Though Cowards Flinch

Somewhere in the labrynthine passages of student politics, the democracy of the NUS stagnated, not quite dead. To give the disease a clinical name, we could call it necrotising fasciitis, a bacteria which releases toxins that kill cells. Arising now from these dark passages, with their spotty, over-aftershaved, well-coifed lurkers, is a foetid smell as finally the body begins to die. The muscles have atrophied and all that remains is a stubborn heart.

At the last NUS conference the disease, toxins and all, tried a full-frontal assault on the heart of NUS. The governance reform proposals meant that NUS Conference would no longer set policy, meeting instead for an annual ‘celebration’ of what NUS had achieved. Or failed to achieve, more likely. Additionally, opposition to top up fees was finally dropped in the face of the new threat from raising the cap in 2009. Which will happen.

Thankfully the proposals were beaten back by a slim majority. Plenty has been written on the subject by various political blogs that opposed the reforms. To give three examples, here is the view that students themselves sold their souls. Here is the view that these reforms are positively awful but we can’t possibly, y’know, re-democratise the NUS because that puts us in league with the AWL oiks – crivens! Here is a typical and rather self-serving article from CPGB, denouncing the SWP tactics.

Watch this space too, because Ben Lewis of Communist Students has given me permission to reproduce his upcoming article for the Weekly Worker on the subject.

It will surprise no-one who knows anything about student politics that it was Labour Students who were at the forefront of this move by the NUS to introduce a much larger role for unelected consultants. Labour Students, as far as I have ever discerned, is a group of the most unrepresentative, excessively bureaucratic political dullards in existence. I love the milieu of the Labour Party – but we should get rid of Labour Students completely.

Pictures of me can be observed on facebook spending time at a dinner (in Somerville College, I think) arguing vigorously with one NOLS Chairman. I was in apoplectic rage, explaining why it is a reactionary position to say that one would prefer to be a Tory than hold Marxist views, as this chap did. Shortly after desert I left rather than wait to hear the speaker, Lord Gould, because of how outraged I was at the NOLS Chair.

Surrounding NOLS is an even worse group of ‘independents’ who are of exactly the same Blairite outlook as the NOLS upper echelons, and who have in the past held the most senior NUS roles. Outgoing NUS President, and cheerleader for the reform package, Gemma Tumelty was one such as those. A Labour Party member playing the bureaucratic game of NUS politics, using ‘independent’ status opportunistically.

None of this should come as a surprise to people who follow politics. They need only read a list of former NOLS/NUS bigwigs and then match that list against the positions each one has taken on being elected to parliament. Though the Liberati article linked to above is a bit preposterous in its preconceptions, it does a neat hatchet job on the pretensions of Jim “No to Top Up Fees” Murphy, who upon the addition of the letters MP to his name, promptly voted for Top Up Fees.

Eventually Labour Students will get its wish. Even were the extreme left to co-operate completely, the rot has spread too far I think. It is extremely difficult to make headway working within Labour Students, which has a lot of clout in getting people elected to NUS office. In many individual universities, the growth of broad left forums has been a direct result of the stranglehold which right wing careerists have on the Labour Clubs. Certainly that was the case in Oxford, where an ex-NOLS Chair exerted pressure to try and block a moderate leftie being elected Co-Chair of the OU Labour Club.

The question we should be asking is, what do we do then? So many people are pushing for disaffiliation from NUS, mostly a right-wing tactic, though it takes in some elements of the moderate left. The elite Russell Group universities already have their own representative body (aka junket) for Student Unions. What happens when a much diminished NUS finally succumbs to proposals turning into a toothless think tank, rather than a focus for student activism?

This one time, the NOLS Mother Hubbard has gone to the cupboard and found it bare. Next time, we’re not going to be so lucky.