- NUS NEC Meeting 3rd August 2006

I don’t want to jinx it but, looking back on last year’s blogs, it’s hard to believe that there were NEC meetings where no motions were discussed due to time constraints. All 3 NEC meetings I’ve been to since being elected have run to time and covered the whole agenda, August’s meeting included.

A number of motions passed uncontroversially, including a much-needed condemnation of the abuse of disabled people, and policy supporting the “Green Books” environmental guide (though yes, eyebrows were raised at the production of books to tell people how not to waste paper…). Predictably, this unity-fest only lasted until we got on to discussing Israel’s war on Lebanon and Gaza.

The first motion to be discussed (decided arbitrarily by Gemma Tumelty as chair, not in the order motions were received as we had previously been informed over email) was submitted by Organised Indepedents Stephen Brown, Ama Uzowuru, Dave Charlesworth, Gemma Tumelty, Lousie Sweeney and Alex Kemp – it called for an end to disproportionate military action and support for a UN peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon, and can be read here.

No one spoke against the motion, and we moved straight on to amendments, the first of which was submitted by Labour Students (text available here). In typical opportunist fashion they moved to insert some ENS text into the main motion whilst simultaneously deleting the (already vague) criticism of the Labour government. The new formation claimed the US and UK governments have (despite "diplomatic efforts”) failed to bring about a sustainable ceasefire – no NOLSie was able to explain how this might have been achieved when neither administration was actually calling for a ceasefire…

More seriously, the NOLS amendments (both passed) also deleted the already weak resolves of the main motion to call for a ceasefire; this has been the crux of the controversy over this meeting, so I’ll spell out exactly what the result of this amendment passing was. Resolves 2 was changed from;

2. To call on Israel to halt its disproportionate military action and to add our voice to calls for a ceasefire

To;

2. To call on Israel to halt it disproportionate military action, condemn continuing attacks by terrorists on Israeli citizens and add our voice to calls for a sustainable ceasefire.

The insertion of the word “sustainable” sparked a lengthy debate during the meeting that has spilled out into the wider student movement, centring around the omission of the word “immediate”. The phrase ‘sustainable ceasefire’ is typically weasel-worded, but it doesn’t necessarily contradict with an anti-war stance – the motion as passed also (similarly weasel-wordedly) calls on Israel to halt its military action. In response to the motion Black Students’ Officer and Student Broad Left member Ruqqayah Collector sent this letter to student officers requesting that they lobby NUS to take a firmer stance – the sentiment is admirable but the controversy has lead many in the student movement to assume that NUS has taken a pro-war stance on this issue. The stance is weak, despite ENS’s best efforts to sharpen it up, but it’s not pro-war.

The next amendment was brought by Joe Rooney and myself, concerning the call for UN intervention and the support for “free trade” between any potential future states (text here). I spoke against the text calling for UN intervention on the basis that the US and UK governments sit on the UN security council, and it’s shockingly naïve to presume troops controlled by these powers will suddenly act in the interests of peace just because they’re wearing blue helmets. We wouldn’t call for a US/UK military deployment to the area, so we shouldn’t call for a UN one either.

This part of the amendment fell, but the second part, sharpening up the resolves relating to a two-state solution was passed. The debate moved on to Sam Leben’s Hezbollah amendment (available here) which I took parts on to remove references to George Galloway’s potential contravention of the Terrorism Act – while the amendment isn’t clear, it can be read to imply support for the Act’s restrictions on free speech. These parts fell, leaving Ruqqayah Collector and George Woods of SBL to speak against the amendment as a whole. (Ruqqayah made reference to Kosova, presumably in relation to the slaughter of mainly Muslim Albanians by the Milosevic regime – ironic as her faction’s parent organisation, Socialist Action, explicitly supported the Serbian government at the time).

I voted for Sam’s amendment then against the motion as a whole because of the call for UN intervention remaining in the text. Next up was the ENS motion on Lebanon (here) – speeches against were surprisingly few from the OIs and NOLS, presumably on the basis they’d already made their minds up to vote against, despite this motion’s much sharper stance on an immediate ceasefire, something a few NEC members had expressed concern about. Parts were taken by George and Ruqqayah on text pertaining to the clerical-fascist nature of Hezbollah (a term apparently “used by Islamophobes” but in fact promulgated on the left by SWP founder Tony Cliff in the 1940’s to describe the Muslim Brotherhood – whose British co-thinkers, the MAB, is now one of the SWP’s closest political chums) and on the phrase “motivated by a reactionary hostility to the Israeli people as a whole”. It is, apparently, “patronising” for NUS NEC to ascribe motives to Hezbollah. This is, in my view, a bit of a redundant argument; Hezbollah themselves do a pretty good job of making their motives clear - “If [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” (Hassan Nasrallah, October 22, 2002, as reported by the Lebanon Daily Star). Seems pretty unambiguous to me.

These parts remained but the motion as a whole was voted down, with only Joe, myself, Alex Kemp, Dave Charlesworth and Issahaku Kotomah voting in favour. Next up, the Stop the War motion failed to provoke the normal amount of debate around its resolves for NUS to call for Blair’s resignation and to support the Stop the War Coalition demonstration outside Labour conference; Suzy Wylie was absent from the meeting, so no proposing speech was given before our amendments were discussed. The amendments (here) were voted through but the motion as a whole fell with only myself, Joe, Ruqqayah, George and Kotomah voting in favour – the right-wing yet again unwilling to vote through any policy critical of the Labour government.

The remaining ENS text, motions on Keep Our NHS Public and Supporting student nurses provided the remaining controversy. During a lengthy back-and-forth about the anti-privatisation motion, NOLS cynically twisted the debate to pretend the motion was about whether or not Blair is worse than Thatcher. In fact, the motion makes no more than passing reference to the ideological continuum between the Tory and Labour governments when it comes to the smashing up of public services, but this provided a convenient cover under which Labour Students could vote against the motions whilst still claiming to be against privatisation. National Women’s Officer Kat Stark voted with the NOLS line on the motion despite ENS motions from Women’s Conference explicitly committing the Women’s Campaign to opposing attacks on the health service. What's going on Kat?

In true NUS style, the student nurses motion was objected to on the basis that it is conference policy to support RCN, and the NEC shouldn’t vote through policy that conflicts with conference. However, no one seemed able to confirm this as a fact, basing it solely on the suspicion of Richard Angell – during the 6-hour long meeting, the information couldn’t be confirmed. As such, Joe and I agreed to re-submit the motion to September’s NEC; it remains to be seen whether someone will have tracked down an accurate conference policy document by then (and, indeed, how NUS functions without having access to the policy set by its sovereign body at all times…).

The only other point of note aside from motions was the discussion of Joe Rukin’s resignation from the NUSSL board. Whilst the personal politics and factional wrangling of the issue don’t particularly concern me, there is a democratic issue here; conference delegates voted for our National Treasurer on the assumption the successful candidate would chair the NUSSL board. The fact this has until now solely been a convention, not a constitutional fact, is an indictment of NUS democracy – conference needs greater democratic control over NUSSL board, particularly when, as we saw last year, its actions can have such great repercussions for the day-to-day running of CMs and for NUS activists – see Daniel Randall’s motion to NEC concerning NUSSL’s intervention into the Coke boycott debate.

When questions that so meaningfully relate to democracy and accountability within our union were being discussed, I think it’s a bit of a shame that mine and Joe’s reports of the meeting will undoubtedly be the only ones that are anything like comprehensive or that let NUS members actually read the text that was discussed. I know NECers are busy, but it doesn’t take that long to write a summary of debates or copy-and-paste the text of your motions.

NECers shouldn’t play toy-town politics with our positions and pretend we’re MPs or the General Secretaries of huge trade unions organising millions of workers. But we should take what we do seriously; being on the NUS NEC shouldn’t just be something to put on your CV or get a foot-in-the-door for a future career in the bureaucracy of the labour movement or the voluntary sector. Students elected us to represent them and (if we stood on anything approaching a political platform) to change their union. Using our blogs (which, after all, are the only widely accessible channel of accountability between NUS members and the NUS leadership) to put out “statements” about who we’re backing in Big Brother is, at best, a waste of time. At worst, it’s completely patronising.

I don’t want to come off as a dour leftie, here – if I could afford a TV license I’d have been watching Big Brother too. But if NEC members like Wes are sincere in claiming that they want to combat apoliticism in the student movement and rebuild an activist culture, they’ve got to be able to think of a better way to use their blogs.

With that in mind, I’m gonna use mine to plug an event. ENS Women are organising Feminist Fightback, a conference for feminist activists to be held in London (venue tbc) on 21 October. The conference will include a variety of speakers, discussion and activist training workshops on themes including sexual liberation, international solidarity and women's struggles as workers. We want to build a feminist movement that fights - if you do too, get involved!.

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