The art of resolutionary (student) politics is dead

Thirty annual conferences, and five extraordinary conferences – the majority of which, for me, were in the Blackpool Winter Gardens. I was even a student for some of them.

It passed me by at the time, but back in April what I didn’t realise was that I was attending my last.

And not because of some sort of ban.

On the agenda – at an event whose evolution had already shunted elections and even voting on motions to before or afterwards – delegates discussed the “creation of flexible membership structures” with “more engagement opportunities for both students’ unions and students directly”.

Changes were to enable NUS to “move quickly”, “maximise the potential” for members to shape NUS’ work across the year, and enable it to “test and adopt different methods” for its work to be directly influenced by the 7 million students it represents.

And despite issues like immigration and the conditions that students face at work not being ones subject to devolution, it resolved to create something called “NUS England” – and the ability for students to directly elect their “NUS reps” has been removed.

It will now “give some serious thought” and “ask for further input” on how it runs “democratic spaces”. I can’t imagine that the card vote will be a feature.

There’s an odd club that many former students belong to – those that have attended an NUS Conference.

In its early days in the 1920s, what was then called NUS Council was a sedate affair, reflecting its establishment roots – as well as the discussion of formal business, delegates visited sites of local interest and took tea with the Principal of the host university. One year into its formation, the event in Birmingham included a visit to the Cadbury’s factory and a local repertory theatre.

It was many decades later that the event took on the features that many will recall – resolutions submitted by students unions noting, believing and resolving to take action; hustings and balloting for its annually elected executive members; endless procedure and bizarre turns of phrase resulting in many an attendee declaring that they “see that delegate there” to a baffled passer-by at the motorway services on the way home.

It was regularly torn between the pragmatism and the principle that has always caused splits in the Labour movement – except this event also had Conservatives at it too. In 1969, a deal that had been struck with the CVCP (what we now know as Universities UK) on the participation of students in university governance was narrowly defeated because “Vice Chancellors are hoping to divide the moderates from the extremists in the student revolt”.

That year in Liverpool, it switched its voting system to the single transferable vote (STV), allowing minority parties a chance of representation on its National Executive, and removed its “no politics” clause – reflecting desires amongst student activists to shift from a “polite pressure group” to a more active political force.

Political groups had always influenced NUS, but in the early seventies, they began to do so more openly – creating chaotic conferences where shifting alliances fought for control. Key debates included whether it should focus on educational or broader political issues, whether to engage pragmatically with the government or focus on mass action, or even whether to attempt to fundamentally change society to achieve student goals. Media coverage of the annual event shaped the long-term image of both NUS and students more generally.

Its minutes and motions documents – all painstakingly debated locally, submitted nationally and then “composited” into longer resolutions – read like a social history of students and higher education. Calls for grants were almost annual. The establishment of “liberation” groups for women, gay (and later lesbian, bisexual and trans students), black and disabled students were key moments. Calls to tackle student “stress” morphed slowly into debates on mental health. Some years there was a call to improve communal facilities for students – others a call for fair disciplinary systems.

Conference 1971 passed policy on a comprehensive student health service, nursery provision and greater priority for health and safety. Such was the level of interest in the debate over the introduction of a “No Platform” policy for fascists in 1974 that both the BBC and ITN turned up to film the debates – delegates complained of being blinded by the lights but the cameras stayed. In some ways on that issue, those cameras have stayed ever since.

My first proper one was in 1996 – in an era when NUS was torn between the fight for free education, or the pragmatism of the coming Labour government. It was also an era in which the “streaker” was still a popular feature at many a live event – the chair reminding delegates that “credentials must be worn at all times on conference floor” was one of the lighter moments of the week.

Elections at the event were extraordinary. Informally husted, formally husted, leaflet tunnelled, balloted, (hand) counted and announced in real time – results were as often a foregone conclusion as they were a genuine shock. For many of us, this was the first time we’d seen anything approaching oratory in real life – one of the few places you could see it being done by someone young, or black, or queer, or disabled – and for a few of us, the first time we’d got to have a go at it too, as our amendment in the booklet was called.

Anyone that’s been will have a highlight. For some, it’s “shit in a bag” – if you know, you know. Maybe yours is Wes on a wheelie bin in Wolverhampton. Eric Bean is a name some will recall – Keith Underhill is another. My own was the year when someone in the office decided that it would be a good idea to attempt to move all 1,400 delegates to London overnight on day three, such that students could protest the third reading of Blair’s bill to increase fees to £3,000. We did it – even though we lost, as usual.

It was all, in many ways, meaningless – sometimes silly, often priggish, divorced from the “real world”, and not especially connected even to the campuses that many in wider society argued were also divorced from the “real world”. But it was democracy – both in the procedure of the process, the jeopardy of the result, and the visceral realisation that one’s own views and interests were not always shared by others. And there was a system that sorted that out – one you could win if you put the effort in.

It was also educational. Fringe meetings introduced delegates to political groups and political issues they would otherwise never have come across. Nights in Blackpool hotel bars were spent debating and understanding Northern Ireland, feminism, apartheid and immigration – and whose dad worked for who out of UWE and Bristol. Nothing has ever beaten the education I got about the middle east during Conference 2005 – even if it was 8 hours of card votes peppered with 40 B&H and the occasional passionate speech.

Given that I often use my privileged platform here to rail against nostalgia and its role in higher education policy, I shouldn’t get too indulgent. It was a messy, expensive and largely unpleasant affair in many ways – and it must surely be possible to do democracy better than that. We should always trust students to reinvent themselves and their organisations.

But I do worry that the free speech “debates” about the climate on campus in recent years miss something important. The practice of democracy – not through surveys and consultative forums but through formal debates, voting, husting and the making of motions, matters – because in the end, someone and something has to win. And it’s necessarily not always you.

Outside of the annual popularity contests for SU officers in March, democracy is pretty dead on campus these days. I think that’s a problem. Because even if you’re not the sort that hands out leaflets or stands for election, now and again it’s good to hear something like this on a stage. It’s hard, in the end, to be inspired by a TikTok. And where else could something like this happen today?

While the times may and will be hard, while the problems will be profound, there are few greater purposes than to fight the barriers that limit opportunity in education, to empower students to shape the quality of their learning experience and the world around them.

In the end, politics is often about responding to the people – and I expect that surveys and consensus circles can often do that better than procedural motions or 45 second speeches against. But now and again, politics is also about persuading people, making choices about whose needs to put first, giving them the chance to give you a bloody nose and allowing an electorate to make a break with the past. I do hope NUS’ new design for democracy finds a way to factor all of that in.