On 6th September we held our second ever Campaigns Launch at the Birmingham NEC. Admission Impossible was revealed to the membership!

It was a fantastic day with excellent feedback from everyone who attended, now all we need to do is deliver!!

Here are my speeches from the day….

Good morning everyone.

When I got up this morning and looked at my diary, I felt a certain sense of dread. Usually, when I see the letters NEC in there, I don’t imagine a particularly exciting day, but thankfully today those three letters represent the venue, not the meeting, I have Friday to look forward to for that!

And I want to start by saying how proud I am that the national union is holding a major campaigns event outside the M25. Last time we met as movement in Blackpool seems so long ago, but I clearly remember the debates we had and the decisions we made. Since March, your national executive has worked hard to turn your policies into action, and today we will present our campaigns, outline our strategies and programmes of work, and provide materials to support your work in delivering them on the ground.

We also need your help and advice. Because we can’t hope to deliver nationally without your ideas, your participation, and above all, your determination to get your members involved in this agenda. The NEC and members of NUS staff are on hand today to listen to your feedback, so that we can improve our plans, modify our campaigns to make them as successful as possible.

But before we get started with our priority campaign, I’d like to take a few minutes to explore the challenges we face as a student movement, not just this year, but also in the future.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I want to start with Education. Some of you have been listening to a show on Radio 4 about the history of British Universities and how over the years they’ve expanded to serve more and more of the population.

In this job, I hear a lot of rhetoric about how the policy of expansion is damaging standards, about how the fifty percent target has been plucked out of nowhere, about how we should focus on the quality of students not the equality of opportunity to become a student. Let me make our position absolutely clear; this is dangerous and elitist nonsense. The same things were said about the red bricks once; the same things were said about the new universities of the sixties. I’m the first president of this national union to have come from an ex poly, and I’m proud of my achievements. Without expansion of access, I wouldn’t be here, and neither would most of you. We must never be tricked into believing that our members’ interests can be served simply by reducing the number or diversity of those members.

But we must also never be forced to choose between quality and quantity- and certainly never forced to choose between a lifetime of debt, and our ambitions and aspirations. We are about to enter an unprecedented era of uncertainty and instability in education. And to fight these threats, there is one simple principle we need to remember always:

“Education is not the privilege of the few but the right of the many.”

It may sound like the same old rhetoric that NUS Presidents have been spinning for years, but it isn’t. Those words were spoken by Tony Blair at the doorway of ten downing street on the second of May, 1997. Instead of adhering to his own principles, Blair has sold out. He’s sold out students, and now he’s putting education as a whole up for sale to the highest bidder.

So today, we’re calling you to action by launching our priority campaign.

Admission Impossible – what so many people entering higher education this year have faced. Top-up fees will arrive on our campuses and 13,000 students won’t, because they were faced with a choice between a lifetime of debt or fulfilling their educational dreams and aspirations. And to make matters worse, those missing students may be exactly the students the governments widening participation agenda was meant to attract. This system is riddled with inequality and is detrimental to access.

It seems like five minutes ago that I stood in Westminster watching MPs cave into the bullying of the Government whips and walk through the lobbies to create a market in the education system. And now, in the blink of an eye, top-up fees have become a reality for thousands of students. Soaring debt guaranteed for all but a few.

Education should be a driver for social mobility, the only way to break down years of class inequality – but as the cost stacks up, the likelihood of education remaining a preserve of the wealthy does too. The Government talks of progress and choice, but acts to send us back forty years, leaving many with no choice at all.

And the facts prove that we were right all along. We said that the fear of increasing levels of debt would provoke a decline in applications – we were right. We said that increasing fees would create barriers not opportunities – we were right. We said that introducing variable fees and bursaries would introduce a market and create further inequality in an already unequal system – and we were right.

In his first week as Education Secretary, Alan Johnson said “students will learn to love fees”. We need to prove to him that this will never be the case. He has also said that if the new system is shown to put off those from poorer backgrounds he will consider reversing it – it is now our responsibility to hold Johnson to his word and hold Blair to account for his government’s actions.

Because enough is enough.

No to soaring levels of student debt .

No to any attempt to lift the cap.

No to the marketisation of education.

So your mission - should you chose to accept it - is to fight as a strong, united movement to reverse this system, find the missing 13,000 students, win free education and access for all. To re ignite the arguments, educate, and mobilise our members. To unite and turn the tide on this regressive and exclusive policy.

In a short time, your Vice-President Education will set out our objectives and the strategy we will use to secure them. But the absolute priority right now is to deliver our message to the public and the powerful in the form of a national demonstration, through the streets of London, right to the heart of power in this country. I look forward to seeing every one of you, and many thousands more, on the 29th of October.

These education issues are not the only challenges I have faced since taking office – far from it. We have been criticised for debating the recent crisis in the Middle East at NEC. Well, let me tell you something about that.

“NUS is an association of students for the furtherance of students’ interests. But no one can fail to see how direct a bearing national and international student co-operation must have on the great and pressing problems in the world”.

Not my words, but the words of Ivor Macadam, our first president, at the meeting where NUS was formed. Times change of course, but principles don’t. Whether at National Conference or at NEC, I believe it is not just appropriate for this organisation to debate and take a view on the major issues facing our world; I believe that it is our duty to do so. Those who say that “ordinary” students don’t care about war, famine and poverty are, quite simply, disjointed from reality. That we don’t talk more about those issues is a great failing of our movement today.

I believe in the internationalism of our movement, strongly. Because it doesn’t ever detract from the other things we do – it never gets in the way of our work at home or our core message. Instead, it adds context and power to those things. Students came together to campaign for peace in Europe in 1922, they undermined the Vietnam War in 1967, they forced Barclays bank out of apartheid South Africa in 1986. Today, the wrongs in the world are different, but one thing hasn’t changed; the student movement still has a role to play in trying to put them right.

And whilst on the subject of that middle east debate, I also want to use this opportunity to put the record straight on its outcome. The NEC decided collectively. A vote was taken, and whether you believe it was right or wrong, that was the majority view, that’s democracy. But as a result, I have been denounced as pro-war, a racist and an Islamophobe. When some in our movement choose to make personal and libellous attacks on one individual instead of challenging the collective view, then they discredit themselves and their causes, and that’s a great shame, because those causes are amongst the most pertinent and important facing us today. Right here in the UK, Isocs are now under considerable suspicion. Over the past few weeks a whole host of stories have appeared in the media about them being “extremist” groups. Sensational headlines and stories in the wake of the incidents of the past month have repeatedly used the term extremist. We must all understand, and say clearly: this represents the most appalling racial and religious prejudice, and it must not be allowed to go unchallenged.

We all have something to fear from this obscene generalisation. Who will be next? I’m worried that just as other rights have been removed under the guise of preventing terrorism that the right for students to self organise on campus will once again be under threat.

Demonising all Muslim students as extremists jeopardises and threatens the very diversity of which our educational community is becoming so proud- and it’s up to us all to protect it.

So I ask you this: -

How do we protect the diversity of our membership and the right of all students to self organise?

How do we ensure that our student movement is engaged with the wider world, it’s politics and its injustices?

How do we convince all our members, in their thousands and millions, that the marketisation of education is harmful and destructive, driving them to take action?

People always tell me that students are apathetic- but now I’m beginning to think it’s students’ unions themselves that are apathetic. Not student officers – that’s why you’re here. Organisationally Students' unions have failed, and are continuing to fail, to really involve the diversity of their membership and make them angry about the world around them, so they feel compelled to take action to change it.

We all know, certainly respect and mostly champion the right of students to self organise, self determine and speak on behalf of each other. We know that when students speak up for themselves, punch above their weight and challenge power they learn, their institutions get better, and society gets better too.

Missing from students’ unions is respect for discussion itself, willingness to risk debate about troubling issues that might not be resolved immediately. We always talk about doing and acting, instead of thinking and understanding. Isn’t that was education is supposed to be about?

Of course, discussion does not always generate the right decisions- or any decisions at all, for that matter. But saying, "I care but feel powerless" is very different from saying, "I don't care at all". Without such discussion in public, students have no place for actively, collectively forming a will, a community, and a vision of the wider world together. They are deprived of the power to decide what can, and can’t, be changed, to say publicly what is right and what is wrong.

In that environment it’s hard for students to imagine any good reason for conducting political discussion. And so the cycle of apathy is complete, and we are left with a culture of political avoidance.

Students really do care about the wider political world, but can’t often express their concerns in or through their students’ union. To renew real democracy we need to open up a new kind of culture on campus that can embrace the complex, difficult and sometimes frustrating process of political discussion.

And that change of culture starts with you.

Ask yourself this. When was the last time your union council debated marketisation, or international affairs or politics? When did your blogs talk about rights, or your websites criticise the government and its policies?

New university students this year will spend up to thirty thousand pounds each on their education, most of it turning into debt. That’s one tragedy, but the even greater shame is that the vast majority will leave believing that they couldn’t have had it any better. It’s just not good enough for our members to leave education and not understand what’s being done to it by those in power - or how they can change it for the better.

I talked earlier about diversity, and how as a movement, we must look beyond the stereotypes that divide us. We need each other. We don’t have a person to waste, and yet for too long we have focused our concerns on a series of imagined enemies within - the problem is never with us, if we aren’t united it’s always "them" who get the blame.

Them- the religious groups Them- the organised left. Them- the liberation campaigns. Them- the mature students. Them- the FE sector. Them- the factions.

We’ve got to the point where we’ve nearly "them'ed" ourselves to death: Them, and them, and them and them. To unite NUS, we must strive every day for the moment when there is only "us."

One movement, believing in democracy, equality and collectivism, with liberty and justice for all.

You see, in the future, it’s not just that there’s no them, but that there’s only us. Imagine in the future the Government target is met, when 50% of school leavers go on to higher education, over half of the population will have been a member of students’ union at one time in their life.

Half of Britain. That’s our opportunity. To empower and influence our members to shape and form our country’s future. We won’t do it by servicing them- by looking after them, by feeding and watering them, or just by making them aware. We’ll seize the opportunity open to us by organising them- talking about issues, encouraging them to challenge power, and enabling them to change their course, their campus and their community. We have immense influence and power in our hands and it would be a tragedy to waste it.

And where do we harness that influence and power? It starts in your unions – right now. I challenge you to use your freshers talks to make that speech about soaring student debt instead of telling them what services you provide. I challenge you to spend an hour at union council debating the marketisation of education at the first meeting of the year, even if there are no clear conclusions or actions to take at the end. I challenge you to publish a genuine political paper setting out your agenda for this year, and distribute thousands of copies to your members, not because it will solve the problems, but because if we all do it together, it will make student politics mean something again.

Throughout the rest of the day we’ll set out the challenges facing students and our movement. Those challenges are substantial, and some of the greatest that the student movement has ever known. But they bring with them opportunities which will, if recognised and exploited today, secure our future, determine our legacy, and cement our values in the Britain of tomorrow.

Thank you. Have a good day

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Part Two- end of day

Thank you for your time and participation today, I know it has been a long day but I hope you are as excited and motivated as I am about the campaigning year ahead. I want to close today’s event by talking about NUS- it’s role and its future. But before I do, I want to talk about Students’ Unions. Students’ union autonomy up and down the country is under threat. And unlike in 1992 and 93, the battle is local, subtle and just as hard to spot as it is to tackle.

It comes in many forms. Partnerships. Collaborations. Service Level Agreements. Shared buildings. Sticking to the knitting. Doing what we do best.

There’s barely a union in the room not engaged in a discussion with their college over autonomy in one form or another. Many of you are having bars taken away, welfare services rationalised and being told- falsely- that the charities bill will mean having to become a department of the University. And if it’s not happening now, believe me- the market means it will do.

We believe it is right for students to run their own services. But University management can’t believe that students still do. And in many cases, they’re already doing something about it. And the moment you spot it- we’ll be right there to help you fight it.

Let me now set out where I think NUS is- and where it’s going.

We have an exciting agenda ahead, a clear vision for a united, campaigning and organising NUS. And when I say NUS, I don’t just mean a building in Camden, the NEC or even NUS’ Constituent Members. I mean 5.3 million students in education across the UK.

Despite what some may say I want a fighting NUS - that means standing up, challenging power, no matter whose cage gets rattled in the process. And it means not just doing it nationally, but empowering every officer, every activist and every student to do it too.

We live in a society where some students still live in poverty and appalling accommodation. We live in a world where student workers are denied key rights because they are viewed as temporary and dispensable. We live in an education environment where Vice Chancellors close down courses because it is quicker, cheaper and easier to close down than to tackle the policies of the Government through their own organisation.

So “fighting” for me means never letting an injustice in education- or wider society- go by without challenging it.

But however good our message is it won't be heard unless we get it out there. That’s why, and I hope you have seen evidence of this today, we’re rebuilding a campaigning NUS. Campaigning in Parliament, in Europe, in the council chambers, in the media and out there most importantly at the grassroots engaging our students.

You see, as I said earlier my vision of campaigning for NUS is one based on the greatest resource we have - tens of thousands of student activists and their officer leaders who can and must be mobilised behind the objectives their union and NUS sets itself. That’s why we’re investing in an organising strategy- helping you to build activists and helping the student movement to become the vehicle for any student who wants to change things.

But to do all we want and need to do and to make NUS the organisation it can and should be, we need NUS Extra- and we need you to help make it happen, to make it a success. Put simply, it is time to kiss goodbye to the cutback culture. It is time to take the initiative, a difficult decision though it may have been and live up to our responsibility to fund the movement that students deserve.

We have seen growth in NUS over the last few months. We’ve taken on new staff out in regions to help build our organising and activist strategies, to help support you in doing the same. We’re investing in new technology, helping officers and activists to network, to share experiences and to build better practice. And we’re prioritising Further Education for development- ringfencing resources from NUS Extra and winning new money from Government to give real opportunities to the sector.

I meant it in Blackpool when I said that the era of NUS as the national union of Higher Education students is over. The work done on FE over the last two years has been amazing and I know Ellie will take it further.

Our work in FE isn’t just about tokenism- it matters to us as a whole. It’s deeply symbolic. Students in FE are second chance learners and often those at the bottom of the demographic heap. If we can become a movement which empowers those for whom educational opportunity matters the most, we can do it for anyone- and we’ll have built NUS for the coming century and for the whole of our membership, in all its diversity.

But it’s not just about their education. We all know that students are workers too- today their challenges are differential pay rates and health and safety; tomorrow they are pensions, mortgages and working time. Our new strategy- for a long, lasting and deep partnership with the trade union movement – not just when we need a favour, not just when yet again students’ right to a free, accessible education is under threat- but a serious, structured, long term commitment to promote collectivist values, social solidarity and trade union membership among young people.

Our commitment is also born out of practicality, out of a very real understanding that the financial position students now find themselves in means that they are almost inevitably workers too, and they need the protection and solidarity of trade unions like never before.

And whilst that might be a challenging agenda, for every 100 unionised bar staff in a students union “causing trouble”, there’s ten thousand students that need the support and protection of the trade union movement out in other bars, other shops and other service sectors.

But in addition to all of the talk about campaigning and activists’ I also want an effective NUS and an educational and representative NUS. We can and must do more to support officers to understand and impact upon the educational environment in which they now operate. We’re beefing up our research and policy units to deliver real research into student lives and real resources to officers to make lasting change on local campus issues.

Yes, NUS must prove its worth, improve its Governance, drive out poor practice and focus down on its mission.

Yes, we must think smarter and harder than ever before about how we serve students, develop students and represent them effectively.

But we must also ensure that students- in their local union, through their local union and through their national union can still get involved and deliver change.

That means a political movement, an activist movement, and a fighting movement.

It means by students as well as for students.

It means big ticket campaigns like the ones you’ve seen today, as well as being the umbrella for any student wanting to take action.

Above all, it means accepting, developing and celebrating the infinite power that students have to make people in power feel challenged and uncomfortable.

This year and in the years ahead in the run up to the review of the cap on fees we have a duty to do just that, make Blair and his government regret ever bringing in this unprincipled and fundamentally flawed policy, challenge them on their marketisation and privatisation agenda in education and raise time and time again in every public forum possible the lies we have been told and the lies MP’s were told when the salesmen of fees were pushing it through parliament just a few years ago.

We need to stand together this year, unite, to fight and win – not just for our education, but for the things I hope we can all unite around despite any political differences - democracy, collectivism, equality, solidarity and social justice. For a peaceful, fair and just world.

Good luck- and if I don’t see you before, I’ll see you on the Demo

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