Youth in revolt Socialist party national youth meeting discuss perspectives

This weekend I attended the socialist party’s national youth meeting in London. It was a whole weekend of debate, discussion and the way forward. Around 80 members of the party attended in a cold wet February weekend and a great level of political understanding was felt by all. The Saturday afternoon was kicked off by Hannah Sell the deputy general secretary of the socialist party who lead off quite rightly on the international global struggle against the global economic crisis and the catastrophic social disasters which have followed from that. Namely the huge levels of unemployment with over 50 million now unemployed in the OECD nations the most prosperous apparently is surely a huge indictment of this rotten capitalist system we live under. Hannah brilliantly outlined the global situation of course she couldn’t go into every country issues but gave a really good broad overview on the global economic crisis and the horrific facts and figures behind that. It has been said that this is the new norm now whilst many workers and even capitalists have been hoping that things will go back to “normal” sometime soon if we just tighten our belts is looking even more unlikely than ever and many are starting to think this is it unless we organise and change society. So this was the basis of these weekends’ meetings getting young people who are deeply angry at the government and the system too wanting direction, a hope and a strategy to fight back. Youth fight for jobs and the socialist party a long with Socialist students can play a vital role in the coming period with our ideas showing the working class which route to take. A really good wide ranging discussion then followed with many comrades coming in e with personal questions on the world situation on certain countries the question of the EU and our views towards it, Cameron’s Tories in a mess how long will the government last, role of new labour and a lot more personal experiences of workplace and student experiences. The later session of commissions was a choice of different sessions I attended a session on answering anarchists criticisms and the need for a revolutionary party I found this really interesting a lot of it I already knew but was a good defence of why we need a party by Sarah Sachs-Eldridge of who is a editor of the socialist our weekly paper. Not much was talked of in terms of anarchism sadly it would appear we don’t have a huge grasp of what they stand for it’d be fair to say but as I expected we know all too well about a revolutionary party which was fair enough I guess. The social was excellent a lot more discussion and drinks On Sunday we had a session on more youth matters focusing on our work with youth fight for jobs introducing our new campaign “sick of your boss” encouraging young workers to get in touch write articles and take on stunts and the like against the worst bits of your boss be them heavy handed or tight on breaks or whatever it could bring in a layer of angry young people we feel linking up with trade unions such as Unite on their community based membership could be useful. The trade unions need to get active with young people organise the youth show them they can fight back and the union will support them. So many still dont know what a union is and others are put off by them so much much more is needed to be done by us and the trade union movement to give young people a future. The socialist party is a revolutionary socialist party fighting for socialism linking the day to day struggles to the need to change society so in the afternoon we had sessions on how we can recruit members, write a leaflet, organise a picket line/protest, public speaking and writing an article for the paper. I attended recruiting and organising in a protest all very interesting discussions and great points. I was glad to see comrades getting fully involved and contributing to the debates and I personally found them very useful for the struggle ahead. Its now time for us to take our ideas out there and fight for the socialist society we all so badly want but more importantly need!