by Laurie Smith, Communist Students

The five rebel delegates from Sheffield University who broke a mandate to vote for the NUS governance review were called to a disciplinary hearing on Wednesday 14^th. We were found guilty of breaking the mandate imposed by SRC (Student Representative Council) and have been banned from delegate elections for a year.

At NUS conference the right’s governance review was narrowly defeated, in part thanks to delegates who broke mandates from their Unions forcing them to vote in favour. Even by the petty, bureaucratic constitution of NUS these mandates were illegal; delegates are elected by popular student vote, not by SRC, and can vote however they like. Most of the right-controlled Student Councils who mandated delegates have grudgingly accepted this defeat, and started planning for another attempt. But at Sheffield, where the left as a whole is weak, a clique of rightist officers and SRC members have pursued a campaign to punish us. In the student paper they have been beating us with the stick of ‘democracy’, as the mandate was voted on by SRC. But while it chafes to describe the 10% turnout we Sheffield delegates were elected on as ‘democratic’, it far exceeds any mandate of Student ‘Representative’ Council, most of whom received only a handful of votes, or were elected unopposed!

The governance review is mostly the project of Labour Students, but the dominant grouping at Sheffield is, bizarrely, constituted by members of the Christian Union, who last year went political -though not overtly, of course- and won most of the posts for the year’s executive. These officers had been vociferously attacking the anti-review, left candidates from the off, but did not dare impose a mandate during campaigning lest the review become even more of an issue. Hence the mandate was imposed after the left had been elected on explicitly anti-review platforms! A cowardly and shamelessly anti-democratic farce, in other words. At least the ensuing wrath of some of the Christian officers, after we broke the mandate and defeated the review, has been an amusing contradiction to watch. Does the Bible not enjoin us to ‘Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice’? (Ephesians 4:31).

Our punishment -a year’s ban on delegate elections- is partly aimed at preventing us doing the same next year if the review is put to conference again. It is likely, though, that an extraordinary conference will be called before the year is out. In that case, the procedure is for Sheffield SRC to appoint its own delegates- so our punishment has the definite appearance of politically motivated spite rather than a serious move to shut us up. One officer told me it was intended to show that SRC ‘had teeth'; i.e. as a warning to future left candidates. The small size of the left at Sheffield University has made it hard to build support for us against the rightist Student Council, but the five of us will be going through the bureaucratic motions and trying to overturn this decision. More news on our attempt as it progresses.

Also see the report by Gemma Short, one of the other rebels, on the ENS website