The National Union of Students annual conference saw a tactical defeat for the right, but the left would be wrong to celebrate too much. Dave Isaacson reports from Blackpool

One policy issue dominated all others in the run-up to this year’s conference – the governance review. As we have previously warned, this was an attempt by the bureaucracy to make the NUS even less transparent and democratic than it already is. Annual conferences, for example, were to be scrapped and a congress that “celebrated achievements” was to replace it.

Communist Students, along with the rest of the left, have been arguing for a rejection of this review. Unlike many on the left, however, we were not content to simply defend the current set-up, which is frankly appalling. We said that the left must use this as an opportunity to put forward positive proposals to rapidly expand the democratic space within the NUS.

In December of last year NUS organised an extraordinary conference which was packed out with mainly student union bureaucrats – partly due to the short notice given. Over two-thirds of the delegates voted for the governance review, but this decision then had to be ratified at annual conference. Once again, this week the bureaucrats needed a two-thirds majority to make these constitutional changes. The governance review, which was the first policy item on the agenda and in the end, was defeated despite the bureaucrats putting massive resources and money into trying to convince people of the need for “change” (Obama-style, as they have put it). But only just.

The leadership needed 717 votes to get the review passed, but in the end got 692 votes, with 355 voting against. Indeed the vote was so close that the review’s defeat was only secured thanks to a number of delegates, including Chris Strafford (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Laurie Smith (Sheffield University), who broke their mandates (see ‘Why we are breaking our mandate’ below). As can be seen, these Communist Students comrades were elected after openly standing against the review in their manifestos, only to have undemocratic mandates slapped on them by their local student unions.

The Socialist Workers Party’s Rob Owen, who has sat on the NUS national executive for the past year, has said that: “This is a significant blow for the right wing, which has left them demoralised and reeling. It comes at a time when students are radicalising, with grassroots movements springing up on campuses against war, racism, climate change and many other issues.” Unfortunately, the facts do not bear this out, Rob.

Yes, the individual Blairites within NUS who had made this review their big project are hacked off. Yet those opposing the review only scraped together just over a third of the votes. The SWP have been telling us that “students are radicalising” for so many years now and if that was really the case then surely we should be in a much better position than this. The fact is that, while there is a layer of students out there who are looking for radical answers, the organised left is completely failing in its duty to offer any credible theory, democratic organisation or leadership. And the kind of hyperbolic nonsense coming from the SWP merely underlines this point.

So far the rest of the conference has been dominated by the right wing too, with the Blairites winning almost all policy votes and elections that have taken place up until now. I write on April 2 with one more day to go. A full report will be carried in next week’s paper.