Education Activist Network and the need for democracy

Submitted by AWL on 7 December, 2012 - 1:46

Last year I was 'elected', along with fellow National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts activist Edd Bauer, onto the national committee of the Education Activist Network, which is run by the Socialist Workers Party. Myself and Edd were at the time both student union sabbatical officers, at Liverpool and Birmingham Universities respectively, and had played a leading role in building anti-cuts groups out of the student walkouts and demonstrations of 2010-11. We were both members of the NCAFCs National Committee which was elected in June 2011.

To say that myself and Edd were 'elected' to the EAN committee would be stretching the definition of the word. We had both nominated ourselves ahead of the 2011 conference. Over the course of a day, despite the many useful workshops, there had been no real debates, votes or decisions taken by those in attendance. We were told there was no time for an election and so everyone who had put themselves forward had got on. I was unable to attend the recent 2012 EAN conference, but understand that there was no new national committee elected, or again any votes or motions. I guess this means we are still members?

I cannot claim to speak for Edd, but the primary reason I had stood for the committee was to remedy the slightly farcical situation the student left had found it in after the biggest student revolt in a generation.

We had two national campaigns, the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) and the Education Activist Network (EAN), both with a pretty indistinguishable program: free education, opposition to cuts, solidarity with workers and the labour movement, opposition to police violence etc. On formal demands, at least, you would struggle to find a substantial point of disagreement.

The NCAFC had been founded in February 2010 out of a conference of various student anti-cuts groups held at University College London attended by some 250 people. At that conference, SWP members opposed the setting up of a National Campaign (since then they have consistently opposed it creating any kind of democratic structures - including a national committee, despite EAN having one!)

Yet the EAN was set up shortly afterwards, largely by the SWP, at a meeting with a similar number at it. NCAFC activists took a motion to its 2010 autumn conference, at Kings College London, calling for a unified campaign - this was however defeated.

This may seem, and largely is, all a bit boring. The reason I think it matters is largely because of the experience of working to establish a student anti-cuts group in Liverpool. The Merseyside Network Against Fees and Cuts, which we managed to build, unified the anti-cuts groups and individual student activists from both HE and FE across the area. It met regularly, debated openly, and SWP students were among the most dedicated and energetic in it, despite the fact that their national organisers had initially tried to get them to set up a separate EAN 'branch'.

The purpose of standing for the committee was to attempt to replicate insofar as possible, this kid of unity at a national level. Sadly, following its initial meeting (which to be fair neither Edd nor myself made it to), the EAN committee has not met once. Correspondences seemed to peter out. And yet, materials are still produced, money is donated and SWP student activists still speak in the same of this 'wider campaign'. As I understand it the last EAN conference - which sadly I couldn't make - didn't elect a new committee.

My experience so far at the University of East London, where I have moved, which has the largest Socialist Worker Student Society (SWSS) group in the country, no formal anti-cuts group, but an EAN society, is that the EAN is whipped out as a flag of convenience. Our lecturers took strike action earlier this term. I was more than happy to use the EAN materials produced when we were talking to students on the picket lines and the EAN-organised meeting with both a UCU rep and Jérémie Bédard-Wien, executive member of CLASSE in Québec, was excellent. I suggested that we agree to meet more regularly and this was accepted. However these further meetings have not happened and I have had no real answers as to who is responsible for convening or organising EAN at UEL. It appears to be mainly the local SWP full-timer. Even other SWSS members are generally in the dark about planned 'EAN' activity.

I think the SWP play an important role in the student movement. Unlike their hangers-on 'Student Broad Left' whose only real existence is in the hackosphere of the official NUS structures, most SWP student groups contain dedicated and talented activists with a lot to give. The political differences between our organisations are no more sharp than those amongst many of the activists within the NCAFC, yet in the latter case we have been able to engender a culture of serious comradely behaviour and activism at a national level.

I would therefore call on SWP students to question why serious activist unity of the student left, on the basis of open discussion and democratic structures, has so far proved elusive. And I would call into question the seriousness of the fuss which their leading comrades have occasionally tried to kick up within the NCAFC about the health of its democracy, when those standards are so clearly not held up by EAN.

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