On Sunday 24th September I went up to Manchester as part of the NUS delegation to Labour party conference. It was my first party conference and I felt I got a lot out of it both professionally and personally. I want to give a detailed account of exactly what I did and what I achieved whilst I was there, because I believe there’s a real value in NUS representatives, party members or not, being there. So…

I arrived on Sunday and met Ellie, we spent several hours queuing for our passes, only for her to be told her application hadn’t been received (despite the fact the delegation’s were all sent off together). It was a sham and when the next day it emerged she was unlikely to get a pass at all, Ellie left- and I believe her absence was to the detriment of our organisation. I hope the Labour party sort out their conference organisation and administration before next year. I missed you Ellie!

I’m keen to outline exactly what I did, what I attended, and who I talked to, so here goes:

Sunday evening:

• One Parent Families fringe meeting- where next for ending child poverty? John Hutton, the Minister for Work & Pensions spoke at this event. I raised the issue of top-up fees deterring children from low-income backgrounds being deterred from HE by top-up fees in the Q&A session.

• NUS delegation briefing/meeting

Monday:

• 8am- Myself & Stephen attended an Age Concern/NIACE breakfast meeting. It was useful for me as the age discrimination legislation, which the mature students’ campaign is doing work around was debated.

• 12 noon- Watched Gordon Brown’s speech.

• 1.30pm Attended a Foreign Policy Centre fringe meeting on Preventing Ismalaphobia & Extremism.

• 5.30pm- Attended the YWCA fringe- ‘Bovvered? What’s the matter with young women’, which was really interesting and probably my personal favourite fringe.

• 8.30pm- NUS/NIACE fringe- Adult Education. Ellie was due to be speaking on the panel at this, but due to the pass-travisity I took her place. I’m no Ellie but I did my best to do our FE members justice, and it was pertinent for me to talk about the mature students campaign in part. Bill Rammell was also on the panel, and I ended up clashing with him when he accused NUS of scaring potential students off from university by talking so much about debt. It was really unfair and completely untrue. Luckily I got the last word on the matter!

• 10pm Equalities reception- time to let our hair down!

Tuesday:

• 12.15- Stop AIDS campaign fringe (unfortunately we had to leave early for….)

• 2pm Tony Blair’s speech

• 5.45pm CMU fringe- ‘should government fund universities?’ Gemma spoke on the panel and did really well. There was a heartening amount of support for the NUS position on fees in the room. I asked a question about teacher top-up fees, but no one deigned to answer it!

• 8pm Democracy reception- we ran an NUS stall at this, along with other organisations who promote democracy. It was great to talk to people from other organisations about ways we can get more young people engaging in democracy.

• Later- Labour students disco, Independent (Newspaper!) Party

Wednesday:

• Spoke to Family Planning Association about potential work we can do together

• Midday- Watched Bill Clinton’s speech

• 1.45- Attended NHS reform fringe

• 2.30-4.30- Watched the health & education debate plus Alan Johnson’s speech

• NB- At 3pm we were due to meet Peter Saulsbury MP regarding the campaign from Free Prescriptions and getting an EDM tabled, but this was cancelled at the last minute and will be rescheduled in the next few weeks.

• 4.30- met Alex Kemp to finalise details for NUS mental health day (Friday of the week)

5.45. Myself, Alex, Stephen Brown and Gemma attended the NUS North West Demo from Manchester Union up to the GMEX. It was brilliant! Most HE unions from the NW were there including my old union, the Guild. There was a good turn out, we got oxford road closed off, and whilst I’m writing this, my voice is still really croaky, due to my hollering down the mega phone. I think its great and utterly right we were making a loud visible presence at the conference- its what we had to do. And it struck me later that night, when I was back inside conference, we can and must both lobby and protest if we are going to succeed. I want to say a huge well done to those unions who organised and attended- you made me proud to be from the north west! To see the Guild’s phot’s from the event, go to- www.liverpoolguild.com for more info

• 9pm- Having dried off, we attended the diversity party hosted by Presentation, who are a social housing organisation. Me and Gemma spoke to their chief exec, as they have just completed their first halls of residence build, and are hoping to meet them to find out more about their work and also to see if there’s any scope for getting them on board with our co-op housing project.

• Later- AMICUS disco- lots of fun!

Thursday- time to pack up and go home (or move hotels for me, as I was staying in Manchester for the mental health day tomorrow)

I just want to say how pleased I was to attend this conference. I think we were in the right places, providing the right arguments to represent our membership, and I hope I was value for money as a delgegate.

Any questions or comments on what I got up to at Labour party conference please get in touch- veronica@nus.org.uk

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