Adam Gillman, Socialist Party national youth organiser
Growing up today, unless things change, our future looks increasingly bleak. More and more wars around the world, increasing racist and sexist division being stoked, while the catastrophe from climate change threatens our very existence.
For young people, our tuition fees will reach over £10,000 in 2027, as fees rise with inflation. And over 13,000 job cuts have been announced at universities.
The cost of living has never been higher. Our accommodation rent is outrageously high, while we live in unsafe, mouldy conditions.
This is not even counting the hundreds of youth clubs that have been closed, and the youth and mental health services that have been cut, under Tory, now Labour, austerity. The list goes on.
But students are organising to fight back. Socialist Students helped organise walk outs against Donald Trump’s visit to the UK in September. Students have marched and protested in solidarity with Palestine, and in support of teachers and lecturers in colleges and unis fighting to defend their pay and their jobs.
The capitalist system prioritises the profits of a few at the expense of the working class and young people. The bosses, and their politicians, are trying to force us to pay for a crisis of their own system.
But by getting organised, we can force them back! The strike wave in Britain 2022-23 showed that workers, through their trade unions, taking strike action together could force the government to improve pay offers to workers. It showed how potentially powerful the working class is.
Now we have a Labour government that acts for the capitalist bosses, it continues to hike fees and underfund our education, fails to meaningfully address climate change, and uses increasingly authoritarian methods to try to stop us protesting.
What’s our alternative?
We need an alternative that represents the working class – a new party based on the trade unions and that fights for a decent future for young people. We need a party that fights for free fully funded education; a minimum wage of at least £15 an hour, with no exemptions; rent control and decent affordable council homes for all; a fully funded NHS, and other public services; and more.
And we need socialists to be organised to answer the lies from the capitalist bosses that ‘it is not affordable’. To argue for the socialist transformation of society, where we take the top 150 banks, big monopolies, and businesses into public ownership – nationalised under democratic workers’ control and management. That way we can plan to meet the needs of society in Britain and internationally.
If you want to fight for socialist transformation to end capitalist chaos, then join the Socialist Party today.
