In which it's important to get some things sorted out…

The quote that provides the title of this blog, as some people will undoubtedly have noticed, is from Francis Ford Coppolla's epic movie The Godfather. Before anyone asks, I am definitely not comparing gang warfare and organised crime to student politics. The world of gang warfare is a world in which vain people bound together by little more than their common devotion to self-interest and the accumulation of power pursue petty personal vendettas against people possessed of similarly fragile egos. As everyone knows, student politics is nothing like that.

People who quote excessively from gangster movies tend to be slightly insecure, passive aggressive wannabe-macho types. I hope I don't come across like that. I use the quote because I think it's necessary to make some things about recent developments very clear, and the quote neatly captures the spirit of what's going on.

In the last week, a number of sharp critical attacks on figures within the NUS leadership - particularly National President Kat Fletcher - have been posted as articles on the website of the Education Not for Sale network. They attacked, among other things, her political relationship with Minister of State for Higher Education Bill Rammell and her recent endorsement of a candidate for the National Management Committee of the Tory Party's youth wing. One article referred to Kat as a "sell out." Some in the student movement have responded by branding this sort of criticism as illegitimate, calling it overly "personal." I want to make it absolutely clear now that it's not.

I don't know Kat Fletcher very well. I sat next to her at my first ever AWL conference in 2003 and saw her at plenty of AWL events during the time in which our memberships of the organisation overlapped, but I didn't know her then and I don't really know her now. I have neither the foundation nor the inclination to make personal attacks on her.

All I know about her, and all I have to judge her on, is what she's said and done during her time as President of the NUS. It is those words and those actions that the ENS articles attacked, not any aspect of Kat's personality or character.

You might disagree with me. You might think my analysis of Kat's time as President is mistaken. Perhaps you think she's actually done an excellent job.

You might argue that Kat's political relationship with Bill Rammell - one of capitulation and conciliation - is perfectly acceptable. You might think there's nothing wrong with giving the man responsible for the continuing privatisation of education a platform at the event intended to launch NUS's campaign for free education. Perhaps you have no problem with our supposedly left-wing President endorsing candidates for leadership bodies of parties with backward and reactionary politics. You might think that articles proudly announcing the NUS's "unity" with the anti-student Blairite government in insidious "information" campaigns about top-up fees do not constitute a sell-out.

But if you do think any of that, you should state your case politically without trying to silence any criticisms of those actions by branding it "personal."

That type of attitude is, for me, symptomatic of the general political culture - or rather the lack of it- in our union. It's a culture in which any criticism that moves beyond mild deference in its tone is considered "personal" and offensive.

It's a culture we need to break from. We need a culture where political disagreements are had out in the open, and in the clearest, most honest and sharpest terms possible. Anyone who can't distinguish between attacks on someone's political views or record and attacks on someone as a person is perhaps not suited to a life in politics of any kind.

So let me be plain and frank about it; I've got no interest or basis to attack Kat Fletcher personally. Diluting political criticisms with personal attacks simply undermines the strength of your political case. If people want to respond to criticisms that I, or organisations of which I am a member, might make of Kat or anyone else they should do so politically, and not by calling into question the right to make the criticisms in the first place.

That's about all there is to it, really. It's nothing personal - it's just business. But then again, I'm sure Kat knows that.

Daniel Randall

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