Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students
Hundreds of school and college students walked out to protest Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK on 17 September. On the thousands-strong protest through central London, the Socialist Students contingent was by far the most lively, youthful and politically bold. Our chants and slogans were not just drawing attention to Trump and the role he is playing, but also to Keir Starmer’s complicity in war, genocide, and defending the profits of the billionaires.
In Liverpool 75 walked out, there were 25 in Leeds, 15 from a Sheffield sixth form, 30 from one college in Nuneaton, 25 in Preston, and many more at youth protests around the country. The Trump walkouts showed that we can take matters into our own hands and have a voice when we organise and fight back.
Our walkouts forced their way into the national media. The government had been doing their best to keep Trump’s visit under wraps, knowing the anger it would provoke. But our campaign got onto ITV and BBC, into the Independent newspaper, even over the pond into Time magazine – which has twice named Trump ‘Man of the year’!
Right to protest
Hundreds walked out against Trump, but it would have been many more if not for the police being called on students to try to intimidate us into not exercising our right to protest.
In west London, about a dozen police officers were waiting at the tube station to try to intercept students travelling to the central London demo. In south London, a headteacher called the police on us, as well as ripping up leaflets that students were being handed has they were going into school.
In east London, hundreds of students spilled out into the playground at lunch, ready to walk out and join the protests in central London. They were prevented from doing so by a police van as well as about a dozen police officers at the school gates.
In north London, headteachers in Enfield were communicating with each other and the police to try and clamp down on student exercising their right to protest. That didn’t stop nine students walking out at one school.
Despite all the obstacles, when we are organised, we can overcome all the barriers put in our way. We can have a say over what goes on in our lives.
Schools, colleges, sixth forms… our entire capitalist education system is designed to strip away young peoples’ confidence to take action: restrictive rules try to teach us from a young age to obey authority; there is a complete lack of a say over our curriculum and what we get taught; gates are locked to keep us in all day, trapping us in prison-like conditions; students are thrown into ‘isolation rooms’ as punishment, facing a wall in solitary confinement conditions. All this is designed to make us feel powerless. And it’s not accidental.
This capitalist system we live under is about making profit for a tiny few at the top of society, a super-rich minority, at the expense of everyone else. It means mega wealth for the billionaires while poverty, war, and climate destruction become the norm. Capitalism will look for all the ways it can to maintain this unequal arrangement, that includes trying to drill into us from a young age, while we are in school, that we can’t fight back to change things.
The youth walkouts against Trump were a way to show that we can fight back. We sent a clear message to Trump, Starmer and the capitalist class that we won’t accept their agenda.
Build students unions
As a first next step, Socialist Students is calling on young people to build our own students unions. These can be spaces where students in a school or college can come together to share ideas about how to fight back and to make a plan of action. Why not organise a meeting of everyone who is interested, including those who joined walkouts and other supporters?
The meeting could take place in the playground, or a quiet indoor space, or there might be sympathetic teachers who are be open to allowing us to meet in their classroom, for example. A starting point could be to find out which teachers are trade union reps for the education unions in your school.
Then the meeting can decide collectively what campaigning issues to take up. There might be anger at what is going on in the world – war, poverty, climate catastrophe. But locally there might be anger at canteen prices, the cost of school trips, uniform policies… At some schools, students have been told that they are unable to wear political badges, for example.
Once a main campaigning priority has been agreed on, one idea could be to write a short protest letter setting out the issues, getting as many students as possible to sign it, and to take a list of demands to the headteacher. That pressure could be increased by organising a protest at lunchtime or outside the gates after school. A march to the local council offices could lobby a meeting of local councillors to ask what they are going to do to address the issues. There could also be a lobby of a local MP.
Students in east London prevented from protesting plan to write to their local MP Dianne Abbott to ask for her support in demanding the right to protest.
Socialist Students groups can also get together to attend protests outside of school or college. Socialist Students will have a contingent on the 11 October Gaza demo in London, for example. In Liverpool on 27 September, there is a protest outside of Labour Party conference, which Socialist Students will be attending – exposing all of the ways in which the Labour government is attacking our futures.
A new party fighting for our future
Events across the whole of society shape the conditions which we grow up in. We have a Labour government hiking uni fees, cutting funding to schools and public services, that has attacked benefits for disabled people including getting rid of PIP for under-18s.
Outside of schools and colleges, young people need a political voice. Many have been enthused by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’. It is polling highest among 18 to 24-year-olds. Socialist Students calls for a new mass workers’ party that fights for a future for young people.
As leader of the Labour Party, Corbyn called for free education, mass council house building and a fully funded NHS, and many other policies to make the super-rich pay. Now young people again have a chance for a political party to fight for those things. There is the opportunity for a mass party that puts across an anti-war, socialist alternative to Labour, as well as to Reform. Socialist Students says any new party should be a democratic socialist party. We are holding meetings on 50+ university campuses across the country to discuss that.
Young people need a voice – our own students unions organising to fight in our collective interests. And a political voice, a party that links our struggles to those of other young people and the working class as a whole.
We have to fight for a future. That is linked to the struggle for a socialist society as an alternative to capitalism. That would be a system where the banks and major industries are owned and run by the working class, democratically discussing and collaborating to draw up a plan of how to use the wealth and resources in society to meet the needs of all. Internationally, that would lay the basis for an end to war and climate disaster. Join Socialist Students to fight for a future. Fight for socialist change.
Stoke Newington School
Protest goes on in face of intimidation
Adam Gillman, Socialist Students
Students tried to walk out from Stoke Newington School. For a few weeks, we had been giving leaflets to students. The students themselves had organised too, planning to protest in the playground, and then walk out.
But as supporters of students organising, we had been interrogated by the headteacher and her senior leadership team. They tried snapping leaflets out of students’ hands, and tried to stop us from leafleting.
Senior management raised vague concerns about safety, implying it’s not safe for students to be protesting. This is not true. Students go to and from school on their own, and other activities, and are trusted.
Students also have the right to organise. Throughout history, students have played a role in getting rid of unpaid youth work, corporal punishment, and showed their opposition to climate change, tuition fees, and war.
If the leadership team truly cared about student safety, why didn’t they accept being stewards to the march supervising them?
On the day, we saw an inspiring protest of around 200 students in the playground chanting “let us out”, asserting their right to protest. However, management locked them behind two sets of gates, before ushering them back into classes.
Police
Even worse, the school had called the police, who turned up with a car, a van, and seven officers. This heavy-handed presence was deliberately meant to intimidate students.
The police forced me and another Socialist Party member to give our details, or be arrested – accusing us of ‘incitement’ and anti-social behaviour for supporting a peaceful protest.
We were fine. But this is why it’s essential that students get organised to fight back, not only against Trump, but against the many issues we face as students – from barbaric isolation rooms to canteen prices going up.
We need fighting, democratic student unions in schools, colleges, and universities – building links with the staff unions, and to stop senior leadership teams sowing fear in organising.
Latymer School, north London – ‘we are the future, we have the power’
Josh Asker, Enfield and Lea Valley Socialist Party
A student at Latymer School got in contact with us in the weeks leading up to Trump’s visit. They had taken in leaflets and posters, with details about the assembly point for the walkout.
Several who walked out did so because they had seen posters pinned up in the toilets. Others were given a leaflet at the school gates.
On the day itself, senior teachers did all they could to persuade students not to protest. Others gave quiet words of encouragement.
The argument from the head and deputies was that a walkout would be too dangerous. Students responded to say: Trump in the White House is dangerous!
As we gathered at the park next to school, students appeared one by one. Some had stayed off for the morning, because they didn’t want to be locked in. Lots who assembled had never met before, and were excited to meet like-minded students.
Confidence grew as we walked down to the station, and cars beeped in support.
People on the train wanted to discuss all topics political with us. It’s not every day that a group of protesting teenagers gets on to your carriage!
Arriving in central London, we joined the Socialist Students contingent.
Student Robert said: “I’m from the Latymer School. I walked out to defend women’s rights, LGBTQA rights, and everyone’s rights. There were posters in my school, and I felt like I needed to join.
“The day has been thrilling. I felt like I made my voice heard, and all of my peers as well, I was very proud of them.”
Plans are being made for a lunchtime meeting at the school to discuss what next to fight back.
Another walkout participant on the London demo said: “I was at a ‘stop Trump’ march on my 13th birthday, and I’m here again aged 17. Walking out of school, leaving the education that I should be getting, because I think that this is more important. Because if Trump gets his way, our education will be for nothing.
“We are taking back control of our bodies, of our minds, and of politics. We are the future, and we have the power. We can’t let them forget that. We can’t let them think they have won.”
Cardinal Newman College, Preston – from Trump walkout to Socialist Students
Pen Dawler, Cardinal Newman College Socialist Students
The day after thousands of people protested the state visit of the ‘bigot-in-chief’ Donald Trump in London, we did the same in Preston. In the week before, more than 40 interested Cardinal Newman College students signed our petition to form a walkout.
Most that gathered on the day supported the walkout. Even those that disagreed, engaged us in conversation.
On the day, 50 people signed our petition to create an official Socialist Students group at the college. Many also took to the megaphones to chant about Palestine, telling Trump to leave.
Several took up our protest placards. One set of boys took them, chanting around the rest of the college.
Some students were also interviewed and expressed interest in a mass workers’ party that takes the fight to the pro-austerity parties, like Reform, Labour, Tories and Lib Dems.
Pimlico Academy, south west London – ‘keep it up’
Adam Powell Davies, Socialist Students
As students arrived at school, we announced on our megaphone that Trump is in the UK, and that students across the country are walking out against him and everything he represents.
Many students gathered around to hear what we had to say. But they were quickly shooed in by senior management.
Socialist Students members have been leafleting the school since July, and we’ve had a great response from students. But school management wants to clamp down on students’ right to protest, even taking leaflets out of students’ hands as they walked in.
One student told us his leaflet had been ripped up by his teacher. He and his friends told us: “Keep up the good work”.
When one student asked the headteacher why they couldn’t have a leaflet, he replied: “Because it’s nonsense”. Thank you for your balanced political analysis, sir!
We don’t think it’s nonsense for young people to get organised for a future without war, poverty, climate chaos, racism, and all the horrors that Trump represents.
In that spirit, Socialist Students went to Grey Coats School Sixth Form down the road. Dozens of students gathered outside to listen to us explaining on the megaphone why students are walking out today.
We pointed to Trump being welcomed to the UK, with a banquet with Keir Starmer and the King, while in Gaza thousands starve. Almost everyone took a leaflet.
Sheffield – ‘you should be proud’
Alistair Tice, Sheffield Socialist Party
When we returned for a second ‘Trump out’ leaflet drop, the headteacher at King Edward School (KES) asked: “Why do you keep picking on my school?”
We replied: “Because your students are so intelligent and socially aware that they are concerned about issues affecting their futures. You should be proud of them.”
She obviously wasn’t, as she stood at the security gate, demanding students hand her the leaflets they’d taken.
Despite this, and the main gate being locked on the lunchtime of Thursday 18 September, 25 KES students joined the protest on a nearby green. Many identified as socialists, with ten signing up for Socialist Students. And they discussed the potential for setting up a group at or from the school.
Exeter – new group growing
Miles Thatcher, Devon Socialist Party
The walkout was spearheaded by one particular student that the Socialist Party met when we were campaigning – someone with a tight group of friends, strong political imagination, and a firm grasp of socialist ideas.
He and his group did great campaign work promoting the walkout throughout the campus. They now want to build a Socialist Students group in Exeter College. They have also attended anti-racist counter-demos outside our local asylum hotel. Exeter students, in the preceding weeks to the walkout, were also eager to speak about the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity of the UK and Trump.
Leeds – students and workers unite
Laura Fretwell, Leeds Socialist Party
Leeds was no exception. Despite Leeds University lectures not starting until the week after Trump’s visit, we engaged many members of the public and ran out of leaflets.
At the height of the demonstration, 25 people, including students from nearby Notre Dame Sixth Form College and Leeds Arts University stopped to listen our speakers. The main message from each speaker was the same – it is appalling that Donald Trump has been invited for a state visit, the political situation does not have to be this way, and we can say no to demagogues who only cater to the super-rich.
Kevin Pattison, Leeds TUC (Trades Union Council) vice-president, spoke of the importance of students and trade unionists standing together to “oppose the obscene visit of Trump – a climate denier, who would happily watch the planet burn”.
Tom Gibson, from Socialist Students, spoke of solidarity with immigrants in the US, who have faced horrendous human rights abuses; Palestinians, who suffer horror and genocide by the US-backed Israeli State; and citizens of Washington DC and other US cities, who face intimidation of National Guard deployment.
Tom said that a bright socialist future around the world is possible. The vast majority “do not want our money spent on an expensive, sycophantic ceremony, held by a government that refuses to spend money to help working people.”
Plymouth – freshers join protest
Alex Moore, Plymouth Socialist Party
We produced leaflets and posters, overprinted with info for a lunchtime rally, and a follow-up meeting on fighting Trump and the far right. We gave these out on campaign stalls prior to the event, and on a student freshers stall the day before.
We met a small but enthusiastic group of students who came to protest at our stall on the day. We are following them all up, with a view to joining the Socialist Party, and setting up a new Socialist Students society.
A little effort can produce good results.
