Socialist Students
Keir Starmer has finally confirmed that his Labour Party will drop its pledge for free university education for the next election. Socialist Students invites all supporters of free education to join us in fighting for a new mass party for workers and young people.
The recent local elections have underlined just how hated the Tories are. Rather than any enthusiasm for Labour, it is this ‘get the Tories out’ mood that will in all likelihood deliver Starmer to Number Ten at the next general election, which must be called no later than December 2024.
This leaves millions of young people facing yet another government that will refuse to end the marketisation of higher education, 25 years on from the introduction of tuition fees by Tony Blair. By underfunding higher education and pushing universities to compete for students’ fees, a series of pro-capitalist governments have facilitated cuts to jobs and services on campus, and led to the piling-up of student debt and a growing layer of impoverished staff and students. This is the course that Starmer is set to continue on.
So, what should supporters of free education do in preparation for a general election and the likely election of a Starmer-led government?
Abandoned
Starmer has abandoned his 2020 pledge to scrap fees on the basis that Britain is now in a “different financial situation”. Using this same argument, he has refused to back workers striking for higher pay, and dropped a number of other Corbyn-era pledges, barring Corbyn himself from standing as a Labour candidate. Instead, Starmer and his frontbenchers have promised “fiscal responsibility”. That means protecting the profits of big business, which have almost doubled since 2019, and making ordinary people pay for economic crisis.
The scrapping of tuition fees and the restoration of maintenance grants would cost well over £10 billion. Only the building of a mass movement could force a Starmer government to provide such funding. Supporters of free education must answer how such a movement can be built.
The largest-ever movement for free education in Britain was around the anti-austerity programme of Jeremy Corbyn in 2017. Corbyn raised the basic idea that the wealth existed in society for a decent life for all, but that it was concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority. Hundreds of thousands of young people queued at polling stations to vote for his radical programme, including free education.
The Corbyn era showed the potential for a mass struggle for free education to be built as part of a society-wide fightback against the 1%, to win the resources we need for our futures.
A political force challenging Starmer at the ballot box in a general election, with a programme for free education, real pay rises and fully funded services, would strengthen our fight.
If even a handful of anti-austerity, pro-worker MPs were elected outside of Starmer’s Labour at the next general election, they could become a lightning rod for a new mass movement against the 1% and for free education. It would force Starmer to ‘look over his left shoulder’, and could lay the basis for a new mass party for workers and young people to develop, as a real alternative to Starmer’s Labour.
Socialist Students is fighting for steps to be made towards building such a political formation, including calling for a trade union-organised workers’ list of candidates at the next general election. This could include Corbyn as a candidate in Islington North, and others exiled by Starmer.
We want to discuss and debate with other groups and individuals who support free education, about the way forward.
Would you be interested in organising a meeting with Socialist Students members to discuss how we can build a new mass party for workers and young people, to fight for free education, for decent homes and jobs for all, and for socialism?
