Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

I've been putting off writing about Conference because I didn't know where to start. But I've just found a place because I've written an article on Conference for the Seren News Editor. Here it is (cheesy headline and all):

UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL
New NUS Constitution falls at bitterly divided Annual Conference

It’s hard to put NUS Annual Conference into words. It’s chaotic, exhilarating, comical and divisive. It’s three days of impassioned debating on subjects ranging from tuition fees to military recruitment in schools, from accreditation for extra-curricular activities to ending child poverty.

It’s also full of nutters. There was the guy who claimed that One Water (charity bottled water whose profits go to building merry-go-round-powered water pumps in Africa) was a capitalist plot, the people who claimed all sabbaticals were right-wing fascists who sat around sipping Bollinger champagne (we get ours from Aldi ...) and the people who wrote to the Guardian before Conference claiming that NUS was linked to the CIA.

Somehow, in between all the bickering and tub-thumping, we did manage to discuss some pretty important issues. So now your national union believes, amongst other things, that we should oppose Special Branch attempts to spy on Muslim students in universities (something we’ve already opposed here in Bangor), that the Government should raise the education leaving age to 18 and that there should be an NUS Nursing Students’ Campaign to address widespread problems with nursing courses.

But the biggest issue was the ratification of NUS’s new constitution, a project I personally was heavily involved in as a member of the Governance Review Steering Group. To everyone’s surprise, the constitutional ratification did not get the majority it required, getting 692 votes in favour, just 25 votes short of two-thirds. This was quite a blow for Bangor and the other unions whose disaffiliation campaigns had been defeated on the promise of far-reaching reform.

In fairness to the newly elected National Executive Committee, they have bounced right back and are insisting that a new constitution can and will be passed within a year. But there is a fundamental split within NUS between the hard-left factions who want their national union to campaign on international issues, to “fight them on the streets”, and those who favour lobbying ministers and other key decision-makers directly, focusing solely on educational issues. This split has left the Union locked in a stalemate where a majority wants change but the minority is blocking it.

This year’s leadership have had all the right ideas, and it is a real shame that the positive initiatives they put forward have been hijacked by factions who have put a halt to the changes NUS needs so much without offering any real alternatives. Next year’s sabbatical officers will have to think long and hard about our involvement with NUS, whether we continue to fight for change or whether we cut our losses now and leave NUS to the factional in-fighting that dominates all NUS “democratic” events.