I went to the seaside last weekend. I’d made plans to go several days in advance and, after the miserable and disappointing affair that was the last NEC (and after a mad week spent rushing around Freshers’ Fairs talking to various social justice and anti-capitalist activists about NUS’s commitment to organising an anti-sweatshop week of action on campuses this year), I was massively looking forward to it.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Rolle College is in Exmouth, Devonshire and is part of the University of Plymouth. Primarily a teacher training college, it has a fantastic academic reputation and has an excellent relationship with the local community. Despite this, Plymouth Vice Chancellor Roland Levinsky plans to “relocate” Rolle College to a new site, miles away in Plymouth itself. Rolle plays an integral part in the life of Exmouth as a town, and it is a campus with many mature students with family commitments. For them, Levinsky’s proposals are not for a “relocation” at all; they’re for a closure.

The University of Plymouth Students’ Union has organised a campaign against the closure, with almost all of the ground-work being done by activists at Rolle itself. I decided to go the demonstration they’d organised firstly because I think that as an NUS NEC member I have a responsibility to do whatever I can to help students fighting the privatisation of their education, but also because in these turbulent times, our union needs to take its lead from grassroots student activists like those at Rolle.

Almost 500 students turned out for the demonstration on the 24th, nearly 50% of the entire student body. The work that had been done to pull the local community behind the campaign was evident; local people lined the streets and clapped and cheered as the march went passed. An alliance had been built with the local labour movement; Devonshire NUT activists attended the demonstration and brought their union banner along.

There are certain things about the campaign that I personally would disagree with or would have done differently. I wouldn’t have had the local Tory MP speak at the rally, for example, given that his party’s pro-market agenda offers no alternative for the future of education, and I would have placed greater emphasis on student-worker unity and given local trade unionists a platform at the rally. But the overall perspective of the campaign and the spirit with which its activists built it are both absolutely correct.

You might think that this intense level of activism and this uncommonly high level of rank-and-file engagement with the union’s campaigning is simply a product of the fact that the proposed closure is a clear and immediate threat that has shocked students into action. But you’d be wrong. Rolle’s activist spirit and campaigning perspective did not develop overnight once closure proposals were announced. Site President Katie Shaw explained to me that the union organises a demonstration around a live issue – usually free education – every single year, right at the beginning of term, in order to make sure new students become engaged with the union’s activities.

I was blown away; a tiny union with practically no money for campaigning organises a free education demonstration every year as a matter of principle, but the National Union of Students (which, even in the throes of a financial crisis, has infinitely more resources than Rolle College Students’ Union) cannot bring itself to do the same.

There are, of course, qualifications to be made here. The fact that Rolle is such a small campus with a small student body does make it easier to maintain a higher level of engagement with union activities and structures. A campaigning union on a small campus is obviously going to be a very big presence. I’m not saying it’s possible to simply take what’s happened at Rolle and directly replicate it onto a national level.

However, the NUS must learn from experiences like this if it is to survive. This anti-closure campaign can give us vital practical tips on how such campaigns could be run elsewhere. We can learn from Rolle, among other things, the importance of mobilising the local community and the need to link up with the labour movement. The experience shows that a demonstration called around immediate, winnable issues that also maintains a general advocacy of universal free education can mobilise students. That perspective is something that must be developed nationally, particularly against the dour defeatism of the “the battle for free education is over” crowd.

On a side note, the reasonably sizeable NUS NEC contingent on the demo included some of the most fervent opponents of the NUS holding a national free education demonstration this year. It’s very positive that people like VP Education Julian Nicholds actively support Rolle’s campaign, but when they’re in a position to develop similarly active campaigns nationally (including through national demonstrations) and are reticent, unwilling or unable to do so it is a little frustrating to watch them present themselves as supporters of militancy and action.

All in all, the weekend in Exmouth was totally inspiring and greatly enthusing. Compare it to the pitiful experience of the national demo debate and you can’t help but feel that the Rolle students have put the national union to shame.

The last line of one of the chants used on the demo went “We’ll keep fighting.” We need to act now to inject the spirit of the Rolle campaign into the NUS at a national level to make sure that it does.

In solidarity –

Daniel Randall

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