Since October I’ve been running a Socialist Students branch at my sixth form. I decided to start organising meetings after seeing socialists running successful societies at universities, and also seeing how many people were angry after racist BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time.
Dan Crowther, Coventry sixth form student
The first meeting was on ‘how to stop the BNP’ and 14 people attended. My introduction was about 10 minutes long, and a ‘robust debate’ followed. People had agreed with what I said about how to stop the BNP, but some disagreed about the smaller details of immigration.
For the second meeting I chose the topic ‘university fees and youth unemployment’. Only five people came, but of those five, four were socialists. It was definitely a better meeting and I was pleased that other socialists were becoming regular attendees. 19 people attended another meeting on discrimination – a topic they chose.
Getting people along wasn’t as hard as I thought – I picked topics which I knew would interest people, and let them know about the meetings by announcing them in assembly, sticking up posters and reminding people every few days!
I recommend that any young socialists who know other people with similar political views at their college or sixth form should try having Socialist Students meetings.
