Read the motions passed at Socialist Students conference 2025:

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1. After 14 years of Tory rule, the election of a Starmer-led Labour government will solve none of the problems of the crisis of British capitalism.
   
2. The Tories suffered their worst ever result at a general election in 2024. They were punished for inflicting years of attacks on the living standards of ordinary people.
   
3. Watching on at the implosion of the Tories, the capitalist class has turned towards the Labour Party under Keir Starmer in the hopes that it can act as a ‘safe pair of hands’ for its interests.
   
4. While Starmer was initially compelled in 2020 as Labour leader to adopt elements of Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity manifesto – including the pledge for free education for all – these have all vanished from the Labour Party today, along with the rest of Corbyn’s programme. Instead, Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves, committed to defending capitalism, have constantly repeated their mantra of ‘fiscal discipline’, which means a continuation of the public spending cuts and privatisation seen under the Tories and the ‘New Labour’ governments before them.
   
5. The capitalist class hopes that a business-friendly Labour government under Keir Starmer can restore some stability to capitalist profit-making in Britain. However, this Labour government will face the same obstacles as the Tories, as will any party seeking to rule on behalf of decaying British capitalism in this era.
   
6. This Labour government will prove utterly incapable of meeting the aspirations of millions of workers and young people for an improvement to the miserable conditions they currently face, laying the ground for numerous battles against it. This will open up major opportunities for a new generation of fighters to be won to a socialist alternative to capitalism, along with the next steps needed to win that alternative.
   
7. Starmer has tried to blame the sorry state of British society on the mess he inherited from the Tories. However, his government is set to oversee an even further deterioration in the situation – as university students and staff are currently seeing, for example. This is because the capitalist system – which both Starmer’s Labour and the Tories defend to the hilt – demands attacks on the living standards of working-class people in an attempt to boost profitability in Britain’s economy. Starmer hopes he can encourage investment from the capitalists by driving down the share of the economy taken up by workers and young people, leaving more to be siphoned off by big business. This is what lies behind his ‘austerity agenda’.
   
8. Defence of the capitalist ‘profit-first’ system is the key factor determining what this Labour government does. That includes its approach of making workers and students pay for the university funding crisis, as well as its actions internationally. Starmer’s willingness to do the bidding of US imperialism was demonstrated before the general election, through his support for the Israeli state’s bombardment of Gaza. And he has indicated this won’t change under Trump. At least 50,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 100,000 injured across 15 horrific months.
   
9. While many young people in Britain will have been relieved to see a temporary ceasefire deal, there will also be major questions about how a free Palestine and a permanent peace can be achieved. Furthermore the threat of a return to the Israeli state slaughter or other outbreaks of war in the future are present in the ‘new world disorder’, of which Trump is both a symptom and an accelerator. Our socialist programme for working-class unity to end war and oppression will be key, as the heightened international competition for profits in this era lays the basis for future mass movements against war and capitalism.
   
10. The Labour government will also be complicit in allowing the climate crisis to spiral globally. Before the election it had pledged £28 billion for a Green New Deal, but that has since halved. The climate crisis cannot be solved in the framework of capitalism, which is a competition-based system that is incapable of fostering the global cooperation needed. We can anticipate more climate movements by young people in Britain, especially given the increased likelihood of extreme and deadly weather events both here and abroad.
    
11. Facing increased opposition from young people and the wider working class, the Labour government will look for ways to divide people and weaken our ability to collectively fight back against its attacks. Starmer has continued Tory anti-migrant rhetoric about small boats, for example, showing his hope to ‘divide and rule’. His government has also continued to clamp down on the right to protest – including handing the heaviest-ever sentences for direct action to a group of climate activists. Students can have no faith in new legislation to defend ‘free speech’ in universities, as this still leaves control over what is considered ‘acceptable’ speech in the hands of capitalist politicians and university bosses.
    
12. While anger at Starmer’s pro-capitalist agenda is set to grow even further, the key question is what alternative there can be. Britain is still the sixth biggest economy in the world, with vast wealth and resources. The problem is that the vast majority of wealth is in the private hands of a tiny number of capitalists, whose chief guiding concern is the generation of profit. In the past 3 years the UK energy sector made profits of £420 billion alone, for instance.The task of Socialist Students is to throw ourselves into the massive battles that will be provoked under a Starmer government, while putting forward a socialist alternative – the idea that society can and should be owned and run democratically by working-class people for the needs of all. Especially important for us are the battles that we could soon be leading in universities, colleges and schools.
    
13. The new Labour government was elected on a wave of resentment towards the Tories, as opposed to any mood of enthusiasm for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. One YouGov poll found that 48% of respondents who had voted for Labour did so in order to ‘get rid of the Tories’. Only 5% did so because they agreed with Labour’s policies. Overall, just 20.1% of people who could have voted did so for Labour – the lowest share for any incoming government since 1918.
    
14. This is a government with a very shallow base, and this should give young people and workers the confidence to lead – and win – battles against it.
    
15. In the absence of any mass organisations putting forward the socialist alternative that could actually improve people’s lives, reactionary ideas can partially fill the vacuum left by disgraced capitalist parties. Reform UK is currently gaining in polls by posing as an ‘anti-establishment’ alternative to Labour, while whipping up fears around migration. Yet migration today is largely fuelled by the nightmarish situation of war and climate catastrophe created by capitalism in many parts of the world, which the likes of Reform – and their programme of swingeing public sector cuts, for example – has no way of stopping. Given the growing anger with the government, Reform has the potential to make further electoral gains, and this can also give confidence to far-right elements. However, as shown by the magnificent anti-far right mobilisations of workers and youth over the summer, there is also a widespread mood of opposition in society to the vile ideas of the right. As demonstrated by the 2017 general election, when scores of previous UKIP voters voted for Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity platform, building a political alternative to austerity and capitalism – which Reform, Labour, and all the pro-capitalist parties support – can and will be key to cutting across racism and division.
    
16. This document has shown some of the many flashpoints that could ignite further opposition to Starmer’s Labour government. This poses the need for students to get organised with a socialist programme, and for a mass political alternative that can unite all the coming battles into one fight against the capitalist system that Starmer defends. Socialist Students will continue to argue for steps to be taken in the direction of such a political force. This includes calling on Corbyn and the four other Independent Alliance MPs, as well as the seven suspended left Labour MPs, to give the struggles of students and workers a parliamentary voice.
    
17. The process of building a new mass workers’ party, which we campaign for as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), will be further accelerated by the crises facing a Labour government. This must continue to be a key demand for Socialist Students, linking the struggles of students to those of the wider working-class in the fight to replace capitalism with socialism.

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This conference recognises:

1. The university funding crisis has entered a new stage this year. The real value of higher education funding is at its lowest point since tuition fees were trebled to £9000 in 2012. According to a report published in November by the Office for Students (OfS), two-thirds of universities (66%) are projected to run deficit budgets this year.
2. The collapse in university finances has had terrible consequences for students and staff. University bosses are currently making job cuts at over half of universities. Students this year have only seen a 2.5% rise in their maintenance loans, leaving a chasm between students’ finances and actual living costs. 
3. The Labour government has chosen to make students and staff pay for this crisis, not the capitalists. It has announced plans to increase university tuition fees from September 2025, by lifting the cap on full-time undergraduate fees in England from £9,250 to £9,585 per year. The Labour government in Wales has said it will follow suit.
4. However, on no campus would raising fees by £285 next year fundamentally solve the crisis. Nationally it is estimated that the September 2025 fee rise would bring in just under £400 million for higher education. That will not even touch the sides of the £3.4 billion sector-wide deficit that the OfS is now predicting for next academic year.
5. Labour’s fee plans are therefore a promise to students of even more cuts, cost-of-living crisis, and debt – a deepening of the disaster that is already facing many young people on campus. This is the logical conclusion of a higher education system based predominantly on individual students taking out vast loans for a degree, which universities then compete for as part of an education market.
6. This situation is paralleled by the crisis in colleges, sixth forms and schools. The Labour government has given just £300 million to further education (FE), and £1.4 billion to schools, for the next academic year 2025/26. This will not close the funding gap in FE, nor will it prevent “almost all secondaries not being able to meet costs”, according to the ‘Stop School Cuts’ campaign.
7. Students and workers have to fight for the funding that education really needs. Socialist Students launched the Funding Not Fees campaign last term to demand that big business foots the bill for the capitalist crisis in education, not students and workers. The FTSE 100 biggest corporations have been paying around £85 billion annually in dividends to their shareholders. That would be more than enough to scrap tuition fees, introduce living grants for all students, and reverse all cuts made to education over the last decade-and-a-half of austerity.
8. This Labour government, ruling on behalf of crisis-ridden British capitalism, can only oversee continued attacks on our education and all other aspects of young people’s lives. This will produce movements of students, on individual campuses as well as nationally, which pose the need to fight the Labour government and the capitalist system it defends for the resources young people need for a decent future.
9. Labour is promising to announce further and even more serious attacks on university funding later this year. Students need a level of cohesion and battle-readiness that is up to fighting these attacks as they come. By announcing the fee increase, Labour is testing the waters for how far they can go. Students and workers must not allow this latest fee hike to be the ‘thin end of the wedge’ that pushes through even bigger attacks on universities.
10. In 2010 there was a major student movement against the trebling of tuition fees by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. But unfortunately the student leadership nationally failed to link up with the trade union movement, at a time when workers were preparing to take generalised strike action that had the potential to bring down the government.
11. The Funding Not Fees campaign is a tool for Socialist Students groups to use in attempting to cohere a movement of students, staff and other workers behind a clear set of demands for what is needed to end the crisis in education:
    
    • No fee rises! Scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt
    • Living grants, not loans
    • Rent controls in student accommodation
    • End low pay and casualisation of staff
    • Stop all cuts and closures on campus
    • Divestment from arms and big business – no place for profiteers from war and exploitation on our campus

This conference resolves:

1. That every Socialist Students group strives to build the Funding Not Fees campaign in their university, college or school, taking the following steps as a guide:
   • Call a Funding Not Fees campaign meeting with invites sent to other student campaign groups, students’ union (SU) officers and course reps, local trade union branches, tenants’ groups, and community organisations
   • Build for campaign meetings – which we could bill as an ‘anti-cuts, anti-fees summit’, or something similar – through a concerted plan of leafleting and postering
   • Using the campaign meeting as launchpad, organise a calendar of campaign action, including the potential for:
     • A student-worker lobby of the local MP to demand they oppose all attacks on education, including at the summer spending review
     • A Funding Not Fees campus protest
     • A delegation to meet with student representatives, calling on them to publicly support the Funding Not Fees campaign
     • A protest letter to the university vice-chancellor, demanding they refuse to increase tuition fees in line with the new 2025/26 cap and any future rises
2. That Socialist Students groups consider electing a Funding Not Fees campaign officer, who is responsible for:
   • Giving updates on the Funding Not Fees campaign to every Socialist Students meeting
   • Staying up to date on any plans for cuts and redundancies in their university/college/school, and reporting any updates promptly to their Socialist Students group as the basis for planning an appropriate response. For example: organising a protest, doing a stall to collect signatures for an anti-cuts petition, uploading a statement to social media, calling and building for an emergency Funding Not Fees meeting etc.
3. To reaffirm our commitment to fighting for a free, fully funded education system that is under the democratic control of students, staff, and the wider working class
4. To continue our fight for a political voice for students that stands for free education as part of a socialist programme to take control over society off big business and the super-rich

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Taking Funding Not Fees into the colleges

Swindon Socialist Students

This conference recognises:

• Continued austerity in the hands of Labour is leading to further cuts and attacks on college funding and the scrapping of bills and grants that would alleviate financial pressure on students. Bursaries for low income students are dependent on the amount of funding the college receives – attacks on funding means inadequate support for students. 
• Students who are over 19 are charged tuition fees, often costing thousands of pounds. Adult learners often receive no financial aid and many are unable to go back to their schooling all together due to factors created and exacerbated by capitalism. These include unreasonably long working hours and the ever rising cost of safe childcare.
• Teachers are suffering pay cuts to their already stagnating salaries at the hands of education bosses who refuse to increase pay according to inflation. Almost all staff surveyed by the UCU were found to be struggling financially or food insecure.
• College students have the capacity to engage in political activity. Many are seeking the guidance and development that Socialist Students provides. We have seen evidence of this in previous years. During the start of the genocide in Gaza, colleges up and down the country staged walkouts and protests.
• The continued building of both Socialist Students and ‘Funding not Fees’ within colleges is crucial. Although college students are not yet organising in large numbers, this could change with the escalating crises in Further and Higher education, under the impact of international events, or with a rise trade union struggle. It is essential that we continue to organise in Colleges and win the most forward-looking students to our ideas in preparation for the battles to come. 

Conference resolves:

• Increase in funding to sixth forms and colleges, allowing them to properly provide free, high quality, education regardless of age. Subsequently, end the funding disparity between ‘high value’ STEM courses and ‘less valuable’ vocational subjects. The £300 million promised for further education in last October’s budget is a drop in the ocean compared to the funding lost to austerity. It will not alleviate the crisis in further education. 
• Living grants to be available for all college students and the scrapping of adult learner tuition fees and steps to access by providing services or grants. An example of this would be the provision of accessible, affordable childcare.
• Solidarity with staff and support for their demands for a real term pay rise. Socialist students shows support for any strike action taken by the UCU, NEU or Unison.
• An end to the monopolisation of the education system. Scrap tuition fees, cancel student debt, replace maintenance loans with living grants that rise alongside inflation. Control of the education system transferred to students and trade unions for democratic organisation. 
• Establish Socialist Students groups on campus and organise regular political discussion. Centre around the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign as the destination for many college students will soon be university. Socialist Students groups currently in unis should aim to coordinate efforts with local young socialists in colleges and 6th forms.

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End sexism and violence against women on campus

Liverpool Socialist Students

This motion notes:

1. Sexism and violence against women is endemic in capitalist society, which is based on exploitation and inequality.
2. At least 75% of women students have experienced an act of sexual violence at universities across the UK.
3. Whilst sexual violence is often reported to occur on nights out and online, the majority of incidences amongst students occur on campuses, meaning victims are forced to take measures such as skipping lectures and changing course modules to avoid their attacker – 25% of victims have said they have done this. Devastatingly, 16% had dropped out as a result of their assault.
4. Due to the rising cost of living and inadequate maintenance support, working-class students are given little choice but to work. 55% of students are working part-time jobs alongside their studies. Many students work in the night-time economy and have to make their way home after work in the dark, alone. Working-class women in this situation are vulnerable to being harassed and followed home, which is an all-too-common occurrence.
5. Despite all of this, universities are doing far too little to end the problem of sexism and sexual violence on campus. Only 2% of students experiencing sexual violence feel both able to report it to their university and are satisfied with the reporting process. University managements have also overseen years of cuts to things like counselling services, campus lighting, transport, and student bursaries, which leave students even more exposed to instances of sexual violence.
6. The executives who currently run universities cannot solve this issue because they work within the framework of capitalism. That means accepting cuts to education, and ultimately tolerating the worsening conditions facing women on campus.
7. Since the dawn of class society, women’s bodies have been objectified. This is a product of a rotten capitalist system. In our fight for a socialist transformation of society, we must not let this go unchecked.

This motion resolves:

8. To build the Funding Not Fees campaign and to understand the fight against sexism and sexual violence on campus as a part of this campaign. This includes fighting for measures such as the introduction, or expansion, of night buses around cities, as Liverpool Socialist Students has done successfully.
9. To organise on campus to fight to provide adequate resources for women who have experienced sexual violence on campus. All students should be able to access support in situations of sexual violence but also measures to protect their safety in order to prevent cases of sexual violence. We must, therefore, fight to end the marketised basis of universities, by campaigning to abolish tuition fees.
10. Students’ and trade unions must organise and campaign against sexual harassment in workplaces, including schools, colleges and universities. This means not only ensuring that adequate procedures are in place for dealing with sexual harassment but that they are actually implemented in practice – for example, through democratic committees comprising students and staff to investigate all reports of sexual assault and sexist abuse.
11. That all Socialist Students groups hold a day of action on International Women’s Day (Saturday 8^th March) to demand a safe, accessible campus for all, and for a socialist world to end sexism and sexual violence.
12. Lead this movement with an understanding that capitalism’s objectification and commodification of women’s bodies is the root of this epidemic of sexual violence, and universities running on a capitalist basis means that the needs of the bosses are prioritised over the education and safety of women on campus.

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Fighting right populism and the far-right

Teesside Socialist Students

Conference believes:

• Since the last Socialist Students Conference both the populist right and the far right have raised their reactionary heads. Opinion polling shows that Reform UK are currently posing a serious challenge to the Labour Party. A populist right party under Nigel Farage polling well is not new however, in 2014 UKIP polled at 19% under him for instance. But it does require Socialist Students to discuss the best way to respond in 2025 – with a Labour government carrying out vicious austerity leaving ground for these ideas to gain ground.
  
• In August last year the country was rocked by far-right agitated riots which amounted to racial pogroms against people of colour and in particular Muslims and refugees. These days and nights of violence, vandalised homes and businesses scarred many individuals and communities.
  
• However, there were several lights at the end of the tunnel. In communities such as Middlesbrough and others, workers and young people rallied on mass once the dust had settled to clean up the streets and help neighbours in the fallout. Furthermore,  workers and young people from Newcastle to Brighton and London, rallied in their thousands in defiance of racist division, far outnumbering the size of mobilisations by the far-right over the summer. This now needs to be built on.
  
• Populist right political formations are attempting to fill the political vacuum left by all pro-capitalist parties which have driven down wages and living standards, cut public services to the bones and overseen the removal of affordable housing for working-class people, including the now Labour government.
  
• This underlines the need for a new mass workers’ party which will shatter the sham arguments put forward by the right populists of Reform and the far right, given legitimacy by Labour politicians. A workers’ party armed with an anti-austerity programme – fighting for decent jobs, fully funded services and affordable homes for all working class people to smash racist division – would have the potential to  unite people of all different backgrounds under the banner of working-class unity and socialism.
  
• Such a party could win this layer to the ideas of working-class solidarity, internationalism and socialism rather than racist ideas, which do not serve the interests of any section of the working class, only the capitalist class who wish to keep ordinary people fighting amongst themselves rather than uniting to take on their real enemy, the global capitalist class. Jeremy Corbyn won a million UKIP voters to his anti-austerity programme in 2017.
  
• Part of this is fighting to build a united working-class movement in the workplaces and communities for the jobs, homes and services workers of all different backgrounds and ethnicities need to overcome the racist division inherent in the capitalist system and the attacks of the capitalist class. The trade union movement, with over 6.5 million members across the country, has the potential to play a central role in mobilising a struggle of workers of all different backgrounds in workplaces across the country in a movement to smash racism.

Conference resolves:

• Such a struggle against racist division has to be built on the university campuses also; indeed there are now starting to be some registered Reform UK societies on university campuses. It will be possible to challenge their influence with our ideas of abolishing tuition fees, opposing all cuts, and introducing real living grants for students. Reform will not offer genuine solutions to students facing a crippling student cost of living crisis, attacks on their courses and jobs on campuses etc. – it is the job of socialists on campus to win them over with socialist solutions to the problems that students will face.
  
• To campaign on campuses against racist division by saying no to racism and building campaigns for the funding our campuses need to provide high quality, decent education and living standards for all students regardless of background. For democratic oversight and control of university finances and spending by democratic committees of campus trade unions and elected student representatives, linked to the building of a struggle for free education.
  
• For Socialist Students societies to support campaigns to defend local areas against attempts by right-wing groups to march and open up division, including by campaigning for the trade unions to take the lead in such initiatives and for the TUC 2018 campaign for jobs, homes and services not racism to be central.

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Campaigning against the student housing crisis

Manchester Socialist Students

This conference notes:

• This conference recognises that the student housing crisis has hit new heights. Average rents are  the most expensive they have ever been, rising 8% in 2024, whilst private landlords and university bosses are walking away with obscene salaries/profits.
  
• 65% of students said the most important factor in their final decision on where to study was the accommodation on offer, while 51% there weren’t enough options for them to choose from.
  
• Average student rents sat at £689/month in 2024, whilst the average student loan was only £496. Students are unable to cope with rising costs. 56% are forced to work alongside their degree – pushing many to personal and financial breaking points. Mental health problems directly attributed to cost of living amongst first year students were reported to be affecting 72% of students, with self-harm and suicide hitting record highs in the years since the pandemic.
  
• Students are regularly facing the brunt of inflation in all walks of life, with increased tuition fees, the highest level of food inflation since the 70s, record numbers of students using food banks, the removal of caps on bus fares and the erosion of affordable venues to socialise. 
  
• Manchester Socialist Students notes the crucial impact this will have on young women attending university, with 68% facing sexual harassment and 7% facing serious sexual assault. Unfit and expensive accommodation and travel will only continue to exacerbate this issue.
  
• The University of Manchester has been embroiled in a particularly severe student housing crisis over the last 4 years. Despite numerous rent strikes, management have affirmed their plans to redevelop the most densely populated student housing campus in the city. In 2025, 3 complexes will be closed for redevelopment until 2028. First years in the meantime will have to choose between fighting over the limited spaces remaining or paying absurd rates to private providers. Once reopened in 2028, the minimum rent in the 5000 new homes will be more than double the current cost, with the announced prices also subject to inflation over the next 3 years. Only 1% of these flats will be accessible.

This conference moves to:

• Campaign for affordable and safe accommodation for all students. This should be achieved by a mass programme of student home building, alongside mass council house building so local residents don’t pay more as a result.
  
• Continue the fight to bring privately built homes into the hands of universities, overseen by democratically elected committees including trade unions, staff, and students. For compensation to landlords only on the basis of proven need.
   
• Put pressure on local councillors to implement compulsory rent controls on private landlords, to protect students living in HMOs. This should include Socialist Students groups organising to stand in elections against councillors who do not stand for the housing policies students and workers need.
  
• Campaign to bring construction companies into the democratic control of workers, to facilitate house building at a low cost.
  
• Demand the implementation of adequate street lighting and night transportation, to create safe and comfortable campuses for young women.
  
• Fight for the widespread implementation of accessibility measures in halls and HMOs for students with disabilities.
  
• Affirm our commitment to the belief that  good-quality, affordable housing for all can only be guaranteed through a socialist transformation of society.

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Literature and finance

Liverpool Socialist Students

This conference notes:

• On campuses around the UK members of Socialist Students have been intervening with socialist ideas into struggles such as the Palestine solidarity movement, a wider anti-war movement, the Nigerian solidarity movement and attending picket lines.
  
• To intervene in struggles such as these requires literature to present to eager young students and workers who want more information about what we as Socialist Students have to say about given issues. In this academic year we as Socialist Students have produced a myriad of leaflets and have in addition to this produced on two occasions special wraparound 4-page newspapers as a supplement to he Socialist newspaper sold by Socialist Party members active within Socialist Students.
  
• However we have to be ambitious and look forward at improving on these achievements. Furthermore to be ambitious is to look at the logistics of how to produce wider literature, such as the Socialist Students magazine, and the importance of finances in doing so. Producing the magazine on a planned, scheduled basis allows members of our organisation to write longer form articles on topics members are passionate about, an example in the last edition of the magazine being an article about the socialist government in Chile in the early 1970s. The magazine can tackle theoretical and historical topics that at this moment are not able to be covered, giving new layers of our organisation the opportunity to engage with crucial socialist ideas and concepts.
  
• The need for a physical literature outlet is reflected in the current situation occurring online, with censorship of progressive and especially socialist views becoming more and more common. Examples include TikTok’s recent scandal in censoring users from saying sympathetic things about Palestine or the billionaire Elon Musk using X (formerly Twitter) as a safe haven for far-right views whilst banning many socialist users. This censorship stresses the need for physical media as well as the supplementary use of social media to make sure socialist students views and perspectives can never be silenced on campus and in wider society.

This motion resolves:

• That Socialist Students nationally aims to produce the Socialist Students magazine twice per year. This goal should be centred on the ambitious goal of creating a magazine to coincide with the Freshers period in September and the Refreshers period in late January/early February.
  
• That each Socialist Students group should not feel the need to wait for the national organisation to suggest initiatives. Local groups have the autonomy to lead local initiatives with literature – examples including but not limited to: creating blogs, creating leaflets or issuing statements on key issues.
  
• A conversation should be had nationally and at local branches about how socialist students can fund and sustain a regular magazine. This means crucially selling magazines both internally to active members and also externally in our activity on stalls and other interventions.
  
• Encouraging members to write for the magazine and wider literature and asking what articles and ideas members would like to see covered in the magazine .
  
• Every leaflet, magazine and poster costs our organisation. Each Socialist Students group locally should add finances to the agenda of each of their meetings to encourage discussion about why we have literature and also to give an opportunity for people to be reminded that we have things available to read for further information – and sell to raise funds.
  
• To encourage each student branch to have one meeting per year on the topic of the role of socialist literature and why we produce and distribute it.
  
• Socialist Students should set up a shared account on the Square app, which allows for card payments for magazines and general donations to go directly to the national organisations bank to fund further printing of literature. Use of the app is free they just take a small transaction fee per payment.
  
• In addition to this step all branches of Socialist Students should be sent the details of the national organisations bank to deposit cash donations into.

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Socialist change to end climate change

Liverpool Socialist Students

This motion recognises that:

• The capitalist system, and therefore capitalist parties, offer no solution to the climate crisis. Capitalism has proven time and time again that it is willing to prioritise profit above all else, including the wellbeing of environment.
  
• The LA wildfires have burned more than 40,000 acres of land, and have resulted in the loss of the homes of tens of thousands of people.
  
• Powerful capitalist leaders worldwide have demonstrated their lack of concern for environmental issues, for instance, Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to below 2%.
  
• There have also been drastic weather conditions in the UK recently, and rather than choosing to take any positive climate action as a reaction to these circumstances, the Labour government has instead made cuts to pensioners’ winter fuel payments, allowing a very vulnerable group in society to be subject to the increasingly cold winter conditions.
  
• Labour have also significantly scaled back their plans of insulating 19 million homes in the next 10 years, now stating that they will aim to insulate only 5 million by 2030, which clearly undermines previous targets.
  
• Climate change disproportionately effects poorer areas of the world, and even in more developed economies, it is the working class that suffers significantly more than the middle and upper classes from the effects of climate change, such as air pollution and environmental disasters.
  
• Although the Green party presents itself as the beginnings of some form of solution to the climate crisis, it is important for us to recognise, as Marxists, that the Green Party is still a capitalist party and thus cannot offer the real, long-term system change necessary to resolve the climate crisis.
  
• Labour offers no positive alternative either, as Labour has ditched its policy of spending £28 billion a year on its green investment plan. Furthermore, Rachel Reeves has stated that the government supports the building of a third runway at Heathrow airport, a stance which many believe will result in the party falling short of climate change targets, which they evidently have no interest in.
  
• In order to actually combat climate change, socialist transformation of society is necessary, as socialism is the only way to combat the capitalist system that has allowed climate change to accelerate in the disastrous way which it has.

This motion resolves:

• Socialist Students groups all over the country should have access to leaflets and other materials which sufficiently explain our position on climate change.
  
• Socialist student groups should be encouraged to have a meeting to discuss the Marxist position on climate change in order to present our ideas and allow any questions to be asked.
  
• Socialist Students groups should be encouraged to write articles/blogs surrounding climate change topics.
  
• Socialist Students groups should be encouraged to lead campaigns regarding their respective university and Student Union’s impacts on climate change. A student-led mass campaign should push for the full funding of universities in order to negate any incentives of universities to invest in environmentally harmful capitalist companies, such as fossil fuel giants.

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