Socialist Students campaigning against the student cost-of-living crisis
Studying at university has become even more unaffordable for less well-off students, a recent report published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) reveals.
The report calculates that the ‘Minimum Income Standard’ – the minimum income needed to study at university per year, including costs of living such as rent and groceries but excluding tuition fee costs – has risen to £18,632 for those studying outside of London, and £21,774 for those within London. Maintenance loans are able to cover less of these expenses year on year.
According to the National Union of Students, 69% of students are now employed alongside studying to afford their studies, up from 45% in 2022. Students have reported that balancing working, studying, and other commitments – alongside worrying about money – is having a negative impact on their academic achievement.
Access to higher education is further becoming the privilege of the wealthy few, deepening the economic inequality in the UK as working-class and poorer young people are forced to forego education and take low-paid jobs with little chance of long-term progression. Meanwhile, universities are being run like businesses: relying on inflated fees while simultaneously axing degree programmes, underpaying staff, and providing little support to students. Staff participating in the UCU strikes in 2022-23 spoke out on many of these deeply ingrained issues.
The long-term impact of the crisis in higher education is dire. Young people will have fewer opportunities, and industries dependent on qualified graduates will continue to face worker shortages.
The solution is obvious: stop treating education as big business and start treating it as an essential public service, free to use with grants, not debt, to enable people to study. It’s time for a democratically run and high-quality higher education system that is accessible to all and meets the needs of both students and staff.
Socialist Students says:
Fight for fully funded free education – scrap and refund tuition fees, cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
Take universities under the democratic control of elected bodies of campus trade unions, students and communities
Build democratic student organisations to link up with the campus trade unions and fight for what our universities need
Build a new mass party that will stand up for students and workers
Fight for socialist change – for democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
A fighting programme to build the student encampments for Gaza
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 UK 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.
BROADEN THE PROTESTS!
Our protests would be strengthened if more students – and workers – joined the action. Encampments could collectively organise:
Stalls and leafleting sessions, where we can talk to other students about our 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 the 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
A march to a local school or college, encouraging students there to walk out and join us for a protest
A mass meeting open to all who want to discuss how we can build this movement against war, terror and oppression
SUs SHOULD BE ON OUR SIDE!
Students’ unions are elected to give students a voice – they should call a special meeting, open to all students and staff, to discuss the above demands and other ideas to build our movement. Students need fighting, democratic organisations that represent our interests against management, the government and big business.
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 Party won’t even begin to fight for this. We need a new workers’ party with socialist policies to end war, oppression and capitalism.
Socialist Students is part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). You could stand with us as an anti-war, socialist student candidate in the upcoming general election.
End the siege of Gaza! For the immediate withdrawal of the Israeli military from the occupied territories
For a mass struggle of the Palestinians, under their own democratic control, to fight for liberation
For the building of independent workers’ parties in Palestine and Israel, and links between them
For an independent, socialist Palestinian state, alongside a socialist Israel, with guaranteed democratic rights for all minorities, as part of the struggle for a socialist Middle East
No trust in capitalist politicians, internationally or in Britain. Fight to build a workers’ party in Britain that stands for socialism and internationalism.
University students across the United States have set up encampments to protest against the brutal onslaught on the Palestinian people by the Israeli state. This comes after the US Government agreed an extra $15 billion for the Israeli military. Students are calling on universities to cut ties with companies making huge profits aiding the Israeli military and its occupation in Gaza.
There has been vicious police suppression against the protesters, showing how cruel the university managements are by encouraging these attacks on students and staff. In Columbia University, for example, students were faced with hundreds of riot police who barbarically attacked protesters and arrested students and staff en masse.
It is not only university management; the pro-capitalist Democratic and Republican parties support and encourage these cruel responses by police and university security.
UK protests
Students here have seen the events in the US and have taken action onto their campuses with solidarity protests and encampments. Students fighting against the war do not have a mass party that represents them either.
In order for students to defend the right to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people, students need to have their own democratic organisations. They could link up with the workers’ movement and the trade unions. Socialist Party members are fighting in trade unions to bring together workers in the arms and logistics industries to discuss and debate what action they can take against the war – workers in the same companies students are protesting against.
Students, linked to the workers’ movement, could help take the necessary steps for genuine workers’ political representation, to fight against the barbaric war on Gaza and the right to protest on campuses and in the workplaces, but also to fight against the housing crisis, never-ending cuts and exploitation here in Britain.
The fight against war means fighting for socialism. It’s the working-class and students internationally who have the power to bring that change about.
Socialist Students says:
Stop the Gaza slaughter – for the permanent withdrawal of the Israeli military from the occupied territories
Solidarity with students occupying universities across the US and Britain. Stop arming Israeli state terror!
Defend the right to protest on campus. Student unions must lead campaigns to defend any students victimised for protesting against war and oppression
Kick out the Tories! But Starmer’s Labour is no alternative. Help us build a new workers’ party with socialist policies to end war, austerity and capitalism
For a socialist Middle East and world!
Oxford
Appearing overnight, the newly formed ‘Oxford Action for Palestine’ added Oxford to the long list of Palestinian solidarity encampments spanning the world. So, with leaflets, Socialist newspapers, and six boxes of cereal in tow, we headed down to lend our support and put forward a socialist programme.
The group’s appointed media liaison explained the group is comprised of a mix of students and professors standing in solidarity with their Palestinian counterparts. She said that they don’t intend to leave until their demands are met, which are:
Disclose all finances and open the University’s books
Divest from Israeli genocide, apartheid, and occupation
Overhaul university investment policy
Boycott Israeli genocide, apartheid, and occupation
Stop banking with Barclays
Support Palestinian-led rebuilding of education in Gaza
Plenty of positive aspects to their demands, such as opening the University’s books, are mirrored by their collaboration with students at other universities and with university trade unions. The group has been working alongside the University and College Union (UCU) branch which sent out a statement supporting the camp. Further collaboration was seen with the camp swelling to around 500 as part of a healthcare workers’ vigil.
When asked what message the group would like to send to socialists, the response was very direct. She called on socialists to get involved in their local camps, or build new ones if not already established.
I agree, socialists should get involved, but also use all the levers available to workers in addition to occupations. Only with workers and students acting side by side will their full demands be met.
Rachel Cox, Oxford Socialist Party
Manchester
On the 1 May, students at the University of Manchester (UoM), including Manchester Leftist Action, Youth Front for Palestine, Youth Demand, and Manchester Palestine Action, occupied Brunswick Park as an escalation of a series of short occupations resisting Israel’s assault on Palestine and the university’s ties with arms companies.
When I visited the occupation in Manchester for an interview, they had just renamed it Dr Adnan Al-Bursh Park, after a Palestinian doctor and professor who died in an Israeli prison on 19 April.
Among the groups’ demands is no disciplinary action against students involved. Already a student is facing suspension for their journalistic work exposing UoM’s vice chancellor saying she was comfortable with arms industries being on campus.
So far, other than the threat of suspension, the university has put up no resistance to the occupation. A spokesperson for the group said: “If the university wants to put a possession order through, they’re welcome to, and we will decide collectively what we want to do about that.”
I asked what the group want people to do: “Show your support, be loud, keep shouting about Palestine because the second we don’t, we lose the rich legacy of the Palestinian people.”
Socialist Students calls for students to organise democratically, and link up with the broader workers’ movement, to resist war, occupation and university marketisation. Universities having strong ties with the arms industry is a product of the broader issue of treating education as a market rather than a public service. Governmental funding has been slashed, and so management turn to wealthy companies, exploitative student rents and high international fees to fill the deficit. A socialist transformation of society is the only permanent solution, and if you want to help get us there get in touch with Socialist Students or the Socialist Party and build a mass movement of students and workers to resist war and capitalism.
Sam Hey, Manchester Socialist Students
UCL
Students at University College London have gone into occupation demanding an end to the institution’s support for the Israeli state onslaught on Palestine.
The tent encampment follows an earlier room occupation. UCL management has responded by having security close the campus to the public.
A solidarity protest on Friday 3 May attracted around a hundred across both sides of the gates at short notice. Supporters outside were open to discussing socialist ideas to end the war, with one telling me he had voted for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in the London elections the day before.
To defend and extend protest actions like the UCL occupation, students need their own democratic campaign organisations that can draw together the various strands of student struggle and link up with campus trade unions. Join Socialist Students to help us build that!
James Ivens
Warwick
Students and supporters gathered to hear speakers at the Warwick protest from the anti-war and trade union movement. The speaker from the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) mentioned the potential role of workers in stopping arms supplies to an illegal war.
As we tried to hand out TUSC election leaflets, a self-admitted prospective local Labour Party candidate in a mask and hood tried to take our leaflets, claiming this wasn’t a political protest!
Warwick Socialist Students
Leeds
Socialist Party members visited the encampment opposite Leeds University Union. While we visited, university staff members also came down to offer support. We explained that we stood in the elections opposing the war on Gaza as part of TUSC, and our election leaflets were added to those being handed to supporters of the occupation.
Student occupiers joined the Leeds TUC May Day march for peace at the weekend which swelled to over 500 strong.
Being a student is hard. You constantly have to worry about deadlines and upcoming examinations. Balance that with any extracurriculars you take part in, while also trying to increase your employability – trying to find placements, internships and whatever else you can do to stand out as a worthwhile candidate in the increasingly saturated job market. Now imagine being a broke student which, for many of us, is the case.
More often than not, the student loan you receive is simply not enough to cover the cost of living. I’m ‘lucky’ enough to come from a poor enough family to receive the maximum maintenance loan, which will be £10,277, for 2024-25.
I study in Guildford and, unfortunately for me, there’s no student accommodation available. If I’m lucky enough to find a house on the cheaper side in Guildford, where housing prices rival London, I’ll be left with a total of £1,877 after paying rent. That’s £1,877 to last me an entire year! With the cost-of-living crisis continuing to run rampant, the money I have left will mostly go to bills, leaving me pennies to figure out how to feed myself. I’ll likely be forced to find a job so that I can afford to feed myself and enjoy the little free time I’ll have left after all that. And I’m one of the lucky ones.
Many students whose families are only slightly better off than mine get a significantly smaller amount, often resulting in prospective students being forced out of the opportunity to study. Had the threshold for maximum student loans gone up with inflation since 2016 it would be at £32,535 instead of the measly £25,000 it currently sits at, and more students wouldn’t be in such a serious hole.
“There’s no student accommodation available.If I’m lucky enough to find a house on the cheaper side, I’ll be left with £1,877 after paying rent. That’s £1,877 to last me an entire year!”
The burden of student loan debt also disproportionately affects poorer students, who graduate with £63,000 in debt compared to their wealthier counterparts leaving with £43,600. Wealthier students are also much likelier to get higher-paying jobs in the future, while students like me are much more likely to be stuck with this loan, paying off the interest until it’s eventually written off in my fifties.
This system is broken. It’s unfair and unsustainable and has led to universities caring more about the number of international students they can bring in, whose fees have no cap, and less about the overall quality of education.
We need free universities and living maintenance grants rather than our current system, where universities are run like corporations and top management can make massive salaries, while students are forced to live off bulk-purchased noodles.
Socialist Students says:
Fight for fully funded free education – scrap and refund tuition fees, cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
Take universities under the democratic control of elected bodies of campus trade unions, students and communities
Build democratic student organisations to link up with the campus trade unions and fight for what our universities need
Build a new mass party that will stand up for students and workers
Fight for socialist change – for democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Millions of workers are worse off now than when the Tories were elected in 2010, as wages have fallen thousands of pounds behind inflation. Public services, a lifeline for the majority of people, have been cut to the bone. NHS waiting times have never been so bad, public transport doesn’t work half the time, and entire councils are now declaring themselves ‘bankrupt’.
So it’s no wonder the Tories are so hated. Plagued by infighting and scandals, they are headed for disaster in the next general election, which has to be called this year. According to one poll, just 1% of 18 to 24-year-olds plan to vote Tory in the next general election!
So what do students do in the elections?
Keir Starmer has made clear that his Labour Party will rule in the same capitalist interests as the Tories. He has helped transform the Labour Party back into a ‘safe pair of hands’ for big business, putting capitalist profit-making firmly before the lives of working-class and young people.
That’s why Starmer has abandoned the pledge of former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to scrap tuition fees and restore maintenance grants for students. For the same reason, he has refused to back workers taking strike action for better pay and conditions, including staff in schools, colleges and universities.
Some may see the Green Party as an alternative. But their record in local government – where Green-led councils have carried out devastating cuts to jobs and services – shows that, when push comes to shove, the Green Party will fall in line and carry out the bidding of the capitalist class.
We need representatives in parliament and the council chambers who point to the massive wealth hoarded at the top of society, and actually fight for it to be in our hands.
Vote Socialist! Vote Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition!
We think that includes using the platform of elections to help spread socialist ideas. Workers and socialists standing in elections shows that we don’t have to leave ‘politics’ – ultimately, the struggle for control over society – to different shades of pro-capitalist politicians.
At a time when none of the main parties stand up for us, even a handful of socialist candidates getting elected could be an important step towards a new, mass party with socialist policies, which stands up for workers, students and everyone else currently suffering under capitalism.
That’s why Socialist Students has joined the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). TUSC was set up to allow workers, trade unionists, students, community campaigners and anti-austerity activists of various different organisations to stand under a common banner against the pro-capitalist establishment parties in elections.
As part of TUSC, we are fighting for a working-class, socialist alternative to appear on as many ballot papers as possible in the upcoming local elections and general election.
Fight for socialism
In a socialist system, the banks and major companies that currently dominate the economy would be owned and run democratically by workers themselves, as the ones who actually keep society running day to day, not the capitalist bosses. Resources and technology would be taken out of the private hands of a tiny minority, making it possible to democratically plan the economy to meet everyone’s needs. It would be an international system, joining together socialist governments on the basis of cooperation, not competition.
That is the kind of world that Socialist Students is fighting for. Winning it will require a massive international movement, led by the working class and organised behind socialist ideas. That would then lay the basis for a world free of all oppression, division, climate destruction and war. The job of socialists is to help build that movement, in whatever way we can – including at the ballot box.
Join Socialist Students and help us build a political voice that unites the struggles of students and workers in the fight for socialism.
Socialist Students says:
End the student housing crisis Introduce rent controls in all student accommodation. For socialist councillors who take on dodgy private landlords.
End the student cost-of-living crisis Replace maintenance loans with maintenance grants which cover all living costs. Scrap tuition fees, cancel all student debt – make the super-rich pay.
Combat climate change Carry out a massive switch to green energy NOW! Take the energy companies under democratic public ownership, to be run by workers and not the bosses.
Fight for socialism For the banks, monopolies and major industries to be owned and run by the working class to meet people’s needs, not the profits of the super-rich.
Behind closed doors, a major university policy change is being discussed and, typically, its not good news! Vivienne Stern, the CEO of employers’ organisation, Universities UK, insists that students finance the gap in university budgets yet again, through ever-higher tuition fees. This is off the back of a broad financial report, which outlines the very real mess that university managements have found itself in, where issues such as an exodus of international students, whose higher tuition than domestic students many universities rely on, have been compounded by unprecedented inflation.
Yet there are no illusions about the popularity of such a move: “Political suicide”, Stern describes it – very hot in Westminster right now. She urges whoever is in power to implement it that they “act quickly” before an inevitable wave of student outrage. Yes, ‘before anyone notices’ seems to be the strategy they’re going for here!
And no doubt such outrage would be fierce: students are already bearing the brunt of major systemic failings. With the confidence built during the continuing wave of agitation for Palestinian liberation, no doubt we would be on the streets in our thousands, as students did over a decade ago the last time tuition fees were tripled.
But why wait for things to get worse? We students don’t need permission to organise and fight to make university life bearable. Stern says raise tuition fees, we say: ‘Abolish them!’ And secure ample student maintenance grants in turn. Keir Starmer, likely future prime minister, U-turned on Jeremy Corbyn’s free education policy. We need a new mass party that will stand up for students and workers.
Socialist Students says:
Fight for fully funded free education – scrap and refund tuition fees, cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
Take universities under the democratic control of elected bodies of campus trade unions, students and communities
Build democratic student organisations to link up with the campus trade unions and fight for what our universities need
Build a new mass party that will stand up for students and workers
Fight for socialist change – for democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Despite the numerous advances in women’s rights that have been won through mass struggle over past decades, many on International Women’s Day in 2024 will be questioning why the basic problems that women face – lower pay, greater risk of violence, objectification in the media, to name a few – still continue to exist today.
To understand how we can end the oppression of women it is necessary to first analyse where it comes from and the conditions that led to its creation in order to understand what conditions are needed to remove it.
We republish here an article written by Christine Thomas (author of ‘It Doesn’t Have to be Like This: Women and the Struggle for Socialism’) on the contribution of Friedrich Engels, one of the founding figures of Marxism, to analysing women’s oppression, its evolution over time, and how it can ultimately be abolished.
The ‘Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’, published in 1884, was Engels’ main contribution to the issue of women’s oppression. It showed that women’s second-class status in society, the inequality, discrimination and oppression we face, hasn’t always existed.
In the late 19th century this was explosive stuff. At the time, women’s inferior status was considered ‘natural’, explained by their biology or ‘God’s will’, and absolutely necessary for maintaining social stability. At the same time, the patriarchal family, with a male breadwinner and an economically dependent wife in the domestic sphere giving birth to and raising children, was a central, core institution of capitalism, and to challenge its universality was to challenge the entire fabric of society.
Of course, Engels’ book should be viewed in the context of the time in which it was written, and in conjunction with more up-to-date material. But the general ideas he outlined regarding women’s oppression are still relevant today, and still just as explosive.
He explained that gender inequality, discrimination and oppression are rooted in class society – in the emergence of societies where a small minority, an exploiting class, owns the means of producing wealth in society and exploits the class that actually produces the wealth.
Before that, in pre-class societies, people lived in communal, cooperative, egalitarian societies in which the main social unit wasn’t the nuclear family as we know it today, but a kinship group – that Engels called the ‘gens’ – which today are usually referred to as hunter-gatherer societies, based on how they made a living.
In these societies, in which humans lived for 99% of the time that we have been on the planet, there was no private ownership of the means of producing wealth, no classes and exploitation, no state apparatus and no systematic oppression of women.
Although Engels got some of the detail wrong, because of the scant anthropological and scientific evidence available at the time, the evidence that has come to light since backs up the general thrust of his ideas.
Pre-class societies
There was a gender division of labour in pre-class societies, although it was not necessarily a rigid one. In general, men were usually responsible for hunting and fishing, and women for gathering wild foodstuffs and looking after children. But this did not result in any economic or social disadvantage. The economic contributions of women and men were both vital for the maintenance of the group. Childcare was a public responsibility carried out on behalf of the group as a whole.
This was very different from the situation today. One of the main reasons why women are suffering so much more during the pandemic in terms of job losses, and pay and hours being cut, is because they are concentrated in the low-paid, part-time, often precarious jobs in retail and hospitality that have been the hardest hit by lockdowns and the economic consequences of Covid. And the principal reason why they are concentrated in those kind of jobs is that they are usually the main carers for children in the family.
During the first lockdown, women were responsible for 70% of home-schooling. In one third of the cases where women have lost their jobs or had their hours cut, it has been because they have been unable to access the childcare they need. Covid has turned an existing shortage of affordable childcare into a disaster for working-class women especially, which can only be solved by bringing childcare provision into the public sector, democratically run by service providers and users.
Engels wrote that the situation for women drastically changed following an economic revolution in which some hunter-gatherer societies discovered how to domesticate animals and cultivate crops. This unleashed economic and social processes which, in some societies, over thousands of years, led to the development of an economically exploiting class extracting surplus production from the labour of others, and expropriating it for themselves. A special state apparatus was also created to ensure that the exploited class continued to produce, and was kept under control.
As an intrinsic part of these processes, the individual household, or family, replaced the communal kinship group as the main economic unit in society. At the same time, women of the ruling class literally became the private property of men within the family.
Wealth and property
In order to ensure that their property and accumulated wealth could be passed on to legitimate heirs, the sexuality and reproduction of women of the ruling class came under the authority and control of husbands and fathers, including through the use of violence and physical chastisement. And, as the state apparatus developed, the legal system, religion, education, and ideology generally served to legitimise and reinforce women’s inferior, second-class status, and deny them basic rights.
This is the historic basis for all of the inequality, discrimination and oppression that women still face today. It is at the root of domestic violence and abuse, rape, sexual harassment, the double standards and stereotyping of male and female roles and behaviour, and sexism in general.
Many feminists believe that the main cause of women’s oppression is the patriarchy, but Engels showed that there isn’t a structure of patriarchy separate from class society. Women’s oppression and class society emerged together as part of the same process – they were inextricably linked together then, and still are under capitalism today.
Therefore, gender oppression, Engels explained, can only be eliminated by ending class society – a fundamental transformation in the way that society is structured, organised and run. Today, this would mean moving away from an economy based on the private ownership of the means of producing wealth by a small group of super-rich capitalists interested only in making a profit, to one where the principal industries are publicly owned, and democratically run and planned by working-class people.
It would then be possible to immediately release the resources for changing the economic and material situation for women. Everyone would be guaranteed a job on a decent wage, which would mean that women would have real economic independence.
It would be possible to do what Engels put forward in the ‘Origin of the Family’ – to socialise the unpaid labour of women in the family by the state providing flexible, quality childcare, social care, affordable community restaurants, affordable housing – things that would totally transform the lives of women, and working-class women in particular.
We would add, that ending gender inequality in the family and in the workplace would also lay the basis for eliminating gender violence and the sexual and cultural oppression women face.
The values in society would change. Capitalism is a system based on unequal wealth, hierarchies of power, and competition. The capitalist class is prepared to resort to the use of force and violence to defend its interests and control where necessary – against strikers, protesters, and in wars. Those values have an impact more broadly in society and affect how we relate to each other.
A socialist system would be based on cooperation and solidarity, and those values would be reflected in personal relations and culture, just as they were in pre-class societies.
And of course, there would no longer be a privately owned media, or beauty, fashion, and leisure industries, and all the other industries that turn women’s bodies into a commodity to make a profit, and promote stereotypical expectations and norms about how women and men should look and behave.
If we removed all of those things, while at the same time initiating a programme of awareness-raising and education, then all gender oppression could be ended over time.
Engels outlined the origins of women’s oppression and what would be necessary to end it – a socialist revolution led by a united working-class.
Socialist Students campaigns for:
● Government funding for what women need on campus – properly funded support and counselling services, campus lighting, childcare services and affordable housing. Scrap tuition fees, cancel student debt and replace loans with grants which increase with inflation.
● Democratic oversight of sexual harassment reporting and campus safety procedures by joint trade union and student-led committees
● For democratic trade union, staff and student control of university syllabuses and teaching procedures with proper training around handling inappropriate behaviour
● Fully funded and affordable public transport available at all hours to ensure students get home safely
● Students get organised! Rebuild fighting, democratic student organisations to campaign on campuses. Build a new mass workers’ party to give workers and students a political voice
● Fight for a socialist alternative to capitalist inequality and chaos to end all forms of oppression
Organising the fight for a socialist world in schools, colleges and universities
Nandi from Queen Mary Socialist Students addressing the conference(Photo: Berkay Kartav)
Nearly 100 young socialists met in Birmingham on Saturday 10 February for Socialist Students national conference. Held annually to decide the political direction of Socialist Students for the coming year, the conference brought together student organisers from over 30 university and college campuses, as well as young workers and trade unionists bringing solidarity as visitors.
This year’s conference took place in the midst of the huge protest movement against Israel’s brutal onslaught on Gaza, which has seen thousands of students across the UK protesting. Delegates from a number of Socialist Students groups reported on successful protests and walkouts they had organised in their colleges and universities. Conference agreed unanimously that Socialist Students should “continue its campaigning to build a young, socialist pole of attraction within the current anti-war movement”.
The importance of building support for socialist ideas to end war was underlined in the opening discussion on the global crisis of capitalism, which outlined the growing fault lines for conflict around the world. Added to the deepening environmental crisis, the soaring cost of living and attacks to our democratic rights, the recent outbreak of major wars – first in Ukraine and then in Gaza – shows the dystopian character of capitalism today. That’s why delegates voted for Socialist Students to “reaffirm our commitment to fighting for a socialist world, free of exploitation and oppression”.
The rest of the conference was all about how Socialist Students groups go about doing just that – practically putting forward what steps we can take now to organise the fight for a socialist world within our schools, colleges and universities.
Socialist Students organisers reported different initiatives that they had taken, or were planning to take, on their campuses – campaigning for things such as rent controls in student housing and standing candidates in student areas in the upcoming local elections. Speakers emphasised the need to link our immediate campaigning demands to the fight for a socialist system, as the only way for improvements to our lives to be won on a stable basis.
All of those demands – whether it’s defending our right to protest, or ensuring we can afford to keep a roof over our head – point to the need for a political voice to fight in the interests of students and young people in parliament and the council chambers. This year’s conference identified the upcoming general election as a crucial opportunity for Socialist Students to organise a political fightback among students – not just to kick out the Tories, but also to offer a socialist alternative to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
Multiple speakers reminded conference about Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour leader, which saw the biggest youth movement of the past decade in support of his left, anti-austerity policies – including the call for free university education.
Socialist Students organisers have previously stood as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in local elections. This year, conference decided that Socialist Students should approach TUSC about affiliating nationally, as the best way to coordinate with other groups putting forward a “working-class challenge to the pro-austerity and pro-capitalist parties at the next election”.
The mood of delegates throughout the day was determined and optimistic. There was a real back-and-forth exchange of ideas among all the young people gathered, which continued into the breaks and the post-conference evening social. Dozens of speakers came in to speak throughout the day, including many attending their first Socialist Students conference. The sense among organisers was that we’ve got work to do now, and a world to win – and this year’s conference has put us in the strongest possible position to do that.
The wealthiest 1% hope to make social change seem like an impossible goal. But the various capitalist crises are taking their toll on young and working-class people in a way that cannot be ignored. This is why more and more young people consider themselves socialists.
This is why the Socialist Students conference is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to get involved, but doesn’t know where to start. It is an opportunity to link up with others to share and develop ideas.
It is very easy to feel politically isolated, that every effort made to fix the system is meaningless. By attending Socialist Students conference you get to see how a democratic organisation operates.
It is also a great opportunity to meet and socialise with other young socialists from up and down the country.
Socialist Students groups have a lot to prepare for.
As the Tories continue to splinter and break apart, Keir Starmer’s Labour looks set to run the country. This government will not be run in the interests of students. Starmer has shown himself to be no friend of the working class.
It’s imperative that we discuss how best to tackle capitalist policies, and defend our right to an education that doesn’t cause a mountain of debt once we’re finished.
Starmer’s Labour doesn’t just threaten students. His refusal to promise to scrap all the Tory anti-union laws means that workers will still find their rights under attack. Students and workers need to link our causes together.
The majority of Labour MPs voted with the Tories against a ceasefire in the brutal and relentless war on Gaza. Many MPs that did back a ceasefire, only did so because of the immense pressure felt by the continuous protests.
Rishi Sunak was also forced to sack ultra-right-wing home secretary Suella Braverman. This proves our actions have results. The next step forward is to discuss what we can do to put pressure on this government, with student walkouts and more.
Teachers can’t teach lessons properly because they are way too overworked and underpaid. Because there aren’t enough teachers, PhD students are heavily relied on, which drives the wages even lower.
Students enter higher education to experience what it is like to live like an adult for the first time, and to discover themselves. But they can’t even afford that. At 18 years old, they have to take a loan, almost equivalent to a downpayment for a house. It’s a predatory practice.
They then have to deal with accommodation. In the first year, you are lucky if you get a place that doesn’t smell of mould, or isn’t the size of a coat closet.
After that, you have to fight every year to get a basic room that won’t cost you your life savings. Almost all educational institutes in the UK give no support to students either, from meals or tutoring, that the teachers have to do off-hours. The system has beaten everyone. This is why students should be socialists.
Socialist Students 