20.12.2007

Incitement to fudge

Discussions aimed at a united left slate for the National Union of Students executive are already degenerating into curious squabbles. James Turley looks at the issues

On December 9, in the hope of combating the latest round of attacks on what pass for the democratic structures of the National Union of Students, Student Respect (ie, the Socialist Workers Party's student front) and Education Not for Sale (ie, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty's student front) met to try and thrash out a united slate for the full-time NUS national executive positions.

At present, the executive is divided into full-time officers with named jobs (president, treasurer and so on, plus various people from the "liberation campaigns" supposedly representing ethnic, sexual, etc minorities), directly elected to their positions; and the 'block of 12', elected by single transferable vote from a long list of candidates. Unsurprisingly, the latter has traditionally been the only place that the far left has been able to regularly get an in on the exec. At present, comrades Rob Owen (Respect/SWP) and Sofie Buckland (ENS/AWL) have places on the block, as does George Woods of the ultra-sectarian, Socialist Action-dominated Student Broad Left.

The meeting followed the December 4 emergency NUS conference, which passed the proposals of the recent 'governance review'. With the remarkable talent for doublespeak apparently native to Labour Students careerists, the NUS officers' website claims the proposals are "designed to make NUS simpler, more democratic and easier to get involved in" (www.officeronline.co.uk). The truth is aptly put by Student Respect's brief report on the emergency conference: the officers are trying to "turn the NUS from a union into a professional lobby group completely divorced from the influence of student activists" (www.respectcoalition.org/index.php?ite=1690).

The review aims, for instance, to scrap the requirement of direct election of NUS conference delegates by local student unions. Unsurprisingly, the poor old block of 12 does not survive either, with an even more Bonapartist and bureaucratic executive set-up on the cards instead.

Good news - we lost

Reading the Student Respect report, however, requires not much less of a feat of doublethink than the NUS officers' position.

We are told, for instance, "The Save NUS Democracy campaign came within 20 or so votes of defeating the attack on democracy at the NUS extraordinary conference on Tuesday December 4. This is more resistance than the leadership has faced in recent years and marks a massive victory for those who want to see an NUS that can challenge for a free education and a better world." This is perhaps the first "massive victory" ever to involve the defeat of the victors (the official report on the NUS website, by the way, states that "members voted overwhelmingly to modernise the organisation" - my emphasis).

The relentlessly upbeat assessment is startlingly, amusingly, dishonest. Does Student Respect (SR) seriously believe this stuff? Given the gravity of the implications of the review, fully noted by SR, the vote can be seen as nothing less than a deeply dangerous and worrying event. Yes, there may be a basis for mobilising enough delegates to scupper the thing at full conference, where it must be ratified - but we should never underestimate the ability of the bureaucrats to mobilise numbers for their own knees-up.

SR does not report the December 9 meeting with the AWL/ENS at all. And it is not difficult to see why. Sofie Buckland provided her own take on the event - while welcoming the SWP's willingness to come to the table, she lost no time in castigating its "sectarian" manoeuvres. Much of the evidence is fairly damning, as well as unsurprising; cited are "the SWP's insistence that Respect must have at least half the places on any such slate; their advocacy of including the small and conservative Student Broad Left group, while excluding others, including Socialist Students".

So far, so SWP. It is far from surprising that they should seek to circumvent the efforts of their closest rival on the national stage - the Socialist Party in England and Wales - to build a substantial student affiliate. In recent history, the SWP has dominated the left of student politics, either through Respect or its own Socialist Worker Student Society (SWSS), and student activism has, in turn, become the backbone of the SWP's activity at various points (it is certainly no accident that following the recent Respect debacle, the SWP emerged firmly in control of SR). The insistence on half the positions and the inclusion of the highly bureaucratised SBL essentially would give it a majority of one in any slate, since a 'productive' alliance between the SWP and Socialist Action has emerged in many such political arenas.

The twist

The twist in the tale comes in Buckland's final, and most prominent, allegation. The SWP is insisting, in a "bizarre and sectarian" fashion, that "unity is impossible unless the slogans 'Troops out of Iraq now' and 'Freedom for Palestine' are included in the joint programme for the slate".

Various reasons are offered as to why this is inadmissible. "Opposition to the occupation of Iraq and solidarity with the Palestinians are, rightly, common ground" between the two organisations, but it is another thing to insist on one's own "particular formulations". This can only be a "means of preventing unity". Further evidence for this is offered: the SWP voted down this slogan at the Stop the War Coalition national council in Leeds in 2004, and did not include it in the Student Respect platform of 2006 either. Clearly, then, the SWP is not particularly attached to it. Indeed, the Weekly Worker has noted that the STWC is prepared to leave out the 'now' to keep more 'moderate' allies on board the coalition.

It is difficult, however, to see exactly what objections ENS has to 'Freedom for Palestine'. It is not exactly a particularly precise formulation. Can there be anybody around, barring the most hysterical racist fringe of Zionism, who is so consciously opposed to a 'free' Palestine (however defined) that they cannot sign up to it? How much more vague can a slogan on the subject get, if one must necessarily be included in the slate (which Buckland readily accepts)?

This is not the main problem with her objection. What is implied as the correct course of action for the SWP is: 'Forget these piffling differences over imperialism! Just get something sufficiently vague in, and we can work together happily.' It is nothing less than a demand to fudge the differences, and thereby produce a fudged compromise.

Compromise will, of course, be necessary. It is clear enough that the SWP is approaching this in an arrogant and ultimatist manner. But what it must not involve is the sacrifice of precision. ENS should be prepared to march under one or two slogans that it (or, more properly, the controlling AWL faction) disagrees with. It should do this on a quid pro quo basis as far as possible. It should be prepared to operate as a minority on this question - after all, on the question of 'troops out' (now or whenever), that AWL faction is in the smallest of minorities on the student left! Getting Socialist Students on the slate would narrow that minority further. It is being ultimatist on this point, not the SWP.

And, sure, we may all snigger at the barefaced cynicism of the SWP 'rediscovering' its politics at just this time. But the simple fact that it has been consistently unprepared to fight for those politics, that it is the worst criminal of all on the charge of unprincipled fudging, does not make it any less right for it to include 'Troops out now' in its NUS platform - where it is opposing, not trying to entice, the Labourite wing. The AWL objection is illuminating, but basically irrelevant.

Don't mention the war

The question of the Iraq war is, ultimately, what lies behind the whole farrago. Leaving aside the SWP's cynicism, there is a reason why this question is such an easily exploited sore spot.

Communist Students, and student members of the CPGB before it, have consistently advocated voting for SR/SWSS - among others - over ENS. And we have done so because ENS has not adopted a position calling for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Comrade Buckland implies that there are more important things for the student left to sort out than a line on Iraq, but this is misplaced. It relies on the abstraction of student politics from politics as a whole, and also the rather dubious manner in which the AWL tackles, theoretically and politically, the issue of imperialism.

Yes - imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the increasing likelihood of an air strike on Iran, are the basic issues facing the left today. It is immensely important that slogans are functional and precise on this issue. If ENS gets its way on this, we will end up either with no position at all on this pivotal, globally significant question or - what amounts to the same thing - with a statement of 'opposition' to the Iraq occupation so vague that it finds it perfectly permissible not to call for it to end!

Dissent, on this point as any other, should not be suppressed in any student left alliance. AWL members should be able to voice, openly, their reservations about this policy or any other. But there is an element of action here too. NUS executive members will be required to draft statements, to organise contingents on marches and so on. These things will have to be decided sooner or later.

In reality, neither side of this dispute comes out well. The SWP's manoeuvres to keep Socialist Students (and, no doubt, Communist Students) off any slate are inexcusable. But ENS's insistence on the fudging of key questions, and on fudging as the method of compromise, are toxic in a more general way. Ironically, it serves as an apologia for most of the SWP's unprincipled dealings of the past few years - after all, it was only making the necessary compromises to keep its cross-class allies on board ...