Students are facing a cost-of-living squeeze and a crisis in university funding with institutions already planning cuts and closures to courses and departments. Socialist Students is holding its 2023 conference on 18 March. We print here edited extracts of the main motion setting out tasks and perspectives for a fighting student movement:
No generalised fightback has yet emerged on the campuses against the attacks students face. The response of students so far has been to ‘grin and bear it’.
This is largely down to the weakening of student organisation over the last decade, which includes the abdication of the National Union of Students and local students’ unions from helping to organise and lead students in struggle. But this is not a reflection of the lack of appetite of students to struggle.
Central then, to the building of a fighting student movement in this period, is the rebuilding of democratic fighting student organisations on the campuses, capable of linking up nationally in the fight for free education.
Students also do not have a political alternative to the policies of the Tories. Starmer’s Labour has ruled out introducing free education, and continues to show big business that Labour is now a safe party to represent the interests of the bosses. That’s why Socialist Students fights for a new workers’ party.
The strike wave demonstrates in practice the power of the working class and the potential of mass collective action. Socialist Students argues that students need to get organised to more effectively link up with workers in struggle and support the strikes on campuses, but also to formulate our demands to fight the cost-of-living crisis.
A fighting programme for students
Our demands include:
- For emergency cost-of-living grants available for all students who need them. Replace student loans with living grants, rising with the rate of inflation
- For subsidised university canteen meals for students struggling to feed themselves; against early closures of campus spaces due to the energy cost crisis
- For heated and safely staffed campus spaces available 24/7 to students and staff who need them
- To take third-party student halls under the control of our universities, as a step towards introducing democratic rent controls
- For an end to and a reversal of cuts to our education, including courses, jobs, and student support services
Campaigning for these demands poses the need to win university funding from central government, and therefore the need to build a national student movement that fights to abolish tuition fees and write off student debt – for free education.
The crisis of capitalism is pushing students and young people towards socialist ideas and conclusions. That’s why vital in this period is to boldly raise socialist ideas as well as explaining what a socialist transformation of society would mean – i.e. the democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industries to provide young people with a future.
Socialist Students resolves to launch cost-of-living campaigns on university campuses and colleges where Socialist Students is present and to campaign as widely as possible – including stalls on campuses, building for public meetings, campus protests, open letters and petitions to management, to students’ unions and course reps, and inviting trade union branches and other campaigning organisations to participate within them.
