Building for student walkouts on the 14th March in Leicester

by Rebecca Christiansen, Leicester Socialist Students

Student union executives at both the University of Leicester and De Montfort University (DMU) are refusing to support the NUS-called walkout. DMU has gladly said that all lectures are off when the Queen visits on 8 March but the student union is afraid that students “will miss too many lectures if they walk out on 14 March.”

At Leicester, we issued an emergency proposal to the student union parliament calling for them to support the NUS campaign and build for it on campus. We asked the student union to use its authority to make sure that the students walking out are not penalised and to organise pickets outside academic buildings. However, the steering committee blocked this emergency proposal and made it into a white paper, which is not due to be discussed on Tuesday 13 March – the day before the walkout!

Students at both University of Leicester and DMU have been seriously let down by our student unions, so we have to do the work ourselves. We will leaflet for the walkout and connect it to the Youth Fight for Jobs and Education campaign to bring back EMA, so that college and university students can walk out together in solidarity. On 14 March we will arrange a demo either on campus or in the city centre.

We held a meeting titled “a socialist alternative to cuts, fees, job losses and workfare”. The response was good and the questions asked showed that people have started to be critical towards capitalism and look for a socialist alternative.

What we do after 14 March is equally important. We need to continue with the meetings on cuts to education and the socialist alternative. We are also looking forward to next term’s freshers fairs where there will be potential for Socialist Students to get many more members, as next year’s freshers will be paying £9,000 fees.