Theo Sharieff, Socialist Party Executive Committee
Over 100 students met in the Highfields Community Centre in Leicester for Socialist Students annual conference on 8 February. School, college and university students, as well as young workers in attendance, contributed to a lively and serious discussion. It was inspiring to see newly established Socialist Students groups sending delegations to this year’s conference, including from Hertfordshire, York, Aberystwyth, Manchester, Sussex, and Brunel Universities, joining those societies who have already begun to sink roots.
The conference took place just months after Labour announced an increase in tuition fees for the first time since 2017. Socialist Students launched the Funding Not Fees campaign last autumn in anticipation of the new wave of cuts and attacks on students and staff on campuses in the pipeline from the new Labour government.
The conference discussed and agreed a national campaigning strategy for fighting Starmer’s tuition fee hike, including organising a calendar of campaign action in the run-up to Labour’s summer spending review. Socialist Students delegates discussed building campaigns alongside anti-cuts groups, local trade union branches, tenants organisations, and students’ union officers and course reps. A lively discussion confirmed the need to demand university managements don’t implement any future increases to fees, and to organise lobbies of local MPs to demand they put forward free education amendments in Parliament to the summer spending review – all linked to building a movement to win the funding necessary for the higher education sector as a whole.
Campaigning
That isn’t to mention the campaigns Socialist Students is already leading on campuses, linked to the question of funding not fees. Like for example, Cardiff students against the cuts, campaigning against 400 planned redundancies at Cardiff University. Manchester and Southampton Socialist Student groups are fighting against sky-high student rents. At Queen Mary University, Socialist Students are campaigning for funding gender-neutral changing facilities in the students’ union. And York Socialist Students are protesting against the Reform UK society recently registered at York uni, who offer no solution to the uni funding crisis, just division.
The conference provided a forum for discussion on the instability and chaos writ large by capitalism globally, a system in a state of rot and decay. Trump’s presidency in the US is just another confirmation of this – introducing a fresh dose of chaos into capitalist world relations, and fresh threats of attacks on some of the most oppressed in society and the environment, as well as the working class as a whole.
Mass fightback
But Socialist Students conference also discussed the potential for a mass fightback of students and workers against Trump and all pro-capitalist politicians and parties attempting to play the divide-and-rule game around the world, including here in Britain. In the US, public support for trade unions is at an all-time high, with working-class struggle on the increase. This points towards the key missing ingredient in the situation globally – mass working-class political parties, armed with a socialist programme to unite workers and young people of all different backgrounds in a common struggle against racist division and against the bosses’ system.
This was a feature of the final rally too. The closing rally was addressed by students covering issues from the slaughter in Gaza to the crisis and attacks on democratic rights in Nigeria, to fight the far right as well as fighting for free education and a socialist alternative to capitalism. The rally was pleased to welcome Independent MP for Leicester South, Shockat Adam, who spoke movingly about the slaughter in Gaza and the wave of revolt against the Labour Party for its support for the war on which he was elected.
Socialist Students speakers on the platform welcomed the stance Shockat has taken on the war, and highlighted the role he and the other sitting independent MPs could play in providing a political voice not only to the anti-war movement, but also to the struggles of students and workers on campuses against cuts and fees.
Rally speakers invited Shockat to continue to work with Socialist Students and be part of the Funding Not Fees campaign in Parliament – which includes scrapping tuition fees, cancelling student debt and replacing loans with living grants for students, all funded by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as a step towards building that working-class political opposition to all the attacks of Starmer’s Labour.
Flash points for struggle
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser, introduced the discussions. We print edited extracts of his speech
The Tories were booted out at the general election last year, suffering their worst ever defeat. When you look back it’s no wonder. Life just kept on getting worse for the vast majority of people under the Tories, all while the richest individuals, the capitalists and the financial speculators, were allowed to line their pockets. Of course, MPs also got a tidy pay rise, not to mention the university vice chancellors, the academy heads, the college executives and others.
The Tories’ fate is a warning to any party that seeks to rule on behalf of an increasingly sick capitalist system, including Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Because at the same time, there is also a growing layer of working-class and young people who are refusing to accept the horrors of this system.
Opposition to capitalist governments is growing globally, including with it the reemergence of working class struggle in many countries, taking strike action at a level not seen in a generation.
Look at Serbia where there’s an ongoing movement led by students which has so far brought down a prime minister, and the movement keeps going. Similarly, there was the mass movement in Bangladesh last year which brought down the hated prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Revolution
Socialist Students is very clear about what type of revolution we think is needed. We call for the socialist transformation of society to put wealth, resources and technology into the hands of working-class people. And on that basis, draw up a democratic plan for how to meet the needs of all, including the need to protect our environment. Through socialist revolutions taking place internationally, working-class collaboration globally could replace the competition, conflict and war between capitalist states that exists currently.
Socialist Students sets ourselves the target of finding and organising the young people in schools, colleges and universities who want to fight for that kind of socialist world.
This Labour government will prove utterly incapable of meeting the aspirations of millions of workers and young people, laying the ground for numerous battles against it.
Starmer’s first budget in October was proof. Just take the example of colleges and schools. Labour’s spending plans will do nothing to stop the epidemic of cuts and the recruitment crisis in education. The crises of overcrowded classes and students being left without the support they need. £300 million to further education does not touch the sides of what is needed. £1.4 billion to schools will not stop a situation where most secondary schools are not able to meet costs next year.
Corbyn and Starmer
What a difference five years makes. Up until 2019, the Labour Party was under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who drew the hatred of big business and the capitalist class for putting forward a hugely popular programme of reforms to British capitalism: anti-austerity and including the call for free education for all.
It wasn’t Corbyn the mild-mannered man that struck fear into the hearts of big business, but rather the movement that he had the potential to mobilise.
Unfortunately however, he did not sufficiently mobilise his support base to stand up to the right wing of the Labour Party, the Tories, and the capitalist class behind them. And with that, Starmer has been able to rescue the Labour Party as a ‘second eleven’ for British capitalism. While initially Starmer was compelled to adapt to aspects of Corbyn’s manifesto, all of that has now gone.
There was a glimpse already in the general election, of the potential for the fight to be taken to this government. At the same time as Labour coming to power, five anti-war MPs were voted in based on a mood of disgust against Labour and Tory support for the Israeli state’s war on Gaza. Those five independent MPs included Jeremy Corbyn and Shockat Adam, MP for Leicester South, who is speaking at our rally today.
We would like to see these independent MPs, as well as the now three MPs who are still suspended from the Labour Party, to go much further and to come out as a clear parliamentary voice giving expression to all the struggles that are going to break out against this government.
Gaza
Many will be horrified watching on at Trump’s warmongering rhetoric about turning the Gaza Strip into a ‘riviera of the Middle East’. Socialist Students demands an immediate end to the Israeli state’s war, and a withdrawal, right now, of the Israeli military from all occupied territories.
There are going to be battles on our campuses from students and workers too. Well over half of universities now are making cuts to courses, redundancies to the tune of hundreds. 400 at Cardiff University, for example, is a sign of what is to come elsewhere. Socialist Students has been able to take part in and lead a campaign in Cardiff, we called a meeting on Monday attended by over 70 students and members of staff.
We also have to expect further movements over the climate catastrophe, including for many of those to be spearheaded by young people.
The invaluable lesson that a new generation of young people has learned from the strike wave is that striking works, and nationwide strikes will break out against the Labour government at some stage too.
Right to protest
In the face of growing opposition, Starmer has already shown he has no problem using heavy-handed measures to put down protest. On his watch we’ve seen the heaviest ever prison sentences for direct action given to Just Stop Oil climate activists, as well as the arrest of over 60 on the last national Gaza demo in London. A crackdown on the right to protest can also become a further accelerator of opposition against this government.
These are just some of the flash points where battles will erupt under this government. The discussions at this conference are vital to discuss the next steps to develop Socialist Students as an organisation, and prepare to fight for our socialist ideas in the movements that are to come.
Funding not Fees
The serious and passionate debate on motions addressed campaigning in colleges, ending sexism and violence against women on campus, fighting right populism and the far right, the student housing crisis, socialist change to end climate change. A new steering committee was elected. And a lively discussion on ‘Funding not Fees: sharpening the campaigning edge of Socialist Students’ resolved to turn the day’s ideas and energy into action:
1) That every Socialist Students group strives to build the Funding Not Fees campaign in their university, college or school, taking the following steps as a guide:
i) Call a Funding Not Fees campaign meeting with invites sent to other student campaign groups, students’ union (SU) officers and course reps, local trade union branches, tenants’ groups, and community organisations
ii) Build for the campaign meeting – which we could bill as an ‘anti-cuts, anti-fees summit’, or something similar – through a concerted plan of leafleting and postering
iii) Using the campaign meeting as a launchpad to organise a calendar of campaign action, including the potential for:
- A student-worker lobby of the local MP
- A Funding Not Fees campus protest
- A delegation to meet with student representatives, calling on them to publicly support the Funding Not Fees campaign
- A protest letter to the university vice-chancellor, demanding they refuse to increase tuition fees in line with the new 2025/26 cap
2) That Socialist Students groups consider electing a Funding Not Fees campaign officer
3) To reaffirm our commitment to fighting for a free, fully funded education system that is under the democratic control of students, staff, and the wider working class
4) To continue our fight for a new mass party, based on the independent organisation of the working class, that stands for free education as part of a socialist programme to take control over society off big business and the super-rich
