One thing that shocked me when I moved to the UK from Eastern Europe roughly five years ago is how it is acceptable to be a communist supporter among young people here.

Even at Oxford, the number of people who think it’s a totally legitimate ideology is very high. Wolfson has organised a communism-themed bop, and Wadham JCR (sorry, Student Union) was going to vote on whether or not to fly the USSR flag to celebrate the end of World War II later this week. I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’m not kidding.

Let me reassure you – I do not intend to stage a protest and shut this bop down. I believe every JCR (or GCR for that matter) should be allowed to host whatever event they like and whilst I might find some of them objectionable, I don’t feel I’m in any position to tell people what to do.
What I find staggering, however, are the double standards so many people hold about the two great evils of the twentieth century, communism and national socialism.

Everyone at our university – I should hope – and the vast majority of people in this country would feel absolutely appalled, shocked and mind-blown if someone suggested to host a Nazi-themed bop or fly the Third Reich flag: and rightly so, of course. If someone were to upload a picture of Hitler or Mussolini wearing a party hat as their cover photo on Facebook, they would probably be reported to their college and disciplined. But turning Stalin into a fun, cuddly little creature is totally cool?

So many people at Oxford talk about no-platforming extreme views as shown by the reaction to the OSFL debates in Michaelmas last year and whilst I disagree with them, I would say they have a valid and intellectually defensible claim. What I can’t get my head around though is that after saying we shouldn’t platform Le Pen because she’s a fascist, they’re more than happy let the Oxford Marxist Society sign up members at Freshers’ fair.

They say it’s different, because communism is an ideology of liberation. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy this. The only reason why it’s become acceptable in the UK to be a communist is that the UK has never fought this poisonous ideology directly and has no direct experience of it. Go to the Czech Republic or Poland and you’ll be arrested for denying the crimes of the Soviet rule.

There actually are people at our university who want to fly a flag which symbolises a regime which killed around 20 million people, systematically used rape as a weapon in warfare, and targeted Jews, gay and disabled people in its killings. Flying it is neither cool nor hip: it’s beyond the pale.

Communism is not cool, and communist dictators are not bop costume material. When Prince Harry wore an SS uniform to a fancy dress party a few years ago, he was sent to Auschwitz to realise there are things one doesn’t joke about. I wonder whether it might be worth organising a trip to a few Siberian gulags.

While those of us shocked by the General Election result piece together what has happened, a new government is steadily working out what policies it will implement for universities and students. Some of these will be a continuation of existing or halted policies. The cuts to Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) which were delayed until 2016, with some changes coming in 2015, look like they will now go ahead. That means disabled students could have to fork out £200 for specialised equipment they need. Vince Cable has now left his post as Business Secretary, which puts a sale of the student loanbook back on the cards, something George Osborne said he was considering during his recent speech to the Confederation of British Industry.

The postgraduate loans system may now be introduced, chiefly a £10,000 loan for taught masters students. But this is capped at under-30s, and only covers part of the expenses. Taking out this loan would also add to the repayments many of us will be making as undergraduates. In other words, as a response to higher fees and debts deterring access to higher education, the government has prescribed – you guessed it – higher fees and more debts.

The big question is whether tuition fees for undergraduates will go up. It has become increasingly likely that the government is considering this, and William Hague, Conservative Leader of the House of Commons in the last Parliament, repeatedly refused to rule out a fee rise when asked. Whether the government is able to get through another fee rise will depend on the strength of the British student movement. If all non-Tory parties voted against higher fees (and the DUP and UKIP are likely to do just that) the government could only survive nine rebels from their own benches.

Given that five Tory MPs who rebelled against increasing fees in 2010 are still in Parliament, if students can cause enough trouble around the threat of a fee rise, especially in Tory-held student marginals like Derby and Southampton, then the government might not risk their chances over a move that would threaten both party unity and public image. Looking at the Lib Dems’ recent decimation at the polls, it is clear that the issue of student fees is one that resonates deeply with the student population and the public at large.

The final possibility is among the most worrying. The Conservative party has a long-held disregard for students’ right to organise, and for unions in general, so a fresh round of attacks on student unionism may be on the cards.

In 1972, Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher led an assault on the rights of students’ unions to campaign politically, which was defeated by NUS, and John Major brought it back in 1994, in what became the Education Act.

If higher fees are posited by the government, and then the student movement fights back, we may have a fight on our hands for our democratic rights too.

Last week’s election result was a disaster for the British Left, and the utter devastation that could be inflicted upon our public services, institutions and the British working class can now most likely only be held back by the benevolence of a few Tory backbenchers combined with the militancy of an anti-austerity movement that has been at best waning and at worst dead since 2012.

Labour supporters have come up with their competing theories as to what went wrong, all of which have some validity and clearly played a part in a defeat of unexpectedly crushing proportions. It has become clear that problems with Ashcroft’s polling, which over-estimated the Labour lead, the ‘shy Tory’ factor, and finally the scare tactics of Tories in England evoking the spectre of the SNP all combined to squeeze Labour’s vote.
In addition to this, in a dozen or so constituencies a break off to the Green Party and smaller left parties handed Cameron his majority by electing Tories at Labour’s cost.

But why did it go so badly for Labour? It’s true that ‘economic competence’, a battle Ed Miliband could never have won as soon as Labour lost that bankrupt argument in 2010, ate away in those crucial English marginals. Yet Labour’s problem was not just that we lost a few Tory votes off the edge, it was that our core voters didn’t turn out at all. Given a lacklustre manifesto where the genuine radicalism of Ed Miliband was held back by the influence of the ‘zombie Blairites’, who had come back to life after the death of New Labour to haunt the current party, Labour just didn’t inspire enough.

The way back for the Left in England is to look to Scotland, where a huge upsurge in working-class political participation has taken place. It’s true the SNP are not a left-wing party, and it’s also true that they have the backing of Rupert Murdoch (quite possibly because he knew they would all but destroy Labour north of the border), and that they are very soft on austerity. Yet by putting out a radical message, they tapped into years and years’ worth of popular discontent and feelings of disillusionment towards ‘the establishment’, which, unfortunately for Scottish Labour, meant them.

Labour’s problem is the Left’s problem. The party’s failure over not just the last five years but the last few decades to match the industrial decline of its heartlands with a newer and more innovative organising strategy has brought it to its knees. For all the New Labour talk of “we’re all middle class now”, there are many more people who feel the sting of Thatcherism through low wages, high rents, a repressive and uncaring welfare system, long queues at the foodbank or waiting times in the local hospital.
It’s Labour’s and the Left’s job now to tap into people’s anger, to organise them locally in campaigns against the social injustice they face, and translate that anger into a politics of the Left.

This election has been a referendum on a whole host of different issues. Whether or not services like universities, schools and the NHS should remain public or private. Whether or not unions still have anything resembling the right to strike.

Whether or not thousands of people continue to be driven from their homes under the bedroom tax. Or the extent to which immigration is seen as a positive or a chronic problem to be fixed. Labour or Conservative, millions of lives will be changed by this result. Some lives depend on the outcome.
But what gets lost during a General Election campaign are the lives and issues that the result will not affect. The issues on which there is an ugly consensus within the political establishment. This isn’t to say the election doesn’t matter. If I thought it didn’t, I wouldn’t have spent the whole of polling day campaigning for Labour in a marginal, along with all the other days I’ve spent knocking on doors for the party, from Glasgow to Brighton.
Take welfare, for example. It’s true the Tories have campaigned on a policy of cutting welfare by £12bn, while leaked plans reveal that would mean taking your pick of cuts between child benefit, housing benefit, or pensions. Labour have no such draconian policy. But they have accepted certain tenets of Tory welfare policy.

Labour has pledged to abolish jobseekers’ allowance for under 21s, maintain the use of benefit sanctions which leave unemployed people without any income, and even continue the appalling policy of ‘workfare’ – where people living on the pittance of unemployment benefit are forced to work for what can be as little as £53 a week. Labour’s welfare and employment policy is based on the same fundamentally toxic assumptions as the Tories – that welfare is a ‘problem’ to be ‘solved’ with hardship.

On tuition fees, Labour have still not pledged to repeal the terrible mistake they introduced in 1998. The first party to fail young people by trebling fees wasn’t the Liberals, but Labour in 2004. Even though Shadow Universities Minister Liam Byrne said he “would love there to be free education”, Labour is yet to agree to abolish the damaging market from higher education for good.

Labour’s support for the Tories on the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, an act which further criminalises Muslims and coerces our tutors to spy on us, should have attracted much greater condemnation from the party’s Left, and followed a long history of Labour’s encroachment on civil liberties dating back to the ‘War on Terror’.

This isn’t a call to ignore the elections, or politics, or the huge impact that last night’s result has had. But instead of lamenting or celebrating the result, we should get on with the only truly tried-and-tested means of pursuing social justice – we must organise.

In seven days’ time, millions of students will go to the polls – most for the first time. A traditionally solid demographic for the Labour Party, students this year are turning away from the established voice of opposition to other, smaller parties.

Millions more will simply not vote. In 2010, just 33 per cent of under-35s voted, compared to 64 per cent of over-35s. The millions of young voters who may desert Labour, by voting Green, SNP, or simply not turning out at all, could keep Ed Miliband out of Number 10, and hand the keys back to Cameron for another five years. So why are young people so keen to do that?

Under-25s have been growing increasingly disillusioned over the last 20 years or so, as the modern politics of spin has taken centre stage and trust in the mainstream parties has waned.

However, with the move of parties further left than Labour, this demographic has found new outlets for its concerns, many of which are social. Younger voters are much more likely to have social democratic instincts on key political questions. According to Guardian research in December, young voters were more likely to support immigration and the Human Rights Act, and a huge 19 per cent of them said they would vote Green.

The obvious risk for young people is that by voting for this new ‘anti-austerity’ alliance of Greens, Plaid and the SNP, then the Tories will get back in. My home constituency only has a Tory MP rather than a Labour one due to 2,000 Green voters five years ago.

The less obvious problem with these voting patterns is that this trio aren’t as left wing as you might think. The Greens membership may have doubled in a year, but their party turned on itself over the bin strike in Brighton, when the Green-controlled Council implemented huge pay cuts, and even Caroline Lucas protested. Sure, these were down to central government cuts, but let’s not pretend there has been a large campaign led by the Greens against those cuts.

Then comes the SNP. Since the SNP minority government first allied with the Tories to set a budget in 2008, a habit that, incidentally, they continued throughout their first term, Glasgow has lost £370m to their cuts, whilst the SNP have underspent their Holyrood budget by £444m. How can you make cuts, have a budget surplus, and still be “left wing”?

Meanwhile Angus, Perth & Kinross – all SNP councils – have seen their budgets increase. This isn’t anti-austerity politics, this is a government implementing austerity.

If you want to vote for a tiny radical party with no chance of winning, at least do it properly and vote for Left Unity or even TUSC – although I maintain that people should vote Labour to keep the Tories out. Voting for the Greens or the SNP will at this stage make a Tory government more likely – and you won’t even keep your “left wing” ideological purity by voting for them.

There is a major conflict in student unionism at the moment, between those who believe unions should be a simple barometer of their memberships’ mood, pale reflections to ‘represent’ some silent majority, and those who will their unions to fight for education, jobs, housing and to defend students.
The problem with the former of these is that it is an impossible project to represent the views of all seven million students in the UK. How could any single organisation, union or not, even attempt to undertake such a monumental task? And even if they tried, wouldn’t you just be left with a set of warring factions unable to agree on any policy?

The critics of the NUS focus on why their union doesn’t represent them individually, rather than reasoning that the NUS must take a position on issues, and that stance will inevitably exclude people. The NUS doesn’t often represent the views of students in UKIP, or even the Coalition parties, and I don’t think it should either.

To take the other, more politically focused view of representation, the NUS is defending students’ interests with its Liar Liar campaign to vote out those MPs who broke the pledge on tuition fees, almost all of whom are Lib Dems. What is the point in running a pledge campaign in 2010 to secure Lib Dem opposition to tuition fee rises if we don’t follow through? You can’t have a political system based on betraying hopes of free education and not expect to pay the consequences.

If we can’t fight the broken pledges of the Lib Dems, what should the NUS do? When Disabled Students Allowance was cut, the NUS fought and won. When our student loans were being sold off, the NUS fought and won. The problem with much of the NUS’s campaigning is that it doesn’t go hard enough on enough occasions. But some of its critics would like the NUS to shut down and focus on ‘student-only issues’, which apparently doesn’t include education cuts and tuition fees.

Lots of those who stand against the NUS and student unions want to have their cake and eat it. They want an NUS which represents everyone, but does no campaigning. They want an NUS which campaigns for students, but never criticises parties in power.

If your problem is that a political body that claims to represent you is too left-wing for your liking, then first of all, tough, and secondly, why don’t you bother to get involved?

Finally, for those who think the NUS is either a hotbed of dangerous radicals, or a training ground for Labour careerists: winds are changing. The new leadership for 2015/16 is well to the left of the Toni Pearce ilk, and Labour hold none of the leadership positions next year.

Campaigns like Liar Liar aren’t only useful and likely to continue to defend students’ interests, but they also spur a militancy in campaigning that will really shake things up.

We need more than a reading week – we need less work.

While a lot of us have simply grumbled about ‘5th Week blues’ again this term, the OUSU Women’s Campaign have launched a great project called ‘5th Week Free’, arguing for a reading week to be placed in the middle of term. It’s an idea that came from Cambridge, which like our own university suffers from a serious problem of overworking students. A reading week would give us that much-needed respite in a schedule that can just jump from essay to essay with nothing in between.

But this solution is only surface deep. A reading week is framed as allowing people to ‘recover’, but what we ought really be considering is why we should be put under such stressful conditions that we need a recovery in the first place?

The current Oxbridge system, or rather the intensity of it, is the problem. It’s a curious predicament. Many of us spend years working to get here for a world-class education, only to arrive and be expected write a theory of the Russian Revolution after two days of reading. Some subjects can end up with as much as 16 essays in only eight weeks. We’re being trained to produce substandard bullshit, and we scarcely have time to think.

While in the short-term we need a reading week, in the long-term we need to be looking to cut the workload too.

A lot of people would complain we are ‘diluting the Oxford experience’, but it’s hard to defend an educational system so old it was used to train colonial officials with only a little modernisation now and again. Halving the number of essays for humanities students, and thereby doubling the time we would actually have to think about each one, would doubtless see the level of rustications plummet.

There is surely a connection between people’s mental health and the Oxford workload. Mental health is poorly understand, and often wrongly treated as a wholly internal process, just something an individual goes through. Yet mental health problems can be brought on or exacerbated by extremely stressful surroundings – and a university environment where we are required to be constantly churning out essay after essay is a very good example.
I can imagine huge resistance to cutting the amount of work we are assigned – and not just from tutors. The biggest obstacles to modernisation and change in this university can often be the students themselves.

After all, 75 per cent of students here (myself not included) voted against allowing subfusc to become optional. In other words, allowing other students the choice to experience Oxford at their own ease came at too high a price for the majority.

Reduced work would give us the opportunity to explore our subjects more deeply, and give us the space to relax and feel more comfortable at Oxford. There is nothing stopping it except for entrenched institutional conservatism.

The nominations committee of the University of Oxford has proposed the counterterrorism expert Louise Richardson as the University’s next Vice-Chancellor. The OxStew understands that expertise in terrorism and security matters was a key criterion for the committee, in light of recent ‘terrorist’ acts by gangs of left wing anti-austerity students. These acts include holding protests every now and then, endless meetings, and the aggressive use of jazz hands.

Jason Akehurst, an expert in ‘terrorism’, told The OxStew, “Ever since the government started trying to pass the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, everyone has been scared shitless. Universities across the country have started seeing terrorists everywhere – so much so that they have started redefining what terrorism actually is.

“The University of Oxford is perceived as being particularly at risk, due to the presence of ISIS at the University which authorities are concerned is radicalising students by spreading their dangerous hipster ideology.”

The last straw really was when students started questioning Andrew Hamilton’s salary. How students could criticise the pay gap between the highest and lowest paid at the University is beyond comprehension. Clamping down on any students who question this really ought to a priority for the next Vice-Chancellor.”

The Oxstew understands that the University is also currently considering the purchase of several drones and Kevlar gowns, in order to bolster the University’s security capability. In addition, documents have been leaked to The OxStew revealing that Richardson plans to convert Exam Schools into a new secret service headquarters for the Oxford University Security Service (OUSS) if appointed, which, yes, is a real thing and, no, is not the Oxford University branch of the Waffen SS.

Giles Ashwood, a privately educated communist and ‘student activist’, commented, “It’s no surprise that we have the University on the run, considering all the protests we’ve organised recently that are attended by the same very small group every time. If we just organise one more poorly attempted demo, the University will have no choice but to give us what we want.”

“Maybe the University has concluded that we’re terrorists as a result of our excessive use of militaristic language when it comes describing things, despite us all being anti-war vegans. We’ve been talking about ‘fighting’ and ‘resistance’ against austerity for years, and yet only now is how hip and radical we are being fully recognised. In any case, there’s only one place this battle will be won and that’s the streets!”

A spokesperson for somebody commented, “I am delighted that Louise Richardson has been nominated as Vice-Chancellor and hope that she will continue this great university’s tradition of having shit library hours on weekends. Being extremely well paid is both challenging and rewarding and I wish her luck in her new role.”

On Thursday evening, St Catherine’s College JCR unanimously passed a motion to purchase a guillotine, as part of the JCR’s ongoing dispute with the College. The motion follows an earlier decision by the JCR to launch a revolution against College, in response to a dispute over how the JCR’s budget is managed. The OxStew understands that the JCR President brought the motion following thorough research into the range of guillotines available, by searching for the term ‘guillotine’ on Amazon. The guillotine, which requires self-assembly, was purchased by the JCR by spending all the money that other JCRs have so far donated to their cause.

St Catz JCR President Jack Hampton commented, “We thought that this would be the most appropriate way to spend the money that JCRs have so far donated to us. Let me reassure all those concerned that we have absolutely no intention of paying back the money loaned to us by other JCRs.”

However, Hampton denied that the JCR planned on using the guillotine to behead people any time soon. Hampton told The OxStew, “If we were to use it to execute anyone, it would have to pass in a GM first. Having a revolution is no excuse not to respect JCR procedure. The purchase of the guillotine is just a precautionary measure; at the moment we only plan to use it to cut pieces of A3 paper into two sheets of A4 paper. “

We’re also currently in negotiations with a theatre company to buy some spare props and costumes from a recently finished production of Les Misérables,” Hampton added. (The OxStew would like to remind its readers that Les Misérables is not, in fact, set in the French Revolution, but rather the Paris Uprising of 1832.) When The OxStew asked Hampton whether frivolous expenditure along similar lines might be why the College may be seeking to take tighter control of JCR expenditure, Hampton responded that if that was the College’s opinion they would have a good use for the guillotine after all.

Meanwhile, many members of the St Catz JCR are discussing whether to adopt a policy of socialism in one JCR or seek to spread the revolution to other JCRs. The OxStew understands that self-identifying Stalinist and Trotskyist factions are already arising within the JCR, as a result of this debate. One self-identifying rugby lad commented, “Who gives a fuck?”.

In other news regarding post-revolutionary life at St Catz, The OxStew understands that at a recent dinner knives were initially withheld from students until the high table had been seated. When asked whether this was to ward off any potential assassination attempts of College officials, the College declined to comment.

Russell Brand was unavailable to comment.

St Catz JCR President Jack Hampton is currently urging all students who are sympathetic towards the JCR’s cause to purchase T-shirts reading ‘Jack for OUSU’ to fund their campaign. Students also wishing to contribute to the JCR’s hardship fund can donate by visiting ready4jack4chang.org.

The OxStew understands that a prominent Conservative at the University is to propose a motion at OUSU Council to hold a referendum on whether to make owls compulsory in exams. The proposed motion also seeks to mandate OUSU to campaign for all students to be required to buy wands from Ede & Ravenscroft in order to attend matriculation. Matriculation is the ceremony in which students formally enter the University of Oxford.

The OxStew spoke exclusively to Matthew Jacques, the conservative in question, who intends to bring the motion. Jacques commented, “Only by allowing students to bring owls with them to their finals will we convince Oxford students to wear subfusc forever. My hope is that Oxford students will be so preoccupied with preventing owl droppings getting on their exam papers that they will never have the temerity to question the existence of subfusc ever again.

“I’d also like to highlight the very strong access arguments for introducing owls into the exam regulations. Everyone wants to go to Hogwarts, and if we can make Oxford more like Hogwarts, applications from all schools will increase dramatically.

“The world of Harry Potter is essentially a celebration of Britain’s elite educational institutions anyway. By invisibly cloaking ourselves in the mythology of the Harry Potter series, we could continue our quaint and outdated traditions forever.”

When confronted by The OxStew about whether this was a cynical attempt to manipulate the emotions of the thousands of Oxford students who are fans of the Harry Potter series, Jacques declined to comment. Since word of Jacques’ proposal has got around, The OxStew has heard numerous reports of students belonging to the Oxford University Quidditch Club pretending to fly at University Parks. OUSU has since released a statement condemning their actions.

Harry Potten, a self-proclaimed expert on access, praised the idea of bringing owls into examinations, “I think making our exams more like Harry Potter could work ‘magic’ for access. If I had an owl, I’d bring it with me all the time to hall.”

Meanwhile, a helpful Morris dancer, who just happened to be passing by, suggested that students instead dress like them and attend their exams in blackface. “Just as subfusc isn’t elitist, blackface isn’t racist. It’s only a tradition after all! Since when have the historic associations of particular forms of clothing been relevant to how they are perceived?”

On hearing of the motion, Emma Watson, star of the Harry Potter film franchise and a former visiting student at Oxford, entered the debate by posting on her Twitter. “Glad I’m not @ Ox now. Enough people shouted ‘10 points to Gryffindor’ at me before, dread to think of sodding owls & wands.”