Because though the debates before us this week are important, compared to many of the challenges facing ordinary, hardworking students, they can seem distant, and trite.

Ordinary, hardworking students, who get into education to learn, develop, and belong.

Ordinary, hardworking students, who deserve inspirational teachers, accessible classes, and meaningful feedback on their work.

Ordinary, hardworking students, who want safe and well-paid jobs, rewarding careers, and successful lives.

The student movement, as represented in this room today, isn’t the same as the millions of ordinary, hardworking students across the country. That doesn’t mean we can’t defend them, or promote their interests. It doesn’t mean that students aren’t stronger without a core of committed and dedicated activists. But if we’re honest with ourselves, in this room, we would recognise that our stance on the bread and butter of education policy is hazy at best. We’re always chasing the agenda, not setting it. We’re always reacting to the demands of universities and the propositions of government, and as long as that’s our occupation, we’ll always be on the margins.

In this room, you hear a lot of rhetoric about the regressive and damaging HE funding system. But actually, everything we could ever say about top-up fees from this platform has already been said. Why don’t we talk about the sky-high up-front fees that adult learners pay in further education? Why do we have such a strong focus on widening participation in universities, when if you live on some estates in Britain, you’re more likely to have an ASBO by your eighteenth birthday than an A-level?

In this room, we often speak of education for education’s sake. And that’s fine. But sometimes we do a disservice to the millions of our members who sought out further or higher education to get a better job. We talk about the marketisation of the system, brought about by Government, as if it is a new idea. But we are near to silent on the deep unfairness and inequity that still courses through higher education, and is caused by the policies and practices of universities. In admissions processes, bursary distribution, assessment systems, and more, it’s students from disadvantaged backgrounds who lose out every time. What are we really doing to tackle this injustice?

In this room, we wax lyrical about equality and diversity. But some campuses in this country are less than five percent black, while some have more than eighty percent black students. It’s not that the latter are shining beacons of fairness, it’s that the former remain culturally inaccessible to many. What are we doing about that? And so much of the provision on those campuses is still deeply inaccessible to disabled people, not just because the buildings are old and ill-designed, but often because the courses and the methods used to teach them are old and ill-designed. What are we doing about that? All too often palming the issues off to liberation campaigns, to sort out themselves, that’s what.

These are the substantial concerns of ordinary, hardworking students in Britain today. And it’s ordinary hardworking students who we have failed so dismally in the last ten years. Why? I’ll tell you why – because our vision is so limited, because our invective is so tired, because our methods are so dated.

And at the very heart of this failure is a very cruel and disappointing reality. Your National Union, the body you expect to lead and organise this movement, is caught up in a profound inertia. It wastes time. It squanders money. It leaks talent.

We desire to be taken seriously, but we don’t have any real evidence to support our arguments. We yearn to be thought of as an authority on student concerns, but we find ourselves outflanked by others. We crave the recognition of policy makers and legislators, but they are unmoved by our case.

NUS tries to be all things, to all people, all the time. And it fails as a result, consumed by a cycle of neglect, and decline.

It begins with the arrangements we make to determine our policies and priorities; this conference, with all it’s bloated inefficiency, which costs over a hundred pounds a minute. A parade of regional conferences, where you are supposed to be able to hold us to account, but where, in truth, no real scrutiny is applied. An NEC incapable – not because of it’s members, but because of the size of the body and the scale of challenge – but nevertheless incapable of controlling our direction and strategy.

And as the cycle continues, over time, the organisation put in place to support the NEC, and to support students’ unions, becomes equally directionless. Our services are misplaced and badly conceived, our delivery to constituent members, irrelevant to the real needs. Our staff have been overloaded, unsupported, and too often undermined. Parts of the organisation that are drifting without purpose have been left to struggle on regardless. Parts of the organisation succeeding, against the odds, have gone without resources and recognition.

And as the decline goes on unchecked, protocols and procedure abound, but action and engagement, are rarefied. Every event a talking shop, every opportunity missed, every one of us just going through the motions.

And it ends – well, we all know where it ends. Disappointment, disaffiliation, and destruction of any chance we have left to achieve our universal aims.

Education accessible to only the few.

People in education unsafe, insecure, and unsupported.

The oppressed undefended, their liberation impossible.

No coherent movement of students. No cultural, social, or political diversity.

Peace and security, an abandoned hope.

Conference – not on my watch.

Not on this National Executive’s watch.

And not on your watch.

On this platform, in this speech, I make just one promise as your President:

I promise you that this is the turning point.

Things are in motion right now to restore our reputation, amongst our members, amongst decision makers, and in the public eye. They are real, they are substantial, and they will make a difference.

We’ve started an activists academy, to ensure that students’ unions have a concrete way to build activism into what you do. Fifteen unions have already been engaged in the pilot. But if anyone says fifteen is enough, they’re wrong. Next year it needs to be fifty, and the year after that, a hundred and fifty.

We’ve signed a historic agreement with the TUC, to secure better treatment and benefits for students who work, to gather support in organising our activists, and form stronger coalitions with trade unions where we have common goals. But if anyone tells you it’s enough, they’re wrong, because we won’t rest until every student worker is a trade union member.

We’ve commissioned a major piece of research on education funding, drawing together solid and compelling evidence to support our policies. And we will do more research on other issues, where success demands it. But if anyone tells you it’s enough, they’re wrong. Because we will change the way we do all our policy work, to suit the way politics and education works today.

We’ve sought the opinion of a leading lawyer on the independence of students’ unions, and received clear and unequivocal advice that it will never be legal for a university or college to absorb their students’ union as a department. This is work of real substance, which is already making a difference to many students’ unions. But if anyone tells you it’s enough, they’re wrong, because some universities are already working to challenge us, and we need to resolve this argument in our favour more than any other.

We’ve arranged a new deal with Endsleigh insurance to secure the long-term financial future of NUS, we’ve ordered a ten percent reduction in your affiliation fees, and we’re proposing a fairer and more consistent affiliation fee system. But if anyone tells you it’s enough, they’re wrong. Because we won’t truly be secure until NUS and students’ unions are financially stable.

And we’ve ordered a half million pound cut in expenditure to be carried out in the next six months, to cut waste, to streamline our services, to improve our performance. And if anyone tells you it’s enough, they’re wrong, because we’ll still be in deficit after that’s been done, and we are committed to reducing that deficit to zero, and we will.

We will do more, and you will do more, and together we will turn this around. We will make students’ unions as successful as they can be, and we will make a real, positive difference to the lives of students.

We will cut costs, and make difficult choices.

We will find our true common cause, through tough and rigorous democratic debate.

We will find real evidence for our case, and rectify the way we argue for it in the corridors of power.

We will organise student activists to campaign for change.

And above all, we will remain political, and we will work to politicise others.

This is the turning point. And I know we can do it. Because you are determined to see it done, because your National Executive has determined to act, and because I am determined to see it through. Yes conference, together we can do it. And it won’t be finished by the end of this week, nor by the end of this year, nor by the time every member of the present NEC has left office.

But if not now, when?

If not us, who?

This is the turning point – so let us begin.

Thankyou.

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