This year’s freshers, we have organised society meetings across Britain under the banner ‘Why you should be a communist’.
At every campus, we’ve met students eager to engage with revolutionary ideas. They mentioned that they are searching for, and determined to understand the way forward.
The response has been outstanding. Meetings drew impressive attendance, with discussions that were not only lively but deeply serious. The questions asked revealed a real hunger for theory, and a genuine desire to find out more about communism.
The reports that follow capture this success and show the growing interest among students in communist ideas. They are a glimpse of the energy and potential that exists on campuses today, proof that our message is resonating, and that the future holds exciting possibilities for students to get organised on the basis of genuine revolutionary ideas.
Central London
Last Thursday, the communist societies from all central London universities held their first public meeting on ‘Why you should be a communist’ and received an extremely positive response, with over 50 students attending.
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We organised this meeting at a time when thousands of young people are entering universities and have no illusions that this crumbling capitalist system has anything left to offer.
On a daily basis, we are confronted with the horrors of capitalism: from the imminent climate crisis, the genocide in Gaza with the full complicity of the British government, and the general decline in living standards while billionaires continue to accumulate unimaginable wealth.
The capitalist system has long ceased to progress humanity, and students feel this most acutely. We kicked off the meeting with a 40-minute talk, in which Khaled Malachi, the London organiser of the Revolutionary Communist Party, gave an explanation of why capitalism is in crisis and why communism is the only alternative out of it.
We discussed why revolutions are actively unfolding in front of our eyes. Only last summer, students in Bangladesh led a revolution. Today, the youth are leading them in Nepal, Indonesia, and East Timor.
Millions of workers and young people, meanwhile, are out in the streets of Italy and France demanding the downfall of their government, and mobilising general strikes against the genocide in Gaza. The youth in Italy, for example, organised walkouts in schools and universities.
It is only a matter of time until these movements break out in Britain, and the ruling class is already trembling at that prospect.
We are preparing for this future: we discussed the importance of having trained revolutionaries in every school, university, and workplace, armed with Marxist ideas, and ready to lead such mass movements.
We had an excellent discussion following the talk, covering questions like “what is the link between communism and Palestine?”, “what is our attitude to reformist parties?”, and “why do we focus on Marx’s writings?”.
These are all serious and excellent questions, showing the attitude of these students. They want to fight for a system that can improve humanity and is democratically run by the people, but are actively searching for the right ideas.
After hours of further discussion in the pub afterwards, many of our attendees expressed an interest in joining the RCP.
The next meeting will take place on 7 October, where Fiona Lali will speak on ‘Palestine: A revolutionary way forward’. Palestine has become the defining issue of an entire generation. We have repeatedly seen hundreds of thousands of people coming out on the streets to demand an end to the genocide.
The next national demonstration is on 11 October, for which we are organising the communist bloc. We are there to inject the movement with revolutionary ideas, as we don’t trust our government to carry out anything meaningful. That responsibility falls to us.
If you want to join our bloc, get in touch and follow us on social media to stay updated on all future events we are holding to build the Revolutionary Communist Students in London!
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Manchester
This week, Manchester Communists have been blown away by the huge and enthusiastic response to our appeals at freshers’ for students to get involved with the Manchester Communist Society.
With over a hundred sign-ups and more than fifty students at our first society meeting, it is clear that there is an extreme thirst for political organisation amongst students.
This doesn’t surprise us. These students were born in 2006/7 and have therefore grown up in the context of the 2008 financial crisis, brutal austerity, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the genocide in Palestine.
Moreover, with revolutionary events across the world, in Indonesia and Nepal, Greece and Serbia, Bangladesh and Kenya, the mood for political change here in Britain, and across the world, is finding expression in the revolutionary movement of Gen Z.
The fantastic talk given by Fiona Lali touched on all of these themes and more, giving voice to the anger of the disenfranchised youth of today.
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New prospective members were enthused by the lead-off and discussion, with many asking questions about class, the state, and the impact of movements elsewhere.
In the meeting and at the pub afterwards, comrades were able to give responses that demonstrated the strength of our ideas and the necessity of theoretical clarity.
This is a fantastic start and provides a brilliant foundation for building the society over the years ahead. We will therefore continue the hard work, with many more events coming up, to educate and build a force of students to fight against this rotten system!
Cardiff
After an intense two-week freshers campaign, Cardiff Communists brought things to a close with one of our biggest ever meetings on ‘Why you should be a Communist’.
Before the meeting, comrades contacted the huge list of people who’d expressed interest in joining the RCP, and over twenty of them came along. The talk opened with the line, “we live in a time of crisis, war and revolution”, and it was these themes that ran through to the discussion.
Many of those interested in joining asked a range of really interesting questions, such as, “what is the communist position on the war in Ukraine?”, “is there still a working class?”, “what’s the difference between socialism and communism?”, “how do you rid oppressive and discriminatory ideas from society?”, and many more.
All the questions were answered well by comrades, in particular our student comrades. When the chair of the meeting asked if anyone would like to join the Revolutionary Communist Party, six of the attendees raised their hands, with several more expressing an interest in discussing further before doing so.
Overall, this was a lively and vibrant meeting, showcasing the hunger for revolutionary ideas amongst students and the ability of comrades to explain them.
With so much interest in the party here in Cardiff, it’s now the role of comrades to recruit as many of these people as possible, train them up as revolutionaries, and prepare them for the huge events ahead of us.
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Queen Mary
Over the last two weeks, four branches across East London have been working on the Queen Mary campus, and we’ve had great success in making some excellent contacts.
With only two students organised in the RCP on campus last year, it was vital that we made many new recruits this year to set ourselves up for consistent campus work in the future.
At the freshers fair stall, there was a strong sense of optimism. The vast majority of people who came to the stall were explicit that they hated capitalism. Many of them weren’t sure about communism, but were eager to speak to us and learn more.
Many of the conversations involved discussions on human nature, the USSR, and recent world events. In total, we got forty people signed up, which consisted of people who called themselves a communist or seemed very radical.
The next week we held our first open meeting, ‘Why you should be a communist’, introduced by Fiona Lali.
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This proved to be a huge success, with roughly twenty new non-members attending and a roughly equal number of RCP members. The discussion largely revolved around the recent revolutions in South-East Asia, and why we follow in the steps of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party.
There is a genuine excitement among everyone after our recent success. Clearly, on campus, there is a large appetite for revolutionary ideas and, given the crisis of capitalism, it is not hard to see why.
With so much momentum behind us, it would be easy to get complacent. However, our job is far from done. It is now our task to convince these interested students why they should join the RCP and continue to train them in revolutionary theory, so we can create a fortress of communism at QMUL.
Sheffield
In Sheffield, both the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam campuses have just held ‘Why you should be a communist’ meetings.
In both cases, the venue was packed out with people who had a burning desire to understand why things seem to be getting worse, and how we can fight back.
A great introduction was followed by a lively discussion with a wide range of questions from the room. From wanting to understand what a workers’ democracy would look like, to why society doesn’t reap the benefits of modern technology. It showed a thirst for understanding beyond empty action.
Everyone came out of the meeting feeling super enthusiastic. One student said they had to rush off to go out with friends, but ended up sticking around chatting in the pub for hours!
Similarly, another person who was clearly coming down with ‘freshers flu’ powered through, nodding the whole way through the meeting and sticking around till late in the pub despite her illness.
Our next task in Sheffield is organising and building for a Palestine rally on 7 October on the UoS campus, as both a show of force of the anger students feel, but also to discuss the way forward for the movement, and how we can actually cut the university’s ties with arms companies.
We have already had success building, at the societies fair, with dozens of societies agreeing to help us build and advertise the rally on their stall: from the Film Society, to the KPOP Society, the Baking Society – and even the Taylor Swift Society!
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Just chatting to people across campus, it is clear there has never been more support for radical ‘extreme’ solutions due to the extreme brutality of this system.
This should be our biggest term on campus yet, and we are planting the flag as the only political force on campus.
Newcastle
The Newcastle freshers mobilisation has been one of the most successful recruitment campaigns we’ve held in Newcastle and represents a huge leap forward in our student work.
We have established a new communist society at Newcastle University. Therefore, we were present at the freshers fair and attracted lots of attention.
More than ever, students are coming up to us of their own volition, many who know nothing about communism but are curious to learn more. Even without the words to express it, young people of today are more angry than ever at the establishment and are looking for an answer to the failures of capitalism.
One thing that stood out was the length and the quality of these discussions. We would chat for over ten minutes or longer with each student, covering vast amounts of ground.
Clearly, they want more details, to understand what is wrong with the world and why communism is the solution. Comrades at the stall had nearly back-to-back conversations throughout the whole day. Overall, we signed up thirty people, and sold all forty-five copies of The Communist that we had!
We held a ‘Why you should be a communist’ discussion the same week. We ran out of chairs as over twenty people showed up!
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This success came on the back of many activities on campus. We have set up stalls even before freshers, introduced new students to our society, and invited them to our meetings and events.
With already two new RCP recruits, we are excited to keep up our activity and build a strong communist base at Newcastle University. We are also making sure to get everyone down to Revolution Festival, which we all can’t wait for.
Fiona Lali University Tour
We’re thrilled to announce that our national campaigns coordinator, Fiona Lali, has started her university speaking tour to discuss communism with students across Britain!
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If you’d like Fiona to come to your campus, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
