Part two of this video can be found here.

Today it is my great privilege to welcome you into this hall for the second and final time as your President.

By the end of this week, you will have defined new policies for the national union.

By the end of tomorrow, you will have elected a new President to lead you in the year to come.

And by the end of this session, you will have made the most important decision about the future of this movement for many years.

I have been a delegate to this conference six times before, but this year’s conference, more than any other in the last half-decade, symbolises change as well as continuity, hope as well as confidence, ambition and not decline.

When I was a first time delegate here, the world was a very different place. Top-up fees were just a memo circulating inside Downing Street, the average student debt was only four figures long, and George W Bush had only just begun his war on terror. But I can remember coming here to discuss higher education funding, a new housing bill, anonymous marking, racism on our campuses, the finances of NUS, and a commission on NUS democracy – not too different from our agenda for the days ahead. This is one of the things that sums up the change and continuity running like threads through the history of our movement. And they are not the only things. Sometimes, the people involved in our work and our mission do the same. I want to begin my remarks today by paying tribute to one of those people.

Service to this union
It is not our custom to discuss the staff of NUS on this platform, but I am going to set aside that rule for just a short time, to tell you about a woman whose service to this union, and in particular the Conference itself, exemplifies our values, and stands completely unmatched. Pauline Brett first came to work for NUS a year after I was born. In those twenty-six years, we went from holding two conferences a year to one, commercial services in students unions boomed, and then dwindled, and there was huge growth in the number of people who became students – from less than twenty percent to more than forty percent of all young people. The scale of change is such that she has seen her first manager leave NUS and go on to become minister for further and higher education: one Bill Rammell MP. And yet in all this, Pauline’s dedication has been constant and unswerving; for the last ten years she has been responsible for organising and managing this conference, and she has consistently done so with distinction, enabling tens of thousands of students to debate the issues that matter to them, and to carry out their mandate. This summer, she will be leaving NUS, and this is her last annual conference.

Pauline, it is my honour and privilege to thank you today for your many years of service, and it is right that the whole Conference should thank you too.

And just as Pauline represents continuity in the very best way, there are many others here who represent change. I also remember coming to Blackpool for the first time and being confused, intimidated, and unsure of myself. So I want to thank all those of you who are first time delegates today. Thank you for taking on this responsibility, even though many of you will have heard – as I had before I came here for the first time – other people’s horror stories about this event. I don’t want you to be under any illusions; the debate is tough, the procedures are inaccessible, and the emotions run high. But I do want you to know that in the end, participation in this democracy is one of the most rewarding things you can do as a student. I also want to tell you – to reassure you – that what you will do here this week really does matter, and really will make a difference, to the way that students in Britain are represented.

I want to stress that point more than any other. Why? Because if you believe in it, if it captures your imagination and inspires you to take action, then there are no limits to what you can achieve. It is highly likely that there are three or four future national presidents sat on conference floor today. One of them is a first time delegate. One day, any one of you could be on this platform, giving this speech – I ask you: what will you say?

I think you can only answer the question by finding your own path, as I did. When I began my journey, I didn’t have a firm political view or sense of my beliefs about the world around me. And as I went on, I was attacked for being apolitical – but in fact I was learning my politics. That is the greatest privilege about being part of our student movement – it forces you to be engaged, it helps you to establish your own conscience, it gives as much as it takes – and more. Student politics is not some cheap accessory to education – it is education.

Voting
This morning I collected my voting card for the last time, but I’m still learning. I have never been a delegation leader before, but now I am, and that brings new challenges. And I have never been so invested, personally and emotionally, body and soul, in a motion to this conference, as I am today.

In about an hour’s time, we will be voting on the ratification of a new constitution for NUS. It is now my duty to give you the recommendation of the NEC.

Our recommendation is simple:

Vote for the ratification; vote for reform; vote to bring this national union into the modern age.

Exactly one year ago, I said we had reached a turning point – and that I would not pass up any opportunity, nor shirk any obligation, nor avoid any challenge, until I had made good on that promise. I reaffirm that commitment to you now.

But I only have one vote. The rest is up to you.

You will hear the arguments on both sides for the final time. You will have the opportunity to speak in what I hope will be a lengthy debate. You will vote according to your own conscience – either informed by years of experience or the instincts that brought you here – but the judgment will be yours.

And I know you will judge it well. On two occasions this conference has placed its trust in me, and I have strived to repay that trust with dedication. Now I must repay it with faith. I’m not going to dwell on the governance debate, partly because I have set out my view at length before now, partly because others will express the case for change in the debate to come.

I trust you
But mainly, conference, because I trust you.

They say – another union is possible.

Today you hold that possibility in your hands, and I trust you not to let it slip through your fingers. The debate is not about the difference between left and right, but about the difference between right and wrong, and I trust you to take us once again on the right course.

Tomorrow, we will build a new union, a new movement, and a new legacy for our successors.

And what will be the character of this new union?

It will be a union that succeeds, and that success has already begun.

And we will go further. The new NUS will be union that enables students and students’ unions to build on their own successes. You know, there are some who pour scorn on the idea that we should celebrate our success. I think those people misunderstand what success is – and they want us to believe that we fail at every turn. But consider the facts – consider some of the achievements of students’ unions in just the last few months.

In union development, like at Cornwall College students’ union, who have developed their organisation and recruited a team of full-time staff, or at Exeter Guild, where a twenty-seven percent turnout in the union elections, gives next year’s officers a powerful mandate for representation. Or at Liverpool Hope, where satellite campuses have been engaged by the union for the first time.

On bread and butter educational work like at UWE students’ union, where over a thousand course reps have been recruited and trained this year. Or both Northumbria and Swansea students’ unions, who have both won twenty-four hour library access for their students. Or at Lincoln, whose QAA student submission was praised by the audit team as being “perhaps the best we have ever read”.

Campaigning
And outstanding campaigning, like Loughborough students’ union, who have run a huge campaign involving hundreds of students in shaping the future of their campus. Or Reading students’ union, where an event was held so students could directly challenge Bill Rammell on the government’s ELQ policy. Or at Goldsmiths, who have been fighting for improvements to their arts courses, and have won a review from their university authorities. Or at Hackney Community College where students’ are engaged in full-scale campaigning activity for the first time.

That’s what I mean by celebrating success - students’ unions working and winning for their members, from Shetland College to Southampton Solent. And there are many, many more. Instead of some distant office in London, the new NUS will be an essential partner to students’ unions in pursuing these goals. And in time, we will fulfil our potential and secure a better future for all our members. The new NUS will be a union that can take on the failures of government and the defective strategies in our colleges and universities, and powerfully advance a new vision for education.

In the last few months, we have seen renewed effort on the part of government and others to bring about an education system defined by utility and driven by market forces. Students will be asked to choose a course in the market of provision, pay fees for that course in a market of prestige, all with a view to finding a job in the market of work. The government speaks of students making an investment in their education, but they fail to give us the small print: in this market, like any other, the value of your investment can go down as well as up.

Economic case
Increasingly, the only case for education that seems to be worth making is the economic case. The concentration on building up skills to the detriment of other aspects of learning continues at pace. Business is being given a much greater role in determining the content of the curriculum and the distribution of places, in both sectors, and it’s happening incredibly quickly. The scandalous abolition of funding for people to take extra courses at the same level will confine us to ever-narrowing fields of study, breaking the links across subject boundaries. We must resist the growing commercialisation of our education.

It has just been announced that in the coming months there will be half a dozen major reviews of higher education policy, and then in two thousand and nine, we expect a commission to look again at the way HE is funded. At the same time, change in further education is getting faster and faster, with colleges demanding a system of self-regulation, in which they will be more free from central control, and in which almost all courses will be ‘demand led’, responding to the needs of employers. On all these fronts, NUS must force open the doors to the rooms where the big thinking happens, shifting the emphasis onto the needs of students, and taking on the market mindset of policy makers. To do this, we must go beyond the reactionary short-termism and inflexibility of our current policy making processes and find new ways of defining our vision. We have to ask ourselves today: what should education look like in twenty years’ time?

Without doubt, it should be fairly funded, in a way that suppresses instead of extends the market. We need a credible alternative to top-up fees that prevents huge funding gaps from opening up between our institutions, and we need to end the shocking mismanagement of bursaries, that not only allows millions of pounds in student support to go unclaimed, but also permits institutions to give out pots of money in recruitment drives for well-off students, instead of genuine support for those in desperate need.

It should also be an education system that resolves the decades-old divisions between academic and vocational, between what is further and what is higher, between learning to get a better job and learning for its own sake. As if these things were easily separated, as if they should be kept apart, as they are today, mainly to satisfy other people’s hubris. We do not accept these false choices; we do not accept the premise that there is one type of education for our culture and one type for the economy. We want an education system in which theory and practice are brought together, in which the levels of study merge seamlessly with each other, and in which there is a new compact between students and teachers to achieve the best standards of provision, instead of the overbearing managerial culture that is beginning to emerge.

Flexible and responsive
It should be an education that is flexible and responsive to our needs. Instead of expecting us to change to fit in, or to struggle for acceptance, it should change to accommodate the huge diversity of tomorrow’s students. Far more courses should be available on a part-time basis, and it should be possible to switch more easily between part-time and full-time study. It should be easier to break up periods of study with periods of work, allowing higher education to become more affordable and less risky, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. It should be an education that is accessible to all who can benefit from it, where participation continues to rise and becomes more equal, an education that brings people from many different backgrounds together when they otherwise would never meet. In short, it should be an education system that can transform our unequal society, instead of simply acting as a part of our unequal society.

I hope you will be able, in the years to come, to promote and secure this vision. I will not be here to share in those battles, but I wish you well. One thing I am convinced of is that our vision matters, and it matters to students that it should be realised.

It was said once that in student politics the stakes are low. But consider the issues before us today, and imagine the consequences of complacency in our actions or restraint in our ambitions. Somewhere, this year, an alternative vision for education will be set out. It will be a vision in which the market rules, and in which disadvantage is once again reproduced through the generations; it will be a vision where students are just statistics and learning is sold on credit like so many fitted kitchens.

Fighting
Student politics now is about fighting this kind of nightmare. Student politics is the only way that we can stand together and secure a future of our own making. In the student politics I know, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Which is why I believe so profoundly in the politics we practice, here in this hall, despite its faults and its failings; there are only one thousand of us in here, but there are five thousand thousands outside, living, learning, holding on, and defended daily through the work we do in our unions.

Some people throw doubt on the legitimacy of students’ unions. They couldn’t be more wrong. Don’t ask me about it, conference. Ask the student who has just has just had their degree saved at an academic appeal, supported by someone sitting in this room today. Ask the student who has just got their deposit back from a dodgy landlord because their union took action on their behalf. Ask the student who didn’t get discriminated against this year because their union won anonymous marking last year. Ask them, conference, and you’ll get the true answer – that student politics is about real people and solving real problems.

And ask yourselves – what’s next?

What can you do when you get home to make student politics matter even more?

Our values
We need to take our politics and our values out of this hall, beyond the campus, and into the society that we want to change. Through volunteering in our communities or becoming active in local politics, we can show that we make a valuable contribution to civic life. By being involved in international campaigns on issues like climate change or human rights, we prove to people outside that we are not living in our own world, we are living in theirs – and that we will take action to make that world a better place. It’s true that our primary focus will always be on the education and welfare of our members, but that must never be the only focus. We must continue to discuss wider issues, and we must continue to take action on those issues when we believe it is right to do so.

To do otherwise would detach us from society, and make us vulnerable to the kind of attacks on our education system, and on our rights, that only a broad social consensus can defend us against. And when over half of all people today will become a member of a students’ union before they reach thirty, it is our duty to build that new social consensus, and enact it by campaigning and by using our voice.

So there it is. We have a tough few days ahead, and there are tough decisions to make. But lets remember what we’re really here for. We’re here because life for many thousands of our members is getting even tougher. We’re here because it matters to be an activist and it matters to be political in the age of apathy.

We’re here because of two things: continuity and change.

The continuity of our values and our determination.

Our influence
The continuity of our influence on policy and our impact on students’ lives – the eighty-five years past and the eighty-five, and more, to come.

And the change this annual conference embodies – to the way we govern our affairs, to our political direction, to our leaders.

But most of all, we’re here to advance the change we want for education and for society, in pursuit of fairness and justice for all.

So have a great conference, but know that when it’s over, the challenge will be greater, and the stakes will be higher, than ever before.

I know you can, and will, rise to that challenge.

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