Although the NUS is hardly the fighting organisation that students need, we must defeat the right-wing attacks on democracy in the NUS – and the April 1-3 conference is the last chance to stop the bureaucrats. By Tina Becker

It wasn’t really a surprise that at the NUS extraordinary conference on December 4 2007 just over two thirds of delegates voted in favour of the governance review. After all, this conference was called with just a few weeks’ notice and was stuffed with delegates who were ‘encouraged’ by the NUS bureaucracy to attend. The vast majority of normal students (and thereby NUS members) still won’t know that there is actually a NUS review going on – or what the NUS is, for that matter.

And who can blame them? Currently, it is not much more than a training ground where people like NUS president Gemma Tumelty learn how to shaft the left and weasel their way up the career ladder. It is where the next generation of Labour Party and trade union bureaucrats is bred – the NUS NEC’s ‘governance review’ lays this fact embarrassingly bare.

Communist Students says it is crucial that we fight for extreme democracy in all spheres of society – including the NUS. In our view, socialism is synonymous with extreme democracy: that is, the rule of the majority. So the working class (which represents the vast majority) must begin preparations to take on a hegemonic role in this society to prepare the ground for the next. Socialism cannot be delivered from above, by some enlightened Hugo Chávez or party leadership – it must be won through the struggles of the majority of the people. In other words, it starts now.

The attacks on the NUS – which will come into force if two thirds of delegates at conference vote ‘yes’ – are quite extraordinary, including:

• Abolition of annual conference (to be replaced with a smaller, rally-type ‘congress’, which could merely ratify decisions)
• Removal of mandatory conference/congress delegate elections. Local student unions could merely ‘appoint’ delegates and would not even have to pretend to hold elections
• The splitting up of the elected NEC (both the new ‘senate’ and the ‘board’ are to be beefed up with non-elected members)
• The de facto abolition of the ‘block of 12′ part-time NEC members. In recent years this has been the only way for minority viewpoints to get a foot in the door. Having been fought for by the left, it is probably the most democratic part of existing NUS structures.

The organised left fails

In November 2007, the most important left student groups met to discuss a joint campaign to stop the attacks: Student Respect (dominated by the Socialist Workers Party), Education Not for Sale (sponsored by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty), Communist Students (initiated by the Communist Party of Great Britain), Socialist Students (Socialist Party supporters) and Student Broad Left (aka Socialist Action).

However, the campaign was doomed from day one. Because it sent 25 people to the ‘organising meeting’, Student Respect was able to decide the political outlook of the campaign and saw to it that CS and SS were kept off the ‘steering committee’. In fact, this committee has not met once since (or if it did, it happened in total secrecy) and it seems that the SWP mainly got involved to stop the other groups from taking the lead in organising an alternative campaign.

The SWP also made sure that the politics of the campaign remained minimal and ineffective, so that it would not become an alternative to Student Respect. “No to the attacks” is all the campaign is allowed to say. Oh, and normal students should not bother to get involved either. Instead, it should be “based on the core of activists and unions who understand the nature of the attacks”. Normal students just can’t comprehend such complicated things, you see.

Thus, the SWP wanted the campaign to be conducted solely at the level of student union bureaucrats – ie, the very people who launched the attack in the first place! The formulation was actually changed by a CS amendment, but the direction of the campaign was clear: don’t rock the boat too much. No wonder it has failed so miserably.

Communist Students says that we must use these attacks as an opportunity to fight for a bold campaign to actually expand democracy in the NUS – this is far more likely to inspire and mobilise students than mere defence of the existing crusty structures.

We argue that the students, staff and all university and college workers are the people who should democratically run educational institutions, not the vice-chancellors, state bureaucrats or purveyors of pseudo-market imperatives.

Concretely, Communist Students fights for:

• Abolition of the direct election of NUS officers at conference. In the current system, they become little Bonapartes who are not really accountable to anybody (the only time they can be removed is at the next annual conference). Instead, the whole executive should be elected by STV at conference (apart from the representatives elected by the liberation campaigns).
• The NEC should then elect its officers from its own number. They must be accountable to and recallable by the executive – which in turn must be far more accountable to the membership.
• Salaried officials and anybody employed by the NUS should receive no more than the wage of an average skilled worker.
• Full transparency on all matters, especially in all dealings with government ministers and commercial concerns. Open the books.
• Abolition of student fees and their replacement by a ‘living grant’. We say that such a minimum wage must be based on the social category of human need. This is not what the government tells us the system can afford: it is the amount of money students actually need to live full lives in contemporary society – to have time to study, discuss and enjoy themselves to the full in this important formative period. Under present conditions, this means a minimum of £300 per week.