NUS Women’s Campaign votes to support national demo for free education

Posted on October 29, 2008
Filed Under ENS Women

By Gemma Short, NUS Women’s Committee open place

At the last meeting of NUS Womens’ Committee, on 23rd October, ENS supporters took a motion to support the call for a national demonstration against fees, debt and the marketisation of education. This motion was passed almost unanimously, and as well as giving NUS womens’ campaign a policy of fighting for free education by taxing the rich and business, it calls for a national demonstration in spring 2009.

This policy is contrary to the policy that the NUS leaders pushed for and passed at annual conference 2008 – which stops short of calling for free education, and certainly would not call for taxation of the rich and business. However, on Women’s Committee prominent Labour Students – who would usually be gunning for NUS’s policy of entering into negotiations with the government and not calling national action - not only voted for the motion, but spoke in favour of it. When one committee member took parts to remove a section that read “funded by taxing the rich and business … that every student over 16 should receive a living grant of at least £150 a week”, it was Estelle Hart, Labour Students, who spoke against removing the parts!

It’s not clear why they did this. However, it is a positive step towards turning back to clocks on NUS inaction, and towards renewing a culture of militant fighting student unionism in campuses across the country. We now need to push for the Womens’ Campaign to actually mobilise for a national demonstration and lead the way on repopularising the ideas of free education.

The statement for the demo can be found here here; please consider trying to pass this through your women’s group etc.