I thought that the idea of inviting leading Blairite ministers to events intended to launch NUS’s campaigns aimed at fighting to abolish all forms of charging for higher education was an unpleasant and hazy memory from the dreary days of September 2005. Sadly, the whole rigmarole was repeated on 17th January. In the Houses of Parliament, no less. And yes – the tiger prawns were back too.

As far as I’m aware, there’s not a cost issue this time. It appears that Endsleigh Insurance footed the bill for this one, so unlike the 1st September Priority Campaigns Launch (see here – www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/danielrandall/271325.aspx), it’s not like we were spending money on launching campaigns that we could actually spend on campaigning…because what union worth its salt would do that…twice?

So with the money question off the agenda for once, the criticisms this time are 100% political. And there are plenty of criticisms to make.

The ‘2010 Coalition’ is the only vaguely concrete thing to have come out of the ‘On Course…’ Education Priority Campaign – which isn’t saying much. When the campaign was officially launched in September, it barely even existed on paper. At its own launch, its stalls were left symbolically empty. Union officers attending the event had nothing but fine words and the aftertaste of some nice food to take back to their campuses with them.

The ‘Coalition’ has been at the centre of Julian Nicholds and Kat Fletcher’s plans for ‘On Course…’ for several months. In the Planning Meetings I’ve attended (see here and here – insert link), the ‘Coalition’ was discussed in pretty vague terms. On the face of it, the idea of a coalition between the NUS and trade unions representing workers on campus is a brilliant one. But for such a coalition to work, it would need to be open, democratic and have a vigorous campaigning core. But if such a coalition merely amounted to NUS bureaucrats and trade union bureaucrats stroking each other while murmuring their opposition to the lifting of the £3,000 top-up fees cap while the minister responsible for carrying out attack after attack on their members looks smugly on…well, it wouldn’t really be up to much.

Try and guess what kind of coalition (militant united campaign or bureaucratic love-in) was launched amongst the tiger prawns, white wine and Blairites. I’ll give you a clue; it wasn’t a militant, united campaign.

Even the name screams acquiescence; ‘Coalition 2010.’ To me, that says that free education is not something to be fought for now, but something to be postponed until 2010 when the cap comes up for review. Unity between the NUS and campus unions is not something to be exploited now, and turned into jointly co-ordinated on-the-ground campaigning on campus issues now, but something that might be of practical use in four years’ time.

It was not an enthusing occasion, and the speeches didn’t help. When I first met Kat Fletcher, she was a revolutionary socialist militant committed to fighting uncompromisingly for her principles. She is now no longer a revolutionary or a militant, and if she retains any principles she seems fairly uninterested in doing much to fight for them. She has become a bureaucrat through and through; her speech praised NUS’s “achievements” over a year in which we have failed to deliver a national demonstration for our members, failed to deliver comprehensive activist training for our members, and failed to deliver any campaigns that respond to the day-to-day struggles they’ve faced. Kat’s “achievement” has been to preside over a union whose militancy, radicalism and belligerence in fighting for its aims have been persistently eroded. I’m sure she’s proud of herself.

The speech from AUT president Steve Wharton was less than inspiring, and even Paul Mackney, the ‘left’ General Secretary of NATFHE, failed to deliver much beyond low-level platitudes. He mildly chastised the Blair government for its “lack of ambition” with regard to Higher Education, and perhaps he was scared to go further in his criticism because key members of that government were in the audience. He didn’t mention NATFHE’s recent disputes or further action that might be in the pipeline or how NUS members could build solidarity with NATFHE members on campus. He briefly touched upon NATFHE’s campaigns against casualisation in the sector but didn’t elaborate on what could be a key area for developing student-worker solidarity.

Earlier in the event, Julian had introduced me to Bill Rammell himself. (Honestly – there was nothing I could do about it. They just descended on me and before I could run away, I was trying to extricate my hand from his grip.) So there I was, standing in the Houses of Parliament, watching the waitresses with their tiger-prawn canapés buzz past, unwillingly shaking the hand of the Blairite minister charged with the task of marketising Higher Education at the event intended to launch a coalition to fight his government's plans, and I could not help but ruminate on the extraordinariness of it all.

Of course, it is because of the politically limited and reticent nature of the campaign that Bill Rammell can attend its launch – feted, once again, by NUS’s leadership – and feel perfectly safe. By making the lifting of the cap the sole issue around which the coalition is politically organised, NUS’s leaders can avoid making real arguments and organising real campaigns that challenge the entire fees system and fight for a universal free education system funded by taxation of the rich – and not in 2010, but right now.

That sort of campaign – a campaign that brought activist groups on campus into engagement with student union structures, that united students with trade unions on campus and that sharply took up radical arguments about how education should be funded and organised and made vigorous propaganda for those arguments – would elicit more than a smug smile and some handshakes from Bill Rammell; it would elicit fear.

Education Not for Sale aims to unite those inside NUS who want to see a union that runs those sorts of campaigns. Until activists who do believe in that kind of union unite inside it to fight for their ideas, NUS’s campaigns are probably never going to move beyond the white wine, the Blairite ministers and those fucking tiger prawns.

In solidarity –

Daniel Randall

www.free-education.org.uk/?p=95#more-95

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