UK: National Student Day Of Action

Today marks one year of genocide in Gaza and many years more of the Israeli regimes crimes against the Palestinian people. Students across the world are continuing to take action against their Universities’ ties and in Britain they have united. The end of the last academic year was marked by a massive mobilisation of students across the country to participate in Encampments. This year, students have shown that nationally coordinated action will continue into the future with students from all over the country travelling to Manchester to protest Vice-Chancellors and University leadership as they attend a summit on campus.

University leadership from around the world have gathered in Manchester for the THE World Academic Summit and so too have students from across the country, with students attending from Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, London, Leicester, Warwick, Nottingham, Bristol, Newcastle, Oxford, Cambridge, Cardiff, Lancaster, Durham, Sussex, Loughborough and many other locations, to protest this gathering. They will be participating in a day of action against their senior leadership at the Summit for there can be no business as normal in Genocide. This has begun with a picket of the welcome breakfast, as the first of many actions planned throughout the day for this national mobilisation.

Today is the opening day of the Summit and there will be a mass demonstration, joined by students from across the country as well as community members, against British complicity and in honour of Palestinian martyrs. The demonstration will take place in Whitworth Art Museum, Oxford Road M15 6ER, at 5pm.

Students are protesting Universities’ ties to Israel, demanding that these ties are cut and that Universities adopt ethical research and financial policies. Across the country students have united in this goal and will continue to take action until their institutions divest. Universities talk of academic neutrality but there are no Universities in Gaza, no one has started term in Palestine as students have in Britain and institutions here are directly contributing to that.

A spokesperson for the coalition says: “As students here we cannot stay silent while our counterparts in Gaza have no universities to go to. Last year, students were at the forefront of global solidarity with Palestine, and we continue with the same spirit of defiance this year. We begin this academic year relentless as ever in our pursuit of justice. We are building upon the foundations of unity created in the encampments, allowing us to target our Universities’ complicity with the support of our peers across the country. The University’s shameful ties to a settler-colonial regime must end on our watch, and this is the minimum we could do for the Palestinian people that have been enduring Zionist violence for over 76 years.”

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