Today, students from across the country will march on parliament demanding free education. We are calling for the abolition of student debt, the end to a fee-based, marketised system and no further cuts to education. As well as funding, we will be marching for a system that rejects the idea of getting an education just to prepare oneself for the world of work and one that is democratically run by students and workers.

Over the past four years, the government has repeatedly persecuted students who have dared to stand up for radical reforms in education, but we are not going anywhere. We need education that serves the interests of people of all backgrounds, yet the current government seems only to be interested in providing a system for the wealthy, which has acted as an engine for inequality.

But it isn’t just the Tories who are the problem. In fact, no mainstream party is proposing free education in the way we envisage it, and yet it would be a popular policy. In a poll conducted this year, 96% of people surveyed said they were in favour of a more progressive taxation system. The public support to tax the rich to fund education is undeniable, and yet Labour’s proposals at present are to lower fees to £6,000 a year, while at the same time introducing a draconian benefits system, which would means-test everyone up to the age of 25. This is not a move to actually listen to us, but rather recoup the vast losses made by an unsustainable student loans system, in which many graduates will never pay off everything they owe.

The free education movement is not a generational debate; it is a reaction to an all-out class war being waged on marginalised groups by those in power. Free education is about more than scrapping fees. The marketisation of our education system is turning our institutions into competing profit-driven academies. Many are closing courses which are not deemed profitable or spending millions rebranding themselves, while cutting essential services for students and attacking bursaries, on the basis that there isn’t enough money.

The pay and power of senior managers is out of control in the higher education sector. Only a tiny handful of institutions in England have retained anything resembling a democratic or academic-led governance structure; almost all decisions are now taken by a handful of highly paid managers. Some vice-chancellors take home in excess of £400,000, while hitting their own staff with cuts, or imposing rent hikes to university accommodation.

This is why we are not just asking for university fees to be scrapped or for the reinstatement of the education maintenance allowance (EMA), but for something qualitatively better. We have no desire to recreate a “golden age” of education that never existed. We mean free education not just in the sense of money, but in the sense of liberation.

Today’s demonstration is just the beginning. To win free education we have to look to the examples of student movements elsewhere – Germany, for example, where they have built a broad, united front and waged a 10-year battle against fees. Free education will not be won in a day, it will be won in occupations of universities, staff and student strikes, and by organising within our workplaces and communities.

The privatisation of our education can only be beaten by a movement which understands that free education is not something to be just fought for during the three or four years you are at university but something that benefits society as a whole, and that should therefore be confronted by all of us.