As the new academic term gets underway in many universities, Marxist students have been at yet more freshers fairs signing up hundreds of students who are interested in building an organisation capable of fighting for socialist policies within the student movement. We publish here reports from some of these freshers fairs.
Over the past couple of weeks Marxist students all over the country have been attending university freshers fairs and holding their first meetings of the term, with hundreds of students who are eager to learn about the ideas of Marxism and their relevance to today’s world. We publish here reports from some areas who have had their freshers fairs already. Stay tuned for many more to come over the next couple of weeks!
A recent report by the Institute for Fiscal studies has predicted what the Marxists predicted at long ago: that the increase in tuition fees to £9,000 per year was a shockingly short-sighted measure, even from a capitalist point of view, that would simply artifically maintain Higher Education funding today at the expense of a massive bubble of unpaid debts in the future.
At this year’s national conference of the National Union of Students, held in Liverpool, three delegates from the Marxist Student Federation made an intervention with a fringe event on capitalist crisis and education, by distributing a bulletin spreading Marxist ideas, and by selling the Socialist Appeal newspaper. Through this action we were able to meet a number of students enthusiastic about learning more about Marxism.
On 26th-27th March 2014, student unions organised a strike of university students across Spain in response to the austerity measures being implemented by the right-wing government against public education. We publish here a report by Arturo Rodriguez of the Oxford Marxist Society, who took part in the strike at the University of Alicante, which gives a background to the strike and a comparison to the situation in Britain.
This academic year has seen significant steps forward for students fighting for the ideas of Marxism on their campuses. This has been reflected in the success of the founding conference of the Marxist Student Federation (MSF) in February 2014, and also in the campaigning and election of Marxists as student representatives in a number of universities.
Hidden away in all the smoke being generated by the Tories about the economy is the grim reality that youth unemployment remains scandalously high in Britain today. Nearly a million youth are officially on the dole, about 19% of the total. Felix Lighter reports on the grim future for youth under capitalism.
The annual conference of the National Union of Students is being held in couple of weeks time in April. On the agenda for this year’s conference are amendments and motions submitted by members of the Marxist Student Federation. Marxist students from UCL, Sheffield and Cambridge universities will be attending the NUS conference as delegates from their universities, elected on a fighting programme of socialist policies for the NUS.
Saturday 15th February 2014 will go down as a historical day for the student movement in the UK, as it saw around 70 student represenatives from 20 Marxist societies across the country, along with international visitors, meeting in London for the founding conference of the Marxist Student Federation. The conference was a great success, and marked an important step forward for the Marxist students in Britain.
The SOAS Marxists enthusiastically welcome the initiative of a group of staff and students to launch the “Democratise SOAS” campaign, which has seen strong support with over 200 people at a recent meeting. But what is the next step for the struggle for student-staff democracy in our universities?
With only one week to go until the founding conference of the Marxist Student Federation, we publish here the full agenda for the one-day conference, being held in SOAS, London, on Saturday 15th February. We encourage all our student readers to attend what promises to be a fantastic event.
For young people today, the situation under capitalism is particularly bad. They are the forgotten generation, dumped by a system in crisis. A new official report from the United Nations reveals that global youth unemployment has now reached dangerous levels.