Campaign for NUS Democracy launched - get involved!
Posted on November 8, 2007
Filed Under Inside NUS, News
On Sunday 4 November, a meeting was held at Birkbeck College in London to launch a united campaign against the attacks on democracy that are part of NUS’s “Governance Review”.
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What you can do:
? Sign the statement in opposition to the Governance Review attacks, the Extraordinary Conference and for a democratic, campaigning NUS - click here
? Get delegated to the Extraordinary Conference (which will take place in the West Midlands on 29 November or 4, 5, or 6 December - more details asap) and to next year’s annual conference by running in your SU elections, or demanding your SU holds elections for the Extraordinary Conference if it doesn’t plan to
? Put a motion to your SU to oppose the Review and send its policy to NUS conference - click here for a model motion
? Circulate the ENS statement as a petition among activists, campaigning groups etc at your college or university to raise awareness of the issues. You may also find useful ENS’s summary of the Review proposals and our submission to the Review, which sets out in detail our analysis of NUS’s problems and our vision for rebuilding the student movement
? Hold a meeting or action on your campus
For a speaker or help with any of these things, get in touch by emailing NUS NEC member Sofie Buckland at volsunga@gmail.com
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Attended by 50 student activists and student union officers - including members of Education Not for Sale, Workers’ Liberty, SWP/Respect, the Young Greens, Socialist Students and a wide variety of independents - the 4 November meeting discussed the nature of the attacks within the context of years of NUS inaction and mismanagement, began to plan a campaign against them, and elected a steering committee to take things forward.
ENS members proposed that the statement we launched, advocating an ‘aspirational’ vision for the student movement and positive proposals as well as defensive slogans, be adopted by the campaign. With the SWP having mobilised a fairly large number of their members for the meeting, this was voted down 14-24 with eight abstentions. The SWP are sticking to the idea that positive proposals will endanger the fight to defeat the Governance Review - missing two key points.
i) The campaign as a whole adopting a particular platform does not mean that people have to agree with every dot and comma to work with it - as anyone who has ever been involved in any sort of activism knows. Even if they don’t put their name to a particular statement, no one opposed to the Governance Review proposals is going to vote in favour on the grounds that they disagree with some aspects of the campaign against.
ii) More fundamentally, it is clear that we cannot run an effective campaign unless we tell the truth about NUS’s current short-comings. For the NUS leadership to be able to present opponents of the Governance Review as as essentially conservative and themselves as champions of democratic reform would be fatal. In particular, we will not mobilise any significant number of student activists if we fail to make clear that we are not defending the status quo.
The left, surely, wants a more democratic NUS not just as an end in itself, but so that we can change NUS’s policy, priorities and ways of operating. The question of democracy and of achieving an NUS that fights and wins are two sides of the same coin.
The 4 November meeting did adopt the slogans “For a democratic, campaigning NUS”, as well as “Defend NUS democracy” and “Defeat the Governance Review”. While it was in fact ENS that came up with this slogan and we thus welcome its adoption (progress from the 21 October ENS gathering, when the SWP argued that the campaign should have no positive element at all), we would make the point that it needs to be filled with some definite content - since, after all, no one in NUS would disagree on paper with the need for it to be democratic and campaigning.
The argument used at the meeting by NUS exec Rob Owen of the SWP, that ENS’s proposals focus on specific organisational changes, when what is needed are broad statement of principle, is the wrong way to approach this. Of course, we need a broad vision for our movement, but this should not be counterposed to practical proposals. Rob’s argument is self-contradictory: broad statements of radical principle are just as, if not more, likely to alienate conservatives as specific proposals. Moreover, we should give any credence to the idea that it is the NUS leadership who are thoughtful, practically-minded people, while all the left are capable of is woolly generalities. Clearly the campaign should not go into too much detail, but why nothing beyond generalities?
ENS will, of course, continue to work within the campaign, arguing against a purely defensive stance, for a positive vision and for concrete demands to win a democratic, campaigning, political NUS. ENS supporters Sofie Buckland (NUS NEC) and Daniel Randall (NUS NEC member 2005-2006) were elected to the steering committee, as were a number of others who have worked closely with ENS. Steering committee meetings will be open to all activists to attend and speak at, and we hope to be able to publicise the first one soon.
What now?
As the meeting heard from Dan Swain of NUS Steering Committee (in effect NUS’s conference arrangements committee), it is certain that an Extraordinary Conference to push through the cuts will now go ahead, since the right-wing majority on the NEC have had little difficulty getting the requisite 25 member unions to call one, although so far only seven requests have been formally made. The Conference will take place somewhere in the West Midlands on 29 November or 4, 5 or 6 December. The immediate focus for student activists is now to pass motions in their unions mandating delegates to vote against the review, and to get themselves delegated if they can, demanding that unions that have not yet had their elections hold a cross-campus ballot to elect delegates. We need just over a third of the vote to reject the constitutional changes.
For all activists, including those at institutions where getting delegated or passing motions will be difficult (because of right-wing or inactive students’ unions, for example), resisting the Review will involve educating people on your campus about what it means for NUS and organising from the ground up. Activists can, for instance, organise open meetings; collect signatures on the ENS-launched statement; circulate information among and involve campaigning societies; write articles for student newspapers and websites; and hold demonstrations and actions - not only to put pressure on union executives and conference delegates, but to mobilise a real movement for a democratic, fighting NUS.
? A note of caution: no to control-freakery
? For the members of the steering committee, click here
? Campaign for NUS Democracy website (not properly up and running yet)
