In which it’s back to the bad old days, our numbers dwindle and I get it wrong.

October’s NEC meeting was, as far as discussing motions go, the zenith of my time on the NEC thus far. After its heady heights (in which all but one of the tabled motions was discussed) it was a depressing shame to come crashing back down to earth with November’s meeting; a genuine return to the bad old days of August. (If this all sounds a bit ridiculous, it’s because having NEC meetings divided by one and a half months of intensive activism does tend to make them take on a slightly mystical and melodramatic character. Or maybe it’s just because I’m trying to make this blog sound slightly more exciting than the meeting it’s a report of. I think I’ve failed.)

When I arrived at the meeting, I noticed that one of the motions I’d submitted (entitled “Against the Iranian regime, against war”) had not been printed, despite being sent out with the rest of the meeting’s papers in the e-mailing. I don’t insinuate here that it had been deliberately junked (the error was a regrettable but entirely unintentional administrative one), but perhaps it was a portent that this meeting and the motions submitted to it weren’t really going to get along with each other.

Ironically, it wasn’t the usual reason of running out of time that saw all the motions fall of the agenda this time round; it was a failure to maintain quorum (i.e. the number of NEC members constitutionally required to be present for the meeting to be considered legitimate). Situations like that are sometimes unavoidable, but it was still depressing nonetheless, and the eternal truism that if we’d spent a little less time bickering over the bureaucracy we might have had more time for politics remains…well…eternally true.

This was all made doubly tragic because the meeting (which began in closed session) actually got off to an excellent start. We had a discussion around the redevelopment of NUS’s regional structures, and for the first time since I’ve been an active student unionist, one aspect of the “reform process” seemed to be moving in the right direction. Perhaps most positive was talk of learning from those trade unions such as the TGWU that have made a turn away from service provision and towards organising, overhauling some of their bureaucratic structures and replacing them with teams of on-the-ground organisers.

NUS’s National Student Learner Programme (NSLP for short) also came in for what I feel is some entirely justified and overdue critical analysis; are NUS’s training resources best spent on training sabbatical officers on how to use flip-charts and OHP slides? As a union, shouldn’t our main focus be on providing activism and campaigning skills training to our members? These are the real "key skills". It was as open, as healthy and as encouraging a discussion as I think I’ve had so far on the NEC. It was too much to hope for that the meeting should maintain its standard.

The downhill descent wasn’t immediate; a number of legal cases concerning NUS were discussed, including one at Loughborough in which the developers of some new property in the area have had a clause written into the planning permission agreement that essentially forbids students from buying or renting any of the property, as well as a case from Aberystwyth where freshers have been denied access to the halls of residence that they were promised as part of their offer. For the NUS to campaign effectively on both of these cases will be costly, but the idea that we shouldn’t play a leading role in helping the local unions fight for their (and by extension, our) members’ rights is ridiculous and runs contrary to the entire purpose of a union. Personally, I’d much rather see NUS spend £20,000 on legal bills to help Loughborough Students’ Union fight for its members’ housing rights than see NUS spend £20,000 on a white wine reception addressed by Blairite ministers.

This was all part of the “Management Update,” the section of the meeting where those responsible for the day-to-day running of the union (essentially the full-time officers and National Director Andy Grant) report issues that have arisen since the last NEC meeting and update on those that continue to be current. These discussions are not always immensely engaging.

It’s a hoary accusation historically levelled at radicals and revolutionaries on the NEC that all we want NEC meetings to do is have an abstract ideological discussion about this or that international issue. While such discussions would probably do a lot to clear the heads of some people on the NEC, I want to make it clear that I am not opposed to discussing the issues that come up in the “Management Update” at NEC meetings. On the contrary, I think it essential that issues of practicality and issues of strategy are discussed. However, the formulation of policy on current political issues (both those directly relating to the student movement and wider ones) and the resolution to go forward and do something about them (i.e. the process of discussing and passing motions) are an equally if not more essential part of what the NEC is for, and every meeting at which several are submitted and none are discussed is another victory for apoliticism inside the student movement.

The meeting then turned its attention to the superficially interesting but in fact rather mundane issue of Will Page’s “retirement”, which people may have read about here: www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/willpage

People can read Will’s blog for themselves; I won’t go over the issues here. All that was really necessary was a brief update on the situation and a resolution from the National President that she would write to Will expressing the NEC’s collective disappointment at his decision and that unless he formally resigned he was still expected to fulfil his minimum democratic mandate as an NEC member.

This conclusion was eventually reached, but only after a tiresome, circuitous and largely unnecessary discussion. The comparison was repeatedly drawn between Will’s case and that of James Knight, the former president of NUS Wales, but it’s a comparison I reject. JK resigned formally following a concerted campaign of vicious personal abuse against him. Will’s reason for abdicating his responsibilities is essentially that he was finding it hard to motivate himself. The two situations are in no way analogous.

It’s always been my belief that if you find yourself frustrated by the bureaucracy of a broad movement you’re involved in (and this is particularly the case with unions), then the correct response is to become more involved in order to fight that bureaucracy and change it. Will’s decision is the precise opposite of that. I think Will’s grievances are, to a large extent, irrational, but his response is even more so.

It is becoming staple of NEC meetings that at least one section is given over to what amounts to a discussion of the maverick behaviour of Benson Osawe, the International Students’ Officer. An old debate about a letter Benson had sent to Vice Chancellors and Principals (over the heads of the students’ unions concerned) asking for money to fund an International Students’ Festival resurfaced in this meeting, as did questions around the International Students’ campaign budget. In this budget (which, due to proposals for this year’s budgets being rejected by both National Conference and National Council, is actually last year’s budget), £1,300 is allocated for expenses out of a total budget of £6,040. So far this year, Benson’s campaign has spent £2,390.88 on expenses – much of it apparently by Benson himself.

Compare this figure to that of the Women’s campaign – allocated £2,700 for expenses out of a total of £37,000, but so far has only spent £282.20 on expenses. Benson protested that the real issue was not how much he’d spent but that the International Students’ campaign budget was so much smaller than all the others. This may well be the case; I’d like to see all of NUS’s campaigns have their budgets greatly increased (and if that means reallocating resources away from other areas like, oh, I dunno, Priority Campaign launches, then so be it), but that unfortunately doesn’t mean that, in the mean time, Benson can spend as if he already has the budget to which he feels he’s entitled. By the time we’d wrapped up that discussion, I couldn’t help feeling that that precise sentiment could have been expressed pretty succinctly without the need for yet another ill-tempered and overlong bun-fight on the matter.

We then moved onto a discussion about plans to develop “Officer to Officer interaction via the Web,” which, as it turns out, essentially boil down to creating an official version of Ednet (and if you don’t know what that is, you’re missing out big-time – check it out here: www.educationet.org/messageboard) as part of Officer Online. I actually think this is a very good idea – it’d be extremely useful from a number of perspectives to have a space where student unionists could thrash out the political questions facing our movement and have out political arguments to their fullest possible extent in a safe environment in a way they’d not otherwise be able to. But to echo concerns raised by Wes Streeting in the meeting, this shouldn’t be seen as a panacea. Our union has problems facing it around democracy, accessibility, accountability, and the relationship between its leadership and its rank-and-file that cannot be solved simply by creating a flashy message board on the internet.

Next came another one of those brilliant sweeps of arbitrary decision making from the chair that Kat Fletcher has become quite good at this year. She was, it turned out, rushing off to a meeting with some officials from the AUT, and wanted to be able to deliver NUS’s line on the AUT’s policy on top-up fees. Succinctly, this policy is that at least one third of the revenue generated from top-up fees should be reinvested into lecturers’ pay, with the other two thirds going on bursaries and facilities. Most people on the NEC were at least semi-aware of this policy already, but I doubt it would have been impossible for Kat to inform us of her meeting with the AUT in advance and at least forewarn us that it would be necessary for the NEC to discuss the matter and take a decision.

Some people argued that unity with the AUT should be maintained at all costs, others that being clear about absolutely opposing top-up fees was more important. I argued that the AUT’s policy was dangerous and could potentially lead to divisions not only between students and lecturers but also between lecturers across different universities and between different types of workers across individual campuses. I said that maintaining a firm, solidaristic relationship with unions representing workers on our campuses didn’t preclude expressing concern at some of their policies.

The debate got dragged in a frustrating direction, a became disingenuously framed as a debate between those who think saying “no to fees!” is sufficient (labelled “idealists” by Kat), and those who oppose fees but think that the NUS should have transitional demands in the meantime, perhaps around lobbying institutions on how the money is spent or on whether they levy the maximum fee (the “pragmatists”).

The proposal from Kat was that she issue a joint statement with the AUT and NATFHE (who have a similar policy), maintaining the NUS’s opposition to fees but stating support for lecturers in their struggle to have revenue generated from fees ploughed back into their wages. The rushed and confused nature of the discussion meant that the concrete nature of the proposal was unclear; I felt that voting for would have meant a wholesale endorsement of what is unquestionably a mistaken policy, but that voting against would mean refusing to side with a group of campus workers their struggle for better pay. Consequently, I abstained.

I think it’s important for us as elected officers to be open and honest if we change our minds about an issue or the way we voted in a meeting, and I think our blogs are good forums through which to do that. So I’ll say it here explicitly: I was wrong. I should have voted against the proposal.

The NUS needs to say explicitly that, while we fully advocate higher pay for all workers on campus, including lecturers, we reject any notion that the funds to provide this should come from individual students. Linking the issue of lecturers’ pay to top-up fees misses the point entirely; what is needed is massively increased public funding for education, generated through taxation of the rich, not charges for students. It’s true that we do need to raise transitional demands beyond simply stating our opposition to fees, but I don’t feel that the demands the AUT has raised are the right ones. Expressing our concerns about the AUT’s policy in the spirit of solidarity and unity is the right approach, and voting against the proposal would have been a clearer expression of all of that.

The one submission the meeting did pass was a Project Proposal from Mel Ward and Dan Chilcott called “Across Borders,” which aims to have 20 of NUS’s constituent member union twinned with a students’ union abroad by the end of the year. It’s a good project, and after expressing my belief that ensuring that any unions we do twin with are totally independent from the apparatus of the sometimes incredibly repressive states in which they’re situated (the project mentioned students’ unions in, amongst other places, Colombia, Libya and Iraq), I was happy to vote for it.

The thing that makes it pretty easy to get over what was far from an enthusing experience is the fact that, unlike my unfortunate colleague Will Page, I feel the work I’ve been doing on the NEC recently has been genuinely worthwhile. From helping out with re-affiliation referendums at Reading, to planning for the anti-sweatshop week of action next year, to developing the ‘students as workers’ project, to plans to head back down to Devon for the verdict on the Rolle College closure (coming up this Friday), as well as to Birmingham to support an FE lecturers’ strike and rally (next Wednesday) and to attend an “Activism in Focus” day as part of the “On Course” campaign (next Thursday), I hope I’m playing a worthwhile role in turning the NUS into a militant, fighting, campaigning force again. And, unlike my semi-retired colleague Will, I think that, given being on the NEC is what gives me the opportunity to do all of that stuff, attending meetings that are sometimes frustrating, boring and depressing affairs is not too big a sacrifice.

In solidarity –

Daniel Randall

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