Mary Finch, Leeds Socialist Students
No one was surprised to hear of the Tories’ plans to continue with their brutal austerity programme after winning a majority. And students won’t be surprised to learn that they’re reviving plans to privatise the student loan book.
This is not, as Chancellor George Osborne claims, about bolstering public finance. The sell-off makes no financial sense, as the government would receive a lump sum rather than a steady income from collecting debt.
Instead this is an ideological attack, orchestrated to help their big business friends, and will push even more working class young people out of education.
£9,000 tuition fees have already started that process, and recent comments from Tory William Hague indicate that the cap could be raised even higher.
A private company collecting student debt would mean raised interest rates and lowered repayment thresholds – the declining numbers of students who are able to pay back their loans because of low wages mean that’s the only way they’d make a profit.
The National Union of Students (NUS) said in 2013 they weren’t opposed to the privatisation as long as students were promised there would be no changes to the loan terms and conditions.
Despite being the biggest national organisation of students, with huge capacity to organise the movement against the privatisation, NUS took a back seat and told students to rely on flimsy promises from millionaire politicians.
We need mass pressure to ensure that the resources of NUS are now genuinely put to the service of the student movement.
When the plans were originally announced, students mobilised against it despite the lack of leadership or support from the NUS. Numerous protests, stunts, and days of action were called. For example, Socialist Students organised two successful demonstrations in Leeds against the move.
The task of the student movement now is to mobilise the mass of students against the privatisation, and to consistently build links with education workers and the wider trade union movement.
Now more than ever, it is crucial that student activists look outward, to building a mass movement of students and workers to defeat austerity!
