NUS Conference- a Candidates View

So it had finally come, April, NUS Conference. Time to find out if thinks were going to get serious or it would be time to pack up and go home. Of course everything was totally ready for conference and things would go off. Yeah right. I truly believed it was April 1st when my printer told me there was a problem with one of the machines. What you might call a ‘combustion incident’. The manifestos were done, but the rest, the cards and what went with them would not be done. Cards, what cards? Ahh, you weren’t at conference were you? Well it is widely accepted that one of the things needed, or that is at least helpful if you are fighting an election at NUS Conference is a gimmick. I have always been a great believer in what one of my heroes, Jimmy Hill said on that score. “Gimmick is a word used by jealous people to describe an idea they wish they’d thought of first”. Well that’s what I thought anyway. It may not have been an idea I’d thought of first, but in this years context I was. A few years ago Dervish Mertcan, standing for National Treasurer had come with an idea, which ex-SWD officer Barry Farleigh reckons was his, of the ‘Dervish Discount Card’, which would offer discounts at all sorts of shops in Blackpool.

Well I had noticed something. At the emergency conferences, we had voted to abolish two meals for delegates. This had been based on firstly cost-savings, but on the basis that just over half had either of the two meals in the evening or afternoon. Now, if over 50% have one of the two meals, surely that means everyone has at least one of them. One of the main problems with take-up of meals was of course the fact delegates had to go back to their hotels for the evening meal, and the break in conference wasn’t long enough for most to go and eat and get back in time. So instead of having random shops, restaurants and takeaways were definitely the way to go.

The problem was at about 1pm on the Friday, with me having to be there for Monday, The cards weren’t made, neither was the guide to go with them. So what I could I do? Photocopying them at somewhere like Office World would cost a fortune, so I came up with the fall back plan I always seem to use when things go truly wrong and no one else can help. No it wasn’t the A-Team, it was going to my family, this time my sister. I suppose if I wanted to save money, it’s what I should have done in the first place. She had a ‘proper’ photocopier at her work, and it was going to be working overtime. We managed to get all the copying done by Friday evening, just leaving the cutting and stapling for the weekend, made easier by requisitioning her guillotine. We just had to pick up the stickers on the way up on Monday and everything was sorted.

Lorna and Alex were coming along too. I’d spent too much time away as it was, and although there are long hours at conference, at least I’d get some time with them, and more importantly be able to look after Alex and give Lorna some time away from the stage. Having him in the quiet room or the balcony was always going to be more fun than having to sit up at the front and watch the chaos unfold. While looking after Alex, I couldn’t go on conference floor, so would have to take a back seat, the watch from the sidelines, always the least stressful option at NUS Conference.

I’d asked if it was possible to have a family room and pay the difference, and been told whilst I could, we wouldn’t be in the Ruskin with the rest of the staff and NEC. Not wanting to take the chance of being stuck out in the Norbreck Castle, over three miles away, I decided it would be best to sort out my own flat. All the factions and most the candidates have their own flats in Blackpool, but I got the feeling that mine looked slightly different to the others. There were no computers or printers with people up all night re-writing speeches, having meetings and producing leaflets. The only reason anyone would be up at 4am in our flat was due to Alex needing feeding, though I’m sure there were other flats were early morning tantrums and screaming were the norm. When we arrived however, we had were given a top floor unit and found FOSIS in our basement. From that point rumours of a voting deal would spread like wildfire!

This was fanned when I decided to go to their fringe with Tariq Ramadan and Ken Livingstone by video link. I wanted to see what both would say in the light of their respective ‘bans’ anyway. Disappointingly (in terms that both attempts to ban proved to be purely political games) neither said anything more than you would expect, and while people might know what that might mean from Livingstone, for Ramadan that meant he wittered on, even putting James Lloyd to shame on that score, about theology, society, philosophy and politics. He said some interesting stuff, don’t get me wrong, but he didn’t half go on, despite having about ten notes passed to him saying ‘FINISH NOW’ on them.

Of course I wasn’t the only delegate coming to conference with a baby. There was a slight difference however. Lorna not being a delegate meant it wasn’t necessarily a problem that Alex wasn’t allowed on conference floor. However for Angela Dunn and Stewart Blane, presidents of Aberdeen and Perth Colleges it was slightly different. Before conference I had been heavily involved in attempting to come to some sort of solution to them being allowed to bring Darcy, their three week old daughter to National Conference. As presidents, both were ex-officio delegates, and had therefore known they would be coming to conference before Darcy was even conceived. Also, both were members of the Mature Students National Committee, so everyone from NUS was asking me about them and they were asking me about NUS.

The thing was I just couldn’t understand what the problem was. People had come up with things like we wouldn’t be insured if there was a baby on conference, like the Winter Gardens has a sign on the door saying ‘No babies on pain of death’. What if the stage was stormed and the baby was caught up in it? Well as Stewart kept saying, ‘Anyone wants to get to Darcy, they’ll have to get past me first’ and he isn’t the sort of man you’d want to try and get past in those circumstances. You had to put this into the context of the outside world. Just a couple of months earlier, a woman had been chucked off a bus in Manchester for breast feeding, whereas if NUS Conference had taken place is Scotland, NUSs’ position would have been illegal following a change in the law, sparked by an MSP breast feeding in the chamber. The bottom line is, that for all the noises that NUS makes of being a campaigning organisation dedicated to fighting for the rights of its’ members and justice and equality for all, the call to ‘ban the baby’ would never have been made.

The other thing was that Stewart, and Angela especially have never exactly been the sort of people you can say no to, especially when they are in the right. Under-ones are not covered by the NUS childcare policy, and the amount of feeding a three-week old needs, as I had just recently discovered, means it needs it’s Mum, no-one else. So eventually I had been appointed to show them the compromise, that they would be allowed to use the SWD room, just off conference floor. Ange said it was fine, much better than she had expected, and as long as her vote was counted, everything was fine. and it seemed like there had been a big fuss over nothing. I knew them too well to think it would end there.

But now we were away, conference was on. Despite the main part of blogs being about saying what interaction each NEC member has had with unions, I think it would be difficult to remember all the unions I interacted with. I was talking to as many people as possible as most candidates try and do, giving them the Rukin Extra card.

So conference started in earnest, and bizarrely, after just a little while we realised things were actually just about going to time. There was something else as well. For the last two years at national conference (not the emergency ones), most policy had been so pointless and transparently obvious that many times not one person in the room wanted to speak against many parts of it. This time debate was actually happening, and again for a really odd reason no-one was that angry about proceedings that they were trying to slow things down or subvert them. This was of course on day one though. No-one really wants to make things kick off before the elections are even underway. Well not the factions at least. They try to use the numbers in the first few elections to asses the voting strength of the other factions, a crucial thing to do when it comes round to figuring out what their chances are in the block elections, who they can deal with, and the nature of the relationship in “Master/Servant” terms.

I had of course caused a slight controversy myself in submitting an announcement to steering, something along the lines of “Get your free Rukin extra card today for discounts on food and drink around Blackpool. £5 for all you can eat and a drink at Deep Pan Pizza, next to the Winter Gardens and other great deals.” John Kayan had come back to me and said they couldn’t read it out, as it would obviously be publicising my election. “But it’s not” I said as I handed him the flyer” ‘Oh.’ He said slowly as the only justification they had disappeared. He said he’d get back to me and asked ‘It is genuine isn’t it?’ I said I doubted anyone would try and con people today and want their votes tomorrow, he replied that surely that was what all politicians did!

One of my biggest regrets is that I never actually got time to go and eat in any of the places on the card, even the exceptionally convenient DPP. I did feel sorry for them though. When their manager agreed to the deal on their all-you-can-eat menu, I don’t think he realised just how many would come and how much they could eat. On Tuesday night, just seven hours after the first card had been given out, DPP became a mini-version of Conference, with the shout going out ‘Lock the doors’. They had ran out of dough. That was definitely going in the elections speech, as it was the one thing NUS could not afford to do!

I decided to opt-out of presidential hustings, or the “Who has the most boisterous supporters?” competition, for the better option of canvassing the drifters as it was time to get the full manifesto out. It’s better to have one of those too, opposed to just a gimmick. And I had another one of those left. Lots of people give lots of things out at National Conference, but one of the things I have never understood being missed was chocolate coins from Treasurer candidates. Well it seems I wasn’t the only one to think of that, but I was the only one to spot a particularly good deal at a national chain, so good that I (well Lorna mostly to be honest) went round them all picking up what they had left. These weren’t going to run out, and I felt they were better presented in a Treasure Chest (on loan from Alex, it’s a toybox my parents gave him) than in a plastic bucket.

In the morning, that’s what Darren Jones’ supporters thought too, when we left the chest unattended for a little while on the Wednesday, we found a load of Darren Jones chocolate coins in it, where there should have been Joe Rukin ones. I know my election might at this point seem like it was my pre-occupation at conference. Well at this point, it probably was, the culmination of years of work was here. I’m either in or out, in the next couple of hours, and things are by no means certain.

I’d decided not to ‘Play the Game’. I hadn’t done any deals, but I had had the foresight to mention quite early that I was standing. That at least meant that some factions hadn’t bothered to stand as they were happy for me to get in, but that was the nearest it came. I hadn’t got any pre-sorted speeches. I had been to compositing (the meeting that negotiates what policy will be discussed) with the stuff MSNC wanted in. The mature students stuff that should have been brought straight back from the last conference had been stitched up (or more ikely forgotten due to incompetence), so we had to re-submit. No-one wanted to know, but the FE stuff MSNC wanted had got through to being on the order paper. I wasn’t interested in waived speeches for electoral purposes, plus of course Ange wasn’t going to give that speech to anyone. Of course in contrast, I’d had a few waived to me at the emergency conferences when no-one was electing anyone. I also hadn’t spent the entire year using my NEC phone bill ringing people to buy their undying loyalty for this one week. If people offered to help, of course I said yes, but I was never going to spend all year, or even the last month on recruitment of lieutenants. It did mean that the campaign team on the day was a bit light, but it’s quality, not quantity that matters.

I suppose that was one of the reasons I was being written off on my own messageboard. It was going to be a two-horse race apparently, and I was the dead donkey that made up the numbers. Of course whilst Martin Rennison benefited heavily from his endorsements and was probably the front-runner before conference, with Labour Students (NOLS) it was just bravado. It became quite obvious, quite quickly that NOLS were bricking it. Oh yes, they had the numbers of brainwashed canvassers, but not much else it seemed. When Henri from NOLS got 4 people to stand in front of the treasure chest, I realised they were desperate. “Henri, could you try being less of a cock?” I asked. “We pay Henri a lot of money to be a cock” one of the troop answered, and she probably answered every question I had of NOLS around election time all in one go.

When it came to sitting up at the front with the Secretary candidates, Dan Chilcott confimed just how desperate they were. “You know, last night I think Gareth Smith offered me a deal. I was a bit pissed I didn’t take it in, but he said NOLS would vote for me in this one if I withdrew from VP Ed in favour of them.” Why did I ever tell Dan there was nothing in the constitution preventing him from satnding for all the positions? Anyway, after he declined the offer of wearing my t-shirt while he withdrew from his treasurer election, there was one last job, finishing the speech. It felt like by the time I’d finished writing it, I’d finished giving it. Beforehand, everyone who had asked how I’d do had been told “I’m going to win” and now I believed it. Good job really, it was a bit late to do anything about it now.

Now I had some much needed time off conference floor. Lorna had insisted she should be my election count observer, so I got Alex. So we could wander through the stalls at lunchtime, had a bit of an excursion into Blackpool, until the sandstorm started, and then back to the balcony for conference, where the welfare debate was ongoing. Had we really made it this far through the order paper already? Well yes, so far in fact that while the ballots for the emergency motions were being prepared and it looked like they would be debated that night! Such timeliness we have not seen, at national at least, for many a year.

But the wheels were about to come off. I felt quite left out, up on the balcony when Angela led a mob of delegates onto conference floor. “There’s a baby on conference floor, this sitting is suspended, run for the hills” was a close approximation of the chairs announcement. I knew something like this had been coming, and was chewing over in my mind whether or not to join in. If I hadn’t been on the balcony, I would have done as. I slowly set off to go down, the protest broke up, point made, but as I winded my way round the balcony (the baby room was at the far end, and of course babies weren’t allowed on the floor), Lorna came out of the count room. I didn’t have to ask what the result was as she ran and jumped at me. “You did it” I wasn’t happy with the levels of surprise in her voice, but let it go! We had done it. 40-odd votes. Plenty. Martin Rennison had closed in from about 80 behind after round one. But the thing that stood out the most was how badly NOLS had done. Darren Jones took just 149 votes in the first round, about 15% of the vote.

I now had to keep quiet. Well sort of. Well as quiet as I could. The NEC knew bit by bit, and everyone of them who came up to shake my hand made it more obvious. So did my continual thumbs ups to the Coventry Delegation, handily placed right in front of me. My body language which resonated elated bemused disbelief may have given it away too. At this point I have to thank everyone. Most of all Lorna of course, the best canvasser I have ever had in any election (and quite a few elections too, mind you I know it’s mutual). Everyone from Cov, that goes without saying and of course WMANUS, NPC and MSNC too –as Lorna is testament to, there’s nothing like family!- but also so many others. Ok not that many, but more than I thought! I have to especially pick out Lloyde for not taking off my sticker as soon as my back was turned this year, Chris, Rob, Will, Beccy, Sarah, Craig, Rachel, and Tim for their efforts on the day. Hah there’s a couple of names there that there was more than one of, don’t argue- I meant you all! And of course all the ones I missed. It was a hectic week, it’s hard to remember, I’ll mention you if you email me and complain at a later date! Top marks of course go to Tony Short, who I really am grateful to and sorry for. He did more work for my campaign than his own, and I did tell him, he just said my election was more important. Bless. Of course there are all the ednet crew too, most of whom weren’t there, but thanks for believing- those of you that did!

But back to the conference. The welfare debate had hit a stumbling block, abortion. It would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago that the issue of a womans right to chose would never come up at conference, let alone to have anti-abortion policy. But it seriously looked like it might happen. The election results wouldn’t be announced until the farce of procedural motions in progress were out of the way. I’m not sure why, normally whatever is happening can break for an announcement from elections committee- ie a result. But ohh- it was clear things wanted to be slowed down a little. The best thing that could be done in terms of keeping people on conference floor likely to vote the ‘right’ way was to hold those election results up, some people would go early when they get announced. Well anyway, it was an age. Time enough for me to get one of my election t-shirts which read, astonishingly “Joe Rukin for National Treasurer”, cross out the ‘for’ and write in ‘elect’ at the end, ready to wear for later and time to agree, in consultation with Coventry University SU, to remove some parts of one of their emergency motions which might have caused a problem with the NUS staff.

But it didn’t matter. The emergency motion that was. Somehow, despite making sure it was OK to submit two emergency motions from the same union with steering committee before Coventry submitted them, somehow despite that, despite the fact both motions were accepted, composited, published in the ballot, voted on, somehow it was only after jumping through all those hoops and one of them coming second in the ballot (where the top 2 would get heard), somehow, it was only then that Steering Committee took the decision that one college could not submit more than one emergency motion, and ruled them both out of order.

“It’s in CD1, one college can’t submit two emergency motions” said the same person I had spoken to a few weeks earlier, denying that any such conversation had taken place. “Show me CD1!, you show me where it says that, I’ll walk away happy.” I repeated over and over, before an admission. “We haven’t got a copy”. Hmm, so you changed your ruling based on a rule in a document you haven’t got. By the time I had gone to get net access from the press office and printed out the document, it was too late. There is in fact no limit whatsoever on the number of emergency motions a CM can submit, but alas, speeches a ruling and a vote had all happened by the time I got back to challenge the rule of steering. To Cov, I’m so sorry this meant your motion got annihilated, but if any comfort, it was a bit further down the ballot.

When the VP election results came in, there was surprise all around, not that Veronica King had beaten the incumbent, Helen Symons in the VP Welfare election, but that Labour Students had been annihilated. It just went to show how important it had been to their survival in the past to have hold of the Presidency, and things would have to be stepped up a gear if they were going to turn things around for the block of 12 election tomorrow.

But I was now knackered. So knackered I didn’t even go out to celebrate the election victory we had worked so hard for. A quiet drink back at the flat with Lorna was all we could stretch to before flaking out.

And so came the final day, with all the fun and games that normally brings. Once the full time elections are out of the way, things take a turn for the nasty usually. It always happens on the last day, and is a combination of last minute canvassing for the elections and demonisation of other groups. Well this year we had a corker. There are many words which describe serious issues which end up getting bandied around like confetti at NUS Conference. After a few conferences, these words start to lose their meaning, as they are nothing more than the ultimate attempt to insult and discredit rivals. Anti-Semitism is one of those words, as for that matter is Zionist. For my money if you are going to use those words at conference, you might as well stand at the platform, point at the people you don’t like and shout ‘WOLF’. I first noticed what was going on at my very first NUS Conference, where Joe Cardwell, the SWSS member on the NEC was accused of this heinous crime. I did think it a bit odd that a leading light behind setting up Youth Against Racism in Europe was being accused of one of the fundamental precepts of fascism. But that wasn’t what it was about. SWSS members promptly stormed the stage, conference was suspended, and in the end finished early. Everyone’s last memory of conference that year was of the evil trots who turned the end into a farce, exactly what they had been manoeuvred into producing.

These words, like ‘faction’, ‘independent’ ‘trot’ and a plethora of others were so commonplace that there were included on ‘Bullshit Bingo’, where delegates had to mark off the words when they were said, and then shout ‘Bullshit’ when the final one on their card was read out. But this year it would be different. Luciana Berger was given leave to give a speech, which told a sorry tale, painting NUS as institutionally Anti-Semite. Although there had been problems at conference, as there always are, every one had been blown up as if it were the end of the world.

But the point of Anti-Semitism accusations was never accuracy. For years NOLS have ruled NUS, with UJS being known colloquially as the ‘Kingmakers’. Now things had changed quite massively. With UJS, NOLS and AWL seen to be operating in a block, the 149 votes Darren Jones got showed pretty accurately how many votes the three factions had between them. Not enough to elect four block of twelve candidates. So before Luciana resigned, towing Mitch Simmons, who was also retiring and Jonny Warren from steering behind her, she made sure everyone just about to vote in the election (which would immediately follow her speech) know that besides UJS “Labour Students and the Alliance for Workers Liberty are the only factions that take Anti-Semitism seriously”. She and UJS no longer believed there was a point of being in NUS. Of course that didn’t mean their current block candidate, Jess Kosmin, would pull out of the election. No of course not, that would be too consistent.

The block speeches went quite well. There was the usual mix of speeches that have been used every year, mixed with innovation and of course a couple of less-than-stellar performances. There was of course one we’d been led not to believe would be there. After he announced he’d not stand, I told Will Page that I had a tenner on him changing his mind. When my election result had been announced, I’d done a football style celebration, taking my shirt off the reveal the altered election one underneath and running off in a random direction. That had brought me on a collision course with the gangling arms of Will. He told me that due to some of, well one of, the election results, he would now be standing.

So afterwards I went to the block ‘count’ as I was observer now for four of five of the candidates, and to be honest would observe on behalf of anyone. What I did observe was a farce. They weren’t going to count them. Despite the fact the staff do all the actual work, elections committee couldn’t be bothered to sit through it, and a count some other day would get them another day out of the office. Now that I could believe. The NUS Constitution nominates three professional bodies which are meant to send people to be on elections committee, along with the people elected to be on. The problem as far as I see it is that those bodies (besides costing too much) continually send the person they would most like to be out of their office for a week. There can be no other explanation, especially when certain people have been specifically requested not to be sent. We have some who are veterans of NUS events, but still failing to ‘get it’. Famously one, nicknamed ‘Hardly’, as there is hardly anything between his ears, could see nothing wrong a couple of years ago when at Black Students Conference, 60 registered delegates produced 61 votes, the winning margin in the election? One!

Had anyone bothered to tell the candidates? Only the staff had just been told they wouldn’t have to count. Conference only knew when Peter Learys observer texted back to the mother ship and they got a speech on it. He was told that he could get thrown out for that, as count observers are meant to have no contact from the outside world. Quite rightly he pointed out that as the count hadn’t started, how could there be a problem? This was the same argument repeated 30 seconds later when Leary, a candidate, turned up to his own ‘count’. Well after much toing and froing, when it had been drilled into our heads that no matter how much we shouted, the decision not to count was solely the purview of the little napoleon and his experienced assistant from elections committee. There would be no movement from them.

So now we could move on to seeing how tamper proof the envelopes are. It took one hell of a while until some were satisfied, and we ended with paper envelopes signed across the seal before they were put in the proper secure bags from the post office, again signed. Pete decided a couple of photos would be nice. Elections committee were not impressed asking; “What are you going to use that for?” He replied; ‘You want us to be happy with the validity of the count and the fact these envelopes are the same ones we open next week, I’m merely using every means at my disposal. It’s not as if I’m going to run off and start practising the signatures. I mean Joes just been elected National Treasurer, what possible use could his signature be to me?’

And there we were. What a mess. When I got out it really felt like the last day of conference and that Billy Smart was once again in charge. The wheels had fallen off the Wagon in a way which would make Coco proud. The fallout from Lucianas departure hung like a radioactive cloud over the Winter Gardens, now snipers were set up all over the building, entrenched and ready to cap their mark. Jamal El-Shayyal had become public enemy number one. It was obvious he’d get elected, so he had to be discredited from day one. “He’s the bloke everyone was having a go at last year, they reckon he’s a terrorist, you know..” they’ll say next year. There were still some last minute attempts to get the block election counted. If the elections to elections committee were counted first, then the new people could outvote the old ones. Well that was the thinking, but it wasn’t going to happen. In the melee, Martin Ings asked you OK for NUSSL board next week? Next week I asked? I’ve got MS Conference next week. No it wasn’t a problem, the didn’t clash. They did take up the entire week between them though. It would have been nice to have been forewarned I suppose. I bet Martin Rennison knew it was NUSSL board next week……. And at last the final whistle came, with purely the entertainment of the leaving speeches remaining and the dark realisation that I had actually won.

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