The ‘Funding Not Fees’ closing rally, hosted by Socialist Students, was full of young people getting organised – against the tuition fee hike, and all the issues blighting young people’s lives.
Robbie Davidson from Manchester Socialist Students outlined the dismal living conditions facing university students. But students in Manchester are fighting back: this term, Socialist Students has set up official societies at two Manchester universities.
Mihaela Ivanova from Queen Mary Socialist Students highlighted how the university funding crisis has also incentivised managements to make money off arms companies that fuel war in Gaza and internationally. Mihaela argued that what students need is not just full public funding for education, but also a democratic say, alongside staff, over where that funding goes.
The need for resources and democratic student-staff control was reinforced by Isis Smyth, from Liverpool Socialist Students, as the way to tackle the epidemic of sexual violence on campuses. Students in Liverpool will be joining Socialist Students groups protesting around the country on 25 November, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
How all these issues are also playing out internationally, often in an even more acute form, was underlined by Tom Porter-Brown from Birmingham Socialist Students. Tom raised the inspiring examples of students fighting back in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nigeria.
Capitalism can only offer young people falling living standards and a future wrought by uncertainty. Summing up the rally, Socialist Students national organiser Adam Powell-Davies pressed home the need for students to get organised now to fight for a socialist future.
Rally chair Adam Gillman, Socialist Party youth organiser, ended by calling on everyone to build the Funding Not Fees campaign – to stop next year’s tuition fee hike, and fight for free education with living grants for all.
Just days after the budget, the so-called Labour government announced a rise in tuition fees to £9,535, coming into effect in the 2025-26 academic year. This will not only affect students starting university in 2025, but also returning students.
The fee hike will anger many already stressed, outraged students. Young people are already facing a cost-of-living crisis, massive debts, and cuts to their services and courses.
Some people say that if you’re low paid after studying you won’t have to pay it back, but if you are a graduate working full-time on just next year’s minimum wage you will still have to start to pay it off.
The budget had already contained attacks on young people, such as the increase in the bus fare cap to £3, making it more expensive for students and young people to travel.
The Labour government is testing to see what it can get away with without triggering a mass movement.
This is why Socialist Students has initiated the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign with other groups on campus. To fight to scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt, for fully funded education, with living grants not loans. To fight for rent controls in student accommodation, to end low pay and unstable contracts for staff, and to stop all cuts and closures on campus.
Socialist Students groups will be writing to student unions and trade union branches to ask to speak at their branch meetings and to ask them to support the campaign.
Funding Not Fees will also be lobbying MPs to see if they are on the side of students or of rotten university managements and a government that wants to make students pay for the university funding crisis rather than the super-rich.
We have ten months till this fee rise will be implemented, so we have to get out there and fight back to show the government that students will not just accept attacks.
It’s not just on the universities where young people are angry. We face the devastating effects of cuts to our public services, such as youth services and schools, which are making life harder for millions.
If you are interested in campaigning for funding not fees, if you want to fight back against cutbacks and for socialist change, then join the socialists today!
Socialist Students says
No fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fight for socialist policies
Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
University students are suffering again this term. The gap between our maintenance loans and actual living costs has never been higher. Most of us have to work long hours in low-paid jobs just to afford to study. Rents have soared yet again, and courses are being cut at a record number of universities. For the first time ever this year, the proportion of working-class students attending university has fallen – and no wonder.
Labour’s Budget has done nothing to stop the rot. In the 170-page document published by the Treasury today, the word ‘university’ appears just twice – and only to announce some crumbs for the “commercialisation” of research.
The Budget is a continuation of attacks on students and university workers seen under the Tories. It confirms Labour’s immediate approach to the university funding crisis, which is to allow university bosses to continue making savage cuts to jobs and courses.
At the same time, by allocating no new money for universities, it remains a strong possibility that Labour will look at raising tuition fees in the follow-up to this Budget – potentially allowing fees to rise with inflation, to give universities a small funding boost in the short-term.
Faced with a higher education sector in crisis, and the spectre of university bankruptcies hanging over their heads, Labour will try to make students and staff pay, not big business and the super-rich, whose interests this Labour government obediently serves. On the same day as the Budget, the government announced they will be legislating for reform of the fee system next year. Even bigger attacks on students could be in the pipeline under Starmer.
Socialist Students has been preparing for the nightmare facing students and staff this year. That’s why we initiated the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign this term, as a step to building a movement for fully funded, free education with living grants for all, paid for by taking the wealth and resources off the super-rich. As part of the Funding Not Fees day of action around Budget Day, Socialist Students protested on over 20 campuses across the UK.
Socialist Students will be reaching out to student organisations, trade union branches and others over the rest of this term to build the Funding Not Fees campaign. We want to organise mass campus meetings, lobbies of our local MPs, and more protests and rallies around the country to demand a socialist solution to the capitalist crisis in education – not more cuts, cost-of-living crisis, and fees.
Students are angry. Socialist Students members in Liverpool have spoken to thousands of new and returning university students since the start of the academic year. All we have ever known is Tory cutbacks and attacks. Now any hope that things might be different under Labour is being transformed into anger at Keir Starmer and his government, including over the possibility of a rise in tuition fees.
With Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader for the 2017 and 2019 general elections, Labour’s policy was for free education. Starmer said it best at the recent Labour conference in Liverpool – the Labour Party has “changed”. It is no longer a party for working-class and young people. Continuation of war in the Middle East, two-child benefit caps and pensioners’ winter fuel payment attacks; life under Labour feels a lot like life under the disgraced Tories.
The cost of a university education is already staggering. Fees alone are £9,250 a year for most students, add to that loans to pay for rent, food and the basic necessities. Every year the threat of a debt mountain deters working-class young people from achieving a higher education qualification. And the Budget on 30 October could include raising fees further.
Already, universities like the University of Liverpool have upped food prices on campus and removed their food pantries, which gave students hit hard by the cost-of-living crisis access to free food if they could not afford to do weekly food shops.
This academic year, 40% of English universities are facing a deficit in their budget. And, as usual, the fat-cat vice chancellors and the government want us to foot the bill.
But at the same time, the rich keep getting richer. As horrific as it is, the capitalist system prioritises profit over young peoples’ futures.
University education should be free, fully funded and accessible to all. Maintenance grants should be universal and enough to be able to afford a decent quality of life. Life under Starmer’s Labour is making it clearer than ever that we need a party to fight for the many, not the few – a new mass workers’ party that fights for socialist change.
Socialist Students says
No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fights for socialist policies
Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Funding Not Fees campaign
Socialist Students is helping to initiate a new national campaign, Funding Not Fees, with the support of other campus organisations, to bring together students and workers in a movement for fully funded, free education – not more fees and cuts.
The Funding Not Fees campaign demands that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers. It calls for fully publicly funded higher education, paid for by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as the means to:
We have witnessed a year of brutal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, and increasingly in the West Bank too.
It has exposed to the world how capitalist politicians do not value human life, despite what they say about wanting an end to the conflict. Many people here in the UK have felt anger at the situation in Gaza, and taken to the streets to protest.
Many students have also taken things into their own hands, protesting against their university bosses, calling for divestment from arms companies and companies that prop up Israeli state terror.
School and college students have organised walkouts and protests in solidarity with the Palestinians. Towards the end of last term, student encampments were organised up and down the country, exposing universities’ links to arms companies and banks. Socialist Students members were involved with many of these.
We fight for the 7-million-strong trade union movement to be central. It is the threat of workers getting organised and fighting back that terrifies the capitalist world leaders, including in the Middle East.
It is a mass movement of workers and poor people, democratically organised and fighting for socialist change, in Palestine and across the region, that can point the way forward to an end to war and national oppression.
We call for an end to the marketisation of higher education and an end of the tuition-fee funding model. Universities are becoming ever more reliant on money from big business, including from arms companies such as BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, due to cuts in funding from government. University education should be free for all, and fully publicly funded by making the super-rich pay.
The huge determined protests against the slaughter in Gaza have defied attempts by politicians and police to intimidate them. That defiance led to the hated Suella Braverman being sacked as home secretary.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners standing in the general election had a huge effect in a whole number of constituencies. Jeremy Corbyn was reelected, in addition to another four anti-war independent MPs.
That must be built on to deliver the new workers’ party needed to give a voice to the anti-war, socialist opposition to Starmer. Student protests this term can have a big effect too – and Socialist Students is determined to make them as effective as possible.
If you want to be part of the fightback, get involved!
What Ideas should students get organised around?
DISCLOSE ALL FINANCES!
Universities should open their books to a democratic inquiry by elected students’ representatives and the campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war and occupation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding.
END MARKETISATION!
The government must fully fund education to disincentivise universities from gambling our fees on dodgy companies and ‘vanity projects’. Scrap tuition fees, cancel student debt, and reintroduce living grants for all students.
WE NEED A POLITICAL VOICE!
Winning a free, democratic, and genuinely ethical education system means fighting to take wealth and power off the capitalist elites. Starmer’s Labour government won’t even begin to fight for this. We need a mass workers’ party, with a socialist programme to end the capitalist system that breeds war and oppression.
MAXIMISE OUR STRENGTH!
Our movement would be strengthened if more students and workers joined. Socialist Students is calling for students to join us with:
• Mass meetings open to all who want to discuss how we can build a movement against war, oppression and capitalism • Stalls and leafleting sessions, where we can talk to other students about any upcoming protests and action, and encourage them to join • A rally with speakers invited from local trade union branches, and students from other universities, colleges and schools nearby • A lobby of our local MP or councillors alongside other students, workers and trade unionists, to demand they explain their position on the Israeli state’s onslaught in Gaza
The Tories have been smashed. Reduced to their lowest vote in a century, they have been punished for 14 years of attacks on the working class, the young and the vulnerable.
There are plenty of reasons for students to be pleased that the Tories are gone. Their broken higher education funding model has left universities at risk of bankruptcy. Average student debt has soared to £50,000, and a collapse in maintenance support has driven a historic student cost-of-living crisis. Facing the fury of students, the Tories have encouraged university managements to clamp down on our right to protest.
But the new Labour government has no intention of improving our situation. Starmer has made clear that his government will stick to the Tories’ fiscal rules. He will use his landslide Labour majority to carry out more attacks on workers and young people. Already the Labour manifesto has promised nothing more than “existing funding” (i.e. Tory austerity budgets) for post-18 jobs and training, and it commits to maintaining wage disparity between 16 to 17-year-olds and the rest of the workforce. It is also silent on fixing the university funding crisis.
No wonder there was no enthusiasm for Labour in this election. According to a poll released just days before polling, half of people planning to vote Labour were only doing so to get the Tories out. The Labour popular vote in this election was lower than in 2017 and 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, with an anti-austerity programme that inspired hundreds of thousands of young people.
Although there will inevitably be hope amongst some that a Labour government would mean an improvement to the day-to-day lives of workers and young people, any political party wedded to the capitalist system would be compelled sooner or later to carry out attacks on workers and young people. The stormy economic backdrop to the incoming Starmer-led government, acting within the economic constraints of capitalism, will push it rapidly into confrontation with students, young people, and the working class.
The next Labour government is set to come up against struggles on an even bigger scale than what developed [during the strike wave]. This will not only mean strikes, but struggle among students and young people.
The student fightback against Starmer’s Labour has already begun; it has been a big feature of the student encampments, and of the Gaza anti-war movement in general.
Now let’s take the movement further. We need a mass movement of all students who want to fight for a decent future, and for a free and democratic education system. That means getting organised on campus, linking up with the workers’ movement, and taking steps towards a new mass party that unites workers and young people in the struggle to:
Take on a Starmer government
Kick out all the capitalist politicians
Fight for socialism
Socialist Students has been preparing for the fightback that will continue under a Starmer government. Join us!
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.
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.
Socialist Students 