Over 1,000 students packed into a Union meeting on 4 February to debate whether or not they should leave the National Union of Students. The result was 546 in favour of staying in and 547 in favour of getting out.
To the delight of the people inside and outside the NUS who want to discrca r mass meeunes open to au students. It was cecaca to nave a rocchaum or ue Issue.
Meanwhile, the same week saw mass meetings at St Davids Lampeter, Keele university. ana rorsmoum roviecnnie which all voted to stay in the NUS; while oxore university votee to retect elections by ballot. The pages of the Telegraph and The Times carried no headlines on these decisions!
It would be wrong to believe that the mass of ordinary students have sudaemy and spontancously nsen up agamsi men unicorcscnauvc communisticadership. The debate that is occurring at me momene m tac student movement, as in the trade union movement, is part of BRITSI A 22-year-old gay militant, Tony Whitehead, has been sacked from his job with the Worthing branch of British Home Stores The victimisation occurred after Tony had appeared on a Southern TV programme about homosexuality. He was hauled up to London for a grilling by three BHS representatives, denied acoreschtauon anu riven a summoIe choice - transfer to another branch and doW DrOLC. Or uC sack OnV SOOd on his democratic right to self-expression ano was accord nav bootee out A picket of BHS's Brighton store was nela last saturaay, attended by over a hundred people - including Brighton Campaign for Homosexual Equality, Brighton IMG and some supporters of the International Socialists. The need for a fight back becomes doubly obvious a concerted campaign by the right wing to masculate trade unions and student unions as fighting organisations capable of defending their members interests.
In the NUs the campaien consists of a hotch potch of groupings, ranging Hom so-calea anarcaisis at manchester ouen une enon ob siberasudens and ine r'ederation ol Conservative stu dents, to the Monday Club and NF supporters in 'ANUS' at Oxford and Cambridge.
'ADEQUATE These groupings were united at the last NUS conference in calling for a postal ballot to replace elections of the executive at conference. The response of the Broad Left leadershin of the NUS to such proposals and to the disarmiauon debates nas been to detend the existing structures as adequate. while suggesting that perhaps better communication is needed. Their arguments have been based primarily on the expense of postal ballots and the supposed impracticability of such a procedUIC. structures of the NUS, it is hardly surrising wat many students have Degur to waver in defending the NUS. Many student union executives sampiy app oint their delegates to conference, and fail to campaign for mandates through mass meetings on all major issues. In Scotland, where the Broad Left is particularly strong, SRCs often decide policy and elect delegates to conference without even bothering to campaign for mass meetings open to all students.
Revolutionaries must fight in the colleges to show that mass meeting democracy is a question of principle that must apply in all situations, against the attempts of the right to place the of students expressing their opinions continually in collective forums.
and elitist SRCs encourage students to leave both decisions and activity "to those who know about the issues involed'. Universities like Birmingham, Edin burgh, Glasgow and Manchester, where unass incernes are scoricu oy uc lhaority on the local leaderships, prove more than ever that the democracy of the ballot places the shadow of passivity and non-participation on the lives of the mass of students.
occurs at a time of major economic crisis, in which students themselves and as teachers and graduates are affected both by the massive cubacks in public expenditure course and staff cutbacks ete. _ and the very real prospect of unemployment.
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- GAY VICTIMISED BY BHS• FOR