From City Hall to Club Row?
June 26, 2008Communist Students member James Turley sees little prospect of future success for Socialist Action and Respect:
When the Respect (un)popular front split last autumn, it provided something of a parlour game for the rest of the left - which fragment would collapse first?
The Socialist Workers Party was seriously rocked internally by the nakedly apolitical nature of the split, and Respect-SWP included very little more than itself. The George Galloway wing had legal ownership of the name and almost all of Respect’s elected representatives went over to Galloway’s side.
2 Comments | 
NUS, politics, students, the left | Tagged: SWP, national union of students, socialist workers party, respect, left list, socialist action, international socialist group, alan thornett, george galloway, student broad left, assed baig, ruqayyah collector, black students officer, respect renewal, bellavia ribeiro-addy, ken livingstone | 
Permalink
Posted by daistation
Fascist attack on ENS supporter in Huddersfield
June 1, 2008A statement from the Communist Student Exec:
Communist Students would like to extend our solidarity to the Education Not For Sale (ENS) supporter who was attacked by far right thugs on Friday 30th May in Huddersfield. She was attacked because of her prominent role at the students union and her vocal support of No Platform for the BNP.
During the attack she received a fractured rib and severe bruising. The comrade was also slashed at with a knife. As she was attacked they called her a “Dirty red”, “Filthy Lesbo”, and “Britain-hater” .
It is essential to show our support for the comrade. Far right thugs could have attacked anyone involved in anti-fascism and left wing politics. It is essential to show that these attacks will not deter us from our struggles. This attack shows once again the necessity of propagandising and organising for the self-defence of the workers movement. Communist Students is prepared to work with others in attempts to ensure the physical safety of working class activists and communities.
Communist Students wish the comrade a speedy recovery and are happy to help in any way we can.
——————————
ENS report: http://www.free-education.org.uk/?p=536
——————————
A press release from Kirklees Unity: Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | CS, NUS, fascism, politics, students | Tagged: education not for sale, BNP, British National Party | Permalink
Posted by daistation
Sheffield rebels punished
May 19, 2008by Laurie McCauley, Communist Students
The five rebel delegates from Sheffield University who broke a mandate to vote for the NUS governance review were called to a disciplinary hearing on Wednesday 14th. We were found guilty of breaking the mandate imposed by SRC (Student Representative Council) and have been banned from delegate elections for a year.
At NUS conference the right’s governance review was narrowly defeated, in part thanks to delegates who broke mandates from their Unions forcing them to vote in favour. Even by the petty, bureaucratic constitution of NUS these mandates were illegal; delegates are elected by popular student vote, not by SRC, and can vote however they like. Most of the right-controlled Student Councils who mandated delegates have grudgingly accepted this defeat, and started planning for another attempt. But at Sheffield, where the left as a whole is weak, a clique of rightist officers and SRC members have pursued a campaign to punish us. In the student paper they have been beating us with the stick of ‘democracy’, as the mandate was voted on by SRC. But while it chafes to describe the 10% turnout we Sheffield delegates were elected on as ‘democratic’, it far exceeds any mandate of Student ‘Representative’ Council, most of whom received only a handful of votes, or were elected unopposed!
The governance review is mostly the project of Labour Students, but the dominant grouping at Sheffield is, bizarrely, constituted by members of the Christian Union, who last year went political -though not overtly, of course- and won most of the posts for the year’s executive. These officers had been vociferously attacking the anti-review, left candidates from the off, but did not dare impose a mandate during campaigning lest the review become even more of an issue. Hence the mandate was imposed after the left had been elected on explicitly anti-review platforms! A cowardly and shamelessly anti-democratic farce, in other words. At least the ensuing wrath of some of the Christian officers, after we broke the mandate and defeated the review, has been an amusing contradiction to watch. Does the Bible not enjoin us to ‘Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice’? (Ephesians 4:31).
Our punishment -a year’s ban on delegate elections- is partly aimed at preventing us doing the same next year if the review is put to conference again. It is likely, though, that an extraordinary conference will be called before the year is out. In that case, the procedure is for Sheffield SRC to appoint its own delegates- so our punishment has the definite appearance of politically motivated spite rather than a serious move to shut us up. One officer told me it was intended to show that SRC ‘had teeth’; i.e. as a warning to future left candidates. The small size of the left at Sheffield University has made it hard to build support for us against the rightist Student Council, but the five of us will be going through the bureaucratic motions and trying to overturn this decision. More news on our attempt as it progresses.
Also see the report by Gemma Short, one of the other rebels, on the ENS website
No Comments » | CS, NUS, bureaucracy, election campaigns, politics, students, the left, the right | Tagged: governance review, NUS, nus conference, nus reform, sheffield | Permalink
Posted by csukblog
Southampton students blockade university
May 15, 2008This report (made at 4.30pm 15/05/08 ) is taken from the Socialist Students website.
100 Southampton University students have marched through campus and are blockading a university court meeting.
The university has taken the decision to remove the Union President vote from the Vice Chancellor appointment panel.
Today the university court is meeting - the highest decision making body in the university with VC chancellors from other universities, local politicians and councillors and representatives from the University’s investors including BAE systems and HSBC, in attendance.
The action started with a march across campus towards the meeting. Students have obstructed the meeting by holding a silent sit in which is blocking building entrances they are wearing gags saying “student’s voice silenced”.
Clare Blackwell from Southampton Socialist Students says “the occupation a few weeks ago at Manchester has boosted morale about what is possible if decisive action is taken. We are taking similar action today. We are asking why is it that fat cat multinationals like BAE systems, and HSBC, the bank that makes record profits from ripping off students, are allowed a voice in how the university is run but student representatives are not?
It is clear that the right wing management and their big business friends want to get away with cuts and privatisation in the university and are trying to remove the students union as a potential obstacle.” Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments | NUS, politics, students, the left | Tagged: socialist students, sit-in | Permalink
Posted by daistation
What sort of ‘unity’ does the student movement need?
May 15, 2008Communist Students members Dave Isaacson and Ben Klein reject economism and put forward the case for Marxism:
Left unity not on offer
This weekend will, farcically, see two separate gatherings to discuss ‘left unity’ in the student movement. Firstly, the ‘Reclaim the Campus’ event on Saturday May 17, called by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty-run Education Not for Sale campaign, along with Sussex University and London School of Economics student unions. Next day there is a “meeting to discuss the building of a conference of the student left” initiated by the Socialist Workers Party’s Student Respect.
This second meeting, entitled ‘For a democratic, campaigning student movement’, was called in the full knowledge that the ENS event was taking place the day before - indeed Student Respect had been publicly invited at the beginning of April, at the Save NUS Democracy rally during the National Union of Students conference. Clearly the SWP has no wish to tail behind the AWL in student politics - certainly now it has two SR members on the NUS executive, while ENS has none.
Because of our highly critical approach, Communist Students has been accused of failing to take the quest for left unity seriously and of putting our own “sect interests” first. The truth, however, is quite the opposite. Left unity is simply not on the agenda this weekend.
Mind you, none of our critics are clear on what left unity is for - beyond ‘reclaiming our national union’ and building bigger and better campaigns. Neither ENS nor SR has any strategic vision. So most of those involved (leaving aside SWP/AWL sectarianism towards each other) gravitate spontaneously towards a lowest-common-denominator fudge.
SWP, AWL and Workers Power’s Revo youth group - which is intervening in Reclaim the Campus - are all self-professed Marxists, yet none of them fight for unity on the basis of Marxism. Have they such little faith in their ideas that they think left-leaning students cannot be won to them? Or do they see their own sect as ‘the Marxists’ - the revolutionary party in embryo form - and the rest of the left as simply a pool to fish new recruits from?
Marxism
Communist Students says Marxist ideas are powerful because they are true. They best explain where exploitation and oppression come from and why capitalism operates in the way it does. And they show how to kill the system off and usher in the era of human freedom - an aim that can win millions to its banner. Marxism teaches that the working class is the gravedigger of capitalism, the agency that can storm the citadels of power and win genuine democracy, when it is organised into a mass, revolutionary Communist Party.
Marxist ideas are currently held by very few students. But this situation does not have to continue. The biggest obstacles to winning leftwing students to Marxism are the existing ostensibly revolutionary groups who erect bizarre shibboleths to preserve their sect integrity, fighting over the recruitment of ones and twos, while refusing to advocate Marxism in the wider movement. Overcoming this perspective will need a protracted fight.
No Comments » | CS, NUS, anti-imperialism, politics, students, the left | Tagged: AWL, SWP, alliance for workers liberty, sacha ismail, ens, reclaim the campus, economism, education not for sale, socialist workers party, student respect, weekly worker, revo, workers power, daniel randall, ed maltby, dave isaacson, ben klein, Marxism | Permalink
Posted by daistation
