Chris Marks for NUS President!

Submitted by Matthew on 5 March, 2010 - 3:39

AWL member Chris Marks is Vice President (Education) at Hull University Union and northern co-convenor of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. At this year’s NUS conference (Newcastle, 13-15 April) he will be standing for President. He told us why.

There are now anti-cuts campaigns appearing around the country – a real grass-roots student movement. That’s what made the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts possible. NUS, predictably, is doing nothing to support this development. Forget about free education - it doesn’t even oppose cuts, really. The leadership’s motions to NUS conference argue that any cuts should be reasonable! Meanwhile it has once again refused to side with education workers in struggle against management and the government.

Under NUS’s new constitution it’s even harder to shift it than before, and there are new plans to entrench the bureaucracy further by turning it into a sort of commercial charity.

Against that, I’m standing as a class-struggle socialist, to provide a voice to students who want a fight back, promote solidarity with workers’ struggles and help build the anti-cuts movement.

My opponents are two identikit right-wingers, Aaron Porter and Richard Budden, and Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a sort of soft-left NUS politician who’s Black Students’ Officer. If ‘left’ means supporting a collection of good causes, then she’s left, but not if it means grass-roots activism, class struggle and anti-capitalist and socialist politics.

Socialist students, and anyone who wants an NUS that gives activists on the ground a real lead against fees and cuts, should back my campaign. Get in touch to give your support, invite me to speak at your union and come to the conference to help out.

c.marks@hull.ac.uk

07931 108 618

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