Leeds Socialist Students marks International Safe Abortion Day

Socialist Students members mark International Safe Abortion Day with a protest on Parkinson Steps – photo Iain Dalton

On Thursday 28th September, Leeds Socialist Students and affiliated groups came together to mark International Safe Abortion Day. As Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have not yet afforded their female citizens the right to legal abortion, Leeds Socialist Students placed this particular group of females at the forefront of their minds.

Eleanor Noyce, Leeds Uni Socialist Students

Speakers Amy Cousens, of the Women’s Lives Matter movement in Doncaster, and Tanis Belsham-Wray, member of the Socialist Party and former Women’s Officer at Leeds Trinity University, spent a few minutes discussing their involvement with the wider women’s emancipation movement. Amy spoke of the need to further change on a local level, highlighting the need for a more progressive approach of the Labour Council in Doncaster towards wider women’s issues, such as domestic violence.

Both Tanis and Amy spoke of the struggles undertaken by Irish women in their search for a legal right to abortion. It is possible to travel across the border receive treatment. However, at present, the NHS only covers the cost of abortion for Northern Irish women, and not for women travelling from the Republic of Ireland. Thus, thousands of women pay out of their own pockets to receive treatment. This right is fundamental: Leeds Socialist Students extends its solidarity not just to the women suffering across the water, but to women all over the world who have not yet been afforded this right.

Marching Against Student Loan Privatisation

Marching through Leeds University. Photo Chloe Soffe

The government plans to sell off student loans to private companies. To show our outrage, 50 students from Leeds marched around Leeds University and Leeds Metropolitan University, to raise awareness of the situation and get more students involved in the campaign.

Mary Finch, one of the organisers of the demonstration, explained the effects, after years of hard work, to then face extreme pressure to pay off high amounts of debt. Mark Taylor-Batty of lecturer’s union UCU expressed great support for us.

At the rally at Leeds Met, Amy Cousens called on the National Union of Students to bring students across the county together to fight this attack by calling a national demo.

This call was immediately seconded by Piers Telemacque, NUS vice-president elect for society and development. Piers gave a passionate speech on the need to organise not just against the privatisation of student loans but to fight to defend education altogether.

TUSC candidate in Hyde Park and Woodhouse, Tanis Belsham-Wray, explained that the only way to defend education is for students to link up with staff as well as the wider trade union movement.

For many of us this was the first march we’d organised but we will keep fighting until we win.

Partial Victory in Leeds Trinity Canteen Campaign

A campaign at Leeds Trinity University College to re-open the canteen at weekends has gained a partial victory. The campaign started as a response to the shutting of the canteen at weekends in January, meaning that students in part-catered accommodation were unable to access hot food during the weekends. The Student Union launched a campaign against the closures and demanding the canteen to be re-opened which Socialist Student activists were involved in. Although the canteen hasn’t been re-opened at weekends, the management have conceded that from September, they will be providing hot food in another area of the University during the weekends.

Tanis Belsham-Wray, Leeds Trinity Socialist Students