[ENS] Draft founding statement for ENS

[Josh Robinson]

Here is a draft founding statement, to be discussed at the conference on 
Saturday. If you have any comments, please send them to 
ens-discuss at lists.aktivix.org

In solidarity,

Josh
--
The case for a new student activist network

Education in the UK is increasingly geared towards the job market. By 
introducing variable top-up fees, the 2004 Higher Education Act 
established a market within the state-funded Higher Education system, 
forcing universities to sacrifice quality and choice and implement 
increases in class sizes and cuts in teaching posts in the name of 
'efficiency'. This trend has been mirrored in schools and colleges across 
the country, where cuts in courses, Private Finance Initiatives and 
privately owned City Academies subordinate the provision of quality 
education to the demands of business. The curriculum is being reshaped to 
introduce children as young as five to 'entrepreneurship'. Meanwhile, 
communities are divided along religious, sectarian and ethnic lines by the 
promotion of faith schools.

Students are faced with increasingly severe financial difficulties. In
1998 the Labour Government completed the process of removing even the
inadequate, means-tested grants we once had, and students have also lost
the right to Housing Benefit and unemployment benefit during the holidays.
The average student debt on graduating from university is over £13,000 and
rising - set to reach well over £20,000 with the introduction of top-up
fees. Even those who receive the most from the current means-tested loans
are expected to survive on £4,195 a year (£5,175 in London) - and these
are loans, not grants. The grants reintroduced by the Higher Education Act
will be heavily means-tested, with only students from the poorest families
receiving the maximum of £2,700 a year. This while the average student
spends £3,900 a year (£5,000 in London) on rent and utility bills (figures
from NUS), despite living in housing which is often poor quality. The
situation in Further Education is even worse, with students offered a
derisory Education Maintenance Allowance of £30 a week. Many students are
forced to take part-time work, often in retail and catering - work which
is often poorly paid, casual, stressful and ununionised. Although
universities expect us to do academic work during vacations, there is no
maintenance provision over the summer and we no longer have the right to
sign on.

NUS has been unable - or perhaps unwilling - to fight to defend students’
standards of living. Dominated since 1982 by the National Organisation of
Labour Students, our national union not only failed to rally opposition to
Tory attacks on education and then the introduction of tuition fees but
actively endorsed Blair’s abolition of maintenance grants. In 2004, Kat
Fletcher was elected NUS National President on a left-wing manifesto.
Since then she has made numerous attacks on democracy and accountability
within NUS, slashing funding for National Executive members, reducing the
size of annual National Conference and cutting it to less than three days.
She and the clique around her, many of them former left-wingers, have done
nothing to restore a campaigning link between the NUS structures and the
students they are supposed to represent. They have refused to organise a
fight to repair the years of damage inflicted by right-wing government
policy.

Following National Conference 2005, the National Executive Committee and
NUS sabbatical officers are dominated by 'independent' hacks, who seem
more concerned with their own career prospects than with the needs of
those they represent. NUS Committees remain isolated from the vast
majority of students, who remain formally members but increasingly see NUS
as an irrelevance.

At the same time there is a noticeable trend in student activism away from 
NUS. The massive upsurge of student resistance to the 2003 war on Iraq 
found relatively little echo in the official structures of the student 
movement. This is both symptom and cause of the fact that huge numbers of 
activists are abandoning the national union in favour of the more diffuse 
international solidarity, global justice and anti-capitalist movements, 
turning to campaigns run by organisations such as People & Planet and No 
Sweat. The NUS leadership and most student union executives have missed 
countless opportunities to reintegrate these issues and activists into 
their campaigning. They have failed to build any meaningful alliance with 
the gradually reviving labour movement in its fight against Blair's 
anti-working class policies of cuts and privatisation across the public 
sector. There is an urgent need to make explicit the link between our 
campaign for free education and struggles for social provision and 
democratic rights everywhere, taking global justice activists into a 
rejuvenated NUS and student activists into the trade union movement.

NUS is currently undergoing a major financial crisis. This crisis did not 
come out of thin air. It is a political problem, caused above all by the 
failure of the NUS leadership to engage its members in mass campaigning 
activity. It can only be addressed by restoring an active link from 
grassroots activists to student unions and the NUS structures. Student 
unions need to redevelop an activist base by campaigning on the issues 
that matter to their members, ensuring that their structures are 
accessible to campaign activists and that their officers listen and remain 
accountable to those they represent.

It would be a huge mistake to respond to the student movement’s crisis by
making NUS even more bureaucratic, into a body that provides little more
than a discount card for high street shops. Student union campaigning
cannot be limited to 'student issues', but must relate immediate,
bread-and-butter concerns to wider issues of human rights and
international solidarity. Moreover, we need to be consistent in our
principles. In the name of anti-racism, parts of the organised student
left, including SWSS and Student Broad Left, have formed a political
alliance with conservative religious forces. The results of this could be
seen at NUS Conference 2005, where the influence of this religious right
was visible on issues from faith schools and abortion to Iraq and even
education funding. We must increase our strength and profile by winning
people over in debate and discussion, not by forming unprincipled
coalitions with those who are hostile to fundamental left-wing principles.

---------------------

What we need

- A fight for high quality, secular, free education at every level, funded
by taxing the rich.
- An NUS which leads the fight on issues such as top-up fees, a living
maintenance grant for all students, housing and our rights at work - and
student unions and an activist left which are ready to take up that fight
if NUS fails to do so.
- Campaigning unity with the trade union movement in defence of education
and public services; consistent solidarity with working-class struggles in
Britain and worldwide.
- Positive support for democracy and human rights, not cultural
relativism; consistent solidarity with struggles for women’s and LGBT
liberation and against racism.
- Mass participation in NUS and student union campaigns – a democratic
political national union which turns outward to the anti-war,
environmentalist, global justice and anti-sweatshop movements.
- Left unity. The activists and organisations of the student left should
unite - maximum unity in action, open debate where there are differences.

Education Not for Sale is a group of student activists who came together 
in the period around NUS Conference 2005. We aim to become an activist 
network and policy development organisation which helps to rebuild the 
student movement along these lines from the bottom up. If you or your 
student union or campaigning group agree with our basic analysis of what 
is needed, join us!