(Hattie with Beth Redmond and Deborah Hermanns of NCAFC, at a free education demo at SOAS in London)
Hattie Craig, a student activist in Birmingham and former Vice President (Education) of Birmingham Guild of Students, is standing for Vice President (Higher Education) at the National Union of Students conference, 21-3 April, in Liverpool.
She is standing as part of a left slate initiated by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, which includes Workers' Liberty member Beth Redmond for NUS President.
Over the next few weeks we hope to interview all the left candidates running in NUS.
**
I've been involved in education activism since the big struggles of 2010, when I was a sixth former in Northamptonshire. It was already clear to me then that, far from being a driving force for student activism, NUS was a hindrance. When I came to Birmingham uni, that impression was only reinforced. NUS seemed very much disconnected and hostile to grassroots student struggles. As an SU sabbatical I saw NUS more from the inside, and that just reinforced my view further. Very few NUS officials say anything radical; many fewer do anything radical. Finally, being involved in NCAFC and organising last term's national demo gave me a very direct experience of NUS standing in the way of student struggle. I'm standing to promote a student movement and national union that helps students fight and win, that raises radical demands and does its best to deliver on them.
What would you say to an activist who thinks, why bother with NUS?
Because NUS is still a massive organisation which has the ability to reach large numbers of student union officers, student activists and occasionally wider layers of students. It shapes the wider student movement, for good or bad. By running in NUS conference you reach hundreds of delegates from across the country, and from them many other people, but it's wider than that. We want to use this to reach out to thousands of students who won't be at NUS conference. On a number of levels this is an opportunity to challenge the NUS leadership and put forward a left-wing political alternative in front of the whole student movement.
What are your key demands?
Upfront and foremost is free education. It's fantastic that we finally won free education policy in NUS after many years, and more than that we've worked hard and successfully made it the platform of the student movement. But even if [NUS President] Toni Pearce says she's now in favour of free education, we don't necessarily mean the same thing. We want to build up a grassroots movement on the streets and on campuses. This will not be won through deft negotiations with VCs and politicians, but by putting the pressure on through mass struggle. And we have a wider conception of free education. We want living grants for all, we want decent housing, we want a diverse, liberatory curriculum. We need to challenge the racist and xenophobic situation faced by international students. We need to build solidarity with campus workers and fight for democracy in our institutions.
What can student activists do about/with this?
Get delegated to conference, put motions through your SU, come along and caucus with us, even if you're not a delegate help out. But it's not just about the conference. It's about building the campaign for free education, joining NCAFC, building up local organisation and activism. It's about making political arguments on your campus. It's partly about doing things we should all be doing anyway, but we hope the NUS campaign will help with that as well as being helped by it.
You're part of a wider left slate?
I'm really happy with the candidates [for NUS President and the five Vice Presidents] we've got, some NCAFC has selected and some we've decided to endorse. They're all really fantastic, strong left-wing candidates who are both radical and credible. By credible, I mean people who have made arguments but also gone out and organised and delivered – people with a record of activism in the movement. The fact we've got a slate shows it's a wider political challenge to the way NUS is run, not just about individual positions.
What's the measure of success?
Of course we want to win, or at least get strong votes. It's also about winning on policy, like we did with free education last year. The most important thing is to come away with a stronger movement, make new links, win new activists for NCAFC and get more people involved in campaigning. It's clear from last year that NUS conference can be part of that: we got the free education policy and the beginnings of momentum and organisation for the demo in the autumn. It was launched from a meeting at NUS conference. Obviously we want to win free education again, hopefully by a bigger margin, but there are other things to fight for too. Living grants is a big deal – we don't just want bursaries or a promise to bring back EMA, but a decent income for all students.