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 at the forefront of attempts to knock together a unified left slate for the full-time NUS positions. While the block of 12 is elected through single transferable vote, thus generally allowing one or two leftists to get enough second preferences to squeeze in (aside from comrade Buckland, the Socialist Workers Party’s Rob Owen also serves on the body), the full-timers are all named positions, directly elected. So the divided nature of the left is a real obstacle – invariably the vote is split three or four ways and the election is handed to the Labour Students/Organised Independents rightwingers.

Despite optimistic noises at the start of the unity drive, a recent article by comrade Buckland on ENS’s website fumes at its total failure, under the pugilistic headline, “Yes, left unity was possible: but it was not ENS that scuppered it; Student Broad Left cheapens anti-racism with libel against ENS.”¹

SBL is, infamously, a highly sectarian outfit run by Ken Livingstone’s cronies, Socialist Action. The “libel” accusation is not really central to our purpose here, but it’s worth a passing comment. The whole article is a response to a posting on SBL’s website.² There, it is claimed that the failure of ENS to support NUS black students officer and SBL supporter Ruqqayah Collector as next NUS national president is due to ENS not “prioritis[ing] challenging the soaring racism – and in particular islamophobia – we are witnessing in society, and campaigning for an end to war and occupation – such as the current ongoing siege of Gaza.”

Buckland claims this is a “bizarre accusation of racism”. Actually, it isn’t – it is more an accusation of economism, albeit in the twisted definition one might expect from the Stalinoid right-wing nuts of SBL. She cites various pieces of evidence to the contrary which all serves to obfuscate the basic fact: ENS does not offer any actual political positions – to use the example raised by SBL – on the Palestine question. It only calls for “solidarity”, typically with particular victims of particular crimes. Anything more than vaguely saying “no to everybody” is either out, or vastly wrong. After all, the Workers’ Liberty majority supports the pro-imperialist Fatah against Hamas (ENS, tied to the AWL’s politics but clearly embarrassed by the whole thing, is simply silent on the issue).

It was this approach – and its failure – that dominated the whole united slate process. Communist Students and the Socialist Party’s Socialist Students were excluded from the meetings between ENS, SBL and the SWP’s Student Respect (though an AWL comrade did manage to inform us just before the last of the joint meetings).

Those meetings all had the intention of ‘haggling’ ad hoc over various shibboleths (around, as Ken Crisp reported, “coffee shop tables”³), trying to lower the political value of statements on issues of controversy. Comrade Buckland previously bemoaned the SWP’s insistence on ‘Troops out of Iraq now’. Of course, she conceded, it was necessary to oppose the occupation of Iraq – but why have that particular slogan and call for the immediate withdrawal? She even objected to ‘Freedom for Palestine’, which is not exactly brimming with content itself.

The SWP and particularly SBL, meanwhile, were insistent on keeping the student-based demands to a bare-bones minimum platform. This was a continuation of their method in setting up a wholly negative Defend NUS Democracy campaign (see article on page 5).

Theirs was also the ulterior motive of deliberately wrecking the slate. The SWP leadership of Student Respect had no real taste for it. Buckland was certainly correct to identify its insistence on ‘Troops out now’ as deliberate sabotage – the SWP knew the AWL would walk if the slogan was included, even though the SWP has been more than happy to drop it before. In her more recent article, comrade Buckland points out that Ruqqayah Collector does not make that demand either – but the SWP finds her perfectly supportable, and insisted on the involvement of SBL.

There is, of course, no shame in haggling as such. However, it must not be at the expense of clear political positions. A principled compromise, for example, would have ENS accepting ‘Troops out now’ in return for Respect accepting a clause on class independence, solidarity with Iranian progressives or some other such thing. That way, we have a clear position on Iraq and a clear position on class independence, rather than meaningless waffle on both.

Unfortunately, it is one of the features of rotten politics that it abhors such clarity – therein lies the lesson of this whole farcical spectacle.

Notes

1. www.free-education.org.uk/?p=433.

2. www.studentbroadleft.org/art-icle.php?id=172.

3. Weekly Worker January 31.