We need a mass campaign to save NUS

Submitted by Anon on 30 October, 2007 - 7:27 Author: Sofie Buckland

On 16 October the NUS National Executive Committee voted with only two votes (myself and SWP member Rob Owen) against to endorse the proposals of the “Governance Review” for slashing internal democracy, and, with only four votes against, to call on member unions to authorise an Extraordinary National Conference to rush through the changes.

The fight, in other words, is now definitely on. What is being planned is not just a bit more chipping away at NUS democracy, as has happened almost continuously for the last twenty years, or even a dramatic attack like the abolition of the second (winter) conference in 1993. The very existence of NUS as a national student union is at stake.

The Blairite leadership of NUS want to destroy activist involvement and rank-and-file control in national structures so that they can convert NUS from a (albeit inadequate) representative and campaigning organisation, into a professionalised lobbying group of the NGO type.

At the same time, they want an Extraordinary Conference so that rank-and-file activists can be largely excluded from the decision on the proposals (extraordinary conferences, called at short notice, tend to be small and there are no delegate elections); and so that the whole package can be presented to the spring 2008 conference as a fait accompli and done and dusted by the end of the year.

Already, several of the leadership’s pet unions have passed calls for a conference; since it only takes 25 to convene one, it will certainly go ahead. (November 29 has been suggested as the likely date; this clashes with NUS FE training so may be changed, but in any case it will be around then.) All this makes it even more urgent that we get a real campaign for NUS democracy launched as quickly as possible.

At a special session of the ENS conference on 21 October, activists from a number of groups (including Student Respect/SWP) agreed to launch a united campaign at a meeting in London on 4 November. We need the biggest and broadest possible turn out for that meeting, from activist groups as well as student union officers.

The political basis of this campaign is very important. On 21 October, Rob Owen and other SWPers argued for a strictly defensive political orientation, limiting ourselves to defence of the status quo for fear of alienating right-wing student unions that nonetheless oppose the changes. (Presumably this is a reflection of the SWP’s recent tack in the trade unions: steering hard to the right in order to maintain a relationship with bureaucrats sympathetic to Stop the War, Unite Against Fascism etc, or who might have been won to support Respect.)

As a number of ENS and other speakers pointed out, such an approach is not only wrong but self-defeating, since it rules out involving large numbers of students in the campaign.

The fact is that NUS is irrelevant to most students, because it does barely any campaigning activity, let alone anything inspiring or creative. We cannot defend what democracy does exist within our national union by denying this basic truth. In fact we need to make our criticisms, and our demands for a different kind of NUS, louder and more insistent if we are to be successful. If this alienates some student union bureaucrats from the campaign, too bad.

A grassroots activist campaign, based on mass activity and raising the necessary political answers to NUS’s real crisis, is what Education Not for Sale is attempting to build. If you would like to help, get in touch — volsunga@gmail.com

• For more information, model motions etc see the ENS website: free-education.org.uk

• Defend NUS Democracy:

www.nusdemocracy.org.uk

• For more on the review see my blog:

free-education.org.uk/?cat=22

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