In which we all just keep digging.

During breaks at NUS events, I occasionally occupy myself by trying to think of metaphors to describe the event I’m at. At this year’s South East Regional Conference, I think I came up with a pretty good one.

A lot of NUS events are like archaeological excavations, at which you’re forced to dig through layers upon layers of frustrating bureaucracy in the hope of finding a few golden nuggets buried beneath. The conference did turn up some encouraging gems, but the digging was, as ever, tiresome work.

The South East is fortunate in that, in addition to its regional structure within NUS, is also has an autonomous “area” structure (South East Area NUS, or SEANUS for short) that can make policy and run campaigns. In this it is practically unique; the West Midlands is the only other such Area NUS in the country.

There are differences in the way that SEANUS and WMANUS function, but I think that both provide plenty of evidence as to why the Area structure is worthwhile and why its demise in the mid-90’s was a bit of a tragedy. SEANUS, for example, has recently been working with the South East Region TUC to develop a campaign not too dissimilar to the one myself and others on the NEC are looking at developing nationally (read about it on this blog soon). It is SEANUS’s ability to more closely engage with its grassroots, with its members on their campuses, that has allowed it to do this. Learning all this about SEANUS was certainly one of the encouraging artefacts that this conference threw up for me. It was probably the best thing that came out of the day for me, along with the opportunity to talk to NUS members I would not otherwise had the chance to meet.

Less pleasing were some of the presentations from my fellow NEC members. In discussing the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, Jamal El-Shayyal touched on the debate around the proposed state-ban of Hizb-Ut-Tahrir. Just as they had in the NEC meeting which briefly debated the issue, the reasons Jamal gave for opposing the ban basically amounted to “they’re not that bad.” He focused on the absence of any concrete links to terrorist organisations and emphasised Hizb’s condemndation of the 7/7 attacks. One member from the floor asked whether it was not contradictory for NUS to maintain a no platform policy against Hizb while opposing a state ban. “Are we saying that we’re opposed to them operating on our campsues but that it’s okay if they’re active in our communities?” he asked. A reasonable question, and one which I feel cannot be satisfactorily answered by explaining why Hizb don’t really deserve to be made illegal.

I believe that the NUS needs to be clear in opposing the ban because we do not have confidence in the state to solve problems it itself has, in large part, created, and we do not wish to give it lisence to roll out legislation that could later be used against other political forces it sees as a threat; trade union militants, for example, or even free education activists. This is a separate issue from that of no-platform, which is not simply about keeping our campuses free of views we find distasteful (or “nasty”, as Pete Leary put it), but rather about protecting our unions and our ethnic minority and LGBT members from those groups who pose an immediate physical threat to them. Democratic self-defence by collective organisations can hardly be equated to top-down proscription by the state-machinery.

This issue has never been fully debated at an NEC – no motions about it have ever been discussed. It is, then, little wonder that, in one of the few forums in which a regional organisation of the NUS can hold its national leadership to account, the messages are somewhat mixed and the discussion is somewhat confused.

More confusing still was Gemma Tumelty’s presentation of a document entitled “Progressing the Democratic Reform of NUS.” The “reform process” has been at the heart of a lot of the political debate inside NUS for some time, but rather than being a summary of the debate that has taken place, the document is full of vague platitudes that do little more than endorse the direction in which things are currently moving. In the only section of the document that professes to summarise some of the positions in the “reform” debate, nine out of thirteen positions outlined are from the “right” of the debate.

The first time myself and the other NEC members present had seen the document was that morning – the day it was to be presented to the membership. One wonders, then, in whose name it was being presented? In the section entitled “Other Suggestions,” the document deals with the view of “some officers” (rank-and-file students, once again, count for little) that NUS’s Winter Conference should be restored, and then categorically asserts that “we reject this view.” Who is this “we”? I certainly don’t reject this view. The “views” of this document had not been discussed or voted on at any meeting, so perhaps it is the personal opinion of Gemma herself?

Most shockingly of all, the document contains a model motion for Conference 2005 (more of the same vague platitudes that generally endorse the current process) and, in presenting the document, Gemma encouraged members present to submit the motion! Maybe I’m developing some bureaucratic ticks of my own, but it seems to me that asking members to submit motions about the future of the organisation when the issues in the document from which the motion was taken had not been fully discussed at an NEC meeting is not particularly democratic. Regional Conferences are meant to be a channel of accountability between NUS’s leadership and its rank-and-file. But if this document and the manner of its presentation are anything to go by, the NEC isn’t even properly accountable to itself.

Gemma forgot to mention a few of the major casualties of the “reform process” so far, so I’ll try and list a few of them here. The “reform process” has culled Winter Conference and slashed the length of other conferences (including liberation conferences). It has restructured NEC spending to the almost exclusive detriment of political activism and campaigning, and it has gone much of the way towards creating a two-tier membership between those who can pay for the benefits afforded by the costly “Extra” card and those who cannot. Most recently, it succeeded in cancelling the NUS’s education funding demonstration. At every turn of the “reform process”, political activism has suffered and apolitical bureaucracy has triumphed.

The reason invariably wheeled out for all of this is money – we can’t afford Winter Conference, we can’t afford a demo, and so on and so on.

But Gemma also declined to mention that the NUS has recently appointed a National Director on a salary of over £50,000, or that it spent £20,000 (around 25% of the entire campaigns budget) on the Campaigns Launch, or that it spent £14,000 on an “Inquiry” conducted by a be-suited HR consultant, the only conclusion of which was essentially that NUS’s structures are a bit bureaucratic and ineffective. The cost of the MORI research mentioned in the document was not disclosed, but it must have amounted to several thousand.

It doesn’t take a maths degree to work out that, with a few simple savings in these areas, the money for a national demonstration – and quite a lot more besides – would materialise without too much trouble.

But of course, even at a Regional Conference (where the bureaucracy and inaccessibility of our structures is supposed to be broken down), neither Gemma nor her document is going to give you that information. You have to dig to find it.

In solidarity –

Daniel Randall

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