Peter Lazenby
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STUDENTS are planning a wave of occupations, fee strikes, demonstrations and solidarity pickets with strikers in protest at the cost-of-living crisis.
The Students Cost-of-Living Campaign, a group of former rent and fee strike organisers and other activists on campuses across England, Wales and Scotland, will stand with lecturers, nurses, rail and postal workers and civil servants taking strike action.
Organisers said that while students won millions of pounds back in 2020-21 through rent strike campaigns, there is once again a feeling of crisis as students find themselves among those facing the choice between heating and eating.
University of London student Abel said: “Times are tough all round. Students especially are feeling the squeeze. Our teachers are feeling the squeeze too. We can’t go on like this.
“We have to say enough is enough and demand a different education system, a different kind of society.”
Research by the National Union of Students has found that almost half of Britain’s students are surviving on less than £100 a month.
Nine out of 10 who of those took part in a survey also said that their mental health was suffering and that they were “kept in poverty by sky-high rents, low wages and low maintenance loans.”
The campaign’s demands include an immediate cost-of-living cash payment to students, the replacement of maintenance loans with living-wage grants, the abolition of tuition fees and the imposition of rent controls.
Campaigners are also pushing for an end to the “marketisation” of universities, a halt to investments in oppressive regimes and the arms trade and parity between home and international students in all treatment.
