On Saturday I went with some other members of the NEC to the British Youth Council AGM.

We have been affiliated to the BYC for a long time and one member of the NEC is on their management team and works incredibly hard for the organisation.

On arrival I could not believe how hostile the delegates were towards NUS as a whole and in particularly the Girl Guides. I used to be a girl guide and even went all the way to becoming a young leader and guide company leader, so it was with disgust to see how things must have changed since 10 years ago when I was a committed member.

When I was a girl guide we did work with different organisations around the country and even Europe. We promoted equality and involvement to as many people as we possibly could. But oh how times have changed it were to my disgust that that the girl guides and other organisations there including the St Johns ambulance the Scouting voted against the NUS motion that we had submitted on a NO Platform policy. Any time at an NUS event the words no platform, racism, homophobia, BNP or the National Front are brought up at any of our events it is predominantly with a united voice that we all stand up, support and vote, factions aside, political principles aside, we stand together against these evil problems that plague or society.

At first during the debate on this motion I thought that perhaps it might have been a lack of knowledge, however even after a particularly moving and passionate speech from both Stephen Brown and Defel Owen, who both explained about hated and violence created from some groups that a no platform policy would affect, they still chose not to support it. The room was split in three, some organisation didn’t even have the guts to vote for or against and merely waved their cards sheepishly in the air to abstain there vote.

How can organisations that have such a responsibility to young people and through that to educate the future of this country be so naive to ignore such hatred and violence that goes on every day towards the young people of this country. They harped on all day about being the future and how they had a responsibility to promote the opinion of the youth to local and national government, so now what is the message that is being sent out to the ‘adult’ leaders of this world? That we don’t mind if you incite hatred, that we don’t really care if people are racist or homophobic that we don’t mind that people are abused because of their religious or life choices, or that women shouldn’t have equality. The high point for me of the whole event was when I stood up with the rest of my colleagues on the NEC and walked out in disgust at this pathetic bunch of people who don’t really care about the future or today’s youth, just so long as the Girl Guides get re-elected to the BYC committees.

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