03.10.2007

Vying for support

Communist Students, the militant student group sponsored by the CPGB, is now one year old. Benjamin Klein reports on its growing strength

Freshers fairs provide a reasonably accurate insight into student politics and consciousness, and beyond this provide a rare opportunity for the far left to engage with masses of students, potentially for the first time in their lives. Although some are far more interested in ?freebies?, paintball weekends with the TA or cheap drink offers in these increasingly commodified affairs, there is still a huge space for political ideas and campaigns.

In a vast improvement on last year, reflecting the steps forward we have made organisationally, Communist Students have been able to intervene at fairs all over the country, with stalls in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Cardiff, London and Leicester.

The response we received varied and was dependent not only on the particular politics of the main body of students at each university, but also on the manner of our intervention. Comrades in Sheffield, for example, were able to run a stall for the entirety of the introductory week and sign up around 40 new members. They combined this with a well-attended public meeting with an introduction by the CPGB?s Mark Fischer and CS comrade Mohsen Sabbagh.

Elsewhere comrades worked hard in distributing copies of the newly-printed Communist Student which was warmly received - particularly by other sections of the student left, even though their organisations had been subjected to a stinging critique in James Turley?s review.

Integral to our work promoting CS was, of course, building student contacts for the crucial solidarity campaign, Hands Off the People of Iran. As the only student left organisation that currently supports Hopi, it is all the more important that CS comrades look to bring this campaign onto the campuses. As a result of our intervention north of the border, Yassamine Mather will address the Edinburgh University Socialist Society next week, and more meetings are planned across the country. These will not merely be content with raising the political profile of this campaign, but will look to create ad hoc student committees across the universities building for the Hopi conference in December.

CS has proposed that we debate the Alliance for Workers? Liberty?s David Broder at the annual gathering of the Education Not For Sale network with a view to persuading supporters of this AWL-dominated group to get involved in building Hopi. We will also be looking to do some joint meetings with the Socialist Party?s Socialist Students, who have expressed some interest in Hopi.

The approach of the rest of the left within these fairs is quite revealing about how these organisations are functioning and looking to gain influence within the student movement.

Student Respect, for example, despite being prominent in universities such as SOAS or Manchester, was hardly to be seen. In most places the Socialist Workers Party comrades were there as the SWP, although this did vary from university to university. Going by its intervention at freshers? fairs at least, it seems that the SWP is acting with the view that Respect now has a very limited shelf life. Not that SWP comrades would come out and say that openly though.

Student Broad Left, ?masters in the black arts of sectarian manoeuvring, careerism and opportunism?, preferred to stick to funnelling students through front campaigns such as Student CND or Hands Off Venezuela. Indeed this is fairly common practice on the student left, with the AWL pushing its soft left and uncontroversial No Sweat project.

We reject this practice. Our approach to political work is not to hide behind fronts or to pretend to be nice social democrats. We are nice revolutionaries and look to challenge students by arguing that it is Marxism and working class socialism that have the answers to the world?s problems - sweatshops and all. Currently, this approach has a greater resonance amongst ordinary students than amongst the student groups of the British left, for whom it is anathema.

Within our first year we have made some very good progress and must look to build on this. This necessitates an openly self-critical and honest approach to what we have done and still need to do. In the face of the possible meltdown of Student Respect and the narrow and dull alternatives offered by the other left sects, the work that Communist Students are doing is now more important than ever.