from capitalist governments across the globe has left a trail of destruction, with wildfires raging, sea levels rising, and a potentially very bleak future for young people on the horizon.

The internationally agreed target of capping global warming at 1.5% above preindustrial levels, deemed essential by climate scientists to prevent the worst effects of climate change, is looking dangerously out of reach, with the effects of climate change being no longer predictions of the future, but current events. In early 2025, the LA wildfires burned over 40,000 acres of land, resulting in the loss of the homes of tens of thousands of people. Around 40% of glaciers are already beyond saving and doomed to melt, which will have a massive impact on the billions of people reliant on glaciers to regulate the water used to grow food.

We have also been feeling the effects of climate change in the UK. The summer of 2022 saw temperatures hitting 40 degrees in the UK for the first time in history, leading to rail lines buckling, 20% of hospital operations being cancelled during the peak of the heatwave, and over 3000 people dying prematurely due to the heat. Following this, at the start of July 2023, the planet endured the two hottest days ever recorded.

No Climate Justice Under Capitalism

There is no solution to the climate crisis under capitalism. Capitalism, driven by competition and big business profits before all else, cannot deliver the coordinated, long-term planning required to address the climate crisis. In fact, 71% of all global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988 can be traced to just 100 fossil fuel producers.

This Labour government defends the interests of capitalism, and has demonstrated its lack of willingness to fight the climate crisis head-on. Even before the election, Keir Starmer abandoned Labour’s policy of investing £28 billion into green investment funds, despite the ongoing climate crisis.

The same unwillingness to act can be seen in country after country, where capitalist governments prioritise the profits of ‘their’ capitalist class over the needs of ordinary people and the environment.

While many may hope that international climate agreements may offer a step in the right direction, this has been demonstrated to not be the case. Even if every commitment made at the 2016 Paris Agreement was met, global warming would still go beyond the 2-degree limit that the summit declared as an essential cap. Furthermore, not a single industrialised country is even on track to meet the commitment that it made in 2016.

Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is a clear indication that capitalist politicians are willing to abandon climate targets in favour of national interests and short-term profit motives. The US is a massive contributor to climate change, ranking second in the world after China, with the US still having a higher rate of emissions of planet-warming gases per capita.

Rather than attempting to tackle this problem, Trump is ignoring the scientific evidence and encouraging further acceleration of fossil fuel and oil extractions as part of his ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ pledge! The Trump administration has also launched attacks on universities, pulling funding from diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programmes, many of which are based around climate change, which will limit further research into environmental studies.

At a time when global cooperation to end the climate crisis is needed more than ever, Trump’s divisive politics and use of trade tariffs globally make him a clear example of the unplanned chaos that capitalism means for the world today.

Clearly we can’t trust our planet in the hands of the capitalists and their politicians. By fighting to take big businesses into public ownership, including nationalising polluting oil and gas companies under democratic workers’ control and management, the working class could run these industries for social need not profit, and focus on taking co-ordinated steps to make the switch towards environmentally friendly energy sources.

If workers had a democratic say in how society is run, a planned ‘green transition’ away from fossil fuels and towards environmentally friendly alternatives could be achieved without mass job losses for workers in those industries.

Workers’ control

The ‘Lucas Plan’ in the 1970s gives a glimpse of how workers currently employed in environmentally harmful industries could redirect their skills and expertise to lead the charge for a green transition.

Over fifty years ago, workers at Lucas Aerospace – a company making electronic systems for missiles – were threatened with mass redundancies due to deindustrialisation. Instead of accepting these losses, the workers, organised in trade unions, proposed a shift in production from military manufacturing to socially useful goods.

Over 150 ideas with detailed technical designs were included in the plan, offering a glimpse into the opportunities that can arise when workers are given the chance to repurpose their technical expertise into socially useful goods.

Tragically, due to resistance from the management and the lack of workers’ control in the company, the plan was ultimately blocked. Nonetheless, the Lucas Plan is perhaps relevant now more than ever before. It highlights why we need democratic, fighting trade unions to play a central role in the fight against climate change and towards a sustainable future.

The impact of war

This era of capitalist crisis means horror on end – not just seen in the deepening climate crisis, but also in increasing wars, including the genocidal horrors suffered by the Palestinians in Gaza.

War not only displaces millions of people and causes devastating loss of life. It also wreaks havoc on the climate. Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, has severely damaged biodiversity and inflicted lasting harm on Ukraine’s natural environment.

Examples of capitalist war’s devastating effects on the climate can also be seen throughout history. During the Vietnam War, over 5 million acres of forest and 500,000 acres of farmland were destroyed, with over 400,000 tons of the toxic chemical Napalm being sprayed over the Vietnamese countryside by the US. In Iraq, marshlands were reduced by 90% after President Saddam Hussein ordered major rivers be stopped in order to crush an uprising. Furthermore, Afghanistan has lost nearly 95% of its forest cover in recent decades.

Even during ‘peacetime’, militaries use vast amounts of dirty energy. For example, the US Department of Defense’s 566,000 buildings make up 40% of its fossil fuel consumption. These structures include training centres, dormitories, factories, and other facilities across the department’s nearly 800 bases worldwide. As nations continue to boost military spending in an increasingly multipolar and unstable world, the climate continues to bear the consequences.

Youth vs climate chaos

The message is clear: young people aren’t willing to pay the price for capitalism’s exploitation of the climate, and failure to give us a future. The climate crisis is pushing more and more students and young people into action. As well as countless grassroots youth-led campaigns taking shape in various communities, the ‘School Strike for Climate’ movement saw millions of students across the globe mobilise in protest against climate change, demonstrating that a new generation of young people have been pushed into action. After all, young people are now entering into a world of climate breakdown, increased militarisation, and vast economic inequality. Now, more than ever, young people are seeking an alternative system which can provide a genuine way forwards.

While many young people may have looked to the Green Party, hoping that they may provide an alternative, their actions have fallen short. For example, the party voted through £51 million in cuts to Bristol City Council, a move defended by Green council leader Tony Dyer as a necessity, as he explained in a BBC interview that they were simply having to “work within the constraints that are placed upon us.” This just exposes the Greens’ lack of a clear, transformative vision for a socialist society, which is vital for any party looking to stand up to the capitalist system and its demands that the working class pay for the bosses’ climate catastrophe.

As Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto included a £250 billion green transformation fund, a commitment to a publicly owned national grid, and for the “supply arms of the big six energy companies to be brought into public ownership”. His manifesto, which also included other bold policies such as the scrapping of tuition fees, electrified millions of young people.

Now Corbyn has joined Zarah Sultana in pledging to build a new party to take on Starmer’s Labour. Socialist Students welcomes this as a potential major step forward in fighting climate change and capitalism. As a bare minimum, Corbyn’s green policies from 2019 would be a starting point, from which a mass movement for socialist change, not climate change, could be built.

Under a socialist system, the banks and major industries – including the major energy companies – would be placed in the hands of workers, not the capitalist bosses. By cooperating and discussing together, it would be possible to democratically draw up a plan of production based on human need, including the need for a healthy environment. The world’s massive wealth, resources and technology could be steered towards ensuring we live sustainably. Millions of high-quality, eco-friendly jobs would be created as societies shift rapidly towards green energy. Decisions about where to locate renewable energy production could be made democratically, with proper community consultation.

Socialist Students campaigns at schools, colleges, and universities across the country – to allow young people to make their voices heard in the fight for a viable socialist future, in which the needs of people and the planet which we live on are no longer secondary to profit. If you agree, then join us this term.