Annual Conference 2007 is now just days away. There are big issues on the agenda: the future of our education funding campaign, our future policies on issues like No Platform, tackling islamophobia, students in the community; the future of our National Union.

NUS needs to change. I have relished the challenges and opportunities given to me when I was elected to serve as your VP Education a year ago because it involved leading and campaigning on the issues that have always mattered to me most. Issues like widening access, increasing quality, fighting fees. I look back over the past 9 months and I’m proud of many of the things I have achieved and the things we have achieved together. But I also look back and wonder how much more we could have achieved if NUS was in better shape – structurally, financially and politically.

So I support reform of NUS – who wouldn’t? In fact, if you ask NEC members from any political group or faction they would agree. We may not always agree on what a transformed NUS should look like, but I know that Sofie Buckland, George Woods, Suzie Wylie and the groups they represent all have a vision of an NUS that is fundamentally different from the one we have now.

I know there is a thirst for change amongst our membership from top to bottom. The stategic conversations we have held this year have demonstrated that. The finances of NUS have once again thrown reform back onto the agenda, but the need for reform goes far beyond our finances. It fundamentally boils down to how successful we are and how successful we should be, in defending students’ rights and punching our weight as a mass movement of students to shape the environment in which we live, work and study.

It was undoubtedly that thirst for change which prompted the formation of a new ‘pressure group’ (I’ll resist the temptation to call it a faction, because surely noone would form another anti-faction faction) ‘Not For Politics, Just For Students’. But I believe the principles around which this group has organised, however well intentioned it may be, offers a false contradiction and false promise for what a reformed NUS should be.

Students need a strong National Union and a strong National Union requires a strong political culture. I don’t believe that the floor of Annual Conference is representative of our membership and I’m even prepared to vote for reforms that will make our union stronger and more representative at the expense of my own faction. Our democracy needs to be cheaper and more diverse. But of course I won’t support reform that is a trojan horse for eliminating voices we disagree with because I believe we’d all be worse off for it.

If we disagree with people, we fight it out on conference floor and our resolutions are stronger for it.

Of course it falls to EVERY faction to be open as well. I’ll say in advance what I say after every conference and that is that it frustrates the hell out of me watching the Organised Independents running around slagging off factions whilst neglecting to mention their own. And slagging off Labour Students for being government stooges whilst neglecting to mention that most of them are Labour Party members too!

Next week, reform and governance will be a big deal. I hope there’s a huge debate about it, because our movement will be better off for it. I’m supporting the governance reform motion because I believe it is right and it is necessary. Annual Conference is just days away and there are big issues to discuss. Long live pluralism and let’s hope for robust debates from all viewpoints and perspectives represented in the melting pot of conference floor.

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