NOT one, but two tuition fee hikes have been announced by the Tory government in the last two weeks: first to £9,250 and then yesterday to £9,500.
This makes the national demonstration through central London on Saturday 19 November called by the students’ union, the NUS, and lecturers’ union, the University and College Union (UCU), even more important.
Well over a hundred thousand students are expected to take to the streets in furious anger. Anger, however, is not enough. No protest, no matter how militant will ‘change the Tories’ minds’. A revolutionary leadership must be built within the NUS to bring students and lecturers together with the entire strength of the working class in a general strike to kick the Tories out.
It was two weeks ago that parliament removed the £9,000 cap on fees, linking them instead to inflation – meaning that immediately they have gone up to £9,250. Yesterday’s announcement that university fees will rise again to £9,500 for students starting in 2018 pours even more petrol onto the fire.
This comes after the abolition of the student maintenance grant at the beginning of August. This means that on top of the £9,500 tuition fee loan, students will now take out a further £7,000 putting them in as much as £49,500 worth of debt on graduation, or much more if inflation rises.
Welsh students will end up with similar levels of debt, as the Welsh assembly has announced that it too is removing the student grants covering almost two thirds of Welsh students’ tuition fees.
Now students at universities across the country are gearing up for both the national demonstration on November 19th and a nationwide rent strike to begin next January.
In this battle, the NUS leaders have already fallen short. They are calling for a system where 25% of all university bed spaces are offered at 50% of the maximum amount of maintenance loan available.
This is a cowardly call. Students do not want rents reduced, they want the full living grant restored so that every penny of their student accommodation is taken care of. This sort of leadership in the NUS does not represent the mass of students who are determined to win back free education for all and full living grants.
Furthermore, there is not a single major parliamentary political party which stands for abolishing tuition fees. Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn has called for an extremely minimal programme, with ‘means-tested’ grants for the poorest students. He refuses to call for the abolition of tuition fees and the restoration of free state education.
The only solution to the crisis facing students is therefore a revolutionary one, that of bringing down the Tories with a general strike and going forward to a workers government.
Before 1997, all university fees were covered by a student grant, meaning that university was free for each and every student. On top of this, students were awarded a living grant, which covered all accommodation costs and gave students extra money towards their living costs as well.
This was one the great gains, along with the NHS, council housing and social security that made up the Welfare State. It is becoming clearer and clearer that everything that was won post-1945, when the returning troops demanded a socialist change and dumped the war hero Churchill, can only be defended today through a socialist revolution.
In this struggle, students must fight to build the revolutionary leadership of the WRP and the Young Socialists (including the Young Socialists Student Societies) to mobilise the working class to take the power and establish a socialist planned economy whose maxim will be ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’.
News Line urges students to turn out in your hundreds of thousands to demonstrate on November 19th, organise a massive rent strike in January, and above all join the Young Socialists and build the Young Socialists Student Societies so that student youth will be able to play their full part in the organisation of the British socialist revolution.
2017 will mark the centenary of the Russian revolution, and the ‘ten days that shook the world’, beginning the worldwide socialist revolution. The British revolution is now on the way. We must organise youth to be in its front ranks and to lead it!
