My thoughts on NUS Conference 2014
Ladies and gentlemen, from Tuesday 8 April to Thursday 10 April, I dutifully attended NUS Conference, spoke four times, and ran for the NUS' Democratic Procedures Committee (DPC) on behalf of the Young Greens, and helped Young Greens Co-chair Clifford Fleming with his campaign to be elected onto NUS' Block of 15 (its main executive committee which holds the President and Vice-Presidents to account). Let us hope we both succeed :)
It was a long and exciting conference, and with Liam Burns (NUS President from 2011-13) and other Blairite Labour students largely off the scene now, NUS Conference 2014 was able to get much more progressive, I am pleased to say-although there were many unnecessary challenges of the votes on the more contentious conference motions, which thankfully the chair turned down, as well as large numbers of procedural motions, some of which just wasted time.
This was a particular problem with the NUS Conference 2012, which was also wrongly set during university term time.
Given the length and discussion involved in NUS Conference 2014, I will give you my five top highlights and five lows of this conference.
My five highpoints of NUS Conference 2014:
1. I was able to make a real difference this time- I successfully persuaded delegates to not allow NUS' NEC to get a motion referred to them behind closed doors, which generally does not end well, and managed to make sure it got heard on open floor, as all conference motions should be.
2. Student activist Piers Telemacque was able not only to win the Vice Presidency of Union and Development with his rousing speeches, but was able to help push Labour students' candidate for this position, Hugh, into third place-the first time a Labour students-backed candidate has performed so poorly in a NUS VP election in years.
3. The UKIP candidate for NUS President was almost beaten by RON-Jack Duffin received only 18 votes. This shows that UKIP's racist populism and its great deception have no place within the student movement. To paraphrase David Mellor (Conservative MP for Putney from 1979-1997)-'Jack has nothing to be smug about. I would like to say that 18 votes is a derisory total. We have shown tonight that UKIP's NUS branch is dead in the water. And Nigel Farage, you can move back to Kent, knowing your youth wing's attempt to stir up the NUS has failed!'
4. NUS Delegates voted for free education and a 5:1 pay ratio on universities-both things my fellow Young Greens have been fighitng for for quite a few years now.
5. The SWP was banned from NUS Conference effectively, and their stall was overturned when they tried to preach to NUS Conference Delegates-who thankfully were not interested in what the cultist SWP had to say. I await the SWP's official, final demise.
My five lows of NUS Conference 2014:
1. Aaron Kiely of Student Broad Left failed to become the next NUS President, despite his best efforts partly because of vote splitting from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, who should have allied with SBL to help defeat NUS' establishment.
2. Many important motions, especially 710 which rightly calls for direct elections of the NUS President and the NUS Vice Presidents, never got heard on conference floor due to delays.
3. I never got to make a statement about the dangers of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to students, or a statement of why students should support the Green Party and not the Labour Party, to conference because extensions of guillotines meant the statements sections were skipped, even though I prepared specially for them.
4. I could not find romance, not even a short romantic affair, on NUS Conference this year, as I was able to in 2011 (the first time I attended NUS Conference, which was in Newcastle upon Tyne that year) with a prominent black students' committee member called Keama.
5. My attempts to subtlely encourage NUS Conference Delegates to vote Green in this year's local and European elections did not get as warm a reception as I had hoped, even though Clifford was also trying to get the green alternative across to NUS Conference 2014 at one time (when he made his speech for block of 15).
I am glad to have been at NUS Conference in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, and I have made 20 speeches on NUS Conference floor in all, many of them inspiring. It is a great disappointment that NUS Conference 2014 will probably be the last NUS Conference I ever attend. I thus give this message: students, keep up the good work and fight for a radical and green alternative in further and higher education, based on cooperativeness, sustainability, fairness and democracy, and not on any sort of marketisation of further/higher education.
Regards, Alan.
It was a long and exciting conference, and with Liam Burns (NUS President from 2011-13) and other Blairite Labour students largely off the scene now, NUS Conference 2014 was able to get much more progressive, I am pleased to say-although there were many unnecessary challenges of the votes on the more contentious conference motions, which thankfully the chair turned down, as well as large numbers of procedural motions, some of which just wasted time.
This was a particular problem with the NUS Conference 2012, which was also wrongly set during university term time.
Given the length and discussion involved in NUS Conference 2014, I will give you my five top highlights and five lows of this conference.
My five highpoints of NUS Conference 2014:
1. I was able to make a real difference this time- I successfully persuaded delegates to not allow NUS' NEC to get a motion referred to them behind closed doors, which generally does not end well, and managed to make sure it got heard on open floor, as all conference motions should be.
2. Student activist Piers Telemacque was able not only to win the Vice Presidency of Union and Development with his rousing speeches, but was able to help push Labour students' candidate for this position, Hugh, into third place-the first time a Labour students-backed candidate has performed so poorly in a NUS VP election in years.
3. The UKIP candidate for NUS President was almost beaten by RON-Jack Duffin received only 18 votes. This shows that UKIP's racist populism and its great deception have no place within the student movement. To paraphrase David Mellor (Conservative MP for Putney from 1979-1997)-'Jack has nothing to be smug about. I would like to say that 18 votes is a derisory total. We have shown tonight that UKIP's NUS branch is dead in the water. And Nigel Farage, you can move back to Kent, knowing your youth wing's attempt to stir up the NUS has failed!'
4. NUS Delegates voted for free education and a 5:1 pay ratio on universities-both things my fellow Young Greens have been fighitng for for quite a few years now.
5. The SWP was banned from NUS Conference effectively, and their stall was overturned when they tried to preach to NUS Conference Delegates-who thankfully were not interested in what the cultist SWP had to say. I await the SWP's official, final demise.
My five lows of NUS Conference 2014:
1. Aaron Kiely of Student Broad Left failed to become the next NUS President, despite his best efforts partly because of vote splitting from the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, who should have allied with SBL to help defeat NUS' establishment.
2. Many important motions, especially 710 which rightly calls for direct elections of the NUS President and the NUS Vice Presidents, never got heard on conference floor due to delays.
3. I never got to make a statement about the dangers of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to students, or a statement of why students should support the Green Party and not the Labour Party, to conference because extensions of guillotines meant the statements sections were skipped, even though I prepared specially for them.
4. I could not find romance, not even a short romantic affair, on NUS Conference this year, as I was able to in 2011 (the first time I attended NUS Conference, which was in Newcastle upon Tyne that year) with a prominent black students' committee member called Keama.
5. My attempts to subtlely encourage NUS Conference Delegates to vote Green in this year's local and European elections did not get as warm a reception as I had hoped, even though Clifford was also trying to get the green alternative across to NUS Conference 2014 at one time (when he made his speech for block of 15).
I am glad to have been at NUS Conference in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, and I have made 20 speeches on NUS Conference floor in all, many of them inspiring. It is a great disappointment that NUS Conference 2014 will probably be the last NUS Conference I ever attend. I thus give this message: students, keep up the good work and fight for a radical and green alternative in further and higher education, based on cooperativeness, sustainability, fairness and democracy, and not on any sort of marketisation of further/higher education.
Regards, Alan.
Comments
Post a Comment