Socialist Students statement on NUS NEC policy

'Education funding campaign 2007-2010' and the NUS governance review

This debate about NUS democracy and the governance review is being conducted above the heads of students and, deliberately by the right wing, without their participation. The vast majority of students in universities and colleges across the country have very little awareness about what is going on at the top of NUS. The key to saving the NUS as a fighting organisation for students is making it clear what NUS should be doing, and convincing students to get involved and fight for that.

Students are under a lot of pressure, in terms of finance, studying, decreasing resources and facilities. Fees of up to £3,000 a year mean that students are increasingly working in their spare time, struggling to pay ever increasing rent and food bills. Closures of facilities, courses, and libraries make study even harder. There is an increasing divide between wealthy universities that are of majority public school composition, and the majority.

This situation is creating anger and an understanding of the need for change amongst students. Socialist Students, through building the Campaign to Defeat Fees as well as local campaigning on these issues, has sought to help fight back against these conditions and attacks. We also raised the need for the NUS to take up these campaigns with a fighting strategy, and a determination to win struggles for students. This is especially true on the question of fees.

However, The NUS leadership have, over the last few months, launched two major attacks on the idea of NUS as a union that represents and fights for ordinary students. The education funding campaign proposes absolutely no action over fees other than lobbying, right up until the brink of a vote on the issue in parliament. Thousands of students have signed and supported the Campaign to Defeat Fees petitions, calling for NUS to call mass national action against fees immediately, rather than waiting until 2009. However, the second attack, the NUS governance review, has proposed a series of changes in the structure of NUS which will make it impossible for ordinary students to have any decisive say in this or any other matter concerning the running of the National Union of Students. The leadership of NUS, overwhelmingly members of the Labour Party, want NUS to become the equivalent of a charity that lobbies on students behalves, rather than a student equivalent of a trade union.

HE (university) student unions will be able to opt out of mandatory cross-campus elections for delegates to NUS conference. The current NUS NEC will be replaced with a senate and board. The board will probably be mainly comprised of officials, external ‘experts’ and a minority of genuinely democratically elected student representatives. This board will supposedly play a non-political role. In reality it will be able to veto any campaigns or actions proposed by elected student representatives. The senate will include all of the elected student representatives, which includes both those elected by NUS annual conference (renamed ‘congress’) and those elected by smaller ‘zone’ conferences. These zone conferences will be smaller and have far less democratic mandate than the full NUS annual conference, but any policy for annual conference will have to go through these zone conferences first, and all the bureaucracy that goes hand in hand with these. This is a summary of the major attacks on democracy proposed, but not the total.

The NUS NEC right wing majority is campaigning for an extraordinary conference to be called to push through these changes. This has to be called by 25 student unions. This conference, if called, will have far less democratic mandate than a full NUS annual conference. However, if the extraordinary conference is called and passes the governance review, it will be presented as a fait accompli to the full NUS conference in April, at which the right hope the changes will be ratified. If these measures are passed, it means the end of NUS as a democratic fighting force.

The introduction of tuition fees initially, then top-up fees, saw the NUS calling demonstrations and other actions. It was this clear opposition and action which made both votes in parliament come close to defeat for the government. Socialist Students believes that had they gone further, and organised mass demonstrations on the day of the vote, that there was a real chance that fees could have been defeated outright. Instead, the NUS leadership called for lobbying on the day, which led to a major defeat for students in the form of the introduction of fees.

Lobbying MPs in the absence of a mobilised movement is clearly a failed tactic. However, it is precisely this tactic which is official NUS policy. This policy has the effect of reducing the awareness of what NUS is capable of. A campaign to defend NUS's present, severely limited democratic structures would need to rekindle this awareness.

Student activists campaigning on the ground over the last year has pushed some local student unions to partially take up this idea. Campaign to Defeat Fees –organised protests, showing the anger that students feel over fees with protests at over 50 universities and colleges across the UK, pushed a number of student unions into backing the protests. These include Cardiff, London Metropolitan, Brunel, Southampton Institute, Thames Valley and others.

Socialist Students will be campaigning amongst students to fight back against the attacks that students face, and linking that to the need to defend NUS democracy. This will involve making sure that as many students as possible are aware of, and attend, student union meetings at which these issues are being discussed, and putting forward and supporting motions against the attacks. We will do this by making the case for a fighting, democratic NUS which has a strategy for defeating fees and the many other attacks students face.

We oppose all the measures put forward by the right wing in their governance review and would oppose the organisation of an "Extraordinary Conference" that would be completely undemocratic and in no way reflect the participation of ordinary students or their views. However if the right wing do succeed in getting their way we will try to mobilise delegates to this conference to fight these attacks, and continue to build the fight for free education.

Socialist Students

For a report of the meeting which launched the 'Defend NUS Democracy' campaign, see here.

To sign the Campaign to Defeat Fees petition, to build a campaign fighting against fees and for a democratic, national fighting organisation for students, click here.