Birmingham University Labour Students

As Tom Guise mentioned earlier this week, I am indeed fresh back from my first proper NUS conference. It was quite a spectacle.

It was interesting to see where the big debates fell. While the issues of governance and education attracted long, passionate debate, with the same people arguing against the same people again and again, issues of welfare and “strong and active unions” attracted no such controversey. The politics was agressive- the same tired rhetoric was trotted (heh) out again and again by both sides, and the bitching about the “right wing new labourites” who apparently run the NUS (how ironic) was constant. Factions were evident by the rainbow of t-shirts being worn for various candidates/sides of the governance debate, but not being in recipt of any of the thick field of text messages flying around the room I was ignorant to what was really going on beneath the surface.

I was thoroughly dissappointed, although not surprised by the pathetic and undemocratic efforts to filibuster controversial motions off the agenda (by various factions); I was bored of the constant bitchiness between groups and the long, laborious processes of getting things done; and I was amused by the wonderful irony of seeing a room full of Labour Students upset at the failure of the much needed governance review, having visciously shot down such reforms in their own group only a year previously. My frustration at the failure of the governance review grew as the conference went on and I was treated to more and more glowing examples of the ineffectiveness of the organisation.

Overall, I left feeling I had changed little. Yes, some excellent people were elected- Wes Streeting, Ed Marsh, Susan Nash and Hollie Williams in particular. Yes, we got a lovely set of policy outlining of the kind of things we ought to be fighting for. But with the failure of reform, nothing particuarly momentus happened. What I took away from Blackpool is the knowledge that the NUS has been left in a safe set of hands, with a clear vision of what it ought to work towards…

That, and a hangover.