So, it’s been an awful long time since my last blog. I did write one right at the end of October, but due to various shake-ups and changes I never sent it and it’s rather out of date now. In all honesty, I haven’t done very much NUS work at all since then: it’s bizarre, but I managed to do more stuff for NUS in the three months I was working full-time in London than I did in the month that I was unemployed in Birmingham. I guess that tells you how the organisation functions…

Anyway, for the last four months, I’ve been working full-time as an Organiser for Connect, the union for professionals in communications, as part of the TUC’s Organising Academy. Applications will be opening for this year’s Academy pretty soon, and I’ll try to keep you posted about that. So far, I’d definitely recommend it, although it’s by no means an easy option.

The (only) downside to working for Connect is that there’s little opportunity to link my work with the student movement; our average member is a 48-year old white male who works as a manager in BT. It’s been a little difficult to get my head around the idea that managers have bosses too and need to be protected from their employer, just like anyone else with a job.

What all this has shown me, however, is that our conception of organising within NUS is desperately simplistic. It’s no magic bullet, and it requires much more than a change of attitude. Organising’s about recruiting members and developing activists, and it’s extremely labour intensive. One prominent theorist, Michael Crosby (from the Australian labour movement), recommends one full-time organiser for every 200 members or potential members. That’s right, no typo, one full-timer for every two hundred members or potential members.

Let’s break that down. To start with, my old stomping grounds in Birmingham. The HESA figures say there were about 26,000 people registered as students at Birmingham; should BUGS be advertising for 130 full-time organisers right now?

Or WMANUS, with its half-million members. 2,500 organisers? With that budget?

Hell, let’s go for the biggie. Perhaps NUS, as the source of this drive to organising, should be providing the muscle? With 5.2 million members, should we be expecting our national union to recruit 26,000 organisers? To put it into context, that’s the entire student population at Birmingham Uni.

That would be truly awesome, of course, but it’s sadly unlikely to happen. So what’s the alternative?

We need to work with what we’ve got. We’ve got limited numbers of very talented, committed full-time officers, and the hard-working staff of student unions. We’ve also got various society members, activists and other busybodies we can call on.

In my mind, the first thing we need to do is get sabbs, our most reliable resource, out of their offices! GOATS (Go Out And Talk to Students) isn’t just a funny acronym, it’s a bloody good idea. As a minimum, trying to do a lecture shout each day to a different group of students every time might be an awesome way to get started. Then you could look to develop one person in each academic group (perhaps using existing course rep systems?) to do the lecture shouts for you.

Ultimately, the key is face-to-face (and ideally one-to-one) communication, and a sound knowledge of who’s already involved and who you need to work on a bit more. Then you can start to address the issues.

Organising isn’t sexy, it’s not easy, and it’s not a short-term fix. What it is, however, is the key to revitalising both our movement and the trade union movement, involving more people, and massively increasing both our strength and our mandate. With the fight against fees still going on, we need this more than ever.

For reference, there’s not a trade union in the country that meets the target of employing one organiser per 200 potential members. Connect, who I work for, is supposed to be one of those most committed to organising, and only employs one organiser for (roughly) every 2,000 members. But you get the picture…

I’ve been answering what emails I can, although my E&E Committee duties are kinda outward-facing at the minute as getting to Committee meetings has proven extremely difficult. I’ve been letting Dave handle that stuff. I’ve done a couple of media bits and bobs, mainly phone interviews about various green-type issues, and I’ve submitted apologies to most democratic events. I will be at Conference, however, despite having decided not to stand for re-election (or another position) on the basis that, like the subtitle (and a London band called Reuben) says, there comes a time when you think a house might be nice. I couldn’t find part-time work in Birmingham to pay the bills, so I’m now working full-time in a job I love. I’m lucky, but I also know that I haven’t been delivering what I wanted to on the Block.

I did consider quitting, but enough people told me not to that I’ve stuck with it. I hope you think that was the right decision. If not, Conference is coming up and you can tell me off there.

In other news, since my last blog I broke up with my then-girlfriend, became vegan, carried on doing a fair bit of local politics work with Birmingham Green Party, had in-depth political conversations with awesome musicians, started an OU course in the social sciences, started seeing a psychotherapist, realised that I was an FE student at long last (courtesy of Newcastle College, who deliver my Organising Academy training), became course rep for the Academy, and started a relationship with an old friend called Cat. She’s awesome, by the way.

Anyway, that brings me pretty much up to date in terms of my blogging responsibilities. If you’ve phoned me in the past few months and I’ve not got back to you, I’m sorry; it’s nothing personal, I’ve just been hellishly busy with the new job. Organising, as I say, is basically a lot of legwork. Nevertheless, the phone is probably the best way to get in touch with me at the minute. 07736 456639, as ever.

A special message to Rob Owen: sorry for baffling you the other night! I was in Manchester to see the AlexisOnFire gig at the Academy 2, saw you, and thought I’d say hi. They were brilliant, by the way.

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