Last
updated: 08/04/08
Has
NUS dropped fees fight?
It
was widely reported in the press after conference that NUS has now officially
‘dropped its fight’ for free education in favour of lobbying
to keep the top-up fees cap. The reality is more subtle.
Wes Streeting
was elected as NUS president on a clear Labour platform of fighting
for ‘fairer funding’, not free education, and has given
interviews to the Guardian, the BBC and others making this clear.
Calling the vote “the rise of student realism”, he said:
“The majority of us want to have a real and serious voice in the
fight for a fairer funding system.”
But in the actual motions debate, Streeting’s ‘lobby MPs’
amendment passing simply deleted the free education one, thanks to the
arcane ‘compositing’ process.
The conference did not have any debate about free education, and did
not vote to drop the principle of scrapping fees.
Daniel Randall, a left-winger who opposed Streeting for president, said:
“Conference did not vote to abandon the principle of free education...
it voted for a load of vacuous Blairite waffle, which the conference
steering committee bizarrely insisted meant that more radical motions
could not be discussed.”
“The NUS leadership have now chosen to spin this as a move to
accept fees, since this was their intention all along.”
by
Tom Walker - Conference correspondent
