Queen Mary Uni, East London
Students at Queen Mary University in East London organised a protest to mark a year of brutal attacks on Palestinians by Israeli state forces. Mihaela Ivanova, Socialist Students activist and Socialist Party member, gave a speech to the protest:
The student anti-war movement has opened up people’s eyes to the complicity of universities in the war, and Queen Mary Socialist Students agrees with the demands for divestment and financial disclosure. But I would like to pose two questions to you all: who decides who we divest from and who gets to control where our money goes? We have absolutely no trust in the rotten management here at Queen Mary which has continuously fought against our interests.
We need a political student voice alongside the trade unions on campus to call an open meeting pushing for bigger protests to maximise pressure on the university for our demands.
Elected trade union representatives alongside students should have democratic control over where our money goes. The struggle is stronger when we are united and we can fight on every front. The issues students face do not end at university involvement in the war – we are in a cost-of-living crisis and our needs are not being heard. Universities are lobbying the government for an increase in our tuition fees – we demand the scrapping of tuition fees and in its place, a free and fully funded education system.
We must build a mass, nationwide movement to get the wealth and power out of the bosses’ hands. Labour’s budget is set to land at the end of this month, which could spark mass anger and outrage up and down the country. Socialist Students will be organising a national movement as neither the uni bosses nor Starmer fight for our interests, let alone for a ceasefire in the Middle East. The trade unions must mobilise its over six-million-strong membership for a new mass workers’ party. It could take a lead in the anti-war movement and fight for an anti-austerity programme, taking control of our wealth from the bosses.
Alongside the strike wave here in the UK there have been strong and militant union actions across the world that show the strength of workers. In Belgium, the union of transport workers refused to load weapons to Israel. We fight for the self-determination of all people and an immediate ceasefire to end the cycle of violence and repression. We have a role to play here in Britain. Mass movements can ignite further action and pressure, such as the encampments in the US, which inspired UK students to do the same here.
It’s the ordinary people who must take initiatives. Capitalism fears the unity of the working class. In 2019, workers united in Lebanon and rose up in mass protest against government corruption, which sucked the country into a deeper cost-of-living crisis. In Iran in 2022, a revolutionary movement broke out after protests against the brutal regime’s treatment of women. In Israel 300,000 workers went on strike demanding a ceasefire and return of the hostages.
In 1987, Palestinians made gains under the first intifada mass movements demanding self-determination and an end to the depravity faced under Israeli occupation. The power and strength of the workers is evident and we can meet the needs of everyone and end bloodshed by fighting for socialist revolution which ends the interests of the exploiting elite, giving control to the working-class and poor people in the Middle East and worldwide. I’m a member of Socialist Students and because I believe in the need for a revolutionary organisation to fight for these ideas and win.
Birmingham
Birmingham Socialist Party members
Hundreds of people from across the West Midlands marched through Birmingham to mark one year of the Israeli military’s bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip on 13 October. Socialist Party members joined them to discuss the way forward for the movement against the UK government’s support for the war. Unsurprisingly, when we asked people what they think of the new Labour government, their responses ranged from the indifferent to the unprintable!
The end rally heard from local MP Ayoub Khan, elected as an independent in the former Labour stronghold of Perry Barr in July, along with bakers’ union BFAWU president Ian Hodson, who pointed out that people in Gaza and Lebanon doing the same jobs as his members in Britain had been killed and displaced.
Among marchers we spoke to, there was strong agreement that as well as an end to the slide to all-out war in the Middle East, plenty needs to change for working-class people in this country. Eight people left their details to find out more about how they can join the Socialist Party and help make that happen.
Brighton
Bill North, Brighton Socialist Party
Students at the University of Sussex in Brighton held an anti-war demo, including a march around campus, on Tuesday 8 October. Brighton and Hove Socialist Party members were given a warm welcome; members of the uni’s Palestinian Society invited us to join our stall with theirs and students were keen to discuss a socialist approach to the increasingly desperate situation in the Middle East.
Many of those we spoke with felt that the student unions should be doing more, both locally and nationally. For example, there was no National Union of Students speaker at the rally. Students welcomed the Socialist Party’s call for the trade union movement to play a central role in the movement.
