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► NUS Delegate Manifesto

 

Alistair Farrow, Socialist Worker’s Student Society (SWSS)
K0931880
 
NUS Conference Delegate Manifesto:
 
Among the many issues facing students today the most important in my opinion is the cuts faced by universities across the country. With a Conservative government looking more and more likely in the aftermath of the upcoming general election it would be naïve to assume this problem is going to go away. The NUS has taken a weak stance around Peter Mandelson’s recent attacks on higher education in this country to say the least. They have promoted the idea of no increases in tuition fees without questioning why we should have to pay them at all. The people who introduced tuition fees and semi-privatised our higher education system got their university fees subsidised or for free, for them to demand that we pay for ours is obscene. We need a representative at conference who is going to question the NUS’s stance on tuition fees and represent the majority of students who feel sickened by the hypocrisy of the New Labour Government and their attack on education. Our education is not for sale!
                The opposition to racism and fascism, not only in Kingston University but throughout the NUS, is something that also needs to be highlighted at the conference. Kingston SWSS has been the driving force behind resisting the BNP’s stated aim of recruiting Kingston students this year; raising awareness through petitioning and debating outside Penryn Road, organising groups to go to anti - BNP and EDL (English Defence League) protests as well as passing a motion to ban the BNP from campus at the recent Student’s Meeting. The NUS needs to be shown that there is no place for racist views in modern Britain, be that in the student body or wider society. Islamophobia is on the rise in Britain and the NUS needs to take a stand against fascist organisations and exclude them from the student movement completely. We need someone at the conference who is going to push this anti-racist and anti-fascist agenda as well.
                The NUS also needs to re-affiliate itself with the Stop the War campaign. The majority of students, not to mention the majority of the population of the United Kingdom, are opposed to the war in Afghanistan. Hundreds of British troops and thousands of civilians are now dead for the sake of a war that is unwinnable. We are no closer to pulling out from this conflict; although Gordon Brown says that it will be soon, President Karzai has given the year 2025 as a conservative estimate as to when Afghan forces will be able to take full control of the situation. In the meantime soldiers and civilians will continue to die in order to prop up this corrupt regime. We need a delegate to argue against the NUS’s policy of supporting New Labour’s war in Afghanistan and to convince them to commit themselves to the Stop the War movement.
                For these reasons, and others which I unfortunately don’t have enough space left to expand upon (greater NUS and SU democracy, for example), I ask you to vote for me at the polls this month.
 

 

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