Hundreds of school and college students walked out to protest Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK on 17 September. On the thousands-strong protest through central London, the Socialist Students contingent was by far the most lively, youthful and politically bold. Our chants and slogans were not just drawing attention to Trump and the role he is playing, but also to Keir Starmer’s complicity in war, genocide, and defending the profits of the billionaires.
In Liverpool 75 walked out, there were 25 in Leeds, 15 from a Sheffield sixth form, 30 from one college in Nuneaton, 25 in Preston, and many more at youth protests around the country. The Trump walkouts showed that we can take matters into our own hands and have a voice when we organise and fight back.
Our walkouts forced their way into the national media. The government had been doing their best to keep Trump’s visit under wraps, knowing the anger it would provoke. But our campaign got onto ITV and BBC, into the Independent newspaper, even over the pond into Time magazine – which has twice named Trump ‘Man of the year’!
Right to protest
Hundreds walked out against Trump, but it would have been many more if not for the police being called on students to try to intimidate us into not exercising our right to protest.
In west London, about a dozen police officers were waiting at the tube station to try to intercept students travelling to the central London demo. In south London, a headteacher called the police on us, as well as ripping up leaflets that students were being handed as they were going into school.
In east London, hundreds of students spilled out into the playground at lunch, ready to walk out and join the protests in central London. They were prevented from doing so by a police van as well as about a dozen police officers at the school gates.
In north London, headteachers in Enfield were communicating with each other and the police to try and clamp down on student exercising their right to protest. That didn’t stop nine students walking out at one school.
Despite all the obstacles, when we are organised, we can overcome all the barriers put in our way. We can have a say over what goes on in our lives.
Schools, colleges, sixth forms… our entire capitalist education system is designed to strip away young peoples’ confidence to take action: restrictive rules try to teach us from a young age to obey authority; there is a complete lack of a say over our curriculum and what we get taught; gates are locked to keep us in all day, trapping us in prison-like conditions; students are thrown into ‘isolation rooms’ as punishment, facing a wall in solitary confinement conditions. All this is designed to make us feel powerless. And it’s not accidental.
This capitalist system we live under is about making profit for a tiny few at the top of society, a super-rich minority, at the expense of everyone else. It means mega wealth for the billionaires while poverty, war, and climate destruction become the norm. Capitalism will look for all the ways it can to maintain this unequal arrangement, that includes trying to drill into us from a young age, while we are in school, that we can’t fight back to change things.
The youth walkouts against Trump were a way to show that we can fight back. We sent a clear message to Trump, Starmer and the capitalist class that we won’t accept their agenda.
Build students unions
As a first next step, Socialist Students is calling on young people to build our own students unions. These can be spaces where students in a school or college can come together to share ideas about how to fight back and to make a plan of action. Why not organise a meeting of everyone who is interested, including those who joined walkouts and other supporters?
The meeting could take place in the playground, or a quiet indoor space, or there might be sympathetic teachers who are be open to allowing us to meet in their classroom, for example. A starting point could be to find out which teachers are trade union reps for the education unions in your school.
Then the meeting can decide collectively what campaigning issues to take up. There might be anger at what is going on in the world – war, poverty, climate catastrophe. But locally there might be anger at canteen prices, the cost of school trips, uniform policies… At some schools, students have been told that they are unable to wear political badges, for example.
Once a main campaigning priority has been agreed on, one idea could be to write a short protest letter setting out the issues, getting as many students as possible to sign it, and to take a list of demands to the headteacher. That pressure could be increased by organising a protest at lunchtime or outside the gates after school. A march to the local council offices could lobby a meeting of local councillors to ask what they are going to do to address the issues. There could also be a lobby of a local MP.
Students in east London prevented from protesting plan to write to their local MP Dianne Abbott to ask for her support in demanding the right to protest.
Socialist Students groups can also get together to attend protests outside of school or college. Socialist Students will have a contingent on the 11 October Gaza demo in London, for example. In Liverpool on 27 September, there is a protest outside of Labour Party conference, which Socialist Students will be attending – exposing all of the ways in which the Labour government is attacking our futures.
A new party fighting for our future
Events across the whole of society shape the conditions which we grow up in. We have a Labour government hiking uni fees, cutting funding to schools and public services, that has attacked benefits for disabled people including getting rid of PIP for under-18s.
Outside of schools and colleges, young people need a political voice. Many have been enthused by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’. It is polling highest among 18 to 24-year-olds. Socialist Students calls for a new mass workers’ party that fights for a future for young people.
As leader of the Labour Party, Corbyn called for free education, mass council house building and a fully funded NHS, and many other policies to make the super-rich pay. Now young people again have a chance for a political party to fight for those things. There is the opportunity for a mass party that puts across an anti-war, socialist alternative to Labour, as well as to Reform. Socialist Students says any new party should be a democratic socialist party. We are holding meetings on 50+ university campuses across the country to discuss that.
Young people need a voice – our own students unions organising to fight in our collective interests. And a political voice, a party that links our struggles to those of other young people and the working class as a whole.
We have to fight for a future. That is linked to the struggle for a socialist society as an alternative to capitalism. That would be a system where the banks and major industries are owned and run by the working class, democratically discussing and collaborating to draw up a plan of how to use the wealth and resources in society to meet the needs of all. Internationally, that would lay the basis for an end to war and climate disaster. Join Socialist Students to fight for a future. Fight for socialist change.
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