We are required to take on tens of thousands of pounds of debt to receive a university education, an education that politicians like Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves never had to pay for
After paying ridiculous amounts, we enter into university and are faced with budget cuts and course closures.
Like many other young people, until this July, a Conservative government was all I had ever known and all I could remember.
This July, despite my best efforts, I deep down had a little bit of hope that maybe things could get better. But let me be clear, my hopes, and hopes of all students across this country, were shattered. Not three months into power, this government broke their election promises and raised tuition fees.
We don’t just stand against this latest rise in tuition fees, we call for all tuition fees for both university and college students to be scrapped, and for student debt to be cancelled immediately.
We call for the reintroduction of living grants not maintenance loans, and for them to rise properly with inflation each year.
We also stand in solidarity with university workers to end low pay, job insecurity, and bad working conditions.
At the end of the day, what we call for and what students need is for universities to be properly and democratically funded, paid for by taking it from the super-rich, not by raising the bill for students.
Just days after the budget, the so-called Labour government announced a rise in tuition fees to £9,535, coming into effect in the 2025-26 academic year. This will not only affect students starting university in 2025, but also returning students.
The fee hike will anger many already stressed, outraged students. Young people are already facing a cost-of-living crisis, massive debts, and cuts to their services and courses.
Some people say that if you’re low paid after studying you won’t have to pay it back, but if you are a graduate working full-time on just next year’s minimum wage you will still have to start to pay it off.
The budget had already contained attacks on young people, such as the increase in the bus fare cap to £3, making it more expensive for students and young people to travel.
The Labour government is testing to see what it can get away with without triggering a mass movement.
This is why Socialist Students has initiated the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign with other groups on campus. To fight to scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt, for fully funded education, with living grants not loans. To fight for rent controls in student accommodation, to end low pay and unstable contracts for staff, and to stop all cuts and closures on campus.
Socialist Students groups will be writing to student unions and trade union branches to ask to speak at their branch meetings and to ask them to support the campaign.
Funding Not Fees will also be lobbying MPs to see if they are on the side of students or of rotten university managements and a government that wants to make students pay for the university funding crisis rather than the super-rich.
We have ten months till this fee rise will be implemented, so we have to get out there and fight back to show the government that students will not just accept attacks.
It’s not just on the universities where young people are angry. We face the devastating effects of cuts to our public services, such as youth services and schools, which are making life harder for millions.
If you are interested in campaigning for funding not fees, if you want to fight back against cutbacks and for socialist change, then join the socialists today!
Socialist Students says
No fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fight for socialist policies
Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Funding Not Fees campaigners in Liverpool on the October 30th day of action
The Labour government has today announced that university tuition fees will rise in line with RPI inflation from September 2025.
In anticipation of a tuition fee hike this term, the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign organised protests at over 20 university campuses across the UK on Wednesday 30 October, the same day that Labour announced its first Budget.
The ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign was launched, with the support of Socialist Students and other campus organisations, to demand that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers. The campaign calls for fully publicly funded higher education, paid for by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as the means to:
Scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt
Replace maintenance loans with living grants for all students
End low pay, job cuts and the casualisation of higher education workers
Student activists from around the UK will be discussing the next steps for the free education movement at the Funding Not Fees rally, taking place as part of the Socialism 2024 weekend at the Institute of Education in London on Sunday 10th November, 3-4pm.
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser, said:
“In the space of five years, the Labour Party has gone from pledging the scrapping of tuition fees, to now increasing them. Today’s announcement only confirms that when Starmer talks about his Labour Party governing as ‘changed Labour’, he means a complete abandonment of the anti-austerity policies of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.”
“Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has meanwhile indicated that an inflation-linked fee rise would only be the first step towards a wider overhaul of the university funding system, signalling the potential for even bigger attacks to come on students under this government.”
“Today’s fee rise announcement confirms that Starmer’s Labour wants students to pay even more for education, instead of big business and the super-rich, whose interests this government dutifully serves.”
“Students have to organise now to stop any rise in tuition fees. We refuse to pay an even higher price for the crisis in higher education, which a Labour government helped to set in motion by introducing tuition fees in the first place”.
“Socialist Students has helped to initiate the Funding Not Fees campaign this term as a step to building a united student and workers’ movement for fully funded, free education with living grants for all, paid for by taking the wealth and resources off the super-rich.”
“We will be reaching out to other student organisations and trade union branches in the coming weeks to build for ‘Funding Not Fees’ lobbies of MPs up and down the country, to demand they call for the full public funding students and university workers need – not more cuts, cost-of-living crisis, and fees.”
University students are suffering again this term. The gap between our maintenance loans and actual living costs has never been higher. Most of us have to work long hours in low-paid jobs just to afford to study. Rents have soared yet again, and courses are being cut at a record number of universities. For the first time ever this year, the proportion of working-class students attending university has fallen – and no wonder.
Labour’s Budget has done nothing to stop the rot. In the 170-page document published by the Treasury today, the word ‘university’ appears just twice – and only to announce some crumbs for the “commercialisation” of research.
The Budget is a continuation of attacks on students and university workers seen under the Tories. It confirms Labour’s immediate approach to the university funding crisis, which is to allow university bosses to continue making savage cuts to jobs and courses.
At the same time, by allocating no new money for universities, it remains a strong possibility that Labour will look at raising tuition fees in the follow-up to this Budget – potentially allowing fees to rise with inflation, to give universities a small funding boost in the short-term.
Faced with a higher education sector in crisis, and the spectre of university bankruptcies hanging over their heads, Labour will try to make students and staff pay, not big business and the super-rich, whose interests this Labour government obediently serves. On the same day as the Budget, the government announced they will be legislating for reform of the fee system next year. Even bigger attacks on students could be in the pipeline under Starmer.
Socialist Students has been preparing for the nightmare facing students and staff this year. That’s why we initiated the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign this term, as a step to building a movement for fully funded, free education with living grants for all, paid for by taking the wealth and resources off the super-rich. As part of the Funding Not Fees day of action around Budget Day, Socialist Students protested on over 20 campuses across the UK.
Socialist Students will be reaching out to student organisations, trade union branches and others over the rest of this term to build the Funding Not Fees campaign. We want to organise mass campus meetings, lobbies of our local MPs, and more protests and rallies around the country to demand a socialist solution to the capitalist crisis in education – not more cuts, cost-of-living crisis, and fees.
Charley Lincoln, Northampton Socialist Party and Socialist Students
Student rents have risen more than inflation. Student loans have not. There is a massive gap. The average monthly rent for a student in 2024 is £689.43, 16.5% higher than the year before. In London the average is a whopping £1,032 a month. A student getting the maximum maintenance loan and living away from parents outside of London can borrow £10,227 a year, £852 a month.
No wonder 69% of students now work alongside their studies, according to the National Union of Students. The negative impact is not limited to academic achievement but also health and social outcomes. 78% of students surveyed say they are suffering ‘significant stress’ over money.
Most students with more wealthy parents willing and able to pay don’t face the same stress. Increasingly, access to higher education is becoming the privilege of a wealthy few, deepening economic inequality as working-class and poorer young people are forced to forego education and take low-paid jobs with little chance of long-term progression.
Socialist Students fights for free, fully funded education for all. Rather than being saddled with a lifetime of debt, student loans should be replaced by living grants that rise with the cost of living.
Students are a ‘captive market’ for landlords – be it the university itself, private halls or private renting. All know the level of student maintenance loans, and all hike rents to maximise income. Student housing has become even more competitive than the housing market in general.
University halls
Around one in five students live in university-owned halls of residence. Increasingly, access to this is limited to first-years, postgraduates and international students. These three groups typically bring in the most cash and unis are motivated to get students enrolled (and paying fees) with as few hurdles as possible.
Halls typically have very limited provisions for students who have families, or for disabled students. Often when attempts are made to accommodate disabled students, it is not as thought-through. There are problems such as push-door buttons on one side only, or even behind non-accessible internal doors in the way of the accessible one, or needing an able-bodied person to place a ramp down.
Licensing for halls is viewed in the same way as for residential homes. Each room is treated as an individual dwelling, instead of looking at the whole building. Therefore halls do not have to meet the same fire safety standards as other high-rise residential buildings. In England, more than one residential hall has been found to use the same flammable cladding as Grenfell.
End rip-off rents – give students and university workers democratic control over rent levels, maintenance and repairs
Invest to provide high-quality, safe, and accessible accommodation, including to meet the specific needs of disabled students, and those with families
Private halls
Building private student halls is big business. The largest provider, Unite Housing, is listed on the FTSE 100 biggest companies on the London Stock Exchange. Unlike traditional housing, when halls of residence are sold, they are sold as a whole building, not as individual flats. Since 2013, the ‘block’ selling of student halls has increased.
That marked the start of a student accommodation investment boom, and led national and international investors to build new property portfolios. As investors sought to consolidate scale and drive down operational costs, England has seen levels of investment steadily at around £3.2 billion a year. The selling of IQ student accommodation company to Blackstone in 2020 was for £4.7 billion, which is the highest seen in England so far.
Investment isn’t planned to meet the needs of students. Instead, private hall owners invest in what they think will be profitable.
It’s also worth mentioning that this building type is difficult to repurpose when it needs to be sold (normally due to oversupply). The standardised nature of typical purpose-built halls, along with small room size, makes changes to residential use difficult.
Some cities have attempted to use the rise of co-living integration in the workplace, living environment, and social space as a product for students and young professionals. Still, reports of negative experiences living in this set-up are rampant. People have felt unsafe and forgotten.
Socialist Party member Marcelin shared her experience of a co-living accommodation: “The entrance to the building did not lock even when pushed closed; it was on the street with heavy footfall. Random non-residents would let themselves in, and there have been issues that led to police turning up. The property was meant to be pet-free, but one neighbour had six dogs that would be allowed to roam unsupervised in the hallways.” When both issues were raised, she was told nothing could be done. Previously, she had lived in halls and a shared house, but was priced out.
Student accommodation does not have to comply with affordable housing requirements. At the same time, any housed student can count towards meeting a local authority’s housing targets. In other words, each rented bedroom can be counted as a single home, misrepresenting reality. This means councils can claim they are tackling homelessness while not actually taking action, and instead exploiting students.
Stringent council licensing of student housing providers, with the direct democratic involvement of students
For democratic rent controls, quality and safety standards in-line with university-owned halls
Private-rented accommodation
Second-years and beyond are largely left to fend for themselves securing housing on the private market in competition with groups of other students. Landlords and agents exploit the shortage of housing (and using fearmongering about scarcity too) to charge maximum rents and get contracts signed months in advance. To maximise income, bedrooms are crammed into homes designed for a single family.
Similar to the boom of landlords looking to profit through Airbnb in tourist hotspots, in student areas landlords buy up family homes to convert into student accommodation, further reducing the supply of available housing for families, this drives up the cost of rent for everyone.
Housing contracts for students are not fit for purpose. They often do not provide year-round accommodation, assuming you have a family that can support you during the holidays. They are also not flexible enough to account for the realities of student life. If a student has to drop out, they will no longer have the student loan to pay rent, putting themselves and often their housemates at risk due to them being locked into their contract.
Invasive landlords often take advantage of the inexperience of student tenants, often turning up un-announced for inspections, maintenance and property viewings for the next tenants. This creates a lack of privacy as well as emphasising how replaceable tenants are.
The requirement for guarantors and security deposits, often on a yearly basis, assumes again that the student has a family that is able to provide this support, excluding poorer students from a working-class background from this kind of housing, as well as excluding those with complicated home lives. Students often lose hundreds of pounds every year to landlords manufacturing reasons to take security deposits.
Compulsory licensing for all landlords, including subject to quality and safety inspection from local council authorities and student representatives, and to end security deposit theft
Democratic rent controls for all rental properties, student or otherwise
Access to secure tenancies, including flexibility that accounts for student term dates and other issues. Include Student Finance England as guarantor for students excluded or forced to leave courses early
A programme of mass council house building to meet the needs of all
Damp, mould and rip-off rents
Frankie Sell, Southampton Socialist Students
From the extortionate rates charged by both university and private student halls to omnipresent mould and botched renovations, it feels as if the crisis of student housing is inescapable.
Student halls in particular can cause tremendous headaches as many students’ first experience of living away from home. For instance, in my first year I lived in the cheapest ensuite room stocked with just a single bed and desk. This now costs £6,646.92 for a 41-week contract (an increase of about £500 since 2022). When you consider that the maximum student loan is just £9,672.00 per year, this leaves students with just £250 per month after rent.
This is clearly unsustainable. Like many students, I opted for cheaper student housing with a private landlord going into my second year; however this came with its own problems. The only bathroom and shower I had access to was a converted storage closet under the stairs, it was barely large enough to stand in and had constant issues with damp and mould that were never dealt with. The ceiling in the living room would occasionally start pouring water. The landlords attempted (unsuccessfully) to fix this problem but eventually gave up trying towards the end of the tenancy.
Then, the following year, there were large cracks in the walls (an external consultant informed me these were likely caused by structural damage) which took over three months to repair. There is also heavy staining in the carpets and walls, which have still been largely ignored four months into the tenancy.
Unsurprisingly to any students reading this, these examples are common in the industry of student housing, and are by no means the worst that I have heard in my time as a student.
Why should students be paying more than 50% of their income on rents? Rents should be capped, and maintenance standards regulated, including with maximum time frames for repairs.
The Funding Not Fees campaign demands that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers. We call for fully publicly funded higher education, paid for by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as the means to:
Students are angry. Socialist Students members in Liverpool have spoken to thousands of new and returning university students since the start of the academic year. All we have ever known is Tory cutbacks and attacks. Now any hope that things might be different under Labour is being transformed into anger at Keir Starmer and his government, including over the possibility of a rise in tuition fees.
With Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader for the 2017 and 2019 general elections, Labour’s policy was for free education. Starmer said it best at the recent Labour conference in Liverpool – the Labour Party has “changed”. It is no longer a party for working-class and young people. Continuation of war in the Middle East, two-child benefit caps and pensioners’ winter fuel payment attacks; life under Labour feels a lot like life under the disgraced Tories.
The cost of a university education is already staggering. Fees alone are £9,250 a year for most students, add to that loans to pay for rent, food and the basic necessities. Every year the threat of a debt mountain deters working-class young people from achieving a higher education qualification. And the Budget on 30 October could include raising fees further.
Already, universities like the University of Liverpool have upped food prices on campus and removed their food pantries, which gave students hit hard by the cost-of-living crisis access to free food if they could not afford to do weekly food shops.
This academic year, 40% of English universities are facing a deficit in their budget. And, as usual, the fat-cat vice chancellors and the government want us to foot the bill.
But at the same time, the rich keep getting richer. As horrific as it is, the capitalist system prioritises profit over young peoples’ futures.
University education should be free, fully funded and accessible to all. Maintenance grants should be universal and enough to be able to afford a decent quality of life. Life under Starmer’s Labour is making it clearer than ever that we need a party to fight for the many, not the few – a new mass workers’ party that fights for socialist change.
Socialist Students says
No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fights for socialist policies
Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Funding Not Fees campaign
Socialist Students is helping to initiate a new national campaign, Funding Not Fees, with the support of other campus organisations, to bring together students and workers in a movement for fully funded, free education – not more fees and cuts.
The Funding Not Fees campaign demands that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers. It calls for fully publicly funded higher education, paid for by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as the means to:
After fifteen years of Tory austerity attacking our jobs, homes and services, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have made clear to the bosses their government won’t be a radical departure. And, hearing about difficult decisions to be made on things including education funding, students are preparing for the worst.
Already, the university cost of living is at an all-time high. And the money we need to live on – once maintenance grants now transformed into loans – has not risen with inflation.
And its not just students. Lecturers and university staff are being exploited ever more – with low pay and longer hours. They have organised in their unions against poor pay and conditions during the strike wave and against redundancies now.
Students at this point in time, however, do not have the same level of organisation to match our growing frustration. For most of us, the students union is nothing more than a cafe and bar. Socialist Students members in freshers’ weeks across the country have raised the need to fill that void with democratic fighting student organisations.
Free education should be a right for all, and this can only be achieved by taking it back into our hands. We’ve been told to tighten our belts by the six-figure salary bosses at the core of the marketised system. But its time the super-rich bosses and corporations are made to pay
The University and College Union (UCU) has called for an education levy on big business to pay for an end to tuition fees. We believe students and workers should have a democratic say over how university funding is spent and our universities are run. At our public meetings and stalls we found that our programme for free education chimes with students.
When they tripled tuition fees in 2010, the ensuing outrage lacked the organisation to sustain a proper movement against them. We will be prepared this time! Join Socialist Students today to get involved in the fightback.
Socialist Students says:
No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice – build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fight for socialism
Fight for socialist change – for democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
For full public funding and an end to marketisation
Free education for all!
Students are once again in the firing line! A statement released by Universities UK (UUK) at the start of the Autumn term has called on the government to increase tuition fees in line with inflation – again passing the cost of the ongoing crisis of the capitalist system onto the shoulders of students and young people. UUK has said that each student now costs a university between £12,000 to £13,000 to educate.
One in five universities is in deficit. The government and so-called experts say the problem is fees being frozen and not keeping up with inflation. So they want us to pay more – and face cuts and closures on campus. But in reality, our universities have gone underfunded for years.
Since the introduction of tuition fees, and their trebling by the Tories and Lib Dems in 2010, government funding for universities has been continuously slashed. Students and campus unions have had to fight vicious cut-backs by management – cuts to entire courses, jobs, and attacks on staff terms and conditions.
Meanwhile the student cost-of-living crisis rages on. The rents we pay on average are more expensive than the average available loan – so how are we supposed to be able to live, especially considering inflation has pushed up the prices of food, travel, educational resources and other cost of living essentials?
But it doesn’t have to be like this. Socialist Students is fighting to build a mass movement to win the funding that our universities and students need – to reverse the cuts which have taken place on our campuses, replace inadequate loans with genuine living grants for students tied to the cost of living, and to scrap the broken tuition fee funding model altogether. Education should be free, fully publicly funded, with grants re-introduced.
When Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, the party’s manifesto estimated that scrapping fees and re-introducing grants would cost about £12bn. Starmer’s Labour government has made it absolutely clear that it does not intend to cough up the funding our universities need. That’s because, just like the Tories, Labour now represents the interests of the rich and powerful in society.
Why should education be run like a commercial business? Britain is the sixth wealthiest nation on the planet. The FTSE 100 biggest corporations have been paying around £85bn annually in dividends to their shareholders. The University and College Union (UCU) has called for a £17 billion “education levy” on “profiteering businesses”.
That’s a good start – but why leave so much wealth and power in the hands of big business, which puts profit before need? If the enormous wealth in society was democratically owned and controlled by the working-class majority, we could plan society to meet all our needs. That includes education – how it’s funded and how it’s run should be determined by education workers and students and the wider working class, not fat-cat vice-chancellors.
The recent strike wave showed how governments can be forced to pay more than they intended – and those lessons need to be built on. Mass organised action is needed to build the fight for free education. Building a student movement starts with getting organised on campus with democratic decision-making, linking up with campus trade unions and local college students.
But students also need a mass political voice to give expression to our campaigns and movements, as do working class and young people more generally. If the Tories and Labour both speak for the interests of the super-rich, then we need a new mass political voice to speak for what we’re fighting for – including against attacks on our education, against war internationally, and for a socialist world.
As part of our movement, at the upcoming ‘painful’ (in Starmer’s words) budget on October 30, Jeremy Corbyn and the four other independent MPs, as well as the suspended seven Labour MPs, could use their voice in Parliament to propose full public funding of education for all.
No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and No closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and wider working class to fight the funding our universities need.
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war and occupation and profiteering and exploitation while guaranteering jobs and funding.
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers party that will stand up for students and workers that fights for socialist policies.
Fight for socialist change – For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future.
We have witnessed a year of brutal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, and increasingly in the West Bank too.
It has exposed to the world how capitalist politicians do not value human life, despite what they say about wanting an end to the conflict. Many people here in the UK have felt anger at the situation in Gaza, and taken to the streets to protest.
Many students have also taken things into their own hands, protesting against their university bosses, calling for divestment from arms companies and companies that prop up Israeli state terror.
School and college students have organised walkouts and protests in solidarity with the Palestinians. Towards the end of last term, student encampments were organised up and down the country, exposing universities’ links to arms companies and banks. Socialist Students members were involved with many of these.
We fight for the 7-million-strong trade union movement to be central. It is the threat of workers getting organised and fighting back that terrifies the capitalist world leaders, including in the Middle East.
It is a mass movement of workers and poor people, democratically organised and fighting for socialist change, in Palestine and across the region, that can point the way forward to an end to war and national oppression.
We call for an end to the marketisation of higher education and an end of the tuition-fee funding model. Universities are becoming ever more reliant on money from big business, including from arms companies such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, due to cuts in funding from government. University education should be free for all, and fully publicly funded by making the super-rich pay.
The huge determined protests against the slaughter in Gaza have defied attempts by politicians and police to intimidate them. That defiance led to the hated Suella Braverman being sacked as home secretary.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners standing in the general election had a huge effect in a whole number of constituencies. Jeremy Corbyn was reelected, in addition to another four anti-war independent MPs.
That must be built on to deliver the new workers’ party needed to give a voice to the anti-war, socialist opposition to Starmer. Student protests this term can have a big effect too – and Socialist Students is determined to make them as effective as possible.
If you want to be part of the fightback, get involved!
What Ideas should students get organised around?
DISCLOSE ALL FINANCES!
Universities should open their books to a democratic inquiry by elected students’ representatives and the campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war and occupation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding.
END MARKETISATION!
The government must fully fund education to disincentivise universities from gambling our fees on dodgy companies and ‘vanity projects’. Scrap tuition fees, cancel student debt, and reintroduce living grants for all students.
WE NEED A POLITICAL VOICE!
Winning a free, democratic, and genuinely ethical education system means fighting to take wealth and power off the capitalist elites. Starmer’s Labour government won’t even begin to fight for this. We need a mass workers’ party, with a socialist programme to end the capitalist system that breeds war and oppression.
MAXIMISE OUR STRENGTH!
Our movement would be strengthened if more students and workers joined. Socialist Students is calling for students to join us with:
• Mass meetings open to all who want to discuss how we can build a movement against war, oppression and capitalism • Stalls and leafleting sessions, where we can talk to other students about any upcoming protests and action, and encourage them to join • A rally with speakers invited from local trade union branches, and students from other universities, colleges and schools nearby • A lobby of our local MP or councillors alongside other students, workers and trade unionists, to demand they explain their position on the Israeli state’s onslaught in Gaza
Tens of thousands of students and workers came out onto the streets to confront attempts by the far right to mobilise racist riots. This magnificent show of solidarity shows the potential to build a movement that can smash racism – and the decades of cuts and rising poverty.
Desperate to divert growing anger at their system, capitalist politicians of all varieties and backgrounds have used racist scapegoating of immigrants to try and divert the blame for the crisis of their system. But, as Malcolm X said: “you can’t have capitalism without racism.”
Reform’s Nigel Farage is one particularly odious politician who consistently spouts divisive racist and anti-Muslim rhetoric. He is the highest earning MP, netting a million pounds a year in addition to his MP’s salary, all the while peddling the fraud that he is an anti-establishment ‘man of the people’.
But to focus entirely on him and his party lets the rest of the capitalist politicians off the hook. The Tories spent the last years in government talking incessantly about migrants on small boats and taking part in the expensive political theatre of Rwanda deportation flight plans in the hope of diverting blame and anger for falling living standards away from themselves.
The cost-of-living crisis, high tuition fees and student debt, low wages, high rents, the collapse of public services. These are the results of funding cuts and privatisation carried out by both Tory and Labour capitalist politicians serving the interests of big business.
But the Tories’ crushing general election defeat showed the huge anger at the attacks on living standards of the working class. It followed the huge strike wave and mass protests against the war on Gaza which have brought students and workers together in a common struggle.
Starmer has said there is ‘little difference’ between him and the Tories on immigration, and continues to support the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. The new Labour government is committed to a continuation of privatisation and cutbacks to public services, making the working class pay for the crisis rather than taking the money off the super-rich.
Those who defend capitalism want to divide the working class including by using racism. That weakens our ability to unite and fight against them and the rotten profit system they defend.
This latest surge of racist violence serves as a warning as to what can develop under a Labour government which is continuing with the Tories’ austerity policies – already cutting pensioners’ winter fuel payments and promising billions of pounds of further cuts, including to the education sector and universities. The election of five Reform MPs is a warning too.
The only way to successfully cut across far-right ideas getting a platform is for the workers’ movement to build mass struggle to fight for a socialist programme that unites workers against the bosses – for jobs, homes and public services for all.
If the 6.5 million-strong trade union movement was to lead a struggle for those things – bringing together workers and young people from all backgrounds – it would give an expression to the huge anger and discontent that exists under the surface in society.
The task of defending our communities from racist attacks, strengthening the level of organisation of students and the working class, and developing a workers’ political voice in the form of a new workers’ party– all go hand in hand.
The effect of a political voice that stands for the interests of workers and young people not the fat cats was glimpsed in the 2017 general election. It is estimated that one million UKIP voters switched to supporting Jeremy Corbyn’s programme of cutting tuition fees, council homes, security at work, and more funding for the NHS and other vital services.
Socialist Students campaigns for students to get organised on campus to fight for all of this. We want to build a united movement of workers and students to overthrow this rotten system of capitalism for good.
We fight for the socialist transformation of society, based on bringing the commanding heights of the economy and the banks into democratic public ownership. Under the democratic control and management of the working-class majority, society’s wealth and resources could be planned to meet all of our needs. That is a necessary component of the fight to end racism and all forms of oppression and inequality for good.
If you want to fight back against racism, war and inequality, then join Socialist Students and get organised!
No to racism and the far-right! Build a united student and workers’ movement for good jobs, homes and public services – including free education for all!
Fight to build a political voice for the working class – a socialist alternative to Labour and all the capitalist parties. You can’t have capitalism without racism!
Socialist Students 
