There’s nothing like an NEC meeting to make you feel better when you’re feeling low and we had two real humdingers in the form of not one, but two, extraordinary NEC meetings on Monday 19th September: one to discuss the Report into the resignations of three NUS officers at Annual Conference and another to discuss the Education Priority Campaign and plans for a National Demonstration.

Report into Resignations

During the first half of the day we had an opportunity to read and consider the Report by Marco Henry (available on Officeronline) and to question the author himself. It was always going to be a slightly tense meeting; the issues raised by the resignations had caused considerable scrutiny upon NUS and a great deal of pressure to bear on all the individuals concerned.

However, I felt that the Report was largely constructive and was pleased that the NEC agreed to pass the Report in full, determined to implement its recommendations.

Whilst the Report stated that NUS was not apathetic to Anti-Semitism, the Report (and the author in person), did acknowledge that certain incidents and a creaking and dysfunctional bureaucracy had led to complaints not being followed up as effectively as they should have been and had left Jewish students feeling out of place within their National Union. Addressing this problem is incredibly important and I really hope that the Strategy Team, with the support and determination of the whole NEC, can ensure that our outdated structures and processes do not let people down and we can move on, collectively and constructively.

To demonstrate or not? Well, that’s not the question…

The second part of the day was dedicated to discussing the Education Priority Campaign, particularly the issue of the National Demonstration.

In the run up to that meeting I received a great deal of correspondence from officers and students, all with very strong feelings both in favour and against having a national demonstration against the introduction of top-up fees. However, from talking to many of you about the proposed demonstration, I felt that I simply couldn’t ignore the strength of feeling against having a national demonstration.

That said, that didn’t change the fact that it was two and half months into the year and NO specific action had been set down in the priority campaign.

None whatsoever.

We need desperately need to provide opportunities for ordinary students to get involved. It’s not enough to let another year go by without any action against top-up fees. We did that last year.

We also need to be honest and admit that many of our members are apathetic about this campaign. They think we’ve lost. That’s because we did. But are we leaders or are we followers? Do we simply accept that some of our members are apathetic about fees or do we fight to re-engage them on the issues that matter?

We have two choices: we can either admit defeat and give up or we can start rebuilding the campaign, taking action in the run-up to 2006, educating, informing, demonstrating and mobilising our membership.

What we cannot do is to continue down the course we set for ourselves last year, where we say that we are in favour of a Free, Fair and Funded education, but do little in practice to fight for it. Believe me, 2008 is not a long time away and there is much work to be done.

Last year saw too many policies pursued on paper for my liking and an Education ‘Priority Campaign’ that consisted of series of articles on Officer Online. There are some good principles in the new Education priority campaign – principles worth fighting for.

Actions DO Speak Louder Than Words

Pete Leary had made the point well at the previous NEC meeting that actions speak louder than words and action was sorely lacking from the Education Priority Campaign.

So rather than simply carp from the sidelines, I tabled a paper outlining a plan of action for the coming year, as part of the Priority Campaign. It was passed overwhelmingly by the NEC. In a nutshell it included:

1) National Briefings for Student Officers

- To provide student officers with accurate info about the new funding system in England from 2006 and equip them with the arguments to fight fees
- Collaboration with the Special Nations to learn from and build on successes won there

[This will now be happening over three days in November. Look out for details in the mailing]

2) Campus-based information, agitation and mobilisation

- Involving both an information-based campaign directed at our members and action on campuses targeting Vice-Chancellors, Principals and local MPs

3) National Lobbying

- Supported by local action on campuses
- Identifying the position of the new intake of MPs and our new strength in Parliament since the General Election
- Focus on Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to ensure that internal changes in those parties (leadership and policy reviews) do not affect their positions on HE funding to the detriment of our members.

4) Building for a National Demonstration in October 2006

- We cannot allow this watershed in the history of Higher Education to go unnoticed. The students arriving in 2006 will be the ones fighting the review in 2008 – that’s how short the timescale is we’re working towards. We need to make sure that we build the next generation of fee fighters.

Actions do speak louder than words and we’ve been silent for too long.

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