THE Young Socialists yesterday called a mass lobby of the TUC Annual Congress for Monday September 12, beginning at 8.00am.
The conference is being held at the TUC’s headquarters in Great Russell Street near Tottenham Court Road, central London.
Young Socialists National Secretary Joshua Ogunleye told News Line: ‘This is going to be a very important lobby.
‘In the last week we have seen young people rise up, completely frustrated with their existence and fed up with being told that they have no future, trying to fight for their rights.
‘There are up to one million youth in Britain without jobs.
‘All they face is the prospect of one kind of slave labour scheme or another.
‘They’re already being talked about as a so-called lost generation.
‘This is nonsense. Young people are not a lost generation, they will fight for their rights and the Young Socialists is setting out to organise this struggle of jobs for youth and a future.
‘We are demanding that tuition fees are abolished.
‘How is it possible for young people to go to university, or their families even to consider it, facing tuition fees of £9,000 a year.
‘They are turning education into a commodity.
‘This is a commodity that working-class youth just cannot afford.
‘The uprising that we’ve seen in recent weeks is nothing compared to what’s coming in the future as workers and youth battle for their future.
‘We want free state education restored.
‘We also want to see the Education Maintenance Allowance of £30 a week restored, so that sixth-formers can carry on with their studies.
‘Under capitalism today, the future of youth is zero.
‘The future of the working class is not that much different under the Tory coalition.
‘There have already been mass sackings, the cost of living is rocketing, while wages are being cut by government measures and sky-high inflation.
‘Workers are being called parasites because they’re defending their public sector pensions.
‘This talk of parasitism is disgusting, when a whole class of bankers are living as big parasites off the state.
‘Billions have been handed to them and they’re using it to pay huge bonuses.
‘In many ways it’s like the period just before the French Revolution when people like Marie Antoinette were able to say: “Let them eat cake”.
‘The TUC organises over six million workers. It is a tremendous power.
‘We are demanding that this power be used.
‘We mustn’t stand for mass youth unemployment for factory closures, for wage and pension cuts.
‘We must not accept that the only future we have is paying for the crisis of capitalism.
‘This is why we call for youth up and down this country to mobilise with us for a mass lobby of the TUC on Monday September 12.
‘We will be telling the trade union leaders: act for your members, act for the youth of the country, call an indefinite general strike to bring down this coalition and bring in a workers government that will carry out socialist policies.
‘We want a future, we intend to fight for it, and we call on workers to join in this struggle to get rid of bankrupt capitalism and to go forward to socialism.
‘Join our lobby on Monday September 12.’
