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Socialist Students Show The Way

Socialist Students had the liveliest contingent on the National Union of Students demonstration against fees on Sunday 26 October. Over 50 Socialist Students members and supporters came to the national meeting on 'How to beat fees' after the demo.

Zena Awad

This shows that an increasing number of students are interested in the socialist alternative to tuition/top-up fees, to student debt and poverty.

Sheila Caffrey from Swansea Socialist Students spoke on the need to build a campaign of mass non-payment to make fees uncollectable and therefore unworkable. It was pointed out that many students don't pay their fees already because they cannot afford to and they need to be organised in a mass campaign.

We need to find out how many of these non-payers there are on the campuses and to help build a campaign to defend them from expulsion. The local students' unions must be pressured to support these campaigns - through emergency motions if necessary.

Socialist Students' members need to find out the deadline for submitting resolutions to their local student union AGMs to back these campaigns and to also to put forward motions for NUS conference to back this on a national level. Students were angry over how little the NUS has done, considering the potential for building this campaign.

Clare James spoke from International Socialist Resistance (ISR) about the reality facing tens of thousands of students being forced into low paid casual work and raised the question of the unionisation of young workers. She also called for further discussions on how those starting higher education after 2006 can get organised against the graduation tax which will hit them in the aftermath of graduating, rather than while on campuses.

Clare called for the building of the campaign to defend the right of students to strike and to do so through defending those already facing possible charges, like Karl Debbaut who took part in helping school students walking out against the war on Iraq on Day X (see page three)

The meeting agreed that, with Socialist Students being affiliated to ISR, we will be sending a good delegation to the national conference on the 22 November, where there is a workshop on how to build Socialist Students and our future campaigns. This follows George Bush's visit to Britain from 19 - 21 November where both Socialist Students and ISR will be planning joint activities (more on this in future issues).