Good Morning, I’m Gemma Tumelty, National President elect of the National Union of Students. Firstly can I thank you for once again inviting me here to speak to your conference, and let me congratulate the FOSIS executive for what looks like a very successful turnout and for what I hope has been and will be a productive two days for you.

I’m going to start by addressing something that you may or may not be thinking – but its certainly something I’m thinking as I stand here as your president for next year. I want to lead a united student movement, a movement that is a force to be reckoned with when we mobilise, a movement that can represent ALL of its members effectively and a movement that wins. To do that I think it’s important that at the very start of my term in office I recognise, address and resolve with different groups in NUS the fact that for some I wasn’t first choice to lead NUS for the next year, in fact I wasn’t YOUR first choice. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t work together in the future, I know that I have had a constructive relationship with the FOSIS leadership this year and I very much hope that that will continue into the next year. I know that there are also rumours abound about what I do and don’t believe in, whether I can actually represent Muslim students or whether NUS will go back to the dark days when Muslim students felt that they had no voice in NUS. In fact as I was preparing for this speech last week I dug out some old FOSIS material and was saddened to read in the FOSIS 2003-4 prospectus the perspective and feelings of Muslim students at that time, these are direct quotes… “If you’re still not convinced of the need to get involved, have a think over the facts: NUS NEC passed policies banning the Muslim association of Britain from campuses and have branded Islam as a chauvinistic religion that oppresses Muslim women.” And of the NUS women’s campaign, “this year we had just one Muslim woman at the women’s conference held in the spring term which enabled them to pass several anti-Muslim motions.” Now we have moved on so much since then, I know NUS still makes mistakes, but it is FOSIS’s involvement in NUS that has made Muslim students feel that they have a place in our National Union and I never want to go back to the days when you felt shut out, isolated and oppressed by your National Union. So please don’t listen to rumour and innuendo about my record on defending Muslim students or my ability to represent ALL students - I hope that you could ask me, or ask the members of the FOSIS exec and the FOSIS President whom I have worked with over the last two years about my fairness to all groups in NUS and my record of representing the issues important to Muslim students. It is fair to say that some people in the student movement will have voted for me for their own reasons, some people in the movement didn’t vote for me, again for their own reasons but that is the nature of elections, we are a democratic organisation and I am now the leader of an organisation that I want all of you to be a part of. We need to ensure that we unite around the issues that matter, yes we may disagree at times, we’re a political movement, that’s to be expected but we can’t let those differences of opinion divide our movement and make NUS a weak ineffective force for change in society, so I hope you will all get involved in your local unions and in your national union – we have much to fight for and against this year.

That’s why we need maximum involvement from all groups in NUS, we need to increase dialogue and understanding among us, we must educate ourselves, each other and our unions and institutions about making our movement more accessible to religious students to black students, to disabled students, women students and LGBT students. As student unions we can and must do more to adequately cater for religious students, prayer rooms are not a luxury, but a necessity, non-alcoholic entertainments essential, halal and kosher food always readily available, active and supported religious societies whose right to self organise is always defended and campaigns that demand exam timetables set around religious festivals and campaigns that lobby banks to cater for religious and international students – until these issues are dealt with as a matter of course in our student unions and in our national union I know we cannot say we are a truly inclusive student movement. But the need to be inclusive applies to everyone we ALL have to recognise and understand the differences between us, but embrace them and the wonderful diversity and multiculturalism that our differences represent. Because if we don’t have dialogue and understanding and respect within our own movement then how can we begin to fight the fascists and racists in our society. Only recently the BNP made huge gains particularly in London, and this is a huge threat to our multicultural, multifaceted community we are so proud of in the UK. They called the last local elections “a referendum on Islam”, whipped up Islamophobia in the wake of 7/7 and they want an all white Britain. We must unite against these Nazi’s and we need the maximum involvement in our anti-racism, anti-fascism campaign possible to ensure we stem the tide of their electoral gain.

We also have increasing attacks on our education system to fight - top-up fees are being introduced in September, just the latest attack on our right to free education, students entering HE in September are now estimated to be in around 30 thousand pounds worth of debt, this debt will prove a massive barrier to widening participation – we cannot allow this to worsen. We need a long term strategy for free education and against the lifting of the cap on fees when the review happens in 2009. NUS is currently planning our priority campaign for next year and I’m pleased to announce that we are having a first term national demonstration for free education, against marketisation of education and against the lifting of the cap – this will be on the 29th of October in London – I would love to see you all there. We all need to be committed to mobilising our membership – from our societies and from our unions to truly make this a success.

This year due to the sheer amount of text we passed at annual conference we have so much work to do and so many campaigns to win – We’re launching a student activist academy, reorganising our regions to give more support to student unions on the front line, refreshing our relationship with the Trade Union movement, have clear policy to work on building and growing solidarity campaigns with Venezuela and Columbia, we have to continue the gains we have made in the Further Education sector ensuring that the learner voice is really embedded in their colleges, we have so much equalities legislation to campaign on with our liberation campaigns, we have policy to work on plagiarism and anonymous marking and we have clear anti war policy becoming more and more relevant as the situation in Iran escalates. I really hope you’ll get involved at every level of our work and that this isn’t the last time I see you!

The contribution Muslim students have made to NUS and the student movement particularly over the last few years has been amazing – not just on the traditional issues that matter to you – but taking NUS’s future seriously supporting reforms and NUS extra, being an active part of our anti-racism/anti-fascism campaigns, getting elected onto and being a vital part of so many of our committees, leading the response, with NUS’s full support from the top, to the July 7 bombings and the glees report. I really want to see this continue – as I said before we may not always agree- but something I think we can agree on is that NUS and the student movement is only strong when we have maximum involvement from all students and that includes you.

Thank you for listening

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