Those of you who are particularly observant might notice that the dates at the top of this blog don't match; it's about the 8th September NEC meeting, but it's been posted in December. Clearly, this has nothing to do with those at HQ who put up my blogs, and everything to do with my failure to write a report in a reasonable amount of time. I'm sure you've all been on the edge of your seats with anticipation, and I apologise profusely.

Before we got down to motions business, we had a nice visit from John Rees, national secretary of the Respect Coalition and leading member of the Socialist Workers' Party, as a right of reply after the 3 August meeting in which Sam Lebens and Ruqayyah Collector were mandated to write to Respect, condemning their stance on the Middle East (more info available in the report of the meeting, here). Rees complained about NUS's use of the word "fascist" to describe Hezbollah, claiming that the language was lazy and mirrored that used by imperialist forces. The actual phrase used was "clerical-fascist", which, as I pointed out in the meeting and Rees surely knows, was used by SWP founder Tony Cliff to describe the much less reactionary Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s, serving to underline the about-face the SWP have executed even with regards to their own tradition.

Rees also refused to answer Sam Lebens' question about whether he wishes to see more leaders like Hassan Nasrallah, the foully anti-semitic Hezbollah leader, in the Middle East. He outlined how it is possible to be a member of a democratic organisation and still disagree with some of its policies, but didn't enlighten us as to which of the Respect Party's policies he has an issue with; presumably because there either aren't any, or because the democratic nature of the party is so lacking that public dissent isn't advisable. In fact, Rees' address left more questions than answers; it seemed to be less of a right of reply and more of a party political broadcast on behalf of Respect.

On to motions and the first two, on "Bollocks to Poverty" and Climate Change, passed without comment. On NOLS' student contracts motion, there was some debate around removing parts pertaining to opposing all contracts, with the reasoning that contracts could be useful for collective bargaining purposes, and actually serve to protect student rights. I opposed the removal of the parts on the grounds that any move to bring in contracts by university management wasn't motivated by a desire to protect students' rights as consumers (which we shouldn't be in the first place), but to put more pressure on students to jump through the right hoops. The parts remained, the motion passed; NUS has policy against student contracts.

After Ellie Russell's uncontentious motion formalising NUS policy against the idea some A-levels are "soft" options (which is clearly ridiculous; anyone who's ever done Film/Media will tell you the amount of work is basically phenomenal and it certainly surpassed the amount I did for English Lit or science A-levels), we got back on to the subject of war. Suzy Wylie's motion on the war in Lebanon was briefly discussed (though Suzy was unable to attend to argue for it herself) before getting to the amendments tabled by ENS. The motion and amendments are online here.

After a complicated series of parts from Jamal and Wes, the only successful of which being the removal of the word "Islamist" (Jamal, as always, arguing that this is offensive to him as a Muslim, with me counter-arguing that it describes political Islam, something I'm as vociferously against as political Christianity, Judaism or any religion - no theocracies, full stop!), our amendments passed, followed by the motion as a whole despite opposition from NOLS. After the softness of the NEC stance on Lebanon from the last meeting, it was good, if a little late, to pass much stronger anti-war policy.

More controversy with the next motion, the ENS text on the privatisation of the East London Line. Contrary to the RMT union's position (more info here), SBLer and Livingstone fan George Woods claims the move is not in fact a privatisation; the Mayor is simply "making the service better". Thankfully, few NEC members bought this excuse for so-called left-winger Ken Livingstone's actions and the motion passed 15/9 - Kotomah, George, Ruqayyah, and NOLS were against.

Finally, Alex Kemp's motion on care leavers in education passed, after a cynical attempt by NOLS to remove criticisms of the Labour government, which, thankfully, failed. I might have jinxed things a little when I declared last time that the NEC had turned over a new leaf when it came to time-keeping; two motions were referred to the next NEC due to lack of time to discuss potentially controversial issues, including Sam Lebens' text on the anti-semitism review.

Writing a full report without the benefit of the copious notes I usually take has been a little difficult, so this is pretty short. Please feel free to email me with any specific questions about the meeting, which I'll endeavour to answer. Minutes of the meeting are available here (PDF).

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