The first action of June was National Council, and what a National Council it was. One I have never seen the like of, merely heard tales about such advernture. There were clashes all over the place, battles, slanging matches, and if the half time whistle hadn’t gone when it did, I wouldn’t have been surprised if even the goalkeepers had got dragged into a 22-player brawl.

Well maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but that’s how it felt at the time. Everything had been plodding along like normal, but then we came to what NUS had been doing on the ‘Get the vote out’ tour, things all of a sudden turned nasty. The national councillors for some reason were slightly sceptical, not only about the tour, but what NEC members not on the tour had been doing in terms of canvassing.

So we started off. Kat Fletcher said how well the tour had gone, and said how happy she was to have helped saved the seat of Labour rebel John Grogan. Dan Chilcott was next and he said that he had volunteered for the tour, but not been asked to go on anything. He had made the mistake of asking in his “I’m up for it” email that “I take it we’re covertly supporting the Lib-Dems” poor naive fool. Well I made a similar mistake, saying I’d like to campaign specifically at Warwick Uni against my MP, Andy King, one of the gits who had betrayed us on the day that we lost that knife-edge vote on top-up fees. He’d not only done that, but lied point blank to our faces, and then when we’d challenged him afterwards, we were surprised he could stand up straight.

Anyway, never one for the best of tact, I started “Well like Dan I volunteered too, but obviously I wasn’t ‘on message’ enough as I volunteered and the next thing I knew was when the list of who was going where was sent out.” I’d got halfway through what I was saying, when ‘Lies, liar, lies’ had come from Kat Fletcher. “No I’m not lying I continued”, and explained what I had said at the time had probably made me surplus to requirements.

Needless to say I wasn’t too impressed and things didn’t bode well for the coming year. At this point I have to say to Kat, I’m sorry for pointing this out, we seem to be getting on fine now, but it’s not something I can’t mention! We had that inevitable clear the air fight eventually. I’m not sure if we addressed any of the issues we had at all, but we did clear the air.

Anyway, back to the council as things were only just hotting up. Naturally, in a block at the far end of the table were labour students. As we worked around the table, we got to them. Lists of constituency after constituency where they had canvassed were read out, amongst growing disquiet from the Councillors. A full blown riot looked like it was in the offing as the NOLS NEC were slightly evasive over the question of whether or not they had taken time off to canvass for the party for the best part of a month. Naturally they weren’t impressed that as the elected representatives of students they might be promoting the very people who screwed them over.

The assertions that ‘time off’ had been taken fell on deaf ears, firstly because there is no capacity for holiday from the NEC, as we do not have contracts, but also that they would be considered by students as NUS NEC members, no matter how much they said there weren’t at the time, if indeed they did. To say the debate which ending up focussing between Jo Salmon and Martin Rennison was heated would be an understatement. It was just lucky we then broke for lunch.

During lunch, I thought I would go and print off the email when I volunteered, just to prove I wasn’t lying. When I showed it to Kat and asked for an apology over lunch, well, the response wasn’t too great. In fact in front of the various NEC members and councillors, she quite happily said that it was quite obvious not everything would be going to management team this year.

So when we started again I asked to make a statement, a conciliatory along the lines of “I’m sorry if it wasn’t deliberate, but here’s the proof that I did sign up for the tour. I’m willing to accept that this wasn’t deliberate and I’m willing to make peace, if others are too.” I was slightly disappointed with the response, that went along the lines of “Well the FE advocates came along, they were proactive and booked their own travel” Right yes, of course I’ve been on the NEC for two years and don’t know how to book travel? Of course I do, but the key thing you need to know when booking travel is where you are travelling to. Even the likes of Hannah Essex, hardly a natural ally of mine in the past wasn’t impressed.

The next thing for me was a motion about the charities bill. I’d been told by the charities commission the exact opposite as what NUS had been told. I was quite willing not to get the policy I’d written passed, as long as the policy passed last time was overturned and our options were open in terms of who would regulate students’ unions once the bill was passed. I got it. Shock? I almost fell off my chair.

The next row came over whether or not the NEC could vote at National Council. Apparently the removal of our votes went through at the emergency conferences, but no-one could decide if it went through by the necessary 2/3 each time. Well it wasn’t in the constitution, revised as of March, so we could.

The LGBT campaign kicked off about the removal of their lunches, playing the autonomy card, and managed to get them back, spending money we haven’t got. I’m sure there were another couple of kick-offs. There had to be something about the anti-Semitism stuff at conference, but my mind was elsewhere at the time, convinced my year ahead would just be one long battle. Of course the final act would be the nail in Lloydes coffin. Whilst NOLS had thought it fine for them all to go and canvass for Labour, the fact James Lloyd had made it onto the Lib-Dem broadcast must be worthy of censure. As far as I could see, this was just jealousy and the only difference was the scale. Of course on top of that the broadcast had taken part of a day, not the month the tour some had been on.

They thought differently. He had done it in NUSs’ name, they had not. The fact they (and other non-NOLS) all still had the ‘Vote Labour’ flashing lights on their NUS phones was incidental, it was not an official sanction, no not at all. Anyway, the censure went through quite easily.

So what could round off a perfect day? Getting soaked on the train home. Yes, these beautiful all signing all dancing new Virgin trains. Well there have been loads of problems with them when I’ve been on them so far, and this will be a running theme through my blogs. So I was just sat there, minding my own business, when we slowed down. A reservoir of water that had been sat in the roof panels decided to move, when it it did, it found a join in the panels, under which I was sat. I was just lucky I didn’t have my laptop, and had just two minutes earlier put my phone in my bag.

The best bit was of course the guard, who first lied to me about having complaints forms and tried everything he could not to give me one before I finally made just enough fuss, two miles before we hit Coventry.

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