NUS: we need a principled, united left to push back the right

Submitted by Anon on 30 March, 2007 - 8:08

By Sofie Buckland, NUS national executive (pc), reports on the 2007 conference of the national union of students

THIS annual conference (27-9 March) was the smallest in activist memory, with less than 800 delegates voting in the elections for the leading, full-time positions on the National Executive Committee.

It was also the most right-wing. The various right wing New Labour groupings which dominate the NEC defeated the left on all the central points of debate; we also saw the growth of a new, more aggressive right wing among student union sabbatical officers.

The student left can rally to stop this political retreat — but only if it does some serious rethinking.

The right in NUS is more united than the left; there has not been a united left challenge for the NUS leadership since 2003. Attempts to create one this year were scuppered by the SWP, reincarnated as Student Respect, who declared that their disagreements with Workers’ Liberty and others on issues like Palestine and Iraq made a united front with Education Not for Sale impossible. (Instead they went for an alliance with the not very radical Student Broad Left, a front for the shadowy Stalinists of Socialist Action.) This resulted in rival left slates.

In only one election for a full-time position was the combined left vote more than 200, and there can be no doubt that one factor in this was disunity. We need a united left!

Respect and Student Broad Left are politically unprincipled, sacrificing basic principles on issues like secularism and women’s rights in favour of support for the conservative leaders of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. In return, FOSIS spat in their faces — by doing such things as voting for Gemma Tumelty against Respect’s Rob Owen in this year’s presidential election and a well-known Tory-supporting independent Sam Rozati (who is of Muslim background) for Treasurer. There are some signs that Respect are now backing away from this lunacy, but they still included FOSIS (and not ENS) in their call to support “progressive” candidates!

Respect’s leadership do not put much emphasis on working-class struggle: it might be a good idea, but it’s simply not as important as “anti-imperialism”. (Student Broad Left are much worse and actively oppose workers when they come into conflict with “progressive” bureaucrats from Castro to Ken Livingstone.)

Unity should not mean hiding our criticisms of others on the left, but debating them openly while we work together against the right. We should be able to unite on basic socialist/class-struggle politics — on issues like education funding, NUS democracy, mass action against management and the government, support for workers in struggle — while honestly discussing our disagreements.

NUS’s support for a universal (non-means-tested) living student grant was temporarily restored in 2003; however, the “Organised Independent” (politically Blairite but not organised by the Labour Party) majority on the NEC was unwilling to fight for it, and last year Labour Students succeeded in winning a return to support for means-testing. This year, with a majority of NEC members voting against means-testing, but only the left willing to champion universal grants, Labour Students once again carried the vote. How long before they start arguing that opposition to top-up fees is unrealistic too? (And how long before the “OIs” drop their notional opposition to means-testing?)

This decision set the dreary tone for a right-wing majority on all the major decisions about NUS’s education campaign. The leadership opposed and defeated the demand for a national demonstration next year. A speaker tour with activists from the victorious student struggles in Greece and France was also voted down. Whatever the policy, the leadership has no intention of fighting for it, preferring to return to the supine inaction which made the introduction of fees and then top-up fees possible.

The conference voted to endorse the NEC’s appalling support for the Further Education Bill, which pushes further privatisation in FE colleges.

Delegates voted for an undemocratic “governance review” which will spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of the union’s money on planning further cuts to the national union’s democracy. (£20,000 for “campaign launches” with tiger prawns and white wine will remain untouched!) They also endorsed the paid-for “NUS Extra” discount card scheme, despite the massive loss it has made this year.

There were a few victories for the left, such as the adoption of a proposal from Education Not for Sale for a campaign against the ultra vires laws which aim to prevent student unions from campaigning and spending money on certain issues.

The background to the conservative drift is the growth of supposedly non-political but in fact assertively right-wing — and in some cases Tory — sentiment among some higher education student union sabbaticals. Many could be seen at the conference wearing the “Not for politics, just for students” t-shirts distributed by sabbaticals at Bristol and Sheffield universities who have launched a statement of the same name. For now, the broadly left-Blairite alliance of “OIs” (including re-elected President Gemma Tumelty) and Labour Students maintains an overwhelming majority on the NEC, but if the “far right” of NUS continues to grow it could pose a serious danger in future.

Even this year, Tory-supporting Sam Rozati came within five votes of winning Treasurer and was elected to the part-time “block of 12”.

While broadly left-wing ideas and activism on issues like global poverty, workers’ rights, war and the environment are widespread among students, they are increasingly disconnected from the structures of student unions and NUS. The job of the left is reconnect the them, and link the student movement with the organised working class in a movement that can really challenge Blairism.

ENS, which involves activists from a variety of socialist, anarchist and other radical positions, stood candidates for President, Vice-President Welfare and VP Education, polling respectably in all and doing particularly well in the VP Welfare election. I was also re-elected to the “Block of 12”.

We succeeded in getting Tehran busworkers’ leader Mansour Ossanlou elected as Honorary Vice-President of the union. We held a fringe meeting on migrant workers and immigration controls with speakers including Alphonsus Uche Okafor-Mefor, the Biafran activist saved from deportation to Nigeria by a trade union campaign. We were the only faction to publish a regular bulletin, resulting in lots of interest at our stall and new activists joining our caucus as the conference went on.

Workers’ Liberty is committed to an effective, united, politically principled left in the student movement. If NUS is not willing to organise action on issues like grants and fees, left activists must be prepared to lead the way.

• ENS: www.free-education.org.uk

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