Sofia Pandolfi, college student and Socialist Students member, gave an inspiring speech at Socialism 2025. Read what she had to say here!
Young people today have grown up in a world of crisis. We’ve seen governments increase university tuition fees, cut our youth services, attempt to strip away disability benefits for young people, and propose a future which gives us no hope.
Internationally, we’ve watched our government support the brutal genocide in Palestine, claiming it has no money to invest in our education and services.
Living under a system devoid of opportunities, and dependent on international exploitation, has fuelled anger and frustration.
But if we young people are to have a real future to look forward to, we need to transform our anger into action – by getting organised for a socialist alternative to capitalism, and the war, exploitation and oppression that this system produces.
That is what Socialist Students did when Donald Trump, an embodiment of capitalism in crisis, came to visit the UK on the invitation of Keir Starmer in September.
Socialists Students organised a campaign of youth walkouts against Trump to get young people organised against Trump and Starmer’s politics of war and division. To build for the walkouts in London, I helped to give out hundreds of leaflets, put up posters, and met with students to share ideas on how to protest against Trump’s visit.
Hundreds of students across the country, standing up to Trump and the brutal system he represents, walked out of their schools, colleges, and universities on the 17 September – the day Trump was in Windsor Castle feasting on a state banquet with Starmer, the King, and a guest list of billionaire tech CEOs.
It wasn’t easy. At one school in South London, we watched the headteacher rip leaflets out of students’ hands. At another school in East London, the management called the police to intimidate students into not protesting.
The youth walkouts against Trump were a chance to show that young people can fight back when we get organised. Socialist Students is now following up the walkouts with a campaign to get students in schools, sixth forms and colleges building our own students’ unions, as a way for young people to have an organised voice. Not just for one day, but always.
By getting organised as students, we can more effectively link up with the workers who keep our education and society running and build a united movement for the socialist change that we all need.
For that, young people also need a political voice through which we can fight alongside the organised working class. Your Party is an opportunity to do that.
Your Party could give a voice to young people’s anger by demanding fully funded free education, mass building of council houses and rent controls, as part of a socialist programme to transform the lives of working-class and young people.
Why not take that first step by having Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn, and other Your Party MPs in the Independent Alliance proposing an amendment to the upcoming budget – instead of Labour’s plans for more tuition fee rises, calling for the total abolition of fees, as well as the cancellation of student debt, and the immediate reintroduction of maintenance grants for all students?
Socialist Students members have joined Your Party and are fighting for socialism and working-class struggle to be at the heart of it.
In universities across the country, we’ve organised dozens of meetings discussing how Your Party can be a democratic voice for students. As a next step to building the party we need on campus, we will be inviting Zarah Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn and the other Independent Alliance MPs to be part of a Your Party speaking tour of universities and colleges.
If you want to help build a political voice which can help unite students and young people with the powerful struggles of the working class, then join Socialist Students at your school, college or university to help build the fightback.
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.
Build a new party against the system he represents – fight for a socialist future!
As the people in Gaza starve to death, and thousands are massacred just queuing for food, Donald Trump will be visiting the UK to feast on a luxury banquet with the King. How can we not protest?
That’s why Socialist Students is calling on students to walk out from their schools, colleges and universities on 17 September – the day Trump arrives in the UK for his official ‘state visit’.
Trump wants to turn Gaza into a “riviera”, as a playground for the super-rich. Trump, like Biden before him, has led the US in backing up the Israeli state’s war of terror on the Palestinians, and accepts the Israeli military attacks on Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
How has our prime minister Keir Starmer responded? By handing Trump an invite to meet the King on a five-star, three-day holiday to the UK in September – paid for with the taxes of working-class people! Starmer like Trump has no issue with the Israeli state waging war on the Palestinians.
Young people have to send a message to Trump and Starmer that we won’t stand for their capitalist system, which awards privileges to the warmongers and profits to the super-rich while creating wars, climate crisis, and poverty for the rest of us.
Let’s get organised for a real future. For a socialist world free from war, poverty and oppression.
We can beat Starmer’s Labour
A good future for young people is a million miles from what Starmer’s Labour Party wants. Their main concern is protecting the profits of big business and the super-rich, by making workers and young people pay the price.
But we can beat them back. Starmer has so far led his government into humiliating U-turns over attacks to disability benefits and the winter fuel payment, under pressure from mass opposition. No wonder Starmer wants to stop us fighting back by clamping down on our right to protest.
By building mass movements of workers and young people, we could end all arms sales to Israel, and fight to end the siege of Gaza and occupation of all the Palestinian territories.
Key to this is building a political alternative to Labour. The huge enthusiasm for the initiative of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana to launch a new party shows the potential for this – a mass workers’ party that makes the super-rich pay, not workers and young people.
Defend the right to protest
We’ve seen how Starmer has tried to criminalise the anti-war movement. But he should remember the fate of the former Tory home secretary, Suella Braverman. She tried to ban the Gaza anti-war protests as ‘hate marches’, but she got thrown out – and eventually so did her government! That happened because of mass opposition to the Tories. We can do the same under Labour too.
How can you build the youth walkouts against Trump?
1) Get other people on board!
Who do you know who hates Trump? Who do you know who wants to fight for a decent future for young people? Tell them about the campaign and get them involved in building the walkouts!
You could give out leaflets in your town or city centre to let other young people know about the walkout campaign. If we meet someone who wants to organise a walkout in their school or college, why not give them a stack of leaflets to give out to people they know? Order walkout material here!
On the first day of term, could you organise to give out leaflets to students at your school or college? It could be before class starts, during breaktime, or at the end of the day as people leave – as long as it gets a buzz going from day one of term!
From there, how will you plan to keep up the momentum all the way to September 17? What about a meeting to get everyone organised? Could you then plan some more leafleting? What about putting up posters?
By discussing with other people, you can make a plan for what your walkout will look like. After walking out, could you organise a march from your school/college? Could you all meet up in the weeks before September 17 to make posters or banners, which you could carry as you walk out? What slogans could you use? What protest chants can you think of? What about marching to a nearby park or open space and having a protest there after walking out?
3) Tell us where you’re walking out on September 17!
Young people are determined to have a say in our lives and the big events that affect them, as was shown by the student walkouts against the Iraq war in 2003 (see below), as well as school climate strikes, mass Gaza protests, Black Lives Matter and more.
The capitalist education system tries to strip away our confidence to take action. Restrictive rules, a lack of say in our curriculum, locked gates that trap us in the whole day – it’s designed to make us feel powerless.
Walking out is a way to temporarily turn this arrangement on its head. It’s a chance for young people to get a sense of our own agency, and link up with wider struggles taking place. The experience of a one-day walkout can be the lesson of a lifetime, which is that we don’t have to accept things the way they are.
That is what hundreds of thousands of students showed by walking out against the invasion of Iraq. By helping to organise the biggest possible walkouts against Trump’s state visit to the UK on 17 September, Socialist Students wants to show that young people today are again prepared to fight back for a future free from poverty, war and oppression.
The work we do now over the summer is laying the foundations for huge protests when term starts again.
WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW
1) 26 July – Day of action against Starmer’s meeting with Trump
Ahead of his formal state visit in September, Trump is visiting Scotland from 25-29 July.
As part of this visit, he will meet with prime minister Keir Starmer. Both men are united in their defence of a capitalist system that means chaos and brutality for the vast majority of the world’s population – demonstrated, for example, in their support for the Israeli state’s genocidal war on the Palestinians. No wonder Starmer has spoken of his “good personal relationship” with Trump!
Socialist Students is calling a UK-wide day of action on Saturday 26 July to protest against the war and austerity agenda of Trump and Starmer. It is a chance for everyone who has said they will walk out on 17 September to get together in their area and give Trump a taste of what’s to come.
You could organise a protest, hold a mass leafleting and postering session, or do a campaign stall with an ‘open mic’ or megaphone that allows us to tell passers-by why we will be walking out. The important thing is being visible to other young people who we can talk to about getting involved in the campaign over the rest of the summer.
2) Poster the town red!
Socialist Students has had a flurry of names through our website from areas that have been covered in ‘Youth Walkout Against Trump’ posters. You can organise to stick up posters in places where young people are likely to see them – like parks, or town or city centres. If you want to get posters to put up in your area, or any other Trump walkout material, visit our resources page.
3) Big opportunities for leafleting
There are a number of ‘headline’ events where we can meet young people over the summer. These include:
Pride events
Music festivals and other community/cultural festivals
A-Level results days at sixth forms/colleges (Thursday 14 August)
GCSE results days at schools (Thursday 21 August)
If we get a group of young people going along to hand out leaflets, we can have an even bigger impact. Why not start by inviting your friends to help you out?
4) Organise a meetup – what ideas are needed to beat Trump and capitalism?
If all goes well, there will be a group of students walking out from your school, college or university on 17 September. But what do we chant? What slogans are we protesting around? After 17 September, what will the next steps be in the fight against Trump and the chaos he represents for our futures?
Answering all of that requires a discussion on what Trump is, the capitalist system he represents, and the need for socialism as the alternative.
A vital way to build the campaign over the summer is getting young people together to discuss how we can beat Trump and capitalism – combining our action with ideas to change the world. If you want to request a speaker to come and speak at your meetup, get in touch at socialistudents@gmail.com.
5) Building links with the workers’ movement
Walking out can be a nerve-racking experience. One way to gain confidence in our action is by building points of support in our community, to show that, as young people, we don’t stand alone.
The trade unions are organisations that bring together workers who, like all of us walking out against Trump, are fighting to change society in the interests of ordinary people, not the bosses.
You can send our model trade union motion to trade union branches and trades councils in your area, to ask for their solidarity – including asking if we could speak about our campaign at an upcoming meeting.
‘Day X’ – when hundreds of thousands walked out against war
Guest article originally published in The Socialist issue 1331
Socialist Party reporters
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, school students in Britain walked out of classes and protests multiple times against the war.
The Socialist Party was a leading part of the huge anti-war demonstrations that year, some of the biggest in history, and we were also among the main organisers of the school walkouts, with the campaign ‘International Socialist Resistance – youth against the war’ (ISR) calling a walkout on ‘Day X’ – the day of the invasion – and other initiatives.
Protests and walkouts build up
On 15 February over 30 million people internationally demonstrated against Bush and Blair’s war for oil in Iraq. Many of those protesting were school and college students who saw the demo as the first step in building the anti-war movement.
We helped school and college students across England and Wales to set up student-run anti-war groups and to organise walkouts, strikes and protests as part of the international student day of action against the war and cuts in education on 5 March.
On that day in Coventry, Max Toynbee from Finham Park school reported: “At my school we got about 35 people to a meeting at which Dave Nellist spoke [then Coventry Socialist Party councillor for St Michael’s ward]. A lot of people there were year seven students, who are in the first year of secondary school, 11 and 12-year-olds.”
In Sheffield 400 students took part in the strikes: “When students arrived in the city centre, there was a really lively march with loads of chanting and singing – which then went onto the FE college and another school and went round calling for students to ‘Come Out and join our protests’.
“This took place in the background of some head teachers and the education department trying to stop the walkouts through the press, including a head teacher sending letters home to parents telling them students had been given ISR flyers!”
In London, Downing Street and Whitehall came to a grinding halt for an hour when 500 school students took a rolling protest from Parliament Green down to the gates of Downing Street.
“School students from across London – from north, south and west – and even from Potters Bar in Hertfordshire came to the demonstration. Throughout the day new groups of students arrived after walking out of their school. Some had just heard about the action on the news and decided to walk out. A number of students had been threatened with exclusion but as many said: ‘They can’t exclude all of us if we stick together.’”
There were more walkouts on 7 March, in Leicester alone our reports suggest that at least 1,000 walked out, from maybe ten schools around the county.
In the next two weeks there was further action. Over 100 school students from Clapton girls school in Hackney, London, organised a lively strike on 17 March.
Natalie, 16, told the Socialist: “We organised this strike because we felt like we needed our voice heard and to do something before the war starts. The strike has gone really well, apart from some teachers telling us to go back into school. We are going to build this by going to as many schools as possible to get them to protest – Blair isn’t listening and we have to make him!”
Day X
And then came Day X and the invasion itself on 20 March. Within hours of cruise missiles exploding in Baghdad a wave of anti-war demos and protests, involving millions of people, swept around the globe. And as our reports from issue 293 of the Socialist show, students on Day X were to the fore as tens of thousands walked out.
We said: “The London borough of Waltham Forest has never seen anything like it. At the peak of the protest 3,000 school and sixth form students took over the streets. Together they marched chanting and shouting from school to school in the borough. Terrified teachers rushed to lock the gates and stop students from joining the march, although a few managed to escape.”
In Birmingham: “Well over 5,000 school, college and university students poured into Victoria Square, Birmingham after a wave of walkouts and strikes across the city.
“Many school students were barricaded into schools by teachers but climbed over fences and gates to join the protest against the war. Whole schools were threatened with suspension if they walked out. However, this had little effect.”
Lev Taylor in Reading said: “The amount of people was amazing – just about the entire school had turned up and there were groups yelling anti-war slogans.”
Students in Britain were joined by others internationally. Sascha Stanicic, CWI Germany, wrote about the 150,000 who walked out in Germany: “In a magnificent show of anger against Bush’s war, school students stopped their lessons and took to the streets. In some cities headmasters tried to lock them into the schools. This prompted youth to shout “freedom for the political prisoners”.
In other cases, teachers joined in the strike and took their whole classes to the demos.
“In Hamburg, we co-organised a half-hour stoppage of work by apprentices in the defence company Airbus. Hospital workers in some southern German cities also stopped work for 30 minutes against the war. One of the biggest school student demonstrations took place in Berlin with 70,000 on the march. Stuttgart followed with 20,000 in the second school strike within a month.”
Aftermath
We didn’t stop on Day X either. We organised more action and said the lead of the school students should be joined by the trade unions and workers: “The school students who turned out in the run-up to and including Day X in London and throughout the country definitely inspired many groups of workers.
“However, it is still the case that the anti-union laws and the threat of victimisation still weighs heavy on many people, who would like to take protest action and strike action but still are not fully confident about initiating such action themselves. While there were lots of protests and workers taking time off, the occurrence of actual industrial action was, unfortunately, limited, because many union leaders did not back up their calls for action with concrete plans.
“That is why the Socialist Party proposal for organising a meeting of workplace reps, union executive committee members and general secretaries is crucial.”
And for the school students, we fought disciplinary action that had arisen in some places against those who walked out: “Those who have been disciplined or threatened with exclusion by their schools for taking anti-war action will be offered support against victimisation. Local coalitions are also being asked to raise the matter with local MPs and councillors, and the NUT teachers’ union at a local level is to be approached for help.”
The fantastic school student walkouts and protests in March 2003 show what is possible and are an inspiring lesson for today.
Socialist Students 