 Hello comrades and welcome back to Marxist Voice, the podcast of the Communist. And we're now on to episode seven of the Towards the Revolutionary Communist Party series. There's only two weeks to go until the founding Congress and with students across Britain heading back to campuses this week and next week, we're going to be focusing in this episode on the question of organising on campuses, how RCP branches can reach out to students, recruit them, organise them and crucially as well turn out towards the wider class struggle. So as always, I'm your host, Jack Tai Wilson. And today we're joined by Fiona Lali, who's a member of the Executive Committee of the soon to be RCP and a member of the Campaigns Department, as well as Lubna Badi, who's also a member of the Campaigns Department as well. How's it going guys? Hiya, not bad. You've been up too much this week. How's it going preparing for the Congress? Yeah, well, as you said, we're only a couple of weeks out now. So all roads lead to Congress. Main things we've been focusing on are just the political preparation for that, making sure everyone's discussed all the documents and thinking about how they want to contribute to bring their recent experience in the branches to the whole party. And how about you, Lubna? Yeah, same. There's a great bus going around the organisation. I just had a phone call as well today with a comrade from Brighton. They have a great launch event for the RCP prepared for this weekend. I've been posturing around town and you know, firing for it. So yeah, it's all looking really up. Sounds great. Sounds great. So yeah, let's just jump straight into things then. The first thing I want to ask to sort of lay, to set the scene, so to speak, is what is the situation facing young people and in particular students today? Either of you want to go first? Yeah. I mean, obviously we know that young people have only experienced a crisis basically in their lifetime. They have seen obviously like the the war going on at the moment in in Palestine, but there are also all sorts of other issues on their minds, you know, like how what the job prospects even looks like with the with the current deep crisis in Britain, to the housing crisis, right? To the climate crisis, there's like basically crisis on every every front. So obviously, their their future is now very uncertain. And especially, you know, how does that look like, you know, for future generations is all very unclear at the moment. And we have seen, you know, the eruptions of mass movements across across the world and in Britain as well, you know, around the climate, around racism, right with, say, Black Lives Matter, also sort of via big, big eruptions essentially of anger in Britain. And yeah, we can we can see that in every aspect. And of course, in education as well, right? Like, it's literally schools are crumbling, as we know, with all of the, you know, terrible underfunding of education. And now with the universities, like their massive layoffs announced in various places, you know, like Norwich and Gorsemouth also announced 130 compulsory redundancies as well, department closures in Sheffield and others places. There are even our talk about basically merging universities to basically keep them afloat, right? So this is this is like all a backdrop for for a huge, yeah, all of the sort of, you know, certainty that we had in the past is all just taken away. So of course, people are going to question the system, basically. Yeah, it seems like, yeah, the lives that students have these days is no life at all. You're saddled with debt for for the rest of your life, basically to face a declining quality of education with the staff that are burned out and then depressed. And on top of that, you also have the student housing crisis as well, which is reaching unparalleled proportions. There's a shortage of hundreds of thousands of beds forcing students to go into the private rental sector, dodgy landlords, mold, all of this sort of stuff, often having to commute more than an hour to get to their universities and so on. And yeah, there seems to be no real solution to this. The universities are facing a funding crisis, all of these different things. So yeah, it's no surprise really that a lot of people are turning towards radical looking for radical alternatives, like communism. If you want to, is there anything you'd like to add? Yeah, actually, you know, based on what you just said, it made me think, you know, there's so much going on in the world today, big fundamental, almost existential threats to life to humanity, to society and questions of war, things that may be in the past, at least for young people in this country in Britain felt like a far off abstract thing that maybe they read about in history, or, you know, saw in movies or something like this. But now is becoming a much more real issue in their lives one, because wars cause inflation, they cause a lot of direct impact at home. But not only do you have these huge geopolitical crises unfolding, then in their literal day to day life when they're going to universities, they're also seeing smaller degrees of this same problem, like this massive underfunding that's causing mergers and universities and stuff that Lubna was just talking about. And basically what I'm kind of drive out is that every single plane of people's lives, they're seeing political crisis and economic crisis. And that has an impact on consciousness. And there's no one out there offering any kind of, you know, solution. In the past, you had people like Jeremy Corbyn, who were a bit of a reference point, but that Jeremy Corbyn hasn't been the leader of the Labour Party for a number of years now, and isn't a reference point for 18 year olds, 19 year olds going to university at this point. So actually, what we're finding when we're on campus is that the young people meeting us today are already saying, yes, I'm a communist. They're already saying there is something deeply wrong with capitalism. And they want to they want to know what our solution is. I think that brings us quite nicely then to the next question I'd like to ask. Yeah, which is with all that in mind, what has our organization, the soon to be revolutionary Communist Party? I'm sick of saying soon to be, I can't wait until it becomes the revolutionary Communist Party. What have we been doing in the past periods to connect with young people on university campuses? Yeah, so just going off of that, I mean, the Marxist Student Federation has existed for at least 10 years now, I want to say, which we set up in order to meet the young people out there in society that we thought already did have an interest in Marxist ideas. And, you know, in our organization, in our in our party, it's very important that we win people over on the basis of the ideas themselves. And so we have always placed a massive emphasis on putting on high quality, theoretical discussions going over the basics, the fundamentals of Marxism, from historical materialism to philosophy to economics, as well as analyzing current events and, you know, past revolutions, for example. And the Marxist Student Federation has built itself up over a number of years, precisely through this. I think when we started, we had maybe three, three, I was gonna say 10. Okay, a handful. Okay, there you go. I'm exaggerating. We had a handful of societies. And now we've got a presence at over 50, well around 50 campuses across the UK. And we've only been able to build that through paying attention to to Marxist theory. Because when people are questioning the system, they want serious answers that strike right to the heart of the matter. And that is what our experience over 10 years has shown us. And in that time, we've also learned how to apply those ideas to the real events that are taking place in society. 10 years ago, there weren't as many events, there weren't as many wars unfolding, for example, or even revolutions, certain revolutions over the last couple years across the world in places like Sudan, for example. And so now, I would just say it's easier for us to connect Marxist theory with what's unfolding around us, because you can point to so many different crises unfolding all across the world. And the other thing that that's given us is a real solid defense of Marxism in what we would describe as an alien milieu in that the what do you mean by that the universities are extra terrestrial universities are are a hotbed for alien class ideas. And these are ideas that actually reflect bourgeois thought and bourgeois pessimism because capitalism is in a period of decline. And that's kind of wrapped up and masked in left language. And this is kind of how we see postmodernism, which is really concentrated in the university field. And so the Marxist societies are our first line of defense against that and in time to trying to educate the people most interested in revolutionary ideas and a revolutionary way to change society. And okay, well, what is the philosophy that you need in order to actually do that? Because you're not going to get it from the from the universities. Is there anything you'd like to add to that, Lebna? Yeah, no, I think that last point is very important. I mean, we have always sort of say proudly stood firm on the theory of Marxism. That's that's sort of like our, I don't know how to say it. Yeah, yeah. How we have, you know, built from scratch, basically. But that's also what sharpens us up, right, is to always be able, you know, in a friendly way, just like, you know, have these conversations about the fundamentals because they are precisely what distinguishes us from anything else. And, you know, when you want to intervene, you know, in actually changing society, you do have to have a good understanding of where all of these questions come from, because often, you know, students would come to us, you know, angry about the world, right, but angry also about specific questions, whether it's like women's oppression, or the climate question, or racism. And of course, from academia, there is often the, you know, the idea, say, of identity politics or postmodernism and, you know, things like that. So we do have to engage in that discussion. And that, in turn, you know, say builds up, you know, our members as well in understanding how to, you know, connect our ideas, our program to actually, you know, taking part actively, you know, in the fight against against oppression and all of these issues, which of course, fundamentally is a class question, right? And that's what we bring out in all of our meetings, in all of our discussions, which is often, you know, some blood over, you know, by academia. And we put that basically at the forefront of everything, really. Yeah, well, I think that leads us on quite nicely to a question that we've had in from a listener to the podcast. And just before we get into that, just to remind us all of our listeners at home, that if you have a question, or a report, or anything you'd like to say, and have us respond to you on this podcast series, then please feel free to send those in at communist.red forward slash right. We'd love to hear from you. And yeah, we've actually got a few questions to respond to you on this episode, but we'll start with one from a comrade in East London. So I'll just play that now. Hello comrades, my name is Ben from the Whitechapel branch and I'm a student at Queen Mary University. We've had a lot of engagement on campus with our paper sales and stalls, where people who already have an understanding of communism come up and have discussions with us. And some people, although it may be few, who come to us and try and learn about what communism is. I feel like there's a lot of potential low in people who might not understand what communism really is. So what type of topics and discussions can we have in branch to engage the issues that a lot of young people have in our days? Thanks very much for sending that question in, Ben. So yeah, what do you guys think? What kind of topics can we have, not just in our RCP branch meetings, but also publicly as the Marxist societies and the communist societies, to attract young people, to explain to them our perspectives, our ideas and so on? What do you think? Well, I mean, it's a good question. This is of course something that often gets asked and raised. I mean, first of all, it's a very concrete thing, right? You do have to think about what would sort of engage people the best way, you know, at your campus. Of course, keep an eye on the ground, like an ear to the ground to basically what is of interest, you know, to the people around you, also people who attend your meetings quite regularly and might ask, you know, to know more about particular topic. So it is a very, very concrete question. And we have to stay flexible, right? I mean, I know in some places they have put on meetings on the climate or British perspectives, or about whatever is sort of relevant. For example, if there are like, you know, say, you know, layoffs, as we mentioned before, at your university, then maybe you can organise something around that, right? And discuss why the university is heading towards bankruptcy or issues like this and link it basically to the overall crisis of British capitalism. But yeah, the point is, is that the content of our meetings, whatever question you discuss, whether it is, as we mentioned, you know, the climate or university or any of these issues, it's not just to analyse them, right? Like we're not academics, we're not just, you know, sitting around and saying, yes, that's a problem because of this and that reason and then go home, you know, like the point is, is that we go into depth about how this actually links, you know, fundamentally to the system. And therefore, what is the best way to connect our ideas in our programme and not understanding, you know, to, to, you know, the wider student layer, but also, for example, to the staff, right? If it's for example, about the layoffs or anything like that. And therefore, how can we actually organise ourselves to, to change that, right? To take part in, in the class struggle? That's what it means also to be a communist, right? Like that's, that's like you, if you were going to, you know, leave university grounds, you're still a communist, right? You are participating in that struggle. So you come together to organise and to think about what way forward, right? And you're trying to bring more and more people into that. So you do have to keep an eye out to what they would find interesting and what also radicalises people around you, yeah, to talk about. I mean, I can, there is also a really interesting report actually from Lancaster. And they mentioned that they had a bit of a say, a lull, you know, a moment of like, not getting much attraction. But one of the fundamental points as well is, it's not just the topic alone, you obviously have to build for it, right? And Lancaster did it in a very dynamic way, like going into their lectures and doing a lecture shout out. I think they did a meeting about the climate and about women and, you know, things like that. And they just, you know, stood at the lecture, did a whole speech about why this is such an important topic and why they should come to the meeting to discuss this. They also did speeches like on campus ground about, you know, sort of like getting that engagement about the topic and talking to people about it and bringing them to the meeting. And this result is in a few people basically joining the branch because of that. And yeah, so it's not just about the topic alone. You have to be an active dynamic branch as well to really get people engaged with what you have to say, basically, and get them excited to come to the meeting and discuss further with you. So yeah. Yeah, anything you'd like to add, Fiona? Yeah, I think this is an important point because there's so much in society that we could analyze from a Marxist perspective and have a really nice, interesting discussion about, I'm trying to think of an example, maybe like your favorite TV show or your favorite film, of which we could have lots of good chats Marxist analysis, breaking bad or something like this. I'm sure they're out there and I'm sure they're very interesting. But that's not really going to aid us in our task of building a revolutionary organization that can fight to change the world. That doesn't mean we've got nothing to say about questions on art and culture. Actually, we do have a lot to say and have had meetings on these topics in general from a general point of view. But niche specific interest is not what we want to focus our Marx society or communist society meetings on. And this is also linked to what Lubner just said about how we then build for those meetings, right? Which is that we run recruitment stores on campus. We go door knocking, we do lecture shout outs. And when we meet people, we say, are you interested in Marxist ideas? Are you interested in understanding the state? And then we've got to connect that with something real in life, or a real event that has taken place. For example, recently, when George Galloway won the the election in Rochdale, and quickly after that, Rishi Sunak felt the need to come out on this stadium, stadium on a podium. Sorry, it wasn't a stadium. You wouldn't get how many people. It was just a podium of, you know, press people, journalists. So he stood outside number 10 and, you know, made a big speech about the threats to democracy. And all of this was because someone won an election that they didn't want to win through completely democratic measures. But it was something that they didn't really like. And that reflects something to do with the state, actually. And also democratic rights today under capitalism. Now, Marxist have a very clear idea about the role of the state, how it arises, how it is wielded by the capitalists. But we also understand there can be splits, even within the state in different moments. All of this stuff is relevant and questions about George Galloway and Rochdale are likely to be on people's minds. So our job is to connect with that and show how the weapon, show what the weapon of Marxist theory gives us, which is understanding a way to navigate the class struggle and educate our own members as a result. But I think that the way we build for these meetings and then the ideas within them are two very important aspects of what it means to do RCP work on campus, I would say. And also just to say, like we've noticed, as we said, like more and more people are radicalized. So it also, it now is the time to really proudly and boldly proclaim Oh my God, proclaim yourselves as the communists on campus and get that. Like we get so much like response and people coming to us just wanting to ask about it wanting to get to know us basically. And that has definitely increased, I would say over the couple of years, you know, that we've done this work. So we are basically, for that reason, are just bolder than we've ever been before, because we see that there is so much interest and so much to gain now about, you know, just being real like an active communist, you know, fighting organization on campus, basically. Now, all of what you've been saying there is is very good. And I think it really highlights that Marxist theory isn't something abstract or lifeless or something that we talk about just out of historical curiosity or to sound clever or something like that. There are so many events going on around us. And I guarantee that for every single event that takes place, someone like Lenin or someone like Marx or Engels has written something which deals with the very essence of this question. I'm thinking in particular one of the branches that I follow up is in the Northwest is considering putting on a meeting about the events with Iran and Israel in the Middle East and so on. And it's part of the political preparation for that. We're discussing Lenin's right things on war. There's this pamphlet called Socialism and War. And it really gets to the heart of the matter, the nature of imperialist war, why wars are happening under capitalism. And most importantly, the Communist way forward, what kind of program communists should have when faced with these questions, should we adopt pacifist phrases like, oh, you know, we need to have international diplomacy and all that sort of stuff. Or do we point it out the need for revolutionary class struggle? So yeah. And I think as well as that, obviously, yeah, current events are something that should be used as a hook for a lot of these meetings. But at the same time, a lot of young people are interested in learning about things like the Russian Revolution, what Lenin really stood for. And yeah, of course, we are running the year of Lenin campaign right now. We've got, you know, in defensive Lenin, the book out right now we've got, you know, magazines, pamphlets and so on, which deal with various aspects of Lenin's life and ideas. So these are all things that we could be using to prepare for these meetings and then topics that we could be discussing as well. So yeah, anything else on this question? I wish you move on to the next one from Leah in Lancaster. Hi, I'm Leah from the Lancaster District. Recently there have been occupations in universities across the country with demands relating to housing or Palestine. How could we intervene in these sorts of campaigns? And should we even start our own? Thanks very much for sending that in, Leah. And yeah, what are your guys thoughts? Yeah, this is a very good question. And as Leah pointed out, occupations have been happening quite a lot actually in the last couple of weeks, six weeks, two months, particularly over the question of Palestine. Now occupations, I mean, we've been involved in many occupations over the years, some very big and some, to be honest, quite small, over various different issues that cropped up on campuses. And, you know, occupations are an important tactic. They play a certain role in the movement and in student movement in particular. And they have done historically as a way for students to try and force, you know, university management to, you know, come to the negotiating table or to, you know, raise certain demands. Because as as pointed out, I think we'll cover a little bit later on in the podcast, students, you know, aren't the exact same as workers in terms of the role that they can play in halting production. They can't hold production by themselves as students. And therefore, for us, the goal of any occupation that students start should be also to involve the workers in the university and to bring students and staff together and raise demands that broadens that occupation outward. I think this is very important because unfortunately, it is the case that in a lot of student occupations, there can be quite an inward looking approach from some of the people involved in it. And this comes from initially, the desire to keep the occupation to people who they know they can trust and to keep things going. And unfortunately, what that results in is an occupation for the sake of an occupation rather than being connected to very clear demands. What we are interested in when looking at an occupation, deciding, you know, if we're going to get involved in the role we're going to play, is what are the demands of this occupation? And how can we broaden it out and make it wider? I would say not even just to the other staff in that university, but beyond the campus itself and looking to workers in the town that that university is in. Very often, the problems, the conditions that either students or staff in that university are facing are problems or conditions that are shared by other workers. And if you widen it out, then you're much more likely to run an effective campaign. And so what we've got to look at is what does this politically represent? But of course, we support occupations and we have been involved in many of them over the years. But we're very interested in specifically, what is our occupation for? Because unfortunately, in some places, it kind of becomes quite an amorphous bubble actually of niche particular interests. And then the discussions that are held inside those occupations are not related to the struggle itself. I think that's a mistake. And the way to have a successful occupation is to do so with clear, ultimately bold socialist demands, which are the sort of demands that we would raise and put forward. Can you give any examples that would relate to university finances or Palestine or housing or anything like that? Yeah, what kind of demands would we raise? In a lot of university occupations that we have been a part of, we want to raise the issue of free education, which is one that concerns students. But this also links to the question of staff because it's related to one, how the university is run in particular, but also wider questions in society. For example, one demand that is important for students to raise is to open the books. As was mentioned at the start and a lot of universities now you're having departments that are being shut down specific courses that are being taken away or shut staff members who are being made redundant, a whole host of things and they're doing this on the grounds that they have to make cuts and that they can't afford things. Or for example, you know, they're raising the price of student accommodation and various different things. And so we say, OK, we'll open the books and prove it to us. And often or if you're able to then look at the books, probably what you'll find is that they're spending a lot of money on vice chancellors, salaries, huge vanity projects where they're building just, yeah, big kind of strange buildings. And what else do they do? Contractors as well. Contractors, all of this. And so opening the books is an important demand to raise in that context. But not just that. Another demand that we raise ultimately is for student and staff control over the university itself, democratically run, right? A point that we often make is that who has the best interests of the students and the staff? And also beyond that, who knows how to make the university better? It's not the management who sit far removed from the actual conditions of students in terms of how they're learning and what they're learning or the staff whose job it is is to try and create a good environment for students to learn and then actually do that teaching and do that communicating. The student staff know best how that university should be run. So that's another important demand that that we would raise. For example, during the COVID pandemic, there was a lot of there was a lot in the student movement. There was rent strikes that cropped up that we were very active in. And that was a really clear example of how the students and staff knew best what should be put into place in order to make COVID teaching possible or safe. If students were going to be on campus, for example, but you had a lot of examples of management or private student housing companies rushing crazy decisions trying to force students back into campus, just to trap them in student accommodation because they couldn't actually they were, you know, there was this idea that there would be blended learning. And then in a couple of places, the students arrived and found out there wasn't going to be any blended learning in terms of online and in person. And so we raised a lot of demands around that time about student staff control over the universities themselves. Yeah, thanks for explaining that Fiona. Is there anything you'd like to add to that Livna? Yeah, I mean, I think actually what we spoke about before, you know, like basically the importance of theory and how you said like everything that we've been through basically, or what we're witnessing has already been sort of like, you know, the tools have already been provided by Lenin and Chosky and all of that. Well, I would say like it actually also applies even on a small scale, right? Even on the in the sense of like occupations, like this is not a new thing. Occupations, as we have said, happened for decades, like at British universities. And we do have to not go, you know, the students active is they often just look at today, right at the now and just go into it because yeah, it's a method, it's a known method, you know, to basically use. But we do have to think about it's a little bit more tactically basically, like what is actually the best way of organizing an occupation that has the highest chance of getting your demands, you know, met basically. And we just know like from just looking at at successful occupations that in most cases, they are won by broadening them out and winning them over on the best demands that connects not just to the students, as we said, but to staff as well, and not just in one particular university, which of course is a great way to start, but across the country, right, because that would be such an immense blow, you know, to the government as well, to listen to, which of course is the benefit of like, you know, sort of being part of an organization like ours, it's the fact that you can raise your sights right on those like, you know, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's precisely what we have to offer, right, like if we go into new occupation, of course, we're there to support us and to help whoever, but also there to precisely raise the sides, just precisely speak about, you know, the importance of the correct demands of the politics, because all of that all of these tactics flow from politics, if your politics is a bit say, well, say limited, and you're looking at, you know, single issue sort of questions, then obviously you are going to tend to be a bit more inward looking, or not really seeing the potential that is out there. And we're precisely, you know, say no, there is a lot of potential, and it's a matter of building for it and connecting, you know, your program the best way possible with the wider student layer and stuff and everything. So yeah, that's what we do, basically. Yeah, I think that's a really, really good point. And all of this actually reminds me of a text written by Leon Trotsky, I think back in the 1930s, possibly, which is very, very useful, I think in terms of understanding how communists should connect the Marxist program with the real living, often partial struggles, you know, often they are around a single issue or a few issues, how to connect that program with the real living struggle. And that is a text called the Transitional Program, which I think all comrades and communists should read. It's very, very insightful. And yeah, if you want to get your hands on a copy of that, we do set it in the on the Wellbred Books store as part of our anthology called The Classics of Marxism, Volume One. Yeah, so you can find a link to that in the show notes of this podcast. And yeah, I think we'll move on to our next and final question to round things off, which is from Alex in Lancaster. Once again, we've got a Lancaster double billing today. So yeah, I'll play that now. Hi, comrades, it's Alex from the Lancaster District of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Historically, students have acted as a barometer for the mood in society. I mean, just a couple of years ago, they were leading the initial charge of many of the climate strikes when students were demanding for system change, not climate change. But students are obviously not going to be able to change the world by themselves. So the question is, what can the Revolutionary Communist Party do to reach the workers on and off campuses? Well, yeah, thanks very much for sending that in, Alex. Yeah, who wants to go first on that question? It's a very good question now, too. Yeah, as we said, like we are more than just a student society, right? Like we are a party where, you know, as we said, soon to be Revolutionary Communist Party. So if you were to join us, we're basically training you up and immediately turning you towards the class struggle, right? Of course, as a student, you have sort of the luxury of time so you can spend, you know, a lot of the time, you know, coming together and discussing these ideas, learning from history, understanding the theory. But of course, precisely for the reason, not, as I said, not an academic purpose, but precisely to prepare yourself for intervening in the class struggle. And that is there for for life. If you leave university, you're going to end up, you know, at a workplace somewhere. And you will have to carry those politics with you, right? And and see if you can build, you know, a branch or a cell at your workplace, or, you know, sell the paper to your colleagues and talk about, you know, what's going on, you're not, you're not, you know, not a communist anymore, you're precisely communist for life. And I think like one of the things is, is that if you are, for example, a student and and your branches involved with this or that, like, say, trade union question, then you're learning already so much, say, as a student about this, like, just to, I mean, Fiona can, can elaborate more on that. But for example, like our students say in Swansea and Cardiff have been really active with the Port Talbot, you know, closure, which I believe we've spoken, you know, before about, but that is, that is, of course, an immense learning curve, you know, to go through. Like our students have basically just gone to Port Talbot, did some door knockings, you know, spoken to the steel workers about disclosure. And it is like, you know, very important for them to really listen and to understand the conditions, you know, that workers are going through because this is precisely what they will almost like inherit, you know, this, this class struggle, this, this, this workers struggle, learn from them, but then also fires first, right, we can tell them about us, we can tell them about our organization, about our program and demands. And maybe they can, you know, be asking, you know, the workers to come and write for our paper, for example, you know, things like that. So it's a huge, like, you know, learning curve and experience as a student to be already drawn into the class struggle. So yeah, so that's of course, something that the RCP sort of like training up students to do. Anything to add Fiona? Yeah, look, what we are aiming to do is build branches of the RCP on campus. We aren't interested in building student societies for the sake of having student societies. We want to build a branch that can actually play an active role in fighting for the ideas of Marxism on campus, which will involve the educational meetings that we've spoken about, they're paying attention to theory, but also then being active when, you know, strikes take place on a university campus. And over the last five years, there have been a lot of strikes by the UCU in particular, which is a union that organizes a lot of academic staff on on campus. And we've been massively involved in strikes, organizing student staff solidarity on on campuses for for a number of years. And the point about being a part of a revolutionary organization is that, you know, because look, on different universities, you will find other people, other kind of student activists to, you know, want to play a role in, you know, fighting for workers' rights and things like this. But after a couple of years, they leave. And actually, universities are very aware of this. So they kind of have this approach, some of them, of we can just wait it out. We can wait out this little moment of student politics, because in one or two years, these people, this little generation of people have come through are going to move on. That's no good because that doesn't defend the gains if gains have been won in a particular strike or a particular campaign, for example. And so that's why for us, as I said, we're more than just a student society, but we're actually building branches of the Revolutionary Communist Party on campus, which is very important. Anyone can become a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. So long as they take on a class perspective, and students, when they join, the first thing we're going to do, yeah, is send them to or turn them to the workers, take them to the picket lines on their campus, but also in the town in order to broaden out their perspective on life. Having said that, this also comes from the fact, you know, in the past, students came from a much more middle class background. That is true. That's a fact. In order to go to university, you have to have a certain standard of living, maybe, should we say. But that is less and less the case. And students today, many of whom are workers themselves, actually, and have to work in order to sustain their time at uni. So it's not difficult to convince them of the need to take on a class perspective from that point of view. So yeah, build the RCP on campus, and you'll do that by educating people in the ideas of Marxism and then showing them how to use that in the class struggle itself, which is taking place right now on your campus and in your town. You've just got to open your eyes and look. Yeah, also another thing I was going to say is, yes, we have been really active with DSU strikes whenever they are happening. We were there, you know, every day whenever they were, you know, having a picket line and we would go and of course speak to them and stuff like that. But you can see they really appreciate that. They really appreciate students being involved and helping out and thinking about these conditions and these questions. And there was even a report like of Birmingham where the USU has asked our students to come and chair and host a meeting for the USU, right? Like because they were so impressed with politically what we had to say. And you can see that this is this is like a real sort of your connection that is really important because they also understand that the staff and students, as we said before, share a common interest, right? Like to just do away with this marketization of education with all of this underfunding, with the closures of departments and layoffs, which of course will in turn also affect their quality of education, as well as the livelihoods, you know, in of the of the staff and their families or anything like that. And yeah, that is the that is the positive role basically that students can play, you know, in sort of aiding the class struggle and in aiding the course of the workers yet on campus, but also off campus, right? Whatever way we can. OK, well, I think that wraps things up. But one last question, I guess I can ask to either of you who wants to answer it. What can members of the RCP who are on campuses right now do immediately after they've finished listening to this podcast to prepare for the final term of the university year? Yeah, look, the most important thing is that we get out there and find more communists and find more people to join the RCP. And we're going to do that by putting up the posters and are your communist posters doing stores, recruitment stalls, flyering, lecture shoutouts, door knocking. What we need people to do is raise the flag of the RCP on campus and say, look, the communists are here. And as we've said, there's people out there who already think that there's something wrong with capitalism. What they need is the the ideas in order to make that concrete and make their kind of, you know, abstract sense of I think I'm a communist into a real part of who they are. And the only way to make that real is if they're part of a communist party, which is what we're trying to build on campus. Thanks very much, Fiona. I think we'll maybe leave it there for this episode. But before you go, yeah, just a few quick announcements. So if you aren't already a member of the revolutionary Communist Party, but you agree with what we have to say on this podcast, then it sounds like you're a communist. So why not get organised with us? If you had to the link in the show notes of this podcast, you'll find our application form. If you send that in, we'll get in touch with you as soon as possible, either to put you in touch with your nearest branch or your nearest cell. Or if there isn't one near you, we'll give you the support and the resources that you need to try and set one up yourself. And if you're not ready to join quite yet, then why not support us in other ways? First of all, you can take out a subscription to our newspaper, the communist and our magazine, Indefensive Marxism, from as little as five pounds per month. And the money will go towards helping finance the revolutionary communist party and spreading the ideas of Marxism far and wide. And lastly, why not take it and lastly, why not donate to the party? If you had to the show notes of this podcast, you'll find a link to our donation page. We're currently trying to raise 20,000 pounds for the launch of the RCP. And we still have some way to go. So make sure you donate as much as you can and share this amongst your family, your friends, your co-workers, anyone who's sympathetic to the ideas of communism. And our Founding Congress is, as we've said, only less than two weeks away, I think. So if you're interested in coming along to the Founding Congress, we'd urge you to get in touch with us and get in touch with your nearest branch of the RCP and see if you can make it along to what promises to be a very historic event in the history of communism. So yeah, I think that's it for this episode. Thanks very much to our listeners for tuning in. And make sure you stay tuned to Marxist Voice for future episodes covering Marxist theory, revolutionary history, current events, and party building, brought to you by the Revolutionary Communist Party.