Youth

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.

On Saturday the 29th of March the Socialist Youth Network
(SYN) held its 3rd annual conference at the ULU building near
Euston. The Socialist Youth Network is the youth wing of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), the left wing of the Labour Party led by John McDonnell. Youth comrades from Socialist Appeal attended the meeting reported here.

On Wednesday March 12th some 18 students and visitors met in the Wolverhampton
University Students Union building to discuss the topic "Capitalism in Crisis –
More of the Same or Revolution?."

School students, Ewan Gibbs and Nathan Morrison, give their views on the latest proposals on British citizenship. In this report issued by Lord
Goldsmith it states that school-leavers should take an oath of allegiance to ‘Queen
and Country’ and suggests that schools should hold citizenship ceremonies for
leavers. These proposals were made by a big business Labour government desperate to cover the glaring cracks in our public
services, below inflation pay rises, the imperialist military adventures in
Iraq and Afghanistan and the Northern Rock farce by resorting to flag
waving.

Alan Woods was invited to speak at Eton, the
most prestigious private school in Britain (known as a “public” school in
English), by the school’s Orwell Society. Alan gave a very clear explanation of
why society needs to be changed and why the only direction in can go in is
socialism. We believe the points raised and the answers given provide a very
good outline of what Marxism stands for today.

On Tuesday 5^th February the Manchester Hands of
Venezuela held a successful meeting with over 60 people attending. The meeting
was held jointly with the Green Party of Manchester to raise awareness of Venezuela,
discuss the revolutionary situation and look at changes and developments in the
country and more widely in South America as a whole.