Daniel's Blog
THIS IS NOT A LEAVING SPEECH
I found it fitting that my last few months in office at NUS were defined politically by a dual struggle around the AUT/NATFHE (now UCU) dispute; a struggle, on the one hand, to win our membership to a basic position of support for the dispute and, on the other, a struggle against the majority of the NUS leadership whose trajectory was to chip away at and retreat from the stance of support that NUS as a whole had taken.
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27TH MAY-2ND JUNE LIVING WAGE ACTIVISTS SPEAKER TOUR
In which student activism is given a touch of class
Not a lot of people know this, but I'm actually American. Well, strictly I'm dual-nationality Anglo-American, but this does make me a bona fide American citizen with an American passport and the right to vote in the next American election (lucky me). I'm not saying this to prepare the ground for an attempt to run for International Students' Officer, but to explain why I'm particularly interested in American student politics.
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SOLIDARITY FOREVER?
The AUT/NATFHE dispute and NUS's response.
Most people who read NEC members' blogs will probably be very aware of the heat that's been generated by this issue. It has, by its nature, effected thousands of NUS members and is rightly seen as an issue of great importance by SUs on campus and the NUS nationally.
As a member of a faction that has consistently and unconditionally supported our lecturers' dispute, I've been disappointed if not surprised at the level and scale of hostility directed towards these workers in struggle by student movement officers. If nothing else, it has highlighted how pitifully low the current level of political culture in our movement is. Clearly, many officers do not see the NUS as politically part of the broader trade union movement but simply as an association to articulate what they see as the immediate sectional interests of students.
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11TH MAY ANTI-CUTS DEMO, LAMBETH COLLEGE
In which everyone walks the walk.
Certain figures in the NUS leadership are fond of saying that, while other factions “talk the talk ” on Further Education, it is they who have “walked the walk ” this year. What they mean is that while other people talk about campaigning on FE issues, they've actually done it.
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8TH MAY NUS NEC MEETING
In which I’m almost sad to be leaving…
I struggle to believe that it’s really been a year since I wrote this blog
But there you have it. A whole year. Incredible. And, looking back, things sure were different in mid-May 2005. For example, Will Page was still on the NUS NEC. “Lloydie” was still around. The NOLSies had an outgoing VP instead of an incoming one. And…oh yeah - NUS still had policy in favour of free education and universal living grants.
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MOTIONS TO NUS NEC, 8TH MAY
Campaigning for free education
For human rights in China
Hunger strikes at the University of Miami and ‘living wage' campaigns
28-30TH MARCH NUS ANNUAL CONFERENCE, BLACKPOOL & 11-13TH APRIL TRIP TO FRANCE
In which there are ups and downs.
There's probably a neat metaphor floating in the ether somewhere about Blackpool pleasure beach and roller-coasters and ups and downs and some other nonsense like that. But, to be totally honest, I really can't be bothered to think of it. My motivation for thinking of neat figurative openings to blogs is rapidly on the wane.
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14TH & 22ND MARCH ANTI-CUTS DEMONSTRATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX AND LAMBETH COLLEGE
In which they say cutback, and we say fightback.
It's going on all over the country. Across FE and HE, “unpopular ” - meaning “unprofitable ” - courses are being cut, campuses closed and facilities restricted without a thought to student needs or welfare. University and college bosses have enthusiastically assisted the Blair government in its project to essentially dismantle and sell-off Further and Higher Education piece by piece. It's because of that project that we have to pay fees, that our lecturers go on strike, that we can't get into our libraries when we need to, that our halls of residence are owned by private companies and that services like catering, cleaning and security are outsourced to anti-union agencies.
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18TH MARCH ANTI-CPE DEMONSTRATION, PARIS
In which the militancy of French workers and students brings a tear to my eye.
I hate mawkish political sentimentality. You won't find phrases like “echoes of ‘68 ” liberally sprinkled through this blog and you certainly won't find any talk of “fiery continental temperaments. ” You won't find painterly descriptions of clouds of tear-gas hanging over our heads or lurid retellings of how I screamed profanities at French police while the tears streamed down my face and the gas choked me to the point of vomiting. I'm not a machismo-romantic and, aside from anything else, the current mobilisations in France don't need that kind of talking up; the facts speak for themselves.
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12TH MARCH NUS ANNUAL CONFERENCE COMPOSITING
In which the NUS leadership is let off the hook and people show their true colours again.
Hands up who's been to NUS compositing. Oh come on - someone must have been. Anyone? No. Okay then, hands up who knows what NUS compositing is? No-one. Looks like I'm gonna have to provide some background.
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28TH FEBRUARY WEST MIDLANDS AREA NUS DEMONSTRATION & 1ST MARCH NUS NATIONAL LOBBY OF PARLIAMENT
In which some of the best and some of the worst are on display.
Here's the start of a joke for you: a posh Tory idiot, a Blairite minister and a supine Lib Dem moron go into a bar together. Well, okay - it wasn't a bar, it was a committee room in the Houses of Parliament, but indulge me. The Tory does his usual “affable idiot ” act, the Lib Dem says nothing of substance and the Blairite minister behaves exactly as Blairite ministers are meant to.
So what's the punchline?
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11-18TH FEBRUARY ANTI-SWEATSHOP WEEK OF ACTION REPORT
In which the bosses need us, but we don't need them.
I admit it; I'm cynical. I'm pessimistic. I'm bitter almost to the point of misanthropy. Trying to be any kind of radical on the NUS NEC (let alone a revolutionary socialist with a specific project of political intervention) is not easy at the best of times, and at the worst it is a thoroughly de-motivating and uninspiring experience. But every so often, something happens that galvanises you, reminds you what you're doing this all for in the first place and assures you that you're definitely not just bashing your head against a brick wall. Spending a week with a working-class militant from the occupied factories movement in Argentina and attending packed meetings at which dozens of students listen to him tell the story of how he and his comrades took control of the means of production in their workplaces will usually do the trick.
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6-9th FEBRUARY NUS REGIONAL CONFERENCES REPORT
In which someone needs to get their eyes checked…
Regional Conferences go like this; the NEC gets split into two - an ‘Eastside' and a ‘Westside'. One group of NEC members attend the Regional Conferences on the east side of the country, the other the west (can you tell which group goes to which? There's a clue in the name). So far, so reasonably democratic, so reasonably accountable. But woah there, cowboy. Don't get ahead of yourself. These are NUS structures, remember? So real democracy and genuine accountability are pretty hard to come by.
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30TH JANUARY NEC DELEGATION MEETING & NEC MEETING
In which I can almost taste the difference…
I woke up on the morning of 30th January from a bizarre dream; I dreamt that, in mid-December, there'd been a motions-only NEC with an incredibly high-level of political debate that passed a lot of worthwhile policy. As I shook myself awake, I realised how ridiculous such a notion was and began looking forward to a day that would remind me what NEC meetings are supposed to be like.
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Motions to NUS NEC, January 30
Motions I'm submitting to the NUS NEC on December 15th - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
Defend state education
Support the RMT
17TH JANUARY ‘COALITION 2010' LAUNCH RECEPTION
In which I'm haunted by the ghosts of tiger prawns and Bill Rammell…
I thought that the idea of inviting leading Blairite ministers to events intended to launch NUS's campaigns aimed at fighting to abolish all forms of charging for higher education was an unpleasant and hazy memory from the dreary days of September 2005. Sadly, the whole rigmarole was repeated on 17th January. In the Houses of Parliament, no less. And yes - the tiger prawns were back too.
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THREE WORDS NO-ONE WANTS YOU TO SAY: TAX THE RICH!
By Daniel Randall, NUS National Executive
Peter Leary, a supporter of the Student Broad Left/Socialist Action group who sits on NUS National Executive Committee, has posted a report of the NEC's 1 December meeting on the SBL website. While a welcome change from Pete's failure to post updates on his activity on the NUS blog facility or indeed anywhere else over the last two years, the political analysis contained in this report is misleading in the extreme.
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15TH DECEMBER NUS NEC MEETING
In which I find out what you get when you put Hugo Chavez, City Academies, the Iraqi workers' movement and a load of other stuff in a meeting together.
A motions only NUS NEC meeting. Whoever heard of such a thing? It was a veritable Christmas miracle. And what unbridled, joyous fun it was. And I'm not actually joking.
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14TH DECEMBER NUS NEC MEETING
In which there are some rather shocking revelations and I'm left wondering what General Managers and sabbs have got against flares, Led Zeppelin and the rest of the 1970s.
The NUS Santa, in his immeasurable generosity, had granted us a motions only NEC on the 15th, so that meant that the meeting on the 14th was business only. I'm in favour of discussing business but usually it's still dry as a bone. This meeting, however, contained some pretty interesting stuff.
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Motions to NUS NEC, December 15
Motions I’m submitting to the NUS NEC on December 15th - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
A living wage for campus workers
Iraq Union Solidarity affiliation
7TH DECEMBER WMANUS WINTER CONFERENCE
In which there are steps in the right direction.
A while back, I was talking to someone who'd been on the NUS NEC in the late 1980s. Before that, he'd been an NUS Area Convenor. Misty-eyed and nostalgic, he told me how NUS Areas used to be key political units in the student movement. He explained how political factions in NUS would win first the loyalty and then the leadership of students in an Area. He talked about some of the campaigns he'd been involved in (the anti-government ‘Beat the Blues' mobilisation at the Tory Party conference sounded particularly enthusing), and explained how NUS Areas had been the basic building blocks of mobilisation for such campaigns.
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THE NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS?
In which we need to get bigger.
On Tuesday 6th December, I spoke at a demonstration at a comprehensive school in North London. A student at the school's sixth-form and his family are facing deportation to Iran where they face torture and potentially execution. The sixth-formers have mounted an impressive campaign against this, and several dozen of them gave up their lunch break to demonstrate in the school's car-park.
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2ND DECEMBER NUS ENVIRONMENTAL AND ETHICAL CONFERENCE REPORT
In which there’s potential.
The E&E campaign hasn't really had much of a life so far this year. That's not really anyone's fault but for various reasons, it hasn't really had a chance to get going.
It was good, therefore, to see around 60 delegates (mostly E&E officers) attend its 2005 conference at ULU. And generally, the whole thing was pretty encouraging.
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1ST DECEMBER NEC DELEGATION MEETING REPORT
In which there are fun, games, a daft photo and the season of goodwill begins in earnest.
The NEC delegation meeting is the meeting at which the NEC decides which motions it's going to submit to National Conference - one for each of NUS's four policy “zones. ” Each zone had at least two submissions in it, so for each we had the choice of either simply voting-off between all submitted motions, or breaking out into compositing groups to try and amalgamate the submissions.
Compositing is a frustrating process at the best of times, so to try and write a detailed report of what took place would be like reliving the tedium and frustration of the meeting minute by minutes. So I'll avoid that and try and give a succinct summary instead.
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20-23RD NOVEMBER FE ESSENTIALS TRAINING (SCARBOROUGH) AND 5-7th SEPTEMBER NSLP TRAINING (YORK)
In which I experience the two faces of NUS training, and it's necessary to draw a comparison.
I never blogged about the National Student Learner Programme training I went on in early September. I was one of two allocated NEC members and, to tell the truth, didn't really do that much during the three days. I didn't really think it was worth writing a blog about.
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16TH NOVEMBER NATFHE RALLY AND AOC CONFERENCE
In which students and workers unite (a bit) and I got into the belly of the beast.
Unity between students and workers means a lot more than turning up on demonstrations or picket-lines when teaching staff go on strike. But that's a useful starting point, and if I'm being honest then the student turnout for NATFHE's rally outside the Association of Colleges conference in Birmingham (part of NATFHE's national strike for the implementation of a pay deal they had struck to win last year) was disappointing. However, I know there are plenty of people around working to turn NUS into an organisation that takes labour movement solidarity seriously and mobilises properly for events like this (a couple of such people are working for West Midlands Area NUS at the moment so it was good to see them there).
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14th November National Council Report
In which history repeats itself.
June’s National Council was one of the first constitutional events I went to as a member of the NUS NEC-elect. At that event, I made a number of conclusions.
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9TH NOVEMBER EDUCATION PRIORITY CAMPAIGN PLANNING MEETING & 11TH NOVEMBER ANTI-CLOSURE RALLY, PLYMOUTH
In which one battle is lost but the fight goes on.
If you take a broad view, it's pretty obvious what “On Course…for a fair future? ” (NUS's Education Priority Campaign) is. It's the confused attempt of a union atrophied and shell-shocked after decades of misleadership and two crushing defeats over education funding to get back on its feet and reinvigorate the thing that is (or should be) at the very heart of its entire existence; free education activism. As such it contains both the kernels of a more positive future as well as tonnes of baggage that that misleadership, those defeats and all the demoralisation that's come out of it all has created.
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8TH NOVEMBER NEC MEETING REPORT
In which it's back to the bad old days, our numbers dwindle and I get it wrong.
October's NEC meeting was, as far as discussing motions go, the zenith of my time on the NEC thus far. After its heady heights (in which all but one of the tabled motions was discussed) it was a depressing shame to come crashing back down to earth with November's meeting; a genuine return to the bad old days of August. (If this all sounds a bit ridiculous, it's because having NEC meetings divided by one and a half months of intensive activism does tend to make them take on a slightly mystical and melodramatic character. Or maybe it's just because I'm trying to make this blog sound slightly more exciting than the meeting it's a report of. I think I've failed.)
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THE INJUSTICE OF RELATIVISM
A reply to Jamal El-Shayyal.
In a recent blog entitled ‘The relativism of justice???' (read it here) my fellow NEC member Jamal El-Shayyal attempted to excuse recent comments by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about Israel - namely that it should be “wiped off the map. ”
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31ST OCTOBER SOUTH EAST REGIONAL CONFERENCE REPORT
In which we all just keep digging.
During breaks at NUS events, I occasionally occupy myself by trying to think of metaphors to describe the event I'm at. At this year's South East Regional Conference, I think I came up with a pretty good one.
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Motions to NUS NEC, November 8
Motions I’m submitting to the NUS NEC on November 8th - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
Against the Iranian regime, against war
A living wage for campus workers
Affiliation to Iraq Union Solidarity
Students are workers too
In these columns, I've talked a lot about why students should unite with workers, primarily those on their campuses such as lecturers, cleaners, librarians or catering staff.
But a decade of huge attacks on education funding have meant that more and more students are forced to enter the labour market themselves and working for increasingly long hours for increasingly poorer pay. Government propaganda about how much more university graduates can expect to earn is not much consolation during an eight-hour shift behind a bar or stacking shelves in a supermarket.
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6TH OCTOBER EDUCATION PRIORITY CAMPAIGN PLANNING MEETING
In which there are traffic lights.
In his “Inside NUS” column in London Student, my fellow NEC member Jamal El-Shayyal attacked myself and the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty for what he saw as our hypocritical approach to politics. Why, he wondered, are we so happy to attack Kat Fletcher for alleged “sell outs” even though I had never attended an Education Priority Campaign Planning Meeting and attempted to actually influence the direction of NUS’s free education campaigning?
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3RD OCTOBER NEC MEETING REPORT
In which there are gains and losses.
My accounts of NEC meetings are usually misery reports telling of meetings in which politics are pushed off the agenda in preference to some pointless bureaucratic dalliance. At 4:15, it looked like this meeting would turn out like that too. It was scheduled to finish at 5:00, and no motions had been discussed.
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Motions to NUS NEC, October 3
Motions I put to NUS NEC on October 3 - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
Affiliation to Iraq Union Solidarity
An anti-sweatshop week of action on campuses
Solidarity with sacked Gate Gourmet workers - as submitted
Solidarity with sacked Gate Gourmet workers - as passed
24TH SEPTEMBER ANTI-CLOSURE DEMO, ROLLE COLLEGE (UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH)
In which one union at one tiny college in rural Devonshire puts the National Union of Students to shame.
I went to the seaside last weekend. I'd made plans to go several days in advance and, after the miserable and disappointing affair that was the last NEC (and after a mad week spent rushing around Freshers' Fairs talking to various social justice and anti-capitalist activists about NUS's commitment to organising an anti-sweatshop week of action on campuses this year), I was massively looking forward to it.
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19TH SEPTEMBER EMERGENCY NEC REPORT
In which there are two reviews, and I'll put you out your misery now: we're not having a national demo.
Good things, they say, come in twos. Or something. September 19th brought two Emergency NEC meetings but unfortunately, the saying did not hold true. Neither was very good.
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IT’S NOTHING PERSONAL - IT’S JUST BUSINESS
In which it’s important to get some things sorted out…
The quote that provides the title of this blog, as some people will undoubtedly have noticed, is from Francis Ford Coppolla’s epic movie The Godfather. Before anyone asks, I am definitely not comparing gang warfare and organised crime to student politics. The world of gang warfare is a world in which vain people bound together by little more than their common devotion to self-interest and the accumulation of power pursue petty personal vendettas against people possessed of similarly fragile egos. As everyone knows, student politics is nothing like that.
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1st September Priority Campaigns Launch Report
In which the NUS gets its priorities badly wrong.
It has come to my attention that I spend a lot of time in these blogs being critical and denunciatory. To remedy this, I would like to begin this report with some words of praise.
The 2005/2006 Priority Campaigns Launch - consisting of a daytime event and then an evening reception, held at the TUC's Congress Centre - was a slick, well-managed and very well put-together event. Logistically it was very impressive; speakers, by and large, began and finished on time and the whole thing ticked over very nicely. The food was also of an exceptionally high quality, with breaded tiger-prawns, thai fish cakes with sweet chilli sauce, barbecue chicken-wings and filo-pastry parcels of Mediterranean vegetables all in abundant evidence. It certainly made a welcome change from the shite I usually eat.
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22nd August NEC Report
In which the NEC demonstrates…something, and I wish I was joking.
The days immediately preceding this meeting had been pretty hectic for me. I got back from a week in Ireland on Wednesday, got my A-Level results on Thursday and then had to immediately pack up all my stuff to move to London. I managed to nick a weekend in Cornwall in the midst of all of that and didn't pack any sun block, so I turned up to the NEC on Monday totally shattered and closely resembling a hairy tomato. It wasn't the best preparation for a meeting in which over half of the 10+ motions submitted were from me and over which I anticipated a pretty serious debate. I am, however, a big fan of a good argument so I was looking forward to the whole thing. Sadly I was to be disappointed.
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Motions to NUS NEC, August 22
Motions I plan to submit to the NUS NEC meeting on August 22 - please read, put similar motions to your unions and take up these issues in your campaigning groups!
An anti-sweatshop week of action on campuses
Gate Gourmet solidarity - emergency motion
Our extremism against theirs
In which it's important to call things by their proper names…
Following the 7/7 bombings in London, the media has been full of righteous denunciations of “extremists ” of all stripes. Fair enough, you might think. The belief that blowing hundreds of public transport users up is a good way to get a political point across is pretty “extreme, ” so why not denounce it as such?
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11th July NEC Report
In which the NEC is against terrorism, against racism, against war.
The terrorist atrocities carried out in London the previous Thursday cast a pretty long shadow over my first NEC-proper. In the discussion about how the NUS should respond, some of the live debates surrounding the events were replicated on a smaller scale, as arguments took place on how much emphasis should be placed on the way in which UK and US foreign policy has nurtured terrorism and “made us a target.”
My own view is that it’s a question largely of emphasis. It’s wrong and in fact reactionary to suggest that Blairite foreign policy is solely or mainly to blame for the bombings; this carries with it an implicit suggestion that all those who died are also somehow to blame for not stopping Blair from carrying out his plans or for voting his government back in. It also sees the politics of the terrorists and solely reactive, when in fact they have their own political dynamic and logic. The movement to which they belong has its own ideas and agenda - it doesn’t only exist as a reaction to the crimes of imperialism.
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1st-5th July G8 Mobilisations and 6th July Emergency NEC Report
In which there were no run-ins with the police, no compromises and No Sweat.
For five days prior to the NEC on the 6th, I had been in Scotland at the G8 protests. I spent most of my time building the profile of No Sweat and its recently-launched student wing, Students Against Sweatshops.
I’m not really into the sort of nonsense that people like Geldof spout about how it’s necessary to be part of mobilisations like this for their so-called “historic” nature, as if building up a bank of stories to tell the grandkids is the most important thing. The best activists in Scotland were the ones who went for explicitly political reasons, not just “to be part of it.”
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1st June National Council Report
In which the NOLSies are unfairly attacked, James Lloyd is censured and some right-wingers talk about the pressing need to save loads of money, preferably by hacking NUS’ campaigning ability to pieces and literally taking food out of the mouths of key activists…
It is a sad reflection of the culture in NUS these days that the issue that aroused the most passion at today’s National Council was started by one delegate making a broadside attack on NOLS for… supporting the Labour Party.
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13 May NEC Report
In which the NEC continues to eat itself, and I realise I’m going to have to start looking for a job pretty quickly…
The meeting was a stultifying and depressing affair, with 99% of its time dedicated towards a group exercise in which NEC members were told to find ways of cutting NEC expenditure in order to aid the NUS’ apparently apocalyptic financial crisis.
Kat Fletcher announced that she had received 3 requests from affiliated unions for an Extraordinary Conference on finance (still 17 short of the 20 required), and that if we didn’t find sufficient cuts to make then we’d be pushed to an Extraordinary Conference and probably lose the Block of 12. Whether this is the case or not is highly dubious - Kat is resorting to scare-mongering tactics to get the NEC to approve cuts that she’s probably already cooked up with management. There was certainly no suggestion at the meeting that getting rid of some of the £50,000 p/a Managing Directors (or whatever their title is) might be a better way of saving money that impoverishing Block of 12 members in 2005/6.
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