[ENS] Will the real socialist feminist please stand up?

[Laura Schwartz]

Comrades and Sisters!
   
  Welcome to all of you who have just joined the ENS Women list. This list is used for both decision make and general discussion.
   
  I thought I’d write a brief report of women’s conference for those of you who couldn’t make it, as well as a message of thanks for all the ENS women who did enter into the fray (and who are probably in bed recovering). Sofie will send a much more detailed report to the list soon.
   
  Well, we lost the election 18 votes to 33 but I think that despite this defeat we should feel proud of the campaign we ran. Mary’s performance was amazing. She was by far the better speaker and had some very good, concrete ideas about how to turn the women’s campaign around. The fact that at each new hustings, Kat Stark (Mary’s opponent) began to ‘borrow’ more and more of her ideas (as well as beginning to refer to herself as a ‘socialist feminist’!) suggests that we were able to have an impact on the direction of both campaigns.
   
  Moreover, we managed to have this impact despite the fact that Mary’s campaign was run by full-time activist students, whereas Labour Students had a number of full-time staff organising Kat’s campaign, along with the current women’s officer and the current president of NUS. 
   
  Other ENS women were elected to positions in women’s campaign. Congratulations to Sam Cox who won an open-place position on women’s committee, Joanna Dawson who won Lesbian rep, and Jo Read who won steering.
   
  Of course elections were not our only concern at conference, and our main reason for being there was to be a voice for Education Not For Sale on top up fees, abortion rights, free speech and secularism, women’s rights in the Middle East and socialist feminism, as well as to talk to other students about politics. 
   
  Our approach was to spark as much debate as possible in order to get the people on conference floor thinking about these issues. Some of the debates we won, others we lost.
  Labour Students were out in force, and therefore had a big sway over how the rather confused first-time delegates voted. Our motion on education funding was gutted of all its criticism of the Blair government and the failure of the current NUS leadership to campaign for NUS’ policy of funding free education through taxing the rich. But our motion on Blair’s education bill passed. Although our amendment ‘Against New Labour’s Agenda’ was strongly challenged, it also gained a lot of support and passed without too much of its substance having been gutted by parts. 
  The toughest fight was on the ‘Women’s Rights Are Universal’ motions we submitted, but it was also with these that we had most success. Conference therefore voted to donate £200 to the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and to support their campaign against the imposition of Sharia law in Iraq.
   
  The conference was tiny- between 50-60 delegates and observers, and was the smallest liberation conference NUS has ever held. This seems to go someway to vindicating our criticism of the way the Labour Students leadership has run (or rather failed to run) the campaign over the last 2 years. We hope however, that we raised these criticisms loudly and often enough to ensure that Kat Stark will feel obliged to perform her role with more competency than her Labour Students predecessor.
   
  Sophie Conway Allen made a statement in the name of other women’s committee members (Louise Gold, Sharon Stacey and Debbie Hollingsworth) censuring Jo Salmon for failing in her basic duties as women’s officer, such as organising committee meetings, answering phone calls and replying to emails. ENS distributed a broader document on this subject, a factual record of Labour Students’ incompetence. All this led to a dramatic end to conference, with Jo Salmon using her leaving speech in order to lambaste anyone who had dared to criticise her. It was particularly amusing, given her constant reference to personal attacks, that not only did Labour Students supporters heckle Sophie C.A. and Laura Schwartz whilst they made their statements, but that Jo and her partner Antonia Bance (a member of steering and therefore supposed to be neutral) simultaneously screamed ‘shut up’ across conference floor in response to a question from Sophie.
   
  Most importantly of all, ENS attracted some new women who played a very supportive role in the campaigning and who were not afraid to stand up and defend the principles of solidarity, freedom, equality and sisterhood. It looks that though we will have a really good group of women to carry on socialist feminist campaigning over the next year. Plans include a conference on the international struggle for women’s rights and some direct action (maybe on the issue of immigration and asylum?). I’ll look forward to seeing and campaigning with you all again soon.
   
  In Solidarity,
  Laura Schwartz

		
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