If you're fed up with student fees and debt...

Join the campaign to defeat fees

Southampton Socialist Students campaigning

EDUCATION MINISTER Alan Johnson boasts about how Britain's universities are a source of "national pride and international envy". This is only true from the viewpoint of greedy vice-chancellors, a view Johnson often takes.

Matt Dobson Socialist Students National Organiser

For students it's a different world than the one projected by New Labour. Fees and other attacks on education make the university experience an anxiety-ridden, financially insecure nightmare. Drop-out rates are increasing and there is a huge increase in students working in part-time jobs instead of devoting time to studying.

The debt mountain when graduating (now averaging over Ł20,000) shadows any hope students have of developing their skills and securing a decent future.

The government has taken away our right to free, good quality education with its policies of fees, cuts and privatisation. It is time we stopped them getting away with it!

Protests have been organised in many universities including Southampton, Oxford, Portsmouth, Bristol, London, Durham, Liverpool and Exeter on 27 April and 1 May, following on from the 22 February protests when hundreds of students from over 50 colleges in universities protested against fees.

Now the reach of the Campaign to Defeat Fees is getting wider, with students from additional universities such as Bournemouth and also a school in Basingstoke joining in action and campaigning.

Socialist Students wants to show the scale and the strength of opposition to fees. A national demonstration would give students confidence to fight fees and other attacks.

It could be a major step in building a mass campaign, based on mass action of students and workers, that is capable of forcing the government to abandon fees and other attacks on education.

Our national day of action on 27 April is part of our campaign for the NUS to call a national weekday demonstration in the first term of next year under the slogans "no to all fees, cuts, closures and privatisation".

This can be built and publicised during and after the freshers fairs and when the FE colleges and schools start the new term.

If you're fed up with fees and debt, join our day of action!

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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.

The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.

The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.

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When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.

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