York uni: no shops, no reception, no security, no bus – paying more for less

Louie Nardini, University of York Socialist Students

We kicked off freshers with door knocking at Halifax College. This is an underfunded part of the university. Over years it has been deprived of its Nisa, its local reception, and its bus stop. Students coming back from a night out or shopping now have to walk 15-20 minutes back home through a darkly lit alleyway, with no proper lighting.

During the muddy times of the year, the alley becomes impossible to walk down. The bus company, First, which made millions of pounds in profit last year, says it can’t afford to put a bus stop at the college.

But Halifax is the largest college at the uni, with over 1,000 students. The cheapest accommodation here is St Lawrence Block – HMOs (houses of multiple occupancy).

The rent has gone up

You share with 20 other students, with only one proper kitchen, four toilets, and four showers. The rent went up this year from £99 a week to over £150 a week.

Halifax College was even gifted by Lord Halifax to be cheap and affordable accommodation for students. Not anymore!

This is nothing new in the University of York. The amount of accommodation that is less than £200 a week has shrunk from 47% to 15%, just in the past year. All while tuition fees are rising. We are getting less and less out of our education, while paying more and more.

We got 37 signed up for Socialist Students. And we’re going around the rest of the college and uni this week.

These pressures on students are only getting worse. We hope that the 20 November walkout builds the breadcrumb trail to fight against this cost-of-living crisis, and push forward socialist change for students and young people.

Sheffield Hallam – students worry about future and cost of living

James Hooper, Sheffield Hallam Socialist Students

Speaking to students during freshers week, we heard time and time again, that their biggest worry was their future after university, and the hefty cost during it.

The government wants students to take on a generational amount of debt for an education that only garnishes the pockets of the bosses and the landlords of the city. The University and College Union (UCU) is taking ongoing industrial action against ‘voluntary’ redundancies, cutting some departments in half.

We had a powerful reception from students, getting details of nearly 80 who are interested in attending meetings. During our first two socials, we spoke about the 20 November walkout, the rise of the modern far right – Sheffield had a far-right march that week – and how students can fight for better conditions during our education.

Birmingham building youth walkout and backing bin strike

James Taylor, Birmingham Socialist Students

Socialist Students had a campaign stall every day of freshers week. On each day, several students walked straight towards us, having arrived at the University of Birmingham actively searching for a socialist group to join.

Over 200 students, and some staff, wrote down their names to be contacted and updated on our activity. We gave out more than 2,500 leaflets.

A layer of students have been inspired and disgusted by the events of the last year. The election of Zohran Mamdani in New York, and the rise of the Green Party in the polls.

But also the Iran war and victories of far-right parties across Europe. Tuition fees and the cost of living came up repeatedly in conversations with students.

Our action-focused approach attracted these people to Socialist Students over other campus groups. Our involvement in the Birmingham bin strike, and building the 20 November youth walkout, excited students ready to get involved and fight for socialism.

We got a good amount of students along to a casual meet-and-greet on campus, and hopefully we will be joined by even more of the 200+ contacts at our first proper meeting of the year this week.

York St John – my first time campaigning

Tamsin Allanson, York St John Socialist Students

This was the first time I’ve ever done anything with Socialist Students. And it was my first time ever helping out at a campaign stall.

I was nervous at first. For the first hour or so, I mostly kept quiet.

But as the day went on, I really settled in. I watched how others were campaigning, and ended up having conversation with passersby myself. It improved my confidence to do similar things in the future.

People were really receptive. We counted 39 sign-ups at the end of the day.

Queen Mary, east London – Climate crisis, AI, and war

Luca, Queen Mary Socialist Students

Students agreed with our grievances against the new nearby AI data centre, our previous campaign winning gender-neutral toilets and changing facilities at Queen Mary, safe and affordable housing, and protesting the government’s complicity in genocide in Gaza.

We had two campaign stalls on each day of the freshers’ fair, collecting more than 80 contacts. Students asked ‘what is socialism’, how data centres impact communities, and about the climate crisis.

We held discussions on both days at a nearby café. There, students expressed interest in participating in rallies, campaigns, and discussions about political theory.

Our first meeting was ‘Climate crisis, AI, and war: what is the socialist solution?’ 12 attended, 8 new faces.

We discussed action, we planned for what next. Students were very enthusiastic about contributing.

USW Trefforest – we’re gonna need a bigger room

Students are calling for a change. And at the University of South Wales (USW) freshers’ fair, they are turning to Socialist Students in dozens for that very change. At the University of South Wales,

Socialist Students attracted the interest of 173 students at the freshers’ fair. 14 came to our first Socialist Student meeting.

Socialist Party members also invited students to our local Rhondda Cynon Taff Socialist Party branch meeting, more than doubling attendance.

Cavan Griffin, USW Socialist Students

Leicester – enthusiasm into action

Adam Tyas, Leicester Socialist Students

Each day campaigning at the University of Leicester, the level of our activity grew. On the final day, we had two stalls, and a Socialist Students team walking around talking to students.

Leicester uni campus overlaps with WQE College. Over 150 students showed interest in Socialist Students and the ‘Fight for our future, not their wars’ 20 November walkout.

Although students supported us, the student union and university prevented us from leafleting the freshers’ fair queue, claiming that we needed to be an official formed society to do any activity. That’s what we were campaigning to do!

Young people are becoming increasingly politically conscious. Students openly identified as ‘communists’. Others declared that “we should have a revolution”.

What came through most strongly was growing anger at our futures being squandered by government after government, and a desire to fight for a society that works for us, rather than the wealthy.

Students showed particular interest fighting the climate crisis, and challenging the capitalist system that continues to put profit before people and the planet. Our task now is to turn that enthusiasm into sustained organisation and action on campus. We’ve organised four student meetings in the first week. And we’ve already been getting in contact with students who had signed up.

We need to build for 20 November youth strikes, and develop a proper Socialist Students society on campus. So the university has no excuse to stop our activity!

Pensioners back youth strike

Roger Bannister, North West Pensioners Association delegate

The North West Pensioners Association is composed of retired people, who are delegates from retired people’s organisations and trade unions, throughout the north west of England.

Whilst concentrating primarily on issues directly affecting older people, we are totally opposed to ‘divide and rule’. For example, being pitted against young people by government ministers in an ‘either/or’ squabble over cash and resources.

There is enough money to give pensioners a decent living in our retirement, and to give young people decent, free education, and genuine apprenticeships, with a job at the end, as well as jobs for new graduates.

So the following motion was carried unanimously by the North West Pensioners Association (NWPA) at our meeting on 25 September:

“This meeting notes that a recent meeting of youth organisations across Europe was held in Cologne, which included representatives from the British Socialist Students organisation, and that this meeting called for a Youth Strike to take place across Europe on 20 November 2026 in protest against war, youth unemployment, and austerity policies. This meeting supports this walkout and urges NWPA affiliates to support any rallies held locally, and to publicise our support in the local news media.”

Buy your Socialism 2026 tickets now!

Scrolling online, it doesn’t take long to see the horror of war, climate change and racist ideas being stoked. Meanwhile, we are being forced to pay for increasing rents, tuition fees and the cost of living.

But we refuse to accept that future. That’s why we will be joining the international youth strike on 20 November – walking out and protesting to fight for our future, not their wars.

If you are preparing to be a youth striker, or a socialist campaigner at your school, college or uni, you can’t miss Socialism 2026, taking place less than a week before N20.

A thousand socialists, students and young people will meeting in London 14-15 November. On Sunday 15 November, Socialist Students has been invited to host a youth rally. It will invite youth strikers from across Europe to speak, including from Germany where on 25 September 40,000-plus walked out of lessons to protest. Socialism 2026 will be the best possible preparation for the big day – N20.

Across the weekend of discussion and debate, there will be the chance to meet and discuss with hundreds of other students building  the youth strike at their school, college or uni.

Buy your tickets now!

Adam Gillman, Socialist Students

Join international youth walkout 20 November

Sofia Pandolfi, South London Socialist Students organiser

On 25 September, German students will again be walking out of lessons against military conscription and rearmament. This is following ongoing youth strikes which have already mobilised 55,000 students in recent months, taking to the streets across the country. In response to government changes to military service policy aimed at assisting Germany’s militarisation plans, young people are showing they are not willing to fight for a government and establishment that attacks their rights, education, and futures.

Our own government is no better. While military spending continues to increase, more policies of austerity are being implemented as the government cuts down on the services young and working-class people depend on. 35 universities across the UK have become part of the UK government’s Defence Universities Alliance initiative to support future ‘defence capability’. Meanwhile, our higher education is plunging deeper into a funding crisis. As militarism becomes more entrenched in our universities, we have to build a socialist fightback on our campuses.

From meeting and discussing with students at various university freshers, we are seeing young people frustrated by a government and a system that offers us only wars and exploitation. Students have expressed worry over the uncertainty of our futures, the lack of opportunities that exist for us, and the international chaos we are living through. Hundreds of students so far have already signed up to find out more about joining Socialist Students because they recognise the need to get organised against a system that sacrifices our futures for the profits of the capitalist bosses.

Socialist Students is organising a solidarity demonstration with German youth strikers on 25 September, building international action amongst young people. Join our solidarity rally to show we are standing up against militarisation, war, and austerity. Build the international youth fightback for our futures, not their wars!

Socialist Students

The world is in crisis: wars, climate catastrophe, youth unemployment and the rising cost of living. Meanwhile, the big-business billionaires only get richer.

Millions of young people despair at the prospect of our futures being torn up and thrown away, while the powerful elites compete for evermore power and profits.

But we won’t accept that. That’s why we will be joining the international youth walkouts on 20 November, together with over 20 other youth organisations across Europe.

We are fighting for our futures. Billionaire-funded politicians like Nigel Farage want to divide workers and young people – encouraging us to point fingers at each other rather than the big-business capitalists whose interests this rotten system serves.

Instead, young people across Europe will be taking united action together. Socialist Students will be building for the biggest possible walkouts and raising the need to take the wealth and power out of the hands of the capitalist bosses – so it can be put to use to meet the needs of all.

Robbie Davidson, Manchester Socialist Party

This September, almost 300,000 18-year-olds will enter the student housing market. Most of them will be making the first steps, praying a degree can secure them a stable job, into a spiral of debt which will follow them through decades of their working lives.

Putting themselves on average £50,000 in the red, students will hope against hope that they can cover their expenses whilst succeeding in full-time higher education. As young people suffer, Paragon Bank found that 91% of uni landlords reported positive returns – the highest of any sector. This has come by bumping rents up by 60% over the last decade, whilst cutting costs and leaving young people in cramped, mouldy houses.

On dozens of campuses around the UK, Socialist Students is already leading the way in putting forward what is needed to end market misery and housing hell at university. We are fighting alongside community activists and trade unionists for rent controls to cap rents and enforce decent standards, for a mass council house building programme, for living student grants not loans, and for fully funded, free education for all.

Rent strikes

At the beginning of the 2020s, a national wave of rent strikes erupted – and things have only got worse since. New struggles will come as the crisis of the profit-based capitalist system progresses.

It is clear that Burnham’s crumbs won’t offer any way out for young people under the thumb of the cost-of-living crisis. Socialist Party members will be taking part in Socialist Students activity at freshers fairs around the country, making the case that we need a party which will.

On 20 November we are planning to stamp our mark on our futures, fighting for affordable, safe housing and decent jobs – not more money for their wars. Fight for our futures!

Scrap the failed loan system

Daniel Bassey, York Socialist Students

In college, I was told that you could afford to go to university, no matter your personal background. And that loan repayment was merely an extra ‘tax’, that would be offset by the higher-paying job opportunities that a degree could offer.

I wasn’t told that in 2023, the loan repayment threshold had lowered from £29,000 to £25,000. Meaning that the annual amount repaid jumped from roughly £50 to £453, on an average graduate salary.

Recent headlines around loans being ‘missold’ point at the crushing reality of fees and debt faced by ambitious young students, with no other choice but to bite the bullet.

The system hasn’t always worked this way. In 1977, student fees were funded entirely by government, with a modest maintenance grant too!

This funding system was threatened under Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government. But due to the backlash from students, nothing changed until 1998.

Then, Tony Blair’s Labour government introduced an upfront fee of £1,000 a year. Labour tripled tuition fees in the 2000s.

And the Tory-Lib Dem coalition tripled fees again in 2012. Annual tuition fees are set to rise to over £10,000 next year.

While some have the ability to pay, the reality for many students is that tuition fees are unaffordable. A typical working-class student has parents unable to provide maintenance support. With most loan money going on rent, we’re forced to pick up a part-time job alongside full-time university, affecting our studies.

Graduates are rarely able to pay off the £50,000 in debt. Instead, many pay until it is written off after 40 years!

The loan system is a failed, predatory, capitalist solution to the higher education funding crisis. Further increases to student fees are completely unaffordable, and do nothing to address uni budget deficits.

Courses are being cut, staff laid off, and our universities continue to tumble down international rankings. Socialist Students calls to end the market-based fee model, and for a free, fully funded higher education system.

Since the start of September, the US has carried out further bombing on Iran. A recent strike hit a residential building and a wedding ceremony, killing four people and injuring more than 60. This isn’t an isolated incident, but an increasingly regular occurrence in the era of war which we live in today. The ongoing slaughter in Gaza is another stark example, so too the brutal attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, and the many casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war.

In Gaza, hundreds of people have been killed this year, despite the so-called ‘ceasefire’. On top of this, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security, demonstrated the cold callousness that capitalist politicians are capable of when he posted an AI-generated video on social media, depicting Palestinians being transported on a conveyor belt into a detention camp, alongside the caption ‘We promised – we delivered!’

Young people today are entering adulthood in a world characterised by instability and increasing wars. At the same time, the climate crisis is only getting worse, driving disasters such as the dreadful flooding in Nepal. In Britain, bus drivers have been forced to take strike action to win action over extreme working temperatures. Rents have also reached unsustainably high levels, with many young people unable to afford to move out of their parents’ houses, and with the idea of owning their own home growing increasingly out of reach.

These crises are not separate. They are symptoms of a system that puts profit above everything else, and therefore at the expense of everything else.

Climate change, war and division are all a result of the reckless destruction of the capitalist system. Therefore, we must fight for an alternative.

That is why Socialist Students is working with a growing number of youth organisations across Europe to build for a coordinated day of student walkouts and youth strikes on 20 November. We want to make it clear that we won’t stand for capitalist chaos, and are fighting internationally for our futures, not their wars.

Hannah Ponting, Socialist Students

Join the international youth strike on 20 November

Tom Gibson, Yorkshire Socialist Students

August saw thousands of students walk out of schools, colleges and universities in Australia against the reactionary right-populist politician Pauline Hanson.

Hanson uses dog-whistle politics against minority communities, particularly the Muslim and trans communities, while portraying herself as the only alternative to the establishment’s hated two-party system; a familiar pattern.

Despite a recent rise in the polls, she is very unpopular with younger Australians, the majority of whom are repulsed by her reactionary social views and anti-working class economic policies.

The walkouts were organised by the National Union of Students in response to increasingly repulsive rhetoric from Hanson, and took place all across Australia. Thousands turned out, despite the ‘Labor’ government condemning the protests, summing up how the so-called ‘progressive’ capitalist politicians view actual resistance to far-right politics. This criticism did not deter the students, nor did Hanson’s asinine comments about the students’ action being funded by China.

On 20 November, students internationally will be walking out, protesting against the symptoms of the capitalist system: war, inequality, bigotry and climate disaster. Socialist Students is building for walkouts in Britain to be as big as possible.

The walkouts in Australia are yet another inspiring example of youth taking action worldwide.

Join the international youth walkout on 20 November