NUS "left" executive member pays "tribute" to police over riots

If you are looking for the article on Aaron Kiely voting for cuts, see here.

--

By Daniel Lemberger Cooper, Royal Holloway SU president (pc), writing for AWL Students

Aaron Kiely, a “Student Broad Left” supporter who sits on NUS national executive, is also a Labour councillor in the Essex borough of Thurrock, east of London. During the riots last month, Kiely ‘tweeted’ a number of very mild comments about the reasons for what was happening, for instance:

“Difficult to dismiss people at these protests as ‘violent thugs’ - there are huge and complex problems with poverty and police racism.”

After the Thurrock Tories complained, however, he issued the following statement:

“I apologise wholeheartedly for my comments. There is no excuse for the violence and vandalism we have seen, it is disgraceful criminal behaviour which I condemn.

“I pay tribute to the police officers who have worked around the clock to restored law and order. I also praise the efforts of Essex Police in making sure the streets of Thurrock remain safe for residents.”

The AWL has no illusions about the riots. Nonetheless, we hope we do not to need to explain what is wrong with a self-styled left-winger condemning rioters as criminals and praising the police. Kiely’s comments are particularly disgraceful after the experience of police repression against student protesters (at the time this was published, a member of the NCAFC National Committee was in prison for a protest at the Lib Dems' conference) and in the context of vicious class-hate judges flinging hundreds of young working-class people in jail for trivial riot-connected offences. Some student activists have also suffered this fate.

(We hope that no one will fall for the argument that Labour councillors have no choice but to behave like this. Unlike Kiely, some other Labour councillors were elected on a clear class-struggle/anticuts ticket and would never speak out in support of the police.)

Student Broad Left has so far maintained a stony silence, despite all its demagogy about "no justice, no peace". Why?

SBL – which is in fact far from broad or left-wing – is a front for a strange group called Socialist Action (for more on this group see here). We have no idea whether Kiely is a formally member of Socialist Action, since one of the organisation’s defining characteristics is most of its members denying they’ve ever heard of it. Nonetheless, SA is undoubtedly the dominant group in SBL, its key organisers (eg Fiona Edwards) are SA members and Kiely clearly takes his political line from SA.

SA’s two basic political characteristics are extreme Stalinism in international politics, and almost comical moderation in ‘left’ domestic politics. Thus, to take a few striking examples, it publishes reams of praise for China’s brutal Stalinist dictatorship (see here) and supports the Qaddafi regime in Libya (see here), while arguing against tuition fees by praising the former head of the World Bank and arguing that “Britain needs a highly skilled workforce to be successful in the global economy” (see here and here).

This group, which exists mainly in sections of the student movement bureaucracy, has long history of sectarian manoeuvres to undermine others on the left. In 1998, for instance, when on the back of the revolt against the original introduction of tuition fees, the left came within 15 votes of winning the NUS presidency, SBL stood against the united left candidate, taking just enough votes to throw the election to the right.

This is typical of the utterly cynical, opportunist fashion in which they operate. They typically do so through a variety of fronts, many of which do not really exist (eg the “Free Education Campaign”), and through positions of influence in the offices of "progressive" political figures whom they support uncritically. Thus late Socialist Action leader Redmond O’Neill worked in Ken Livingstone's mayoral office on £100,000 a year, and SA supporters in the student movement loyally justified Livingstone’s effort to break Tube workers’ strikes and smash the RMT.

Unsurprisingly, this organisation consistently attracts "left-wing" careerists who go on to make middle-class careers on the back of their student activity.

However, SBL is a very small group, and by all accounts getting weaker. So why are we making such a fuss about this?

The first reason is that, though Aaron Kiely’s comments in support of the police are no worse than, say, SA and SBL’s support for Qaddafi, their hypocrisy, in the political context, is staggering. And they are not an isolated incident, but part of a wider political phenomenon. SA are also key players in Ken Livingstone's current London mayoral campaign, which has made opposition to police cuts its central plank.

The second reason is that SBL only survives because it periodically receives support from others on the student left – particularly the SWP, which periodically uses SA as a weapon to do down other left-wing student activists. Last year, for instance, the SWP insisted that Aaron Kiely be included on the left slate for NUS executive (see here), despite SBL’s lack of grassroots support and over vocal protests from Workers’ Liberty and many independent left students. The result is that he has now disgraced the whole student left with his comments in support of the police.

Lastly, SBL members routinely to try to witch-hunt their opponents on the left by condemning any dissent from their views as racist, pro-imperialist and so on. In fact, shortly before his comments about the police became public, Kiely received widespread criticism from student anti-cuts activists for publishing a bizarre open letter accusing the AWL of racism, and attempting to split the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, on the basis of claims he now acknowledges to be invented (see here). At the same time, SBL steadfastly refuses to debate such issues openly, despite repeated offers of a public debate.

If anything positive comes from this whole sorry affair, it will be that Aaron Kiely’s speaking out in support of the police may make Socialist Action members more hesitant next time they are ordered to witch-hunt someone. The serious student left, meanwhile, should learn some lessons about what this group represents.