As many of you will know, I’ve pretty much spent my time running affiliation campaigns this year, so much so that my nickname across the movement is fast becoming Vice President Affiliations!

This is obviously incredibly important but frustrating at the same time. Of course it’s every unions democratic right to pursue referendums on affiliation but it can become troublesome when the National Union becomes almost paralysed because of it.

Last week in Bangor was a prime example. The referendum was certainly frustrating and difficult to say the least and I think it’s fair to say that we had some problems with the way it was ran. I wont go into detail but we certainly felt that we were given unnecessary and undemocratic barriers thrust infront of us at every opportunity. Regardless though we recognised our responsibility to do all that we could to inform Bangor students of the importance of the referendum. I believe that we ran a fair and decent campaign that was aimed at both re-introducing the officers to the value of NUS whilst giving us a prime opportunity to talk to students on the ground about the types of things NUS is working on, and winning this year.

The feeling at Bangor was overwhelming but no one could predict the outcome, especially given the councils mandate to oppose us. It has to be said that we were slightly shocked about our huge majority and this is primarily but not solely down to the hard work of NUS Wales and a helping hand from some NEC and officers around the country.

We know that our job is not over and we still have to convince those officers of our worth but this has to come with the balance of their obligations of involving themselves in our structures. There are some outstanding officers at Bangor and I know that NUS will be a better organisation with them in it.

On reflection it’s difficult to know what we could have achieved that week if we hadn’t have had to put so much of our time and resources into the referendum, especially given the amount of notice. I always harp on about the fact that if we had put that many staff and NEC on an Education campaign that week, we could have achieved so much, but given the situation – our hands were tied.

The one thing I will stress though is that if there is dissatisfaction amongst officers and students about NUS then please invite us along, to a council or EGM to explain and sell our worth – it’s not difficult we have the arguments and know that on a practical as well as an ideological level we can win. I hope that Unions don’t just call snap referendums that cost them and us much time and money but instead engage and invite us first.

But that’s behind us now, hopefully we can move forward this year to create and stronger and more relevant National Union.

Stephen x

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/stephenbrown/274071.aspx