No, it’s not the final page in my blogs, much as some might hope, but this my maybe misguided tribute to Will Page, a man like JK a man who walked away quoting Popeye when he’d had enough of NUS; “That’s all I can stand, I can’t stand no more!”

Things start with the November NEC meeting, where I just could not believe the way that Will was treated. He’d written in his blog that he was disillusioned with the organisation and that he couldn’t see a point to him coming to NEC meetings anymore, and that he’d resign his NEC responsibilities, because he didn’t think he was achieving anything. Little did he know that many a year (in fact almost every year) people take on those responsibilities with little or no intention of actually doing any work, but hoping they will never get caught for the fact they have done squat.

But I’d heard the whispers, the people saying “He’s just a little kid throwing his toys out of the pram cos he’s not the centre of attention” and that “It’s just a re-run of what he did in the run-up to national conference, saying he wouldn’t stand. You notice he’s saying he won’t come to meetings, he isn’t saying he won’t come to National Conference”.

And that is what annoyed me the most about the whole affair. Just weeks earlier, everyone had said what had happened with JK was terrible and should never happen again. Well here NUS had the perfect opportunity to show that we meant it. We had an officer, one of our own, openly saying he was disillusioned and depressed, the opportunity was there to show what we had learned, and all we did was show that we had learned nothing.

No matter what they may have said in the meeting itself, for the people who in the end voted to take the quasi-censure, Will Page, or the idea of Will Page, was a massive danger. Many people have been lured by a faction telling them that the faction will get them elected, even though they would do it easily on their own.

Will Page was a true random. I may have coined the phrase ‘Independent Independent’, but Will was that without the hack qualities that I or Dan Chilcott, had behind us. He’d been referred to last year, quite rightly as “An Officers Officer” and that was what made him most scary, that someone who wasn’t blessed with ordination from above, that didn’t have a prize-winning gimmick, be that standing for all posts and giving poetry or setting up the website that everyone reads and having a bear suit. Will just showed that someone who had just been himself, and nothing else could do it. No-one does that. Ever. Not without factional backing. And that he didn’t have, he didn’t even have a campaign!

Look at me. I set up the website everyone reads. As you may have guessed, educationet was my invention. But when I got elected it was so much more than it is today, actually providing news, the news NUS would never have given. The messageboard was just an additional extra that had to be there, simply because there wasn’t one in the student movement, and that has been the case for five years now. OK, the messageboard is what it became, as no-one that I could find was willing to put in the time to run it properly (if anyone wants to take over the news side please please please tell me, one day I’ll decide not to pay the hosting bill because it’s ‘just’ a messageboard), but the point is, that with all that, with actually telling students what was happening in NUS without the spin (something I hope you think I’m still doing), I still only came ninth in the block election, and that was after transfers had lifted me from 14th.

Will Page was a different matter. Despite saying he wouldn’t compete in the block election almost two months before conference, a last minute change of heart, which he is famed for, had meant that he would stand, and that just showed his power, that without any campaigning, without any materials, without any of the established bullshit that you ‘need’ to get elected he had walked it. He had walked it purely on the strength of being Will page. And that is incredibly scary for some in NUS.

Me getting elected was less scary for them and they had a list of pre-prepared excuses, “You’ve always got the chance of one getting through, especially with treasurer” ‘He’s spent all that time getting a profile through ednet, all the hacks voted for him’ “He was up against the weakest link in the chain” ‘How can he claim to be independent, he got more factional votes than anyone?”. The reality was, no matter how much I’d love to think I got elected because everyone thought I’d be best, I put on the best campaign, had the best canvasser I have ever seen on my side and did a good speech. The ‘organisation’ was against me, but sometimes that might count in your favour. Anyway, this isn’t about me, it’s about Will. And as they say, one always gets through, especially with Treasurer!.

The fact is he is one of the few of us who has come through onto the national executive without being in a faction. I did it three years ago, the first for years, Dan Chilcott followed, both of us with our ‘gimmicks’ and then he came along with, well nothing, unless you consider having no campaign at all a gimmick.

I’ve already seen highly competent officers who wish to be candidates assimilated by the factions. They don’t need the factions, but they have been bred to believe that they do. They give the factions far more than the factions give them back. Well Will was always going to give NUS more back if he was given the chance.

But finally, getting to the point of the blog that is it, he wasn’t. At the NEC meeting, he had few friends, and the resolution was that we would stop his travel budget as a result of his blog. The NEC seemed to have collective amnesia about what they had said just a month earlier, about how we should never cut someone loose like what had happened to JK. But for whatever reason Will seemed either so less important, or so more convenient to dispose of. He had said that he became increasingly depressed and disillusioned at NEC meetings, and that was why he did not want to attend. “Well I wouldn’t go to NEC meeting if I had a choice” was the response by so many, but the mood was not to stop and think, “Well hang on, none of us like going to NEC meetings, what can we do about it?”, the mood was more of ”Well f@ck the lightweight tw@t, if he can’t hack it, f@ck him off.”. So instead of doing what everyone said we should have done for JK ”If we’d have known in advance he was finding it so hard……”, the NEC in it’s infinite expedience gave him no choice but to walk.

And walk he did. He said he’d had enough of ”Kids playing politics” and he could do more for a cause outside of NUS. Maybe he was right, maybe not, but you have to respect his decision. For some reason –I’m not going to say what the reason was- he asked me to give his resignation speech at National Council, the last thing I wanted to do. I just hope I did him justice.

Good luck Will.

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