Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/591/7670
From The Socialist newspaper, 26 August 2009
Comment
Leaving education - freedom! No more homework! Making your own way in the world! Independence! Get a job. Oh no, wait, I forgot about the biggest financial disaster since the 1930s. Suddenly, leaving education doesn't look quite such an inviting prospect. As usual, greedy capitalists got greedier and it's the ordinary people who end up suffering.
It's young people who are among those hit the hardest. Those 16-25 year olds currently seeking work, having been raised under the brutal consumerism that came in with Margaret Thatcher and the rest of her gang, are now being exposed to the flip side; vicious competition for menial jobs, and at the heart of it all, a basic social insecurity that comes from spending your entire life being told to buy, buy and buy some more.
What everyone needs, young people especially, is a job or education, and the space to develop as positive members of society. Unfortunately, capitalism dictates that we can't have jobs, must pay for education and should act like drones to line someone else's pocket.
Building a fighting alternative to this is vital for the lives of young people in this country and across the world.
Youth Fight for Jobs provides a way to fight for that alternative. The protests, demonstrations, petitions and everything else the members of the campaign do, will place pressure on politicians to do something that will help ordinary people and boost support for socialist policies as awareness of the failings of capitalism and the advantages of socialism is spread.
Fred Cotterill, Y11 school student, Bristol YFJ
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In The Socialist 26 August 2009:
Jobs and education not dole and debt
War and occupation
Afghanistan: Withdraw foreign troops
Socialist Party NHS campaign
No to health privatisation and 'the market'
Private Finance Initiative still threatens NHS future
Socialist Party campaign news
Ireland - workers campaign against Lisbon Treaty
Time to Fight Back: demonstrate at TUC conference
Socialist Party workplace news
Construction workers defending jobs and conditions
Fiddlers Ferry protest continues
South Yorks firefighters plan industrial action
Youth fight for jobs
No to Future Jobs Fraud scheme
Socialist Students and Youth Fight for Jobs campaign material
Socialist Party Marxist analysis
World recession, revolution and counter-revolution in Latin America
Socialist Party news and analysis
March shows growing opposition to far right BNP
Daventry: socialist candidate in council by-election
Passengers want publicly owned buses
Unison witchhunt
Unison witch-hunt/employment tribunal: The truth is coming out
Housing crisis
Global Warming
Poorest suffer globally from climate change
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