Not a meeting of the NEC.
At the Monday 15 July meeting of NUS National Executive Council, the leadership and its supporters voted down a series of proposals from National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts members – on councilors defying cuts, on campaigning to save the NHS, and on public ownership of the banks. Their general attitude was: don’t say anything radical, don’t demand any campaigning, don’t bother us with motions or debate.
However, some proposals we made on anti-fascism and on migrants’ rights campaigning were passed.
This was my first NUS National Executive Council meeting as a voting member (we took office on the 1 July – I commented on the 9/10 May NEC meeting which I attended as an observer here, here and here).
You can read the motions I and fellow NCAFC members Arianna Tassinari, James McAsh, Edmund Schluessel and Gordon Maloney were backing here.
Anti-racism/anti-fascism
There was an excellent motion on opposing anti-migrant measures and supporting migrants’ rights proposed by Arianna and Edmund. I’d urge comrades to read it and take up similar campaigning proposals in their SUs and on their campuses.
The meeting also discussed anti-fascist campaigning. When we wrote our anti-fascist motion I was really concerned about “getting it right”. Some of you may know that there was controversy over the anti-racism text which was remitted from national conference to the May NEC, and you can read my write-up on that here. This time round, the Labour Students members of the NEC had submitted a motion on anti-fascism which contained a lot of text originally from the NCAFC motion to conference, which was included in an amendment passed at the May NEC but lost when the whole motion fell. This included quite a bit of stuff on anti-traveller racism and working with the Traveller Solidarity network.
I also submitted a motion which was eventually taken as an amendment to the Labour students/leadership motion. As you will see above, my motion including criticms of Unite Against Fascism – not just in connection with the Martin Smith controversy, but also its lack of democracy and its flawed politics on many issues. It also discussed the aftermath of the Woolwich killing, and the need to oppose anti-Muslim attack and bigotry. After I moved this text, it was attacked by NUS Black Students’ Officer Aaron Kiely, who is a member of the so-called Student Broad Left group (see here). Aaron claimed that this was a “sectarian attack on UAF” and that the use of the term “Islamism” was Islamophobic.
Read the motion again. I think it’s clear that this was far from anything like a sectarian attack. Dissatisfaction with UAF is growing in the student movement as well as the labour movement and it is perfectly legitimate to express that. If I or my NCAFC comrades were motivated by some kind of sectarian agenda, why would we have voted for Aaron’s motion at the last NEC, despite our criticisms of it, and criticised the NUS leadership for voting it down? And why would my comrades in Workers’ Liberty have argued, against some others in NCAFC, that it is still necessary to work with UAF on the ground?
What is really sectarian is Socialist Action’s obsession with continuing to push this undemocratic, ineffective front. I notice that Aaron brought no anti-racism motion at all to this NEC – presumably because he knew that support for UAF would be voted down, but he didn’t want to write any motion which didn’t include UAF!
For those who aren’t clear, I also want to explain what the reference to “Islamists” means. “Islamism” refers to a reactionary/radical right-wing (ranging from ultra-conservative to fascistic) religious-political movement aiming to create a theocratic Islamic state – the kind of ideology which, in extreme form, inspired the killers of Lee Rigby. It does not mean Muslim people in general, who like all religious believers have many different political views, or to the religion of Islam as such. The more radical versions of Islamism, like fascism, mobilise a popular movement on the streets with the aim of smashing the labour movement, the left and oppressed minorities. Student Broad Left attacks those (like myself and my comrades in the AWL) who criticise Islamism and claim we are Islamophobic. This is rubbish.
Muslim and Muslim-background people are the main victims of this reactionary stream of ideologies and movements. To pretend it doesn’t exist is ludicrous, and in my view to deny the existence of political, class and liberation struggles which exist inside mainly Muslim communities as they exist in all communities is itself Islamophobic.
We also had an argument with the leadership, who opposed our text opposing calls for state bans of fascists and arguing for mass mobilisation to drive them off the streets instead. Their argument was that this conflicted with no platform policy. This is a completely misunderstanding. No platform is, or should be, about who we allow in our student unions and in our movement. It is not, or should not be, about calling for bans on the far right by a state which is very likely to use those powers to repress anti-fascists and the left. (This is consistently what has happened in the past.) We should maintain no platform for fascists in our unions and oppose state bans. And in all cases mass mobilisation is the best and most reliable way to beat back the far right.
NUS has agreed to investigate working with the new Anti-Fascist Network. I’ll be chasing this up – more soon.
NUS’s £100k CEO Ben Kernigham, who attended the meeting as an observer, whilst NUS elected officers voted against campaigning on the banks and local council cuts.
Councillors Against the Cuts
James McAsh moved our motion supporting the Councillors Against the Cuts initiative. CAC is a group of councillors committed to voting against cuts to local government spending, jobs and services and fighting for local authorities as a whole to refuse to implement them. Have a look at the CAC website, which discusses this strategy in quite a bit more detail, refutes criticism from the Labour right and includes inspiring information on some of the struggles these councilors are involved in.
To summarise: the NEC voted down the amendment because, for all their left-wing noises, most of them are Labour Party careerists terrified of doing anything vaguely radical.
Those present argued that the CAC program was “too prescriptive” and that councillors should be able to decide for themselves how they campaign. I hope it is clear how ludicrous this is. Student unions regularly lobby governments and people in leadership positions of all kinds to demand they do certain things. Not all political arguments imply a particular strategy but I think it is clear that you cannot meaningfully be “against cuts” and still pass them on. The great majority of Labour councillors are doing this not because they really believe that is how to stop Tory cuts but becaue they are afraid for their careers and afraid of a struggle.
I suspect Wenstone and her friends fell back on this argument about not being “prescriptive” because they don’t really know much about the issues and wanted to avoid a real argument at the NEC. But in any case it is classic NUS leadership: going through the motions, while being careful not to say or do anything which could actually have an impact on the world.
Defending the NHS
The same Blairite, do-nothing tendency was on display when we discussed the NHS.
Gordon Maloney moved a motion called ‘Defend the NHS’, which takes a clear position to keep the NHS public, and fight against its dismantling by the government. NOLS members including Dom Anderson (Vice President Society and Citizenship) took parts and successfully removed Resolves 1, regarding backing a student conference on the NHS to be held by Medsin and NCAFC (and, with the backing of the NEC, NUS too, of course), which was claimed to be “backing a faction” – a pretty sectarian view, considering NCAFC also operates as an independent campaigning body, organising many hundreds of students, and Medsin is an independent campaigning body which does not operate on a factional basis within NUS. In any case, for instance, NUS backed the 2011 national demo organised by NCAFC.
We know the reality from the comments made by the leadership at NUS conference – they don’t see the NHS as a priority and don’t really want to do anything about it.
Even more ridiculous was the NEC’s refusal to back the fight for a clear commitment from the Labour Party to rebuilding the NHS. The argument made here was that NUS shouldn’t focus on one political party, that NUS is not affiliated to the Labour Party etc etc. Everyone in the room knew how ridiculous this was – probably the majority of those present were Labour Party members and the NUS leadership is certainly dominated by Labour Students and other party members. But put any pressure on the Labour Party to do anything in students’ interests? Oh no, not that. This is in the tradition of 1997, when instead of pressuring their party’s government to serve their members’ interests, the NUS leadership helped Blair to demobilise the student revolt against his plans for tuition fees and abolishing grants.
Expropriate the banks? No, as it turns out.
The May NEC passed an NCAFC motion remitted from NUS conference which opposed all cuts to jobs and services, advocated a living wage and benefits and demanded expropriation and public ownership of the banks. I reported on this, pointing out the contradiction with NUS’s refusal to fight cuts and fees and calling for a campaign to make them carry the policy out.
At this NEC, I moved a motion to that end. Dom Anderson opposed it on the grounds that it was unrealistic and it was duly voted down. James McAsh had previously asked him – in the VP reports section of the meeting – about why standing policy on Expropriation of the Banks (passed at the last NEC meeting) was not within his priority campaign. Dom stated the same thing then. So NUS has policy for expropriation of the banks – but it is yet another piece of policy it is going to absolutely nothing about. This is the kind of thing that breeds cynicism and apathy in our movement.
I also think it is ludicrous that our national union has nothing to say about the banking crisis or how to clean up the mess the bankers have made in our society. Ludicrous, but typical.
In summary
So the leadership and their supporters repeatedly voted down anything vaguely radical.
Five of the six motions proposed to the NEC were from the NCAFC. It’s not just that the leadership doesn’t want to pass anything radical, or commit to much of anything. They don’t want the national union’s executive to be a forum for political debate and argument about strategy either. That’s something we will be fighting to change.
Rosie Huzzard 