Tag: students

UCU demo must be step towards national fightback on cuts

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Adam Powell Davies, Socialist Students national organiser

Around 500 rallied in London on Saturday 10 May for the UCU ‘Protect Education Now’ national demonstration. The protest brought together workers from across the education sector to demand an end to cuts in universities, colleges and prison education.

Socialist Students brought solidarity, with members travelling from across the UK to attend. Our placard slogans and chants included ‘funding not fees, no staff redundancies’, and ‘money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation’.

Post-16 education faces its deepest funding crisis in decades. Currently one in two universities are cutting jobs and courses.

This Labour government, acting in defence of the capitalists’ profit interests, is determined to squeeze funding for education and all our public services. Only a mass campaign bringing together workers across sectors will be able to win the public funding that is needed to save post-16 education from the current crisis of marketisation.

That’s why this demonstration was significant – it was a glimpse of what can be done when a national lead is given. It was positive that UCU general secretary Jo Grady told the rally that the 10 May demo will not be the last national action in the campaign to stop the cuts.

Socialist Students supports calls by activists in UCU for 10 May to be a step towards building a concerted fightback, including properly preparing for UK-wide action, coordinated with other education unions.

The demo heard from UCU activists from Cardiff and Dundee universities, where staff have taken strike action and successfully halted compulsory redundancies this year. This shows the potential for UK-wide strike action to halt cuts. Any industrial action should be linked to a political strategy that demands full public funding, paid for by the super-rich.

Several speakers called for more lobbying of MPs. Socialist Students agrees with this approach, as it can help clarify who is on the side of our movement. But that has to be combined with a call for action from those MPs who claim they stand with us – like demanding they raise our campaigns in parliament.

Socialist Students has been organising lobbies of MPs through the Funding Not Fees campaign this year. In the run-up to the 11 June government spending review, we will be contacting MPs to ask that they submit an anti-cuts, free education amendment – to demand the super-rich pays for the crisis in post-16 education, not students and workers.

Socialist Students societies have also been busy organising Funding Not Fees protests and meetings around the country. This week at Bradford Uni we held a successful day of action against the cuts, with support from UCU and Unison branches.

Unfortunately, Socialist Students did not get the opportunity to address the 10 May demo. Two of our members asked to speak, to bring solidarity to UCU and talk about our campaigning. But despite being told there might be time at the end, the rally was cut short by 40 minutes without explanation.

There was one speaker bringing solidarity from students, NUS president Amira Campbell. Members of the Socialist Students steering committee will be meeting with Amira and NUS vice-president (Higher Education) Alex Stanley to discuss how to build a student movement alongside staff to end the crisis in higher education.

College students fight back – fully fund our education

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Adam Gillman, Socialist Students national organiser

Further education is in massive crisis. Teachers and staff leaving, courses cut, high class sizes – the list goes on. Students face a cost-of-living crisis, unable to afford high transport costs and expensive food.

Afterwards, there is the prospect of crisis-ridden university education with mountains of student debt, or low-paid insecure work. Adult college learners have to pay sometimes as much as thousands to study.

Facing what can feel like it’s going to be an increasingly bleak future, stressed from exams, many students face mental health crisis, not helped by the terrible state of mental health services.

Further education has been underfunded for decades. Between 2010 and 2020, per pupil funding fell by 14% in colleges, and 28% in school sixth forms.

Further education faces a shortfall of £400 million. The Labour government has proposed a plan for £300 million, £100 million short, and way less than what’s actually needed for our education.

This is only the beginning. Unless we fight back and win, more attacks will come.

Job cuts

We can’t rule out mass job cuts, like what’s taking place at universities, where uni bosses have already announced over 5,000 job cuts this year.

The University and College Union (UCU), which organises college staff, has launched the ‘New Deal for FE’ campaign, fighting for more funding for further education, and better pay and conditions for staff. UCU is also opposing uni cuts with the ‘Stop the cuts: Fund higher education now’ campaign.

Students and young people should fight alongside the trade unions for properly funded, free education.

FE colleges are typically managed by education trusts, run as if they are businesses, with highly paid executives and board members. Students sit exams run by privatised exam boards too.

Socialist Students calls for colleges, as well as exam boards and all aspects of education, to be brought into democratic public ownership, with elected bodies of staff and students having control.

We fight for every step forward for students to get organised and fight back, including by developing and building student unions in colleges. Existing student unions typically have very limited democratic structures, shackled by college management. But every opportunity should be grasped to put forward what is needed.

The strike wave showed that by fighting back, we can win. When hundreds of thousands of teachers went on strike, they forced the government to give them a pay rise.

And students can fight back too. In London, Pimlico Sixth Form College students went on strike to protest racist uniform rules, and against removing black history month from the curriculum.

Hundreds of thousands of students and young people have come to the streets against the horrific genocidal attacks launched against the Palestinians. This led to the sacking of right-wing racist Tory home secretary Suella Braverman.

We’ve won before

During the Covid crisis, school and college student protests forced the Tories to back down on their plans to downgrade the exam grades for working-class students.

We can fight and win funding for our colleges too. That means fighting for a political alternative to Keir Starmer’s Labour – a democratic trade union-based mass workers’ party that fights for fully funded free education, against all the attacks on young and working-class people.

Funding Not Fees

Socialist Students is organising lobbies of our local MPs, to see where they stand on education funding, and whether they plan to actually represent us against this Labour government.

Will they join our movement for free, fully funded education, demand that big business foots the bill, not students and workers? Or will they stay silent, as this government destroys our lives and futures?

Unite for free education! Not war, poverty and racism

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Text from a Socialist Students leaflet

What future do young people have today? The wealth of the richest 1% soars. But all we get are countless wars and climate destruction. The cost of everything is getting higher and higher – from phone bills and food prices to transport fares.

Rent is unaffordable. Wages are too low. Education is under attack. And under Labour, things are only getting worse. In this cruel capitalist world, it’s no wonder so many young people struggle with their mental health. Some students don’t receive mental health support, due to underfunding – services for all young people are inadequate.

This Labour government has shown it is no different to the conservatives. Even before they were in power, Labour backed the Israeli state’s assault on Gaza. Since forming a government, they’ve raised tuition fees for the first time in nearly a decade, refused to end age-based pay discrimination, and announced plans to restrict disability benefits – including raising the age for young people to access Personal Independence Payment from 16 to 18.

Whether it’s enabling war and poverty overseas or attacking the futures of young people in Britain, Starmer’s Labour Party is always on the side of the super-rich elites and their capitalist system. Starmer has rolled out the red carpet for Trump to visit the UK, both of which defend the same capitalist system.

This capitalist system, prioritises short – term profit over the majority of people’s needs at every turn, from education and housing to healthcare, jobs, and the environment, as well as stoking racist and homophobic division.

There is an alternative

The resources exist to provide everyone with a decent standard of living. The top 100 UK companies hand over £80 billion a year to shareholders – money that could instead be used to fund high-quality housing, free education, public transport, and well-paid jobs.

If we took all the major corporations and banks into public ownership, run democratically by working-class people to meet people’s needs and not for profit, then everyone could have a decent well-paid job, a high-quality home, free public transport, and access to free education and healthcare. It would be a socialist society based on collaboration and solidarity between people, laying the basis for ending all war, oppression and where human need and environmental sustainability come first.

We can fight back!

We’ve seen the power of working-class collective action. When workers across the country took strike action in recent years, they forced both bosses and the Conservative government to make concessions on pay, conditions, and funding for our services.

If the trade unions can fight and win under the Conservatives, then they can do the same under Labour. Every young worker should join a trade union, get active and fight for a socialist leadership which could be fighting for a £15-an-hour minimum wage for all – with no exceptions based on age.

Students also have the power to fight back and link up with workers doing the same. Socialist Students members in colleges and schools have recently organised walkouts and campaigns against the war in Gaza, and also fought for the right to meet and discuss socialist ideas. We have seen huge movements initiated by students take place in Serbia, Bangladesh and elsewhere at the forefront of challenging capitalist governments power.

In 2021 students at Pimlico Sixth Form College in London went on strike to protest the racist uniform rules, and against the removing of Black History month from the curriculum. When we fight, we can win change.

But we need political representation for our movements. Labour won’t represent us. Neither will the Tories, Reform, or the other pro-capitalist parties. They represent the interests of capitalism whilst expecting young people to quietly accept a system that fails us.

We say: enough. It’s time to build a new political force – a mass working-class party with socialist policies that gives a voice to our struggles and a vision for a socialist future.

We say:

  • For fully funded, free education – introduce living grants for all students, scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt, and stop cuts to courses
  • Divestment from arms and big business – no place for profiteers from war and exploitation in our education
  • Mass trade union struggle for a £15-an hour minimum wage now! Ban unequal youth pay rates and scrap zero-hour contracts
  • End the housing crisis! For a mass building programme of high-quality, affordable council housing
  • Take the wealth off the super-rich! For the banks, monopolies and major industries to be owned and run by the working class to meet everyone’s needs, not the profits of a few
  • Build the socialist opposition to Labour, the Conservatives, Reform and all the establishment parties! Build a new mass workers’ party with socialist policies to give working class and young people a political voice!

Our education system has been decimated by years of cuts – first under the Tories, now under Labour. Class sizes have grown. Teachers are overworked. Mental health support is practically non-existent. Buildings are falling apart. And now, Labour is planning to raise tuition fees even further – while diverting funding toward STEM subjects and away from vocational and humanities courses.

Socialist Students is organising lobbies of our local MPs, to see where they stand on education funding – and what they plan to do to represent us against this Labour government. Will they join our movement for free, fully funded education – to demand that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers? Or will they stay silent as this government destroys our lives and futures?

Find out more about the Funding Not Fees campaign

Socialist Students win free societies & more democracy at Herts uni

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Herts Uni Socialist Students featuring Morgan (middle)

Morgan Tritton, Hertfordshire Socialist Students

We started Herts Socialist Students in November 2024 and were frustrated by the inaction of the students’ union (SU) on our campus. At the University of Hertfordshire the SU has repeatedly defended the university’s actions over the interests of its own members – students ourselves. There is no real separation between the university and the SU which often echoes university management.

We investigated the SU’s governance, transparency, and action plan. We found little evidence of advocacy on urgent issues such as the cost-of-living crisis, tuition fee hikes, accommodation conditions, violence against women, and campus safety. What we did find, however, was stagnation – a culture that prioritises protecting the image of the university over fighting for the needs of the student body.

We raised our concerns at the November 2024 student council meeting. It took four months, and the submission of a formal motion, before any action was taken!

In April 2025, we submitted three motions: to improve SU governance and transparency, to allow free society memberships and open meetings, and to demand action on violence against women on campus. Prior to this, there had only been one motion passed in the last two years. We faced attempts to resist, delay, water down, or dismiss the motions entirely from SU staff. They downplayed safety concerns by citing a lack of official reports and claimed transparency had now been addressed and further student oversight was unnecessary.

We responded in full, challenged their narrative, and two days before the council meeting, the SU backed down. All three motions were debated and passed overwhelmingly. We came in force to a student council meeting to highlight inaction and received a positive response from students.

This fight is far from over. We are in contact with the SU President and Women’s Officer and will be meeting in the coming weeks. Our passed governance motion requires monthly officer updates, motion tracking, and scheduled council meetings, basic measures that should have existed already, and we will make sure these happen.

We are fighting to repoliticise and democratise our SU. We are organising not just for better policies, but for a shift in power on campus from unelected managers and bureaucrats to the hands of students ourselves, alongside representatives of staff unions. We must continue to scrutinise our SUs and question: who benefits from keeping students in the dark? Who benefits from an unorganised student body? University managements and the relationships they have with pro-capitalist politicians and big business.

The failures of Herts SU reflect a nationwide crisis across higher education, faced with a funding crisis universities constantly put their finances above the interests of students and staff.

As part of the Funding Not Fees campaign, we must confront every institution on campuses that facilitate poor student and staff conditions and rising costs for students. Compromised and undemocratic student unions, acting as extensions of university management, must be challenged as part of a broader fight for free, fully funded education, and fighting democratic student organisations must be built.

Liverpool Guild election: fighting fees, cuts, and cost of living

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Hannah Ponting, Socialist Students candidate in Liverpool student election

Student union elections provide a great platform to voice socialist ideas on campuses. At Liverpool university, we collaboratively created a manifesto focusing on socialist policies, and subsequently selected a candidate who could put forward these policies, and represent socialist ideas in this election. I am very proud to have been that candidate.

The first of our main policies was fighting against Labour’s recent tuition fee hike, and for free education. The increasing cost of university should not be a barrier to young working-class people pursuing higher education. We based this policy around the Funding Not Fees campaign, launched by Socialist Students nationally.

The increasing cost of living is a significant concern to students. Funding life at university is becoming increasingly difficult. We focused on fighting to expand bursaries and reinstate the university’s food pantry, which was previously scrapped.

The university’s night bus is another service which was previously scrapped, although was reinstated due to campaigns led by Socialist Students. We said, expand the night bus to more areas in and around Liverpool, and to increase its frequency to every half an hour.

There has been a recent crisis of violence towards women and girls on campus. We believe that it is necessary to fight for all students to have a genuinely safe, reliable, and affordable way home.

Fight job cuts

Cuts are occurring at universities around the country. Liverpool uni refused to be transparent with the University and College Union (UCU), when pressured about its own job cuts.

We said the university must open its books and have financial transparency. This also extends to fighting for divestment from arms companies.

We held campaign stalls, and other leafleting and postering. We got a brilliant response from both students and workers on campus, with discussions about the cost of living and cuts to disability benefits.

We also held a public meeting. It provided a brilliant chance to explain our policies, and allow for any questions to be asked.

I spoke at endorsement meetings of other societies, such as Labour Students, to advocate socialist ideas to more students.

We achieved 151 first preference votes, rising to 192 when transferable votes were added. 9th place out of 24 candidates. The top four were elected.

There is an appetite for socialist ideas on campus. It’s our job to direct the frustration that young people are increasingly feeling – with the capitalist system and Labour government –into an organised movement.

UCU launches ‘stop the cuts’ campaign

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Joint campus union rally in Leeds, 2022

Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser

The University and College Union (UCU) held a parliamentary lobby and rally to launch its ‘Stop the cuts: fund higher education now’ campaign on 18 March.

Shocking redundancies

This was the first national campaign initiative in the ‘stop the cuts’ campaign, less than a week after the shocking announcement of 632 planned redundancies at Dundee University. UCU estimates that up to 10,000 jobs could be cut this year alone – 5% of staff.

The event was attended by UCU branches from across the country, with rally speakers from as far afield as Lancaster and Bangor, reflecting the enthusiasm for a trade union response to the cuts devastating higher education.

The rally showed that there’s a discussion taking place within the union over the best way forward in this fight, with a range of different opinions expressed. Several speakers called for coordinated, nationwide strike action, linked to the battle over staff pay and conditions.

I spoke to bring solidarity from Socialist Students to the rally, highlighting the need for students to link up with campus trade unions in the fight for full public funding for education, paid for by taking the wealth off the rich – not more fees, cuts and cost-of-living crisis.

Joining UCU activists was suspended Labour MP John McDonnell. He spoke of the need for “a parliamentary voice” to the struggles of university staff, saying the lobby was an opportunity to “recruit MPs as allies of the UCU”.

Funding Not Fees

Socialist Students groups are organising lobbies of local MPs, under the banner ‘Funding Not Fees’. This brings together students and staff, as well as trade unionists, anti-war activists, community campaigners, and more in the fight for political representatives who will give a voice to all the struggles of working-class and young people, under this pro-big business Keir Starmer government.

While Socialist Students continues to build Funding Not Fees on campuses, we hope to link up with the UCU ‘stop the cuts’ campaign – including mobilising the maximum student turnout to the UCU’s national demonstration in London on Saturday 10 May.

Coventry’s fight for free education

Frank Hammond, Coventry Socialist Students

United against attempts to break down our educational infrastructure, workers at Coventry University protested on 15 March. Perfectly planned to clash with the uni’s open day, they were supported by students, other trade unionists, and attendees of the Socialist Party’s national congress taking place in the same city.

John Latham, vice-chancellor and CEO of Coventry uni, has proposed job cuts of over 90 staff and plans to remove 200 others from the pension scheme (see ‘Students: Build the resistance to uni cuts!’.

And what a turnout for the protest. Over a hundred slowly passing by, holding signs; trade unionists, workers and students pumping their fists, clutching their wooden sticks from placards we all built to tell the bosses we aren’t accepting these attacks lying down.

Our placards held our campaign slogan: “Funding not fees! No redundancies!” The Funding Not Fees campaign aims to build a resistance to the many attacks on uni students and workers – the university bosses’ motives being a symptom of the failing system.

Speaking at the protest, former Labour MP Dave Nellist said the ‘fire-and-rehire’ scheme was being used as psychological blackmail against the staff. 66% of UK universities face deficit budgets this year.  If Coventry University succeeded, many other universities would use the same tactics, he said. Clause 22 of the Employment Rights Bill declares ‘fire and rehire’ to be grounds for automatic unfair dismissal. But, with a 174-seat majority in the Commons, Labour, if they wanted to, could have immediately declared the practice illegal last July to protect workers from these attacks. But they didn’t.

Students and workers

My much-loved lecturer and vice chair of Coventry’s University and College Union (UCU) branch Monika Koehler-Ridley was interviewed by BBC news. I was delighted that she has attended a Socialist Party branch meeting to talk about the campaign. Students and workers have a common enemy. We’ll fight for free education, fight to end privatisation, fight for a society where we feel secure in our futures and do our part in pursuing the liberation of the working class.

Breaking news at Cardiff uni

A massive 83% of University and College Union (UCU) members have voted to strike. This is in response to 400 planned job losses.

86% voted for action short of strike, up to and including an assessment boycott. 64% voted in the ballot.

CAMPAIGN: Don’t rent from slum landlord City Rooms!

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● Release Declan Miller from the abusive contract!

● Fight back against capitalist housing crisis!

Text from a Queen Mary Socialist Students campaign leaflet

City Rooms have demanded that Declan pay until the end of his contract despite the unlivable conditions at the property. Queen Mary student Declan has had no choice but to work part time to cover extortionate rents and is now being forced to pay for a room he cannot safely live in.

Yet, with a last reported turnover of £16 million and over £1 million in reserves, a rate of profit of around 50% higher than the average London landlord, annual payments to its two owners of £1m in dividends and the director’s salary, City Rooms are more than able to release Declan from this deplorable situation. But choose not to. Instead, they have decided to profit from a young tenant who they have knowingly put and kept in a violent and discriminatory letting, lining their pockets with no regard for the consequences.

A Queen Mary university student has been battling for months with a verbally and physically abusive flatmate, with no safe refuge! We demand that City Rooms, the property management, release Declan Miller from his contract immediately. City rooms, aware of the abusive thug’s behaviour, did not disclose this information upon signing the student into an exploitative contract leaving him unable to access alternative safe accommodation.

These kinds of situations are becoming more frequent than ever. In a borough like Tower Hamlets, with over 20,000 people on the waiting list for council housing, many are forced to resort to dishonest renting contracts with landlords and renting companies taking advantage of people in desperate housing situations. This is why we need fully implemented licensing and inspection of landlords to enforce decent housing standards. There is clearly more that can be done by Tower Hamlets Council to strengthen their licensing scheme which could start by making licensing compulsory for all landlords and bringing in rent controls.

Unaffordable rents, sky-high house prices and a rising cost of living – it’s no wonder that young people experience the worst of the housing crisis, on top of enormous tuition fees that are being increased as of September 2025. The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) reported in December 2024 that the maximum student loan is now less than the average student rent. The maintenance loans that saddle us with lifelong debt, have left students to fend for themselves in London’s private housing market or are forced to choose cramped and often poor quality halls. This is why we call for the end of the marketisation of our education, and for universities to be free and fully funded to provide safe, accessible housing for all students.

Many councils have declared bankruptcy with 63 more set to do so in the next year due to, now Labour-led, austerity where public services have been cut to the bone, like the recent £5 bn cut from the welfare bill. Starmer’s Labour party has made it clear they do not represent the interests of the working class and young people, cutting the winter fuel payment for pensioners, lifting the cap on tuition fees, and the continued support of the Israeli state’s onslaught on Gaza, many are looking for an alternative to the broken system.

The mass building of council homes, democratic control over housing management and regulations will not happen under Labour, it is clear and necessary that workers and young people must fight for a new mass workers party for an anti-war, anti-austerity programme to provide the services we desperately need. This includes democratic rent caps, a mass housing programme; over 7000,000 homes in the UK are standing empty! If workers and students took this resource into democratic control, it could be one step in the right direction towards fixing the housing crisis and the exploitative tactics of landlords and renting companies who act with impunity.

Fighting back can get results as proven by the case of Lawanya in 2021, a penniless asylum seeker and refugee campaign organiser. City Rooms, with their history of exploiting vulnerable renters, had bullied and forced Lawanya out of their property with no consideration for her situation at the time, whilst still demanding that she pay the rent on the full contract all due to there not being a ‘break clause’ in her contract. Despite this, campaign action and protests led by the Socialist Party backed by the London Renters Union and trade unions like Unite, bought City Rooms to bitterly admit defeat, agreeing to a reduction in the total amount and an affordable repayment rate. This offer was only reached through the resilience and strength of fighting together against the super rich bosses who had even threatened Lawanya’s asylum status!

Now they are back again to threaten and bully another vulnerable person into staying in their property despite it being an unsafe living space. From eviction to unjust debts to unsafe living conditions, challenging the predatory behaviour of companies like City Rooms is vital. Rights for the working class and young people are not granted by the rich, but won through struggle.

Fight for mass council home building and democratic rent control!

  • Implement licensing and inspection of landlords to enforce decent housing standards
  • Full public funding for universities to provide safe housing and make education free
  • Make the rich landlords and bosses pay, fight for socialist policies
  • Workers and young people need our own, new, mass party to fight for our interests

We Rise 2025: Young and optimistic, looking for socialist ideas

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Nick Davies, Southampton Socialist Students

I attended Global Justice Youth’s annual event We Rise 2025 at the University of Sussex in February. They had reached out to invite Socialist Students, so I attended from our group in Southampton. Over 100 attend the event, split into a number of panels and workshops, covering a range of global issues.

The opening plenary entitled “Capitalism in a World on Fire: Oil, climate change and neoliberal power”, with great contributions on the failures of neoliberalism for working-class people, the insidious effects of the political lobbying of fossil fuel capital and on the origins and aims of the horrific genocide in Gaza. I made a contribution praising the fact that the discussion drew direct links between the capitalist system and these crises.

However, the discussion was lacking a clear solution, so I posed the ideas of a socialist green transition based on public ownership of industry, with production planned to meet the needs of ordinary people and the environment.

After lunch there was a talk on ‘Trump, Reform and the global rise of the Far Right’. The panel discussed how capitalist politicians use rhetoric that blames immigration, rather than the policies of capitalist governments cutting public services, for ruining our lives.

One young attendee asked how to make this point to the wider masses, in opposition to the billionaire-owned media diverting blame away from the capitalist elite.

There was an organisation discussion, detailing Global Youth Justice’s campaigning including around issues such as fossil fuel legislation and protesting UK-Israel trade deals.

Whilst this was interesting and positive, the workshop lacked a clear push to link them together to form a coherent and concrete political programme that can begin to tackle the global crises of capitalism.

The final panel was titled “Another world is possible”, which provided a nice summary of the day as well as some revolutionary optimism. However, despite the use of the statistic that 47% of young people think “the entire way of our society is organised must be radically changed through revolution”; the final contributions were restricted by a lack of clear political directive to engage and win over the working class, which is the force that can bring about change internationally.

Overall I thought it was a very good event, with young people starting to draw socialist conclusions based on their experience of the crisis of global capitalism that is staring us right in the face.

Defend UAL students’ right to protest over Gaza

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UAL Socialist Students statement

Student Justice for Palestine held a peaceful protest at the University of Arts London (UAL), protesting against our university’s compliance in the current genocide of Palestinians. The university has continually ignored and blocked student demands that our tuition fees should not be used to fund war and arms deals.

Protesters temporarily occupied a space on Chelsea campus on 17 February to declare that the university chancellor Clive Myrie cannot and will not get away with silencing students and staff. Just two hours after the occupation, students received verbal threats from the management to vacate the premises by 9pm, or face disciplinary action.

The purposeful use of vague terminology of the code of conduct, and heavy police and security presence is part and parcel of the university’s intimidation tactics. UAL has a history of abusing its code of conduct to silence its students and staff from expressing their freedom of speech and right to protest.

After an emergency rally to protest university’s intimidation tactics, it was decided that we would end the encampment, as this was in the best interest of international students, who are here on visas, and already facing disciplinary action for peacefully protesting.

Occupation

Student Justice for Palestine has stated that it will continue to hold space on the campus, hosting readings, discussion, and other pro-Palestine events over the next week until its meeting with the university chancellor and other board members.

This is where they will again negotiate student demands on divesting from Lvmh, Lloyds Bank, and L’Oréal, changing its current definition of antisemitism that protects Zionism, and to protect and support its Palestinian students.

UAL Socialist Students stands in solidarity with Student Justice for Palestine. We condemn the university management on their consistent refusal to cut any ties with big companies who are complicit in the slaughter of Palestinians.

We support the demands that students have put towards our university. And we support our fellow students and staff’s right to strike, protest, and occupy as means of getting these demands met.

We should decide

We call for elected committees of students and staff to have democratic control over how our money is being spent. We should all be asking ourselves why do our universities continue to invest and collaborate with arms dealing companies in the first place?

Keir Starmer’s Labour government must tax the super-rich, and create a fully funded education system that is of higher quality, and accessible to all students of all backgrounds.

Socialist Students believes that this is all comes to a much larger issue that needs a systemic change – socialist change. We need a new mass workers’ party that stands on an anti-war, socialist programme – fighting for free education, decent, affordable housing, and against war and austerity.

IWD 2025: End sexism and violence against women

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March 8th is International Women’s Day. It was founded by socialists over one hundred years ago as a day of campaigning for the rights of all women – for decent working conditions, for a political voice, and for a life free from sexism and exploitation.

In 2025, this fight is still going on. From the dismantling of Roe v Wade in the US, which saw the removal of abortion rights from millions of women, to the mass movement in Iran following the murder of Mahsa Amini by the ‘morality police’, there are many recent examples of attacks on women being met with protests and resistance.

Socialist Students is campaigning for socialist ideas to build a united mass movement that can fight back against all attacks on women’s rights, and put an end to sexism and violence against women for good.

End sexism and violence against women on campus

Reports consistently show that around three quarters of women students experience sexual violence while at university. The numbers are similar for colleges and sixth forms. Many victims are forced to take measures such as skipping lectures, changing course modules, or even dropping out of study to avoid their attacker.

The majority of sexual assaults take place on our campuses. On top of this, the rising cost of living and inadequate maintenance support force working-class students especially to take part-time jobs alongside their studies. Many have to work in the night-time economy, forced to make their way home after work in the dark, alone. Sexist harassment is rife in industries like hospitality, where a big proportion of women students work.

Yet universities are doing far too little to end the problem of sexism and violence against women. Only 2% of students experiencing sexual violence feel both able to report it to their university and are satisfied with the reporting process. Clearly we can have no faith in unaccountable university managements to protect students.

Students’ unions and trade unions must organise and campaign against sexual harassment in workplaces, including schools, colleges and universities. Introduce democratically elected committees comprising students and staff to investigate all reports of sexual assault and sexist abuse.

Fight back with funding and free education

As successive Labour and Tory governments have slashed direct government funding to universities, vice chancellors have obediently carried out cuts – including to things like counselling services, campus lighting, transport, and student bursaries, all of which has left students further exposed to the effects of sexism and sexual violence.

Socialist Students societies have launched numerous campaigns against cuts to campus jobs and services – such as in Liverpool, where we successfully campaigned for the reinstatement of the night bus. We think a key part of challenging sexism on campus is building a united movement for free, fully funded education instead of the current marketised tuition fee system.

Neither Labour nor the university managements have any alternative to the worsening conditions on campus, because they work within the framework of capitalism. Accepting this ‘profit-before-all-else’ system means accepting that a tiny elite in society gets richer and richer, while education and other public services crumble – with workers and students made to pay the price.

Organise on campus to fight to provide adequate resources for women who have experienced sexual violence. Fight to end the marketised basis of universities, by campaigning to abolish tuition fees. Fully fund education, cancel student debt and replace student loans with living maintenance grants for all – take the wealth off the super-rich.

The current unelected university managements can’t protect students’ right to a safe and rewarding education. Students and staff should democratically run our universities instead. Build democratic, fighting students’ unions that can link up with the campus trade unions and fight for the high-quality education we need.

Build a new mass workers’ party that gives students and workers from all backgrounds a political voice – a socialist alternative to Starmer, Farage and all the establishment parties and politicians.

A socialist alternative to sexism and capitalism

Socialist Students fights against all sexist ideas and behaviour, which exist not just on campus but all across society, perpetuated by capitalist institutions and corporations.

To seriously challenge sexist ideas means building a mass movement against capitalism, which is an inherently unequal system that benefits from sexism in countless ways.

Capitalism saves vast profits by consigning responsibility for childcare and housework to individual families, predominantly to the women within them. Women workers are paid less than men (in higher education the gender pay gap is about 20%) and this in turn reinforces ideas about women’s unequal status. The media, as well as the beauty, fashion and leisure industries, all benefit from the commodification of women’s bodies, promoting harmful stereotypes about how men and women should look and behave. The ruling class also relies on sexist ideas as one way to divide working-class people and weaken our ability to collectively fight their attacks.

A socialist revolution would remove this capitalist basis for sexism. All of society’s wealth, resources and technology would be used as part of a democratic plan to meet everyone’s needs. It would be a system based on cooperation and solidarity, and these values would come to be reflected in personal relations and culture. By removing the material basis for sexism, it would be possible to dislodge all sexist ideas and attitudes over time.

Build a movement that fights to take the wealth and power out of the hands of the super-rich and the elites. For a socialist world in which the working class democratically runs society to meet the needs of all people, to lay the basis for ending sexism and all forms of oppression

Do you want to kick sexism off campus?

Do you agree with our socialist ideas to end sexism and violence against women? Get in touch to get involved in campaigning alongside a local Socialist Students group. We want to hold protests and marches, organise outreach campaigns through leafleting and petitioning, and build pressure on students’ unions to publicly support and campaign for the socialist policies outlined in this leaflet.