Chris Strafford, a member of Communist Students and Hands Off The People of Iran, is standing for the NUS Block of 12. This is his election manifesto As the right-wing NUS bureaucracy prepares to gut what remains of the union's democratic structures, the fight for free education faces a growing series of setbacks, and resurgent student ...
The right-wing Labour bureaucracy in the NUS needs to be driven out of office - but not all ‘socialists' deserve a vote. By Jojo Palmer Communist Students call on all delegates to only vote for candidates who: 1. Oppose the governance review. 2. Oppose the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, stand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of ...
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 ...
Communists argue against sectional politics - but the attacks on the organisational structrues for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people within the NUS must be resisted. By Nigel Davis The formation of gay liberation movements during the 1970s reflected a rising level of radicalised anger among marginalised LGBT minorities, influenced most clearly by the 1969 ...
There have been renewed attempts by the government to get universities to spy and report on ‘suspicious' students. But is the NUS ‘no platform' policy the right way forward? By Dave Isaacson A year and a half ago I wrote an article for the first edition of Communist Student entitled ‘Defend Muslims!' It was a response ...
All democrats, socialists and democrats should reject efforts by student unions to actually increase state censorship. By Shelley Martin The NUS has an automatic ‘no platform policy' in place, which bans all members of the British National Party and the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir from standing in NUS elections on any levels. It also bans them ...
The sectarianism and economism of the left has prevented a united challenge in the NUS elections. By James Turley Sofie Buckland, it seems, is very annoyed indeed. Buckland, member of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL), its student front Education Not for Sale (ENS), and the NUS's ‘block of 12' (a part-time group of officers), had been ...
No to sanctions and war, no to the theocracy! Free the Iranian students! By Benjamin Klein In early December 2007, dozens of socialist Iranian students were arrested for taking part in the National Student Day demonstration. This demonstration has a long history and can be traced back to the 1950s, when three Iranian students were killed ...
The original motion pushed by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty displayed its soft position on imperialism (No804): "Conference believes: That the current chaos, sectarian conflict and corporate plunder consuming Iraq proves that American (and British) military adventures in the Middle East have almost inevitably disastrous consequences" (my emphasis). This slippery formulation has been changed at the ...
Benjamin Klein interviewed Mahsa, an Iranian supporter of Hands Off the People of Iran who is currently living in Italy There are some people on the anti-war left in Britain who are saying that the students protesting in Iran are actually in favour of military intervention. The left student movement in Iran has always struggled against the ...
By Michael Jones The debacle of the March 14 elections to the Iranian majlis (parliament) is a vivid example of the extremely undemocratic political system in Iran and the growing gulf between the mass of the (overwhelmingly young) Iranian population and their theocratic rulers. An apt metaphor for the regime's desperate attempts to legitimise the elections ...
As Israel's brutal blockade of the Gaza Strip continues and Palestinian despair intensifies, what should be the response of the left? By Ken Crisp The desperate suffering of the people of Palestine was again brought to the world's attention on January 23, as thousands of Palestinians broke through the border wall at the Rafah passage and ...
The NUS women's officer campaigns have been marked by their economism. By Anne McShane The election of a women's officer has importance in a period when women's rights are under attack. Chief among these is the threat to abortion rights. Now women can have an abortion up to the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, with the ...