[ENS] Education Not for Sale amendments for NUS conference 2009

[Education Not for Sale]

Please find below ENS's model amendments for NUS conference. Each
NUS-affiliated SU can submit one amendment in each Zone. The deadline
for submission is 27 February.

If you would like help submitting them or for more information, get in touch.

In solidarity

Daniel Randall

**

Education zone
a. A real fight for free education
b. Why direct action is vital

Welfare and student rights zone
a. Students are workers too
b. For reproductive freedoms

Society and citizenship zone
a. Support the Palestinians! Support the Israeli opposition!
b. Cut the roots of racism!

Strong and active unions zone
a. For democracy in the student movement

**

EDUCATION zone

a. A real fight for free education (amends motion 605: add amendment)

This conference notes

 1. Soaring student debt and impoverishment as a result of the rising
cost of education.
 2. 2009 is the year in which the government may attempt to lift the
£3,000 cap on top-up fees.
 3. Many VCs have been lobbying for the cap to be removed.

This conference believes

1. Any increase in the cap would be disastrous for students in this country.
2. A real national fightback, based on radical direct action including
demonstrations and occupations, is needed not just to resist any
attempt to lift the cap but to go on the offensive against the entire
fees system.

This conference further believes

1. NUS's recent record in terms of free education campaigning is
deplorable, comprising almost exclusively of surrenders, sell-outs and
political capitulations.
2. The February 25 national free education demonstration organised by
SUs and activist groups independently of NUS shows the sort of
initiative NUS could be using its considerable resource to organise.

This conference resolves

1. To launch a real fight for free education on the basis of total
opposition to all fees and the demand for non-means tested living
grants for all students funded by the taxation of the rich.
2. To base such a campaign on direct action and to link it with
workers' organisations fighting for public ownership elsewhere in the
public sector.

(Words: 231)


b. Why direct action is vital (amends motion 605: add amendment)

This conference notes

1. That every social movement throughout history that has won
significant progress has been based on mass, democratic forms of
radical direct action.
2. The sheer unwillingness of successive NUS leaderships to
acknowledge this reality.

This conference further notes

1. That education campaigning is no exception to this rule. Students
in France, Greece, Italy, Germany and elsewhere who have won huge
concessions from government and university management have done so on
the basis of campaigns including mass meetings, strikes, occupations,
sit-ins and demonstrations.
2. Students in the UK are not somehow innately incapable of employing
these tactics, as the wave of occupations in solidarity with the
Palestinians clearly shows.

This conference believes

1. That the strategies hitherto employed by NUS, based on lobbying and
national demonstrations that have either been poorly organised,
cancelled or not called at all, has clearly failed.
2. That while radical direct action in and of itself will not be
sufficient to force the hand of government and bosses' organisations
such as UUK, a strategy that dismisses it altogether is guaranteed to
fail.

This conference resolves

1. To integrate radical direct action tactics into our education
campaigning for 2009-10.
2. To liaise with students' organisations on the continent to discuss
skills sharing and activist training, including organising a speaker
tour with activists from Greece, Germany, France, Italy and Ireland to
build links and share best practise.

(Words: 233)


WELFARE AND STUDENT RIGHTS zone

a. Students are workers too (amends motion 702: add amendment)

This conference notes

1. The jobs most students do are in sectors in which low-pay, long
hours and precarious conditions are extremely prevalent, including
on-campus jobs in which they are frequently directly employed by NUS
CMs.
2. That the average age of a trade unionist in Britain is still around 45.

This conference further notes

1. Despite producing useful reports such as 'All Work and Low Pay',
NUS has so far failed to launch any serious campaigning to organise
working students and help them fight for their rights.
2. Campaigns elsewhere in the world, such as New Zealand, France and
the USA, in which student organisations and trade unions have combined
to organise thousands of young workers against some of the most
anti-union and exploitative corporations in the world, winning huge
victories such as the abolition of the youth rates of the minimum
wage.

This conference believes

1. To be successful in campaigning for our members' rights at work, it
is not enough to simply promote trade union recruitment. Only
campaigns that set out to help student workers actively take on
exploitative bosses can be successful.

This conference resolves

1. To launch a young workers campaign that aims to ensure trade union
recognition and membership for all workers employed by NUS CMs, as
well as fighting for political change such as the abolition of the
discriminatory youth rates of the minimum wage and their replacement
with a universal living wage.

(Words: 240)


b. For reproductive freedoms (amends motion 712: add amendment)

This conference believes

1. As well as having the right to control her own body, including
having an abortion, reproductive freedom for women should also mean
the right to a top-quality, free healthcare service and maternity
rights at work.
2. That even in countries where abortion is formally legal, this is
not necessarily an indicator of wider reproductive freedoms or a
comprehensive guarantee of a woman's right to choose.

This conference further believes

1. Abortion rights campaigning must include opposition to the
privatisation of the NHS and a fight for a democratically-run,
publicly owned top-quality healthcare system funded by taxation of the
rich. It must also vigorously oppose government attacks on the welfare
state.
2. Women who choose to have children should have access to maternity
leave, social childcare and a welfare state capable of providing
benefits set to a level high enough to live on, and index-linked to
average earnings so that their real value does not decrease.

This conference resolves

1. To conduct our abortion rights campaigning on this basis.

(Words: 172)


SOCIETY AND CITIZENSHIP zone

a. Support the Palsestinians! Support the Israeli opposition! (amends
motion 803: add amendment)

This conference notes

1. The opposition to Israel's brutal assault on Gaza was not
exclusively international; there is a significant and potentially
powerful opposition movement within Israel itself, comprising anti-war
activists, the refusenik movement and elements of the labour movement.
2. The thousands-strong demonstrations in Tel Aviv in January in
opposition to the assault.

This conference further notes

1. This movement has been campaigning against the Israeli occupation
of Palestine and for a just settlement based on independence for the
Palestinians and the mutual recognition of the national rights of both
groups for generations.
2. Students play a crucial part in the Israeli opposition movements,
particularly in the refusenik movement. During the assault on Gaza,
several high-school students were jailed for refusing to serve in the
IDF.

This conference believes

1. That the Israeli people themselves have a vital role to play in
fighting for a just settlement to the conflict and a lasting peace in
the region.
2. The opposition movements prove that Israel is not a nation made up
wholly of warmongering colonialists.

This conference resolves

1. To express the NUS's solidarity with the peace, anti-war and
workers' movements in Israel and in particular with the students who
refused to become cogs in the Israeli war machine.

(Words: 209)


b. Cut the roots of racism (amends motion 811: add amendment)

This conference notes

1. The uneven but continued and worrying growth of the British
National Party, particularly in heavily working-class areas, which the
current economic crisis will help fuel.
2. The revelation of BNP members active within some CMs following the
leaking of the party's membership list.

This conference further notes

1. The BNP's participation in education-related campaigning, such as
campaigns against Academy Schools, and their attempt to position
themselves as a party opposed to privatisation and in favour of public
services.
2. That many working-class people facing legitimate concerns around
these issues are attracted to the BNP given the absence of a credible
political alternative.
3. Racism, scaremongering and hysteria from the establishment parties
over the issue of immigration has helped create an atmosphere in which
it is easier for a force like the BNP to grow.

The conference believes

1. Anti-fascist campaigning that is limited to calling on people to
vote for the very parties that have created the conditions in which
the BNP has grown is guaranteed to fail.

This conference resolves

1. To conduct our anti-fascist campaigning alongside grassroots,
labour movement and working-class community organisations that tackle
the issues upon which the BNP feeds as well as busting their racist
lies.
2. To produce an anti-fascist activist's handbook with advice on how
to link anti-fascist and anti-racist campaigning with campaigning
around issues such as public services and rights at work.

(Words: 234)


STRONG AND ACTIVE UNIONS zone

a. For democracy in the student movement (amends motion 503: add amendment)

This conference believes

1. The ratification of the new NUS constitution was the culmination of
a lengthy period of attacks on democracy at almost every level of the
student movement.
2. The new constitution is effectively the apex of over fifteen years
of cutbacks to NUS democracy, including the abolition of Winter
Conference, the shortening of Spring (now Annual) Conference and
changes to delegate entitlement.

This conference further believes

1. The intense bureaucratisation of the official student movement at a
national level has been reflected on many campuses. Many CMs no longer
have open general meetings where ordinary members can participate in
setting the SU's political direction. Power is concentrated in the
hands of Executive Committees of full-time officers, unwieldy and
inaccessible Councils or – worse – in the hands of Trustee Boards
including unelected and unaccountable figures from outside the student
movement.
2. That this is not an abstract question of organisation or structure
but a political one: the attacks on democracy have fuelled, and been
fuelled by, an almost complete disengagement between the student
movement's structures and the mass of its ordinary members.

This conference resolves

1. To mandate the NEC to instigate a democracy review, led from below
by elected student activists, aimed at reversing the cuts to NUS
democracy and encouraging CMs to adopt governance models aimed at
facilitating mass grassroots control and participation, based on forms
such as mass general meetings.