Hi everyone
Just a quick update letting you know my thoughts on the motion submitted to this week’s NUS NEC. After last meeting where the motions debate was fairly uncontroversial, I think it’s fair to say a lot of people will be watching Thursday’s meeting (people tend to follow the #nusnec hashtag on Twitter) for some of the motions discussion.
The first motion up is the NUS ‘priority motion’ – each year the president can choose a motion which, if passed, will be put to NUS conference by the NEC as leading policy for the year. This is the substantive motion as moved by Toni Pearce (NUS President) and backed by various Labour Students and members of the NUS leadership:
A New Deal for the Next Generation
NEC Believes:
1. Continued attacks on the prospects of students both in education and in their communities represent a whole generation let down by those with power
2. A feeling of powerlessness and precariousness is increasingly common among the rising generation, squeezed by global recession and biting financial pressures, uncertain about its prospects and its future
3. We too often feel let down by politicians who fail to speak on our behalf in a world where the odds are already stacked against us
4. Young people and students’ prospects continue to worsen due to rising unemployment and living costs
5. Evidence from Ipsos Mori public opinion polling shows more than two thirds of people believe the UK government does not adequately consider future generations in the decisions it makes today
6. The next UK general election is due to take place on Thursday 7 May 2015NEC Further Believes:
1. At the 2010 general election, just 44 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 voted, compared 76 per cent of the over 65s
2. The introduction of individual voter registration (IER) threatens to further reduce the number of students and young people voting
3. The gulf in voting levels between the generations leaves young people losing out in policy terms
4. That it is through students working with communities across the UK that we stand the best chance of achieving a new deal for the next generation.
5. That NUS’ approach to the general election needs to be both local and national, supporting students to win locally and on a national level. To win for students we will need public support, and this is best achieved through working together with people in the communities we live in and finding common cause.
6. That NUS analysis of the 2011 census data demonstrates that there are over 60 constituencies in the UK with over 10 per cent full time students, and that the strength of the student voice and the student vote should be reaffirmed at every opportunity.NEC Resolves:
1. To campaign for a new deal for the next generation across the themes of education, work and community
2. To use the opportunity of the next General Election to win for students both locally and nationally
3. To continue and develop the new campaigning partnership between NUS and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to work together for a better deal for students and workers through a strong collective voice
4. To work with external allies and partners to maximise voter registration and electoral participation among young people and students to ensure their voices are heard
5. To launch a general election hub in 2014, and support every students’ union to develop their own election strategy – supporting students to win both locally and nationally.
6. To empower students and to connect student communities with wider society, including through continuing our community organising work and training students as community organisers on their campuses and in their communities.
I think there are some major gaps in the direction of the motion, largely in that it is completely lacking in instruction to get political parties to take on NUS policy, and particularly the Labour Party. I’m supporting two amendments to this motion, the first deals with the instruction for parties to take on NUS police. Considering NUS’s role as a lobbying organisation (highlighted by its recent opposition to the Lobbying Bill), it does seem utterly bizarre to not include this in the general election strategy!
Delete NEC Further Believes 4 and 5 Add
NEC Further Believes 4. That NUS’ approach to the general election needs to be both local and national, supporting students to win locally and on a national level. 5. To achieve a new deal for the next generation we will need public support, and this is best achieved through working together with people in the communities we live in and finding common cause.
NEC Resolves
7. To campaign nationally for political parties to adopt NUS demands, taken from policies passed or ratified by National Conference, and chosen by NUS NEC.
My own amendment goes further still, highlighting NUS’s link with the Labour Party. I think it is vital that NUS is pressuring the party that actually has those links with the TUC, which it already mentions working with. The trade union link with Labour is a powerful mechanism of political pressure that is rarely used to its full effect. Not only this, but Labour Students makes up the political leadership of the NUS, with many full time officers and part time NEC members as active NOLS members. Funnily enough, the last time I put a motion to the NEC regarding mandating NUS to work with the Labour Party, I was told that ‘we shouldn’t be focusing just on one party’ and that ‘NUS is non-party affiliated’. Whilst this is technically true, it is completely dishonest coming from the NOLS faction within NUS, when the NUS is actually driven by Labour Party leadership policy. It’s time for the NUS leadership to be honest about its political affiliation and use it to good effect, starting with actually pushing the Labour Party to fight for students’ right in the next general election,
Delete Believes 6
In Further believes 5 delete ‘support students… national level’
Delete Further believes 6 from ‘and that the strength’
Delete Resolves 2
Delete Resolves 3 from ‘to work’
In Resolves 3 change ‘the Trades Union Congress (TUC)’ to ‘TUC’
In Resolves 5 delete ‘supporting students.. locally’Add:
Believes: That while we want everyone to adopt NUS policies, we must focus on Labour, as the main opposition to the Coalition and a party with major input from the trade unions. Resolves: To make one focus a fight for Labour to adopt NUS policies on issues including education funding/student support, cuts and privatisation. The FTOs should initiate discussions with Labour-affiliated unions and left-wing Labour MPs with this aim, and report back to the NEC.
Another motion I am putting to NEC, which I believe is fairly self-explanatory, is regarding the policy of migration and open borders:
Motion 2: For a United Europe with Open Borders
NEC Believes:
1. The right-wing agitation about Bulgarian and Romanian workers coming to Britain.
2. The rise of UKIP.
3. That the rise in right-wing, nationalist agitation is resulting in such things as a major increase in racist bullying in schools (source: ChildLine).NEC Resolves:
1. To issue a statement saying that all migrants should be welcome here and that “strain” on jobs and services is a result of the government’s cuts, which seek to boost profits and the wealth of the rich at the expense of all workers.
2. That this statement should also condemn UKIP, oppose British withdrawal from the EU and advocate a united fightback to level up conditions and rights, and win greater democracy, across Europe and beyond.
3. To make these themes a major part of our campaign around the 2014 Euro-election and 2015 General Election.
Last term I did a couple of talks around the immigration bill and the way that it is being used to attack international students and refugees. Whilst the EU is a capitalist institution, facilitating free trade across Europe, it does also allow the free movement of labour, and as a result, greater unity between workers organising in different countries. Right wing rhetoric around immigration is used to stir up hatred between different groups of working class people and distract them from the real attacks on their rights and living standards – which come from the rich.
Steph Lloyd, a leading Labour Students member and NUS Wales President, has proposed an amendment:
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NEC Belives:
1. The European elections will to be held on Thursday 22 May
2. The European elections often have a much lower turnout than the General Election which leads to an increase of power in the hands of voters that vote for far-right parties and candidates.
3. Currently the UK is represented by members of the BNP in the European Parliament and both Nick Griffin and Andrew Brones are seeking re-election.
4. The rise of UKIP is symptom of a much wider political narrative of the mainstreaming of anti-immigration rhetoric
5. NUS has a proud history of opposing racist, fascist and xenophobic views and also a proud history of campaigning against this European elections.NEC Resolves:
1. For NUS UK to continue a principled stance on being pro-immigration and to challenge the wider racist, fascist and xenophobic views that feed into the rise of far-right political parties.
2. For this to the one of the main themes of our European elections.
3. To ensure NUS UK pushed voter registration and voter turnout for the European elections.
Whilst some of the points are true, and useful to note, the ‘Resolves’ are far weaker, and far less instructive for NUS taking a hard and public line on this matter.
Edmund Schluessel’s further amendment reflect the Socialist Party’s euro-sceptical position, which led to their previous involvement in the ‘No2EU‘ party (later merging into TUSC) in recent years). Whilst I can support parts of this amendment which expand on the impact of right wing xenphobia, I think it is uneccessarily anti-EU. Whilst the EU is, of course, a capitalist – a ‘bosses’ institution, the amendment makes little comment on the opportunities it brings for pan-European organising against European employment law (for example).
Replace NEC Believes 2 with: 2. There has been a rise in support for UKIP. Rather than try to counter the conditions which fertilise the ground in which UKIP grows, both the government and the Labour opposition have pandered to and fanned the flames of xenophobia
Replace NEC Believes 3 with: 3. That the rise in right-wing, nationalist agitation is resulting in such things as a major increase in racist bullying in schools (source: ChildLine) as well as incidents of violence against international students.
Add NEC Believes 4. The European Union has contributed to conditions fuelling this hate, for example through imposing devastating austerity on Greece which has opened the space for the rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.
Add NEC Believes 5. Supposed ‘free movement of labour’ in the EU is rigged in favour of employers, with EU rules contradicting the principle of equal pay for equal work, member states allowed to discriminate against migrant workers, and many members including the UK making heavy use of opt-outs from EU protections on working rights.
Replace NEC Resolves 1 with: 1. That ‘strain’ on jobs and services is a result of the government’s cuts which seek to boost profits and the wealth of the rich at the expense of all workers. NUS will issue a statement condemning racism in all its forms and arguing for a united fight of workers and students from all backgrounds to oppose austerity and fight for adequate provision of jobs, homes and services.
Replace NEC Resolves 2 with: 2. That this statement should also condemn UKIP and support the unity and solidarity of working class people across Europe, in opposition to the bosses’ EU. The statement should support a united struggle of all European workers against brutal (and often EU enforced) austerity as part of a programme of internationalism, fighting for the liberation of the oppressed, the levelling up conditions and greater democracy worldwide.
Add new NEC Resolves: To support trade unions organising to end the super-exploitation of migrant labour and fight for a living-wage for all workers.
Add new NEC Resolves: To oppose discriminatory rules which guarantee unequal access to benefits, state support and the NHS in the UK
The following motion is a simple one calling for NUS backing to the ongoing ‘3 Cosas‘ dispute at the University of London, which recently won significant concessions in a strike, and hopes to win its full set of demands with its upcoming days of action. The campaign is extremely significant for the UK labour movement, in that it is made up of traditionally unorganised workers. It is particularly important that NUS backs this, as they are workers at the University of London, and it will send a clear message to UoL management that NUS backs the campaign, alongside the trade union (IWGB) and student union (ULU). It has become apparent over recent months that the Vice President Union Development, Raechel Mattey, has been meeting UoL management in private regarding the ‘pan-london representation’ issue where ULU is threatened with closure, in what seems to be an attempt to undermine ULU’s future existence. If NUS backs this workers’ campaign, which it should, it should also immediately cease discussions with UoL management who have brutally attacked students and workers (through police intimidation and arrests as well as refusal to meet with IWGB) as part of their attempt to undermine the 3 Cosas dispute.
3 Cosas campaign
NEC Resolves:
1. To support the ongoing “3 Cosas” campaign by outsourced University of London workers, and advertise and promote it widely.
2. To ask the VP Society & Citizenship to meet representatives of the campaign to discuss working together.
3. To mobilise Constituent Members for the 27-29 January strike.
4. To donate £400 to the strike fund
That’s all for now, I’ll publish my thoughts on motions 4-9 later in the week. At present I’m in discussions with NUS about the legality of an amendment I wrote about the Mark Duggan inquest, calling for full support for calls for justice. After some comments from the NUS legal department, I will be resubmitting the amendment to be heard by NUS NEC, and will publish as soon as I hear back.
Rosie
Rosie Huzzard 