This statement was first published on the ENS website (link).

Five members of Sheffield University SU’s delegation to the 2008 NUS conference face disciplinary action following their refusal to vote in line with a “mandate” imposed on them by their Union’s Council in favour of the NUS Governance Review.

The threatened punishment is a permanent exclusion from all future union elections. Although many of the delegates in question would not be directly impacted by such a measure (as they are soon to graduate), at least two of them are potential candidates in next year’s sabbatical elections and as such the disciplinary action must be seen as a politically motivated attempt to exclude socialist and other radical elements from the structures of the Students’ Union. As a group of activists, we write this article in an attempt to deal with some of the issues and make the case for real democracy in our union.

The last decade has not been a good one for student movement democracy. As the focus of student activism has shifted away from the “official structures” of campus SUs and NUS nationally, union structures – presided over either by apolitical elements or by various shades of Blairite, or worse – have atrophied, effectively disenfranchising the vast majority of rank-and-file members of most Students’ Unions and excluding them from meaningful participation in setting their political and campaigning direction. For example, very few Students’ Unions have general assemblies or meetings open to all students. Policy is increasingly decided either by Executive Committees or unrepresentative Union Councils. Sheffield is a particular case in point; there are members of Union Council (supposedly our union’s sovereign body) who were elected with less than five votes. Clearly, these “democratic” committees are less than engaged with any significant number of the students they claim to represent.

The 2008 NUS conference was a flashpoint year in terms of democracy, as the NUS leadership sought to introduce a new constitution which would set in stone a situation that has existed in the NUS for some time, whereby all but a small layer of full-time Students’ Union officers would be carved out of the decision making process. Several candidates in the NUS delegate elections stood on an explicit platform of opposition to this new constitution and committed to vote against it.

The new constitution was rejected by NUS conference and Sheffield’s sabbatical officers (all but one of whom were prominent advocates of the new constitution) are clearly looking to console themselves by attacking and effectively silencing their political opponents by excluding them from any future participation in union democracy. The obviously disproportional nature of the threatened punishment (a lifetime ban from all elections for breaking one mandate at one conference?) makes it very clear that this is a politically-motivated attack.

So who are the real democrats in this situation? The right-wing sabbaticals who pushed policy through an unrepresentative Union Council, who conduct their proceedings behind closed doors, and who have presided over SU elections in which less than 10% of union members voted – or the conference delegates who upheld their democratic commitment to the hundreds of students who voted for them not to vote for the new constitution?

Other Students’ Unions across the country led by supporters of the defeated constitution have taken, or proposed to take, similar measures against delegates who broke “mandates.” These unions include Edinburgh and Hull.

We understand democracy in this case as the means by which the members of our union can assert themselves politically. We reject the bankrupt conception of democracy held to by our officers. We believe that this case highlights the abject lack of democratic culture in our union – a situation that the current Executive seems intent on maintaining by carving out dissenting voices from participation in union elections.

We call on all socialists, radicals and democrats at Sheffield University, the other Students’ Unions where activists face disciplinary action, and from across the whole student and trade union movement to support us by:

– Adding your name to this protest by emailing gemstone_88@fastmail.fm
– Sending a message of protest to Sheffield SU president Mark Willoughby at mark.willoughby@shef.ac.uk and copy to gemstone_88@fastmail.fm
– Joining the Facebook group: “Their democracy or ours: The case for real democracy”
– Getting in touch to discuss further campaigning.

Signed:

Gemma Short, Sheffield University NUS delegate
Laurie Smith, Sheffield University NUS delegate
Sam Ross, Sheffield University NUS delegate
Sam Durk, Sheffield University NUS delegate

Daniel Randall, Sheffield University, NUS National Executive 2005-6
Heather Shaw, Sheffield College President-elect
Martha Kunda, Sheffield College General Secretary-elect
Sofie Buckland, NUS National Executive
Laura Schwartz, NUS Women’s Committee
Aled Dilwyn Fisher, LSESU General Secretary-elect
Alan Bailey, Salford University VP Representation and NUS LGBT Committee-elect
Darcy Leigh, Edinburgh University NUS delegate
Kath McMahon, Edinburgh University NUS delegate
Rachel Archer, UEA NUS delegate
Stephen Wood, Hull University NUS delegate and LGBT chair
Sham Rajyaguru, Equal Opportunities Officer and Stop The War Society President, University College London Union

For Gemma Short’s letter to a Sheffield Uni newspaper explaining the case, see here.