- Funding not fees – make the rich pay
- Uni funding crisis: no fee rises, no cuts!
- Funding not fees – what you can do now!
- End war – fight for socialist change
Funding not fees Make the rich pay
Isis Smyth, Liverpool Socialist Students
Students are angry. Socialist Students members in Liverpool have spoken to thousands of new and returning university students since the start of the academic year. All we have ever known is Tory cutbacks and attacks. Now any hope that things might be different under Labour is being transformed into anger at Keir Starmer and his government, including over the possibility of a rise in tuition fees.
With Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader for the 2017 and 2019 general elections, Labour’s policy was for free education. Starmer said it best at the recent Labour conference in Liverpool – the Labour Party has “changed”. It is no longer a party for working-class and young people. Continuation of war in the Middle East, two-child benefit caps and pensioners’ winter fuel payment attacks; life under Labour feels a lot like life under the disgraced Tories.
The cost of a university education is already staggering. Fees alone are £9,250 a year for most students, add to that loans to pay for rent, food and the basic necessities. Every year the threat of a debt mountain deters working-class young people from achieving a higher education qualification. And the Budget on 30 October could include raising fees further.
Already, universities like the University of Liverpool have upped food prices on campus and removed their food pantries, which gave students hit hard by the cost-of-living crisis access to free food if they could not afford to do weekly food shops.
This academic year, 40% of English universities are facing a deficit in their budget. And, as usual, the fat-cat vice chancellors and the government want us to foot the bill.
But at the same time, the rich keep getting richer. As horrific as it is, the capitalist system prioritises profit over young peoples’ futures.
University education should be free, fully funded and accessible to all. Maintenance grants should be universal and enough to be able to afford a decent quality of life. Life under Starmer’s Labour is making it clearer than ever that we need a party to fight for the many, not the few – a new mass workers’ party that fights for socialist change.
Socialist Students says
- No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
- No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
- Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
- Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fights for socialist policies
- Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Uni funding crisis – no fee rises, no cuts!
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser
The university funding crisis has reached a new level this term. The real value of higher education funding is at its lowest point since tuition fees were trebled to £9,000 in 2012. 40% of universities predict a budget deficit this year.
University bosses and the new Labour government want students and staff to pay for this mess. Vice-chancellors are currently making job cuts at an unprecedented number of institutions (70 and counting), while Labour ministers have called on universities to continue making “efficiencies” – in other words, more cuts.
And now Labour is planning more attacks on students, which could include increasing tuition fees. The rumours of a tuition fee increase have been spread widely by national media outlets this term. Social media videos about potential fee rises, produced by companies like BBC and ITV, have gathered thousands of views.
All of this is posing the question of who should pay for universities? Should it be students paying even higher fees (not to mention the additional cost of maintenance loans and all the hours of low-paid work on top of full-time courses?) Or someone else?
Socialist Students says it should be the government – not students or workers – which directly funds education, by taking the wealth and resources off the big corporations and super-rich bosses. We also say that universities should be under the democratic control of students, staff and the wider community, not the overpaid vice-chancellors who have cooperated with successive pro-capitalist governments to get us into this mess.
The 100 richest individuals in the UK increased their collective wealth by £40 billion last year. That would be more than enough to scrap tuition fees and introduce living maintenance grants for all students. It would also be enough to give all higher education workers a pay increase that at least begins to restore the wages they have lost over more than a decade. Why should students pay any more?
Funding Not Fees
Socialist Students is helping to initiate a new national campaign, Funding Not Fees, with the support of other campus organisations, to bring together students and workers in a movement for fully funded, free education – not more fees and cuts.
The Funding Not Fees campaign will demand that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers. It calls for fully publicly funded higher education, paid for by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as the means to:
- Scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt
- Introduce living maintenance grants for all students
- End low pay, job cuts and the casualisation of higher education workers
What you can do now!
1) Build for a protest on Budget Day (30 October) to launch the campaign at your university, college or school
30 October is the day the new Labour government announces its first budget, with the guarantee of fresh attacks on the futures of students and young people, including the potential announcement of a tuition fee increase.
To build for Budget Day, you could put up posters around campus and organise leafleting sessions, to advertise the time, date and location of the protest among other students.
You could also invite other groups on campus, like student societies, trade union branches, or students union representatives, to attend and help organise the protest.
And if you have time, what about organising a pre-protest meeting to discuss the campaign, followed by a banner-making session where you and other students can also plan speeches, slogans and chants for the protest?
For help with organising a protest, contact the Socialist Students national organising team at [email protected] or text 07515921699
2) Build support for the Funding Not Fees open letter to the Independent Alliance
The Funding Not Fees campaign has produced an open letter to Jeremy Corbyn and the Independent Alliance MPs. When he was leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn won huge support from students because of his manifesto pledge to abolish fees. We are asking him, and the other members of the Independent Alliance, to now help build the movement for free, fully funded education, not more fees and cuts.
End war – fight for socialist change
Berkay Kartav, Socialist Party National Committee
‘Massive blasts rock Beirut’.
Not a day passes without seeing such headlines on the news.
After a year of brutal Israeli onslaught on Gaza, and now bombing and a ground invasion into Lebanon, there is the risk things could escalate into a deeper and wider regional war. This would have even more horrifying consequences than already exist for the working class and poor in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The war in Ukraine, with tremendous cost to human lives and resources, has been going on for over two years with no end in sight.
In Sudan, a revolutionary movement heroically overthrew the hated, corrupt dictator Al-Bashir in 2019. But, because the working class and poor did not succeed in taking and consolidating power, in the ensuing power vacuum different factions of the military are fighting for political power at the expense of the lives of ordinary Sudanese workers and poor people.
What else do these apocalyptic wars prove than the rotten character of profit-based capitalism?
The world’s richest five men have doubled their wealth to a staggering £668 billion since 2020. Meanwhile, an estimated two billion people now live in conflict-affected areas of the world.
Capitalism inflicts death and misery upon people all around the world so that those in powerful positions can gain even more wealth and power.
The US alone dedicated $916 billion to military spending in 2023, a quarter of military spending worldwide. Arms manufacturers are raking in huge profits.
But why do capitalist governments spend billions in military spending when even just a fraction of that could be used to lift millions out of poverty and hunger?
Capitalism means war
Capitalism is an ailing crisis-ridden system where a tiny minority in society own and control the vast wealth and resources that exist. The capitalist bosses that make up this tiny minority compete with each other to maximise their own profits at the expense of ordinary working-class people and the environment.
Even though it is a global system, however, capitalism is based on nation states. These nation states, in particular the more advanced capitalist states, act to try to protect the dominant interests of their own capitalist classes.
Ceaseless pursuit for profit and exploitation of the world’s resources by big companies inevitably leads to an unstable world order that is prone to conflicts, including military interventions or annexations.
Today, capitalism can be characterised by growing inter-imperialist rivalry, conflicts between different major economic blocs, and increasing polarisation.
The US is still dominant – the biggest economy and by far the largest military power. However, whereas in the previous period it had been able to use its dominance to try to ‘call the shots’ internationally, it is no longer able to do so.
It is increasingly being challenged by Chinese capitalism. While in the past the US was in favour of opening up global markets – to strengthen its own position in the world – now it is the one putting up trade barriers.
The multipolar world we now live in – together with economic crisis, environmental crisis, high levels of debt, falling workers’ living standards and other crises – is increasingly volatile.
Warmongering politicians
When politicians like Keir Starmer or Joe Biden call for a ceasefire in the Middle East – something they refused to do for months and months – it is because they are worried about the destabilising effects of the escalation of the war, and the social upheavals it might lead to, not because they care about those who suffer.
While desperately trying to contain the further spread of war however, the US as well as Britain and other European powers continue to supply Israel with arms which are used to indiscriminately bomb Gaza and Lebanon, and kill thousands of innocent civilians. In reality, they are compelled to try to defend their own strategic and profit interests in the region, and the rigged system they defend.
Hundreds of thousands of people on the anti-war marches have been appalled by the hypocrisy of pro-capitalist politicians.
The need for workers’ representatives and new mass parties of the working class has never been so vital, in Britain and the US, as well as in the Middle East. Such parties, based on the organised working class and armed with a socialist programme, can offer a political voice for the anti-war movement, as well as a socialist opposition to all capitalist wars and attacks on living standards.
The working class
The ruling classes around the world fear awakening one force in society: the working class. This is the only force in society capable of overthrowing the capitalist system, because of the collective role it plays in the production and distribution of all the goods and services we use, and the collective consciousness that develops from that. We have had a small glimpse of the potential power of the working class in recent years in Britain, as a new generation has discovered the power of collective strike action.
Fourteen years ago, the ‘Arab Spring’ that quickly spread across many countries in the Middle East and North Africa shook the ruling classes and overthrew corrupt leaders. It gave a greater glimpse of the potential power of the working class.
Yet despite the mass movements replacing some dictators, the ruling classes’ grips on the economy and society remained.
The conditions for further social upheavals continue to develop and will take on an even broader scope in the future. Out of those struggles, workers’ organisations can strengthen and develop, independent of capitalist interests.
By adopting a socialist programme to wrest wealth and control out of the hands of the capitalist class, and instead developing a plan to meet the needs of all, a path can be found towards working-class collaboration across the Middle East and internationally.
Wars are not inevitable, they are a product of a system based on profiteering and plunder.
Socialist revolutions spreading around the world can bring an end to the horror and brutality of wars and secure a socialist world based on international cooperation that would be free from wars and oppression.
