09.11.1995

NUS attacks democracy

THE National Union of Students is rapidly becoming one of the most conservative institutions in Britain. Last month it called on the government to ban the ‘radical’ Islamic group, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which has an increasing presence in colleges of further and higher education. Jim Murphy, the ambitious and ultra-Blairite president of the NUS, claimed that Hizb-ut-Tahrir posed the “single biggest extremist threat in the UK at the moment”, and even complained that the British state was far too liberal in its approach: “Several Muslim countries in the Middle East have banned this organisation, but this country is not willing to use its power,” Murphy complained.

The Association of University Teachers has expressed support for the Murphy line - ie, a desire for the British state to emulate ‘moderate’ and ‘anti-racist’ states like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

At the NUS conference in Blackpool in March 1995, a resolution was approved which called upon the attorney-general to instigate prosecutions against Hizb-ut-Tahrir members on the grounds of incitement to racial hatred.

This is a dangerous precedent. If we leave it up to the bourgeois state, or university authorities, to define what is “extremist” or “offensive” we can guarantee that we will be the first victims. Sheffield University has already banned the Socialist Workers Party from its grounds, and the Anti-Nazi League at Birmingham University has also been a victim of NUS-approved crackdowns.

After all, Hizb-ut-Tahrir calls for the “destruction” of Israel, as a horrified Jim Murphy pointed out to Michael Howard. The Communist Party of Great Britain - and just about the entire revolutionary left - calls for the destruction of the vicious Israeli state, along with every capitalist state worldwide.

Danny Hammill