I HAVE increasingly noticed a class-identity crisis among students, especially among those who are on the left.

Although it was the dawn of a grim era of austerity, 2010 was a promising year in the political mobilisation of students. 

Up to 50,000 young demonstrators reacted with fury at the coalition government’s attempts to further commodify our education system and engaged in real, meaningful direct action on our streets. 

Things were looking up for the student movement, on its way to becoming a radical, militant force that could be a key ally in the anti-austerity movement in the coming years.

Watching these demonstrators in 2010 at the age of 13 I couldn’t wait to dive head first into a radical working-class movement when I eventually went to university. 

When I did first attend the University of Huddersfield in 2016, however, I found not an organised force for the advancement of the working class, but a staggering lack of class consciousness among my peers.

My first indication as to how students now identify as a class unto themselves was when I appeared on a panel debating the Brexit process for the Politics Society. 

The debate was about as productive as you could expect from any Brexit debate, but it was what happened after that struck me.

There were people, members of my Labour Society, happily drinking and laughing with a member of the Conservative Society who, in an industrial Yorkshire town with deep connections to the mining community, was wearing a Margaret Thatcher T-shirt. 

Now, I’m not someone who is averse to talking to and being friendly with people of a different political persuasion to my own, but this seemed to be a blatant incitement, an act of class-baiting hatred. 

But I couldn’t get anyone else bar a few people to see it as anything other than a bit of “edgy banter” and a laugh on a society night out. 

In this moment, I saw people’s identities as students override their identities as members of a social class.

For some, this can be forgiven as not all students are that politically minded. But this disengagement from class politics goes right to the top. 

In 2010, the NUS was at the forefront of the action taking place in response to the tuition fees hike. Excellent work that had, dare I say, an element of class consciousness about it. 

Fast forward to 2019, and the NUS is financing my Students’ Union to send a bus full of students to march for a “People’s Vote,” what we knew to be a campaign to overturn a democratic decision voted for by a significant majority of the working class of this country.

When I raised this with the SU, I was told that this decision was taken to encourage students to “participate in democracy” (no, the irony was not lost on me, either). 

However, when my Labour Society went down to London for the NHS march and rally in my second year, no bus was laid on for that. 

Just as no bus was laid on for the anti-fascist counter-demonstration against far-right Tommy Robinson supporters in the summer that he was sent down. 

Luckily, being from south Essex I was able to attend, but good comrades who were all proud enemies of the far right were priced out due to the need to take the privatised East Coast service into London, something most students could not afford. 

It should be noted here that this privatisation-driven inaccessibility is backed up by EU policy, the same EU that the NUS vehemently campaigns to remain a part of. 

Now the question has to be asked, what is the more important activity out of marching to overturn a decision taken by the working class of this country in a democratic referendum, or marching to save our NHS or keep racists off our streets? 

I know what I would choose. And I’m confident that so would the millions of working-class Leave voters who are now feeling disenfranchised by both the Labour Party and the new “liberal left” that is so quick to label them as “gammon” and “bigots.”

And here lies another problem. RMT activist Eddie Dempsey has discussed in this paper how he has been judged by elements of the new left for the way in which he puts his point across, coming under fire for not speaking the “Queen’s English” and I must say the same applies among students. 

As soon as someone with a south Essex accent like myself speaks at a university are they assumed to be some kind of Ukip-voting DFLA agitator and there seems to be no place for working-class discourse in student politics. 

We at Huddersfield Labour Students released a statement on Halloween last year calling for Prince Andrew to resign as university chancellor. I was criticised for using the word “paedophile” to describe Jeffrey Epstein as such abrupt language could be seen as “exclusionary” to some. 

Personally, I fail to see how it is exclusionary to anyone except paedophiles and why anyone would have a problem with that.

The point is this: students, historically, have been one of the most influential groups in leftist politics, an area in which we are currently failing. 

The NUS and the wider student movement need to recognise a few things. First, there can be no socialism without the working class, and therefore there can be no meaningful discourse without the language of the working class. 

Second, working-class students need to recognise that they are working class before they are students and not vice versa. 

With an increasing student presence in the campaigning force of the Labour Party, students need to listen to the very real concerns of working-class people rather than dismiss their concerns as bigoted or uneducated. 

And finally, if the NUS and student unions across the country are going to encourage students to “engage in democracy,” let’s get some important work done like getting racists off our streets rather than campaign to stay tethered to a neoliberal protection racket like the EU. 

Let’s bring Whitehall to a halt to get rid of tuition fees, and let’s unapologetically campaign for the only current party leader who has promised to deliver this: Jeremy Corbyn.