Imperial societies organise walkout for International Youth Strike

The International Youth Strike Against War is scheduled for 20 November, with mass student walkouts, rallies, and demonstrations planned across Europe and the UK under the slogan "Fight for our future, not their wars". 

At Imperial, ICL Action for Palestine and Imperial Socialist Worker Student Society have organised a walk-out on the day, encouraging students to “walk out of classes and fight for our education”. Imperial’s Feminist Society and Climate Action Society have endorsed this initiative. 

The walkout will begin at 11am, where students are asked to gather on Queen’s Lawn, and a rally will be held until 1pm, when attendees will travel to the main London Rally in Trafalgar Square and join other London students and young workers across London. 

The walkout will endorse the UK's national demands, which include abolishing university tuition fees, reversing NHS privatisation, and ending the UK’s ties with the UAE. They also ask to stop the development of the Jackdaw natural gas field and to cease the use of counter-terrorism legislation to criminalise Palestinian solidarity. 

 Beyond them, Imperial's student-led walkout has made an Open Letter for Imperial to “stop spying on students”, referring to the College’s six-figure spending on Horus Security Consultancy Ltd to allegedly monitor campus protest activity, which ICL Action for Palestine have previously scrutinised on social media. 

The walkout will also advocate for the end of the Security and Community Safety staff restructuring, and of the College’s ties with “all complicit companies involved in genocide”, as well as pressuring to divest from fossil fuel companies. 

A member of Imperial Climate Action tells Felix the society “have demanded the formation of an ethical partnership policy which would cover military, fossil fuel companies, and more, with a wider social justice framing than for example the current Zero Index which only covers fossil fuel partnerships. This is regardless of Imperial’s inclusion or not in the DUA.

Imperial College Union have expressed their support of  “every students' right to protest, and support broad aims around liberation, climate change, and social justice.” 

The UK Group Socialist Students says walkouts are planned in more than 100 UK towns and cities. The London protest is at 12pm in Parliament Square; Queen Mary’s University will gather at 11am in Library Square and SOAS University of London at 12pm in its library courtyard.