NUS Trustee Board: whose “team”?

Yes, it’s another controversial Trustee Board report from Daniel “shouldn’t he have moved on from NUS by now?” Randall, raising the red banner of revolutionary socialism on a committee he doesn’t think should exist in a union he doesn’t really believe is a union any more and which hardly anyone pays any attention to anyway. I can feel the foundations of capitalism shaking: can you?
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NUS conference 2010: NUS sinks further

By Daniel Randall, NUS Trustee Board
(originally published at www.workersliberty.org)

Despite a background of impressive grassroots struggles against cuts and fees, NUS conference 2010 (Newcastle, April 13-15) saw the Blairite leadership of the national union entrench itself and push further down the road of bureaucratisation, depoliticisation and capitulation to the government. Even by the low standards of recent years, it was a bad conference for the left and those who want a campaigning student movement – at a time when students need one more than ever.
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NUS conference: issues for anti-cuts, free education and left activists

By Daniel Randall, NUS Trustee Board, and Chris Marks, Hull University VP Education, NCAFC northern co-convenor and candidate for NUS President

This year’s NUS conference (13-15 April, in Newcastle, the first not to take place in Blackpool for decades) meets against the background of huge cuts to higher education – some of the first New Labour’s cuts to really bite. We have seen the development of anti-cuts groups on many campuses and big struggles at a series of institutions, notably Tower Hamlets, London Met, Leeds, Westminster and Sussex. The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts has linked up and organised student activists in a fight back across the country.

Unfortunately, very little of this will be reflected at the conference. With the new, anti-democratic structure pushed through last year and the recent dramatic cut in delegation sizes, the conference will be more dominated by friends of the leadership among conservative sabbaticals than ever.
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How to fight: NCAFC speaker tour with Sussex student activists

Last term, six Sussex students were suspended for taking part in the occupation of their VC’s office in protest against cuts. Following a hundreds-strong occupation and a thousand-strong general meeting, coinciding with a UCU strike, which voted no confidence in university management, they have been reinstated. The battle against cuts continues.

Sussex students have built a powerful campaign, made strong links with lecturers and other campus workers in struggle and pushed their management onto the back foot. How did they do it? The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts is organising a speaker tour with activists from Sussex Stop the Cuts, including reinstated student Patrick Rolfe, to spread the lessons of their struggle and build the national anti-cuts movement.

The tour will take place at the end of April and the start of May. Dates confirmed so far:

Leeds University – 21 April
University of East Anglia – 22 April
Manchester Metropolitan University – 28 April
Surrey University – Lecture Theater TD1, University Of Surrey, Guildford. Wednesday 5th May, 7.15 – 9.45.

There will also be meetings at Westminster, UCL, Kent, Cambridge, Oxford, Sheffield, Hull, Birmingham, Gloucester and Newcastle – dates tbc.

If you would like to organise a meeting at your college or university email againstfeesandcuts@gmail.com or ring 07775 763 750.