Youth

On Saturday 8th November, in celebration of the
91st anniversary of the Russian Revolution, students of ULU’s Marxist Society
organised a Lenin tour of London. The tour, led by Rob Sewell, provided a
unique insight into some of the places both Lenin and his life long partner and
comrade Nadezhda Krupskaya lived
and where they worked to build the Russian Marxist movement, destined to lead
the Russian working class and peasantry to victory in 1917.

As water approaches boiling point more and more atoms fly off the surface. The same process can be observed in society. A revolution is where the majority actively enters the stage of history and challenges for political power. But long before society undergoes a revolutionary transformation advanced layers of the working class, and in particular young people, ‘fly off the surface’ and begin to draw revolutionary conclusions for themselves.

A successful ‘Marx in London’ tour was organised last
Saturday by ULU Marxists as part of its activities in promoting the ideas of
Marxism. About 20 students came on the tour to see the sights where Marx
worked, lived and drank in London. Rob Sewell introduced the tour with an account of Marx’s
life and times.

Following the government’s £50 billion plus handout to the
banks and city gents, they are now short of cash. We can all expect to be
forced to pay for this through higher taxes and cuts in government services,
with the money from the taxes used to fund the millionaires’ bailout. For
students going to university this has begun sooner than expected.

Supporters of Hands Off Venezuela intervened at the University of
Sussex’s freshers fair on 1st October. Sussex holds a long standing
anti-capitalist tradition which was reflected the enthusiasm of
students for the HOV stall.

Supporters of Hands off Venezuela at Leeds
University intervened during the week long freshers’ fair at Leeds University
Union to promote solidarity between students here in Leeds and the workers and
youth in Venezuela who are struggling to create a new society based on
socialist principles. There was a great deal of interest in the university’s
HOV society and the programme of events that the comrades have lined up. The
society managed to sign up 13 members and collected more than 50 contact details
as well as selling books, pamphlets and HOV magazines.

Supporters of the Hands Off Venezuela
Campaign in Edinburgh held a stall at the two day long Societies’ Fair at
Edinburgh University.

The
comrades were hoping to highlight the gains of the Venezuelan revolution and to
draw attention to recent events in Bolivia as well as to restart the lapsed HOV
society at the university.

For the second year running the Hands Off Venezuela campaign
and Socialist Appeal made an intervention at the University of Glasgow
Fresher’s Fair. Through the course of the three day fair four supporters of HOV
and Socialist Appeal manned a stall selling various pieces of material
including the Hands Off Venezuela magazine and Socialist Appeal journal.
Hundreds of flyers for the Hands Off Venezuela campaign were distributed and
over fifty names were registered as showing interest in setting up a Hands Off
Venezuela society at the university.

The American education company Kaplan has announced plans to open a
profit seeking university in the UK. Although only a small beginning,
this opens the way to a profit-driven higher education system. The
first move was the government’s, who recently relaxed laws on who can
award degrees. They are in effect trying to open up the concept of a
degree to market speculation and commodification.

Over seventy people
gathered on Wednesday, May 21, at London’s
Bolivar Hall for the opening of the film season Venezuela: a revolution in film, which is organised
by Hands off Venezuela in association
with the Venezuelan embassy in the UK. (Also in Spanish).

The latest attempt
to criminalise young people by "framing and shaming" them and
"filming and repeatedly stopping identified persistent offenders on
problem estates" owes more to the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
than it does to evidence based practice. But what are the real reasons that "Youth Disorder" takes
place and what works?

On
Wednesday April 16th our second meeting of students trying to set up a
Socialist Society at the University of Wolverhampton took place.