[ENS] NUS conference: issues for anti-cuts, free education and left activists

[Education Not for Sale]

http://www.free-education.org.uk/?p=685

NUS conference: issues for anti-cuts, free education and left activists

By Daniel Randall, NUS Trustee Board, and Chris Marks, Hull University
VP Education, NCAFC northern co-convenor and candidate for NUS
President

This year’s NUS conference (13-15 May, in Newcastle, the first not to
take place in Blackpool for decades) meets against the background of
huge cuts to higher education – some of the first New Labour’s cuts to
really bite. We have seen the development of anti-cuts groups on many
campuses and big struggles at a series of institutions, notably Tower
Hamlets, London Met, Leeds, Westminster and Sussex. The National
Campaign Against Fees and Cuts has linked up and organised student
activists in a fight back across the country.

Unfortunately, very little of this will be reflected at the conference.

Even before the anti-democratic reforms pushed through over the last
two years, 75 percent of motions at NUS conference were fluff - bland
management speak churned out by supporters of the leadership, with
right-wing policies hidden away in the detail. This year, with fewer
unions submitting policy than ever before, 90 percent is fluff.

The “collaborations agenda”: try to stay awake, this is important

Hidden away in the ‘AGM’ section of the agenda in amendment 701d, from
the NEC, is a resolution to “progress the ‘collaborations agenda’ and
‘wave of change agenda’ as per the NEC report addendum”. The report
refers to the plans being developed by the NUS leadership to merge the
national union with NUSSL (NUS’s commercial services arm) and AMSU
(the ‘union’ for senior managers in student unions!!), creating what
will in effect be a giant service-providing charity with a very small
campaigning arm.

You can read Daniel Randall’s reports from the Trustee Board on this
proposal here
http://www.free-education.org.uk/?p=626
http://www.free-education.org.uk/?p=671

This change is designed to lock down the impossibility of student
activists influencing NUS’s direction, let alone using it as an
organising centre in the upcoming battles against cuts and fees. It
will lay down further institutional barriers against creating the kind
of campaigning national union we need. It’s crucial that delegates
oppose the NEC amendment and vote 701e (Cambridge University) and 701f
(City University), which not only oppose the “collaborations agenda”
but propose genuine democratic changes to NUS’s structures.

The fight against cuts and fees

“Any cuts to higher education finance must be carefully thought
through, and not come at the expense of students”. So says
leadership-supported ‘policy recommendation’ 301, which also accepts
tuition fees in principle and says nothing about the need for a living
student grant.
In other words, as students across the country move into battle
against cuts and fees, NUS has given up in advance. You can be sure
the cuts they are “thinking through” are not cuts to VCs’ pay or
highly paid managers, but to the jobs, rights and education of
students and workers in the HE sector.

301b are 301c are left-wing amendments, supporting free education,
universal grants and a serious fight back against cuts. Unfortunately,
301b argues that “In order to be successful in the global economy
Britain needs a highly skilled workforce”. This is, self-evidently,
not a left-wing position - “success” in the global economy means
success for British capitalists, and they want a highly skilled
workforce so they can exploit us more effectively. We should seek to
remove this nonsense (on the origins of which, see below).

In the FE zone, Sandwell College has proposed Education Not for Sale
text arguing for FE and sixth form students not living at home to
receive a living grant, equal to that for HE students, of £150 a week
(205a). The leadership are opposing this - of course.

Solidarity with workers in struggle

311a rightly argues that “industrial action is… the best way to defend
jobs and conditions in the face of aggressive management” and resolves
“to support industrial action taken by UCU and our other partner
unions in defence of jobs and education, and to urge our Constituent
Members to do the same”. The leadership, which likes to pretend to be
pro-trade union, has not dared oppose this, but no doubt some stone
age right-wing sabbatical will get up to oppose it from the floor.

311b rightly opposes management trying to play off students and
workers against each other, but is agnostic on supporting industrial
action. 311c similarly focuses on minimising industrial action’s
impact on students. This is not adequate.

Workers and students should not pay for the bosses’ crisis! Vote for
311a! NUS should give a clear lead in supporting lecturers and
education workers in struggle.

NUS and student union democracy

Delegates should obviously vote for 701 and 701a in the AGM section,
which opposes the dramatic cuts to conference delegation sizes which
have been pushed through this year. These cuts are designed to make it
harder than ever for student activists to reach conference, let alone
exert some control over the direction of NUS.
Amendment 503c notes the link between moves away “from democratic
procedures such as general meetings that involve active participation”
and “a vision of unions as bodies that act on behalf of a passive
membership, rather than as vehicles for collective action”. “It is the
latter that is needed if we are to build a student movement capable of
fighting the education cuts”. It opposes NUS’s SU Evaluation
Initiative as a tool to encourage bureaucratisation and
depoliticisation in our unions.

Whether or not this is passed, the NUS leadership and the majority of
sabbaticals will not want to act on it. This is a fight that every
anti-cuts, free education and left student activist must take up in
the new term.

Internationalism

There are a number of important motions on international solidarity in
the Society and Citizenship Zone. We would give particular mention to
ordinary motion 414, which supports Batay Ouvriye, the radical union
organising workers in Haiti’s sweatshops and free trade zones, and
which has appealed for funds to help it rebuild after the devastation
of January’s earthquake.

The elections

SWP member Mark Bergfeld is standing for Vice-President Higher
Education (and Block of 15) and SWP sympathiser Assed Baig is standing
for VP Society and Citizenship. As socialists and grassroots
activists, they deserve support. Black Students’ Officer Bellavia
Ribeiro-Addy is standing for President and LGBT Officer Daf Adley for
VP Union Development; both are essentially leftish liberals - as
evidenced by the nonsense they have been involved in promoting about
scrapping fees being good “for the economy”. This is the central theme
of their fake ‘Free Education Campaign’, which organises no activity
and whose website has been updated once since September last year.
Nikita Joshi also seems to be a liberal - she is supporting a Lib Dem
candidate in Harrow in the general election and in her NUS debate
shows no particular sign of being left-wing.

Fiona Edwards, the supposedly ‘left’ candidate for VP Welfare, is a
member of the Stalinist Student Respect/Socialist Action group, with
no record of grassroots activism and a bad record as a sabbatical,
including undermining the Sheffield University occupation over the
invasion of Gaza.

Chris Marks of ENS and the NCAFC is standing for President on a clear
class-struggle, socialist, anti-cuts platform. (Facebook group is
here.) Serious left delegates, in fact everyone who supports a mass
fight back against fees and cuts, should vote Chris Marks #1 and
transfer to Bell Ribeiro-Addy to stop the right-wing candidate Aaron
Porter.

Chris is also standing for the Block of 15.

(For what the different candidates actually stand for, listen to the
debates recorded by NUS here.)

What you can do

1. If you are a delegate or observer and want to help ENS or the
National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts at conference, get in touch by
emailing us, with your phone number, at skillz_999 at hotmail.com
2. The NCAFC will be holding regular caucuses at the ENS stall in the
Sage conference centre where NUS conference is taking place. Come and
listen to what we have to say, take our materials and get involved.
3. We are sponsoring a joint fringe meeting on “How do we fight cuts
and fees?” with Newcastle Free Education Network on the evening of
Wednesday 14 April - 8.30pm at Central Hotel in Gateshead. Details on
the Facebook event here. Come along and bring other delegates!
4. Vote for Chris Marks for President and Block of 15, and for other
socialist candidates.
5. To find us at the conference ring Chris 07931 108 618 or Daniel on
07961 040 618.