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Students unite and fight - free education now!
London: Socialist Students Budget Day protest, 22.11.17, photo Mary Finch (Click to enlarge)
Dana Harris, Birmingham Socialist Students
Since 2010 students have been paying £9,000 a year for university tuition fees. In 2017 the total student debt in the UK rose to over £100 billion, according to the Student Loans Company.
Students are faced with the inescapable reality that if we want higher education we will leave uni with over £50,000 in debt. We will spend the next 30 years of our lives paying it off - if we can ever afford to at all.
And the bosses don't spend this vast sum of money on the needs of students by providing affordable housing or crucial counselling services.
Instead it's being creamed off by the bureaucratic fat cats, such as the University of Birmingham's vice-chancellor, David Eastwood. He receives a £439,000 salary package and is the highest paid uni boss in Britain.
The last general election saw a huge movement of young people behind Jeremy Corbyn's anti-austerity manifesto. It pledged to scrap tuition fees and reinstate maintenance grants for higher education, among many other pro-youth policies.
However, Corbyn and the union leaders have not yet mobilised this huge potential force. And the right-wing leaders of the National Union of Students (NUS) have left it to waste.
Last year, Socialist Students called for students across Britain to organise, to walk out of classes and march for free education on the Tories' Budget Day to make our demands heard. Where was the rallying cry from the official leaders of the students' and workers' movements?
Young people and students cannot wait for a Corbyn-led government: we need action now. We must start to build our own movement to unite students and workers and force the Tories out, whether or not the NUS supports it.
We must demonstrate and organise to fight for free education, to scrap student debt, and to end universities being treated like big business by the super-rich and their representatives. If you agree, join Socialist Students!
- Join Socialist Students: text 'join' plus you name and postcode to 07749 379 010 or visit socialiststudents.org.uk/join
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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
- The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
- When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.
Inevitably, during the crisis we have not been able to sell the Socialist and raise funds in the ways we normally would.
We therefore urgently appeal to all our viewers to donate to our Fighting Fund.
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