Students at University College London have agreed to ban the British armed forces from using their union premises to recruit officers and promote the military. Jeremy Dewar congratulates them, while unpicking a distasteful racist backlash.

On Thursday 5 March, 325 students voted overwhelmingly - at the best attended annual general meeting for five years - not to grant the Officer Training Corps, the Territorial Army, or the university-oriented arms of the navy and air force permission to participate in freshers' fairs and to prohibit all such recruitment activities from its premises or adverts from its website. The same meeting also voted to "twin" itself with secular Palestinian university student unions in Gaza and the West Bank.

As the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq approaches, the UCL students have given a powerful lead to the majority of the British people who opposed the war not to stop campaigning, to press on exposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until every soldier is withdrawn. As the resolution stated, "the British military under the Labour government is currently engaged in an aggressive war overseas".

Gutter journalists pressed into battle
The Evening Standard, however, immediately claimed that this was part of a general attack on rank and file soldiers, falsely claiming that it would ban military personnel, including cadets, from campus, and insidiously linking the move to recent verbal abuse aimed at soldiers in Cambridgeshire. In a classic piece of gutter journalism, the right wing tabloid even lifted a quote from Gordon Brown, condemning "absolutely any members of the public who show abuse or discrimination to our armed forces", as if this was aimed at UCL students.

The right wing is now trying to whip up a storm of protest against the students. Many have unashamedly used the fact that the current president of the UCL Stop the War society, and mover of the resolution is Sham Rajyaguru, to make sweeping racist statements.

The British state and its loyal press is currently engaged in an attempt to bombard the working class in particular with ideas that it is divided on racial lines, that white workers are the "forgotten people", or somehow "vanishing". This, coupled with the proposal to make every school leaver swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country, is a sure sign that the ruling class is rattled by the persistent antiwar mood of the popular classes, and is engaged in a counter-offensive. And with recession beating at the door, what better time to play the race card?

Who really supports soldiers' rights?
The most blatant attempt to massage public opinion was the collusion in bolstering a flagging war with photo-shoots of "heroic" prince Harry, mucking in on the Afghan frontline. Well, actually, the royal was held several miles behind the frontline, telephoning through co-ordinates at guessed-at Taliban positions to hi-tech fighter-jets to bomb from on high. But somehow this reality is turned on its head with the new euphemism, "asymmetric warfare". The daily misery and mounting death toll of rank and file soldiers and the occupied peoples is pushed aside, as if the prince was the only "bullet magnet".

If any journalists had bothered to phone Sham up, they would have found out that, far from being a woolly pacifist, he was a cadet with several years training before being disillusioned by British imperialism's colonial and reactionary policies. If they had read their history books, they would know that Britain's armed forces would have lost many battles over the years, were it not for soldiers from the Indian sub-continent.

More importantly, Sham would have told them that the socialist youth group that he is a member of, Revolution, supports rank and file soldiers' rights - to meet independently from their officers, to take political action, and, yes, to refuse to fight in reactionary wars. The armed forces, on the other hand, ban serving soldiers from speaking in public or telling the truth about life on the frontline; they fight long legal battles to deny the existence of war-related illnesses, like Gulf War Syndrome; they pay the Ghurkhas, British soldiers from Nepal, and their widows a pittance, because non-white lives are cheaper, more expendable.

The truth is that it is socialists today - as it has always been - who stand up for the rights of rank and file soldiers and their families. We support and work with Military families against the War. The politicians and pressmen and women slander and ignore them. We support those cadets and their parents fighting against abuse and possibly worse at training camps like Deepcut. And it is socialists who are trying to end the bloodshed by fighting to bring the troops home - not so they can be redeployed in another aggressive war, but with British imperialism defeated and unable to continue on its colonial path.

Right wing counter-attack
The well-paid sabbatical (i.e. full-time) officers of UCL students union have wasted no time swinging into action against the anti-militarist campaign. The Evening Standard quote an anonymous and shadowy "spokesman for UCL Union" accusing "a group of 'hard core', left-wing students of orchestrating the vote. 'It's quite a silly thing,' he admitted."

How exactly was the biggest meeting of students for five years (and therefore almost certainly the most representative that this particular "spokesman" has ever seen) manipulated by a "hard core" of leftists? Why is it "silly" to try and stop millions being killed in illegal and reactionary wars, or offer succour to beleaguered Palestinians? And why does this "spokesman" not give his name, and make himself accountable?

Now the right wing is campaigning to get last week's decision overturned. They are petitioning around the students' rugby and drinking clubs to get an emergency general meeting held swiftly to reverse the motion. They have clearly learned their lesson and this time will not allow a "silly" thing like democracy to stand in their way. The officers have unconstitutionally suspended - without giving any reason - the union general secretary, Sam Godwin, who chaired the agm, replacing her with a right winger. This is clearly a political attack, as Sam has also played a prominent role campaigning against war. The new right wing chair is now blocking the left's proposals on the governance council.

Jo Casserly, the president elect of the Stop the War society, and also a member of Revolution and supporter of Workers Power, looks forward to the next battle. "This just shows how undemocratic the right wing really is. We're under no illusions that this is just one small battle in a wider war against war. I think we should petition the national demo on Saturday to show the support we have for our stand. We have breached the defences of one of Britain's most prestigious universities. Maybe that breach will be closed by the right wing, maybe not. But our aim, as always, is to give support to those resisting Britain and the US, whether they be in Iraq, in Afghanistan, or in the armed forces."