Hands off our future!

No to cuts! Youth Fight for Jobs demonstration, photo Suzanne Beishon   (Click to enlarge)

The government has an entire generation in its sights. It is determined to price working class young people out of education. It has voted to triple tuition fees to £9,000 a year, savage funding to universities and colleges, and scrap EMA.

Jethro Waldron, Youth Fight for Jobs colleges organiser

It is true that this vicious cuts agenda has been made law. But this doesn't mean that the fight is over. The government can still be made to back down.

The poll tax, a regressive tax that attacked the poorest in society, was made law by Thatcher's government in 1988. A mass campaign of 18 million non-payers succeeded in removing the poll tax from the statute books in 1991. It also sent Thatcher packing from Downing Street.

The movement to defend free education is not the same as the movement against the poll tax. But that movement showed that a broad, united and militant campaign can win. This is why students must seek to link up with workers, particularly lecturers, teachers and education support staff.

Youth Fight for Education (YFE) gave support to the protest outside the Universities UK conference in London on 24 February.

Save our EMA - student demonstrates against the cuts with Youth Fight for Jobs placard   (Click to enlarge)

Vice chancellors and other university managers were set to discuss the best ways for them to do the government's dirty work: raising fees, closing faculties and campuses, and cutting jobs.

Instead of meekly passing on the cuts, YFE calls on university managers to fight the government. They should set 'no-cuts' budgets and build a campaign to win back the funding that the government is stealing from us.

YFE is also organising protests on campuses and in town centres up and down the country to make our opposition to the cuts loud and clear.

We can use these protests to set a marker for building students' links with workers and the wider community. At the end of March, YFE calls for a national shutdown of the education system, coinciding with possible strike action by the UCU trade union.

We must have this monumental event in our sights as we organise for and take part in the forthcoming protests. Students and workers united can stop this government in its tracks!

Our education under attack

Lincolnshire academies in crisis

Good result for Socialist Students candidates in NUS elections

NUS conference Support for left and for action

Southampton TUSC and Socialist Party: Defend Education, No Academies, Restore EMA

Our Demands

Cuts:

Bristol East Socialist Party: There is an Alternative

Demo against cuts at Salford university

Walthamstow Socialist Party: France - Greece - Austerity rejected!

Back to work? How the system fails the unemployed

Students:

Strike at Sussex Downs College

UCU joins 10 May strike - student solidarity needed

Welsh government slashes student grants

Poll tax:

Irish 'poll tax' battle has begun

Greece: Non-payment movement against new housing tax

Rob Windsor: socialist fighter and Coventry Socialist Party councillor 1964-2012

Colleges:

UCU special conference

UCU members prepare for battle on pensions and pay

National finance meeting success

Fees:

Campaigners learn the ropes

National student protest against tuition fees

Student protests force Lib Dems to cancel conference

Youth:

UN reports rise in global youth unemployment

Youth Fight for Jobs Northern Ireland launched in Belfast

Living to work, not working to live

University:

'Capitalism fails the poor' agree Oxford University students!

National student demonstration

Defend Unison activist at Queen Mary University

Jobs:

Hospital jobs scandal - Action now to save the NHS!

Youth Fight for Jobs Northern Ireland launched

Duncan Smith throws insults at Remploy workers

Universities:

Continuing the pensions battle - Universities

EMA:

Socialist councillor leads fight to restore EMA

Abolition of EMA - Socialist Party's Linda Taaffe speaks on Radio two

Save EMA day!