We need the Right to Recall Porter
Article published: Monday, November 15th 2010
The NUS’s anti-cuts strategy is absurd and its proposals for funding reforms regressive. It’s time students regained control of the debate.
Thousands of students surround 30 Millbank.
The attack on Millbank demonstrates the frustration students have not only with the Tories but also the slow pace and limited imagination of the National Union of Students (NUS) strategy. Last month Aaron Porter, NUS President, paid lip service to direct action, saying that “if students felt that they were going to be trodden on once again, then there may be an appetite for there to be more action, and that could be more militant than before. We will use every weapon in our armoury.” Yet on Wednesday the only weapon he was willing to use was the one he handed the right wing press by calling us “despicable”.
Porter’s solution is the naïve “Right to Recall” campaign, a plan that would try to take advantage of coalition proposals to introduce a recall system wherein if 10% of the electorate in any constituency sign a petition saying that their MP has behaved improperly a bye-election is called for that seat.
Proposed during the expenses scandal, the legislation is targeted towards financial impropriety, meaning it is not clear if it could be used against MPs who have broken pre-election promises. On top of that, the people proposing and who will ultimately pass the legislation are the same people the NUS hope to attack with it. If they ever view the NUS plans as a credible threat the coalition are likely to amend or shelve the legislation. That Porter is placing so much trust in the government looks especially moronic after this weekend’s revelations that the Lib Dems planned to ditch their plans to abolish fees even when Nick Clegg was pledging the exact opposite.
Porter’s core strategy is therefore a patent, wholly discredited absurdity: while the NUS waits for the government to grant them their only tactic, entire departments and quite likely entire universities will be closed down. Thousands of academics and other staff will lose their jobs, thousands of post-graduates their careers, and the 2012 deadline for those born in 1994 will loom nearer. Right to Recall is an incompetent and cowardly betrayal of those whose futures are under an immediate threat.
Beyond this, Porter’s mandate to lecture the Millbank protesters, let alone speak for all students in the country, is questionable.
Students have no opportunity to vote directly in NUS elections since it would be a logistical nightmare to get them all in one part of the country. However this could easily be solved by electronic voting, which has been used in many university unions for several years and has proven an effective way of increasing the turnout of direct votes. Instead, the NUS persists in electing delegates who in turn elect the NUS president. Using this indirect system Porter was elected by 444 votes out of 678, a year after the number of delegates had been halved. The NUS reforms under which this took place were widely criticised as being undemocratic, introducing a corporate structure in which non-student, unelected bureaucrats are able to influence – some would say hijack – campaigns.
Nor is he opposed to the debt, but rather what it is called. One of his earliest announcements as President was his support for the graduate tax, since adopted by Labour. The tax has been attacked by the University and College Union (UCU) as a simple rebranding of debt, which for many would likely see a de facto increase in fees as they had to pay more of their income back than at present: the UCU estimates that teachers would have to pay £17,271 more, nurses £7,824 more and social workers £8,528. The Russell Group of leading universities also pointed out that the tax is extremely similar to the fees system, the main difference being that universities wouldn’t directly receive the funding. Even if all these issues could be resolved, as the NUS claim with their own plans, the right wing Adam Smith Institute pointed out that a second income tax would simply stop people from going to university.
Porter has made no attempt to return the NUS to supporting the principle of free education for all that allowed the present generation of politicians to enter university free of charge – and it is worth noting that no-one is proposing they pay a retroactive tax, which would have the benefit of preventing the inevitable funding gap caused by a switch from a fee to tax system. The higher education budget costs £8 billion, in comparision to the £7 billion in bankers’ bonuses or the £4 billion for aircraft carriers that have no aircraft – all of which is nothing compared to the £25 billion lost through tax avoidance in a total tax gap of £120 billion. The benefits to business of a well-trained workforce are incalculable, yet the NUS along with the political parties believe business should not pay for those graduates, but that graduates must pay out of their future wages – something they already do with income tax. This is not to mention the fact that education is a good in itself and a worthy ideal for any culture to pursue.
On Wednesday we finally had the chance to vent the frustration of a generation being sacrificed by our elders in an attempt to solve a crisis that was not of our making. Now we also need to vent our frustration at Aaron Porter who sacrificed our urgent needs in order to advance his own political career. Being a Labour Party member he was no doubt ecstatic when Ed Milliband adopted the graduate tax as the Party’s position on funding, meaning that once again the NUS is an appendage of the Party that caused this mess in the first place. Just as he has forced us into alliance with the putrefied corpse of New Labour, the NUS recall campaign puts everything in the hands of the coalition and nothing in the hands of those who will actually suffer in the months and years ahead. He is simply not fit to represent us.
At Millbank students acted autonomously, independently and in unison. They attacked a legitimate target that has acted unethically, undemocratically and unconstitutionally in order to bring the shock doctrine to the UK; our only regret is that we did not occupy the Lib Dem HQ as well, who have surely committed even more egregious crimes than the Tories. Those Lib Dems now know the extent of anger against them in a way that the Right to Recall campaign, which cannot get off the ground until the Lib Dems themselves pass the requisite legislation, cannot. We have no confidence in the NUS leadership and refuse to recognise that they have any right to tell us what to do or what strategy to pursue. They do not own our actions or our thought, they possess no coherent strategy and are clearly intent on attacking those they pretend to protect. In the months ahead we need to not only vigorously take control of the debate about higher education, but free ourselves from their grasp.
Tom Fox
More: Manchester, Opinion
Comments
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“Using this indirect system Porter was elected by 444 votes out of 678, a year after the number of delegates had been halved”. At Milbank court there were at least 4,000 people. This means that Porter has less individual votes than the number of people present at Tory HQ. Who is the unrepresentative one hijacking the student movement?
Comment by Withingtonian on November 15, 2010 at 10:46 am -
I remember ‘free’ education at universities.
There weren’t many universities and they were much smaller than they are today.
If we went back to a those days we could probably afford to have ‘free’ education again.
That might not be a bad idea. The current arrangement of lots of mediocre universities educating hordes of students of around average ability has proved to be a bit of a farce – a farce mainly encouraged by the desire of modern middle class parents to see even their dimmest children go to ‘uni’ for a cheap, subsidised price.
Comment by simon on November 15, 2010 at 2:51 pm - Comment by Withingtonian on November 15, 2010 at 4:07 pm
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Totally agree with everything said about Porter. However, it is worth noting that in the past, progressive action has been taken over the heads of elected union officials, for example as during the 2nd World War, where despite the banning of strikes, industrial action was taken against injustices. Indeed, this is what exactly happened at Millbank. Pressure can be bought to bare on these careerists with concerted action from below. The shop stewards network was borne out of this necessity in the wider movement. Perhaps the student movement needs something similar?
Comment by Matt on November 20, 2010 at 12:10 am -
I agree with Simon above. Too many are going to university and it isn’t the right place for some of them. It’s sad that many are getting themselves into terrible debt paying for poor courses that may be of little benefit in the future. It’s a con.
We need more apprenticeships and quality training as part of employment. And the young shouldn’t pay for any of this.
There seems to be this horrible idea these days that paying is the only way to increase your knowledge and learn. Maybe not surprising after the New Labour years… We need adequate funding of libraries, the BBC and other public service broadcasters must get back on track ‘educating and informing’ and above all we need to encourage the young to be inquisitive and self-motivating.
Comment by GS on November 23, 2010 at 9:29 am -
[…] cases of ‘serious wrongdoing’ – illegal behaviour or expense fiddling. The Manchester Mule dug up the relevant briefing from the House of Commons Library (updated on the 20th of January […]
Pingback by The NUS Right To Recall Campaign: Anatomy of a Farce – Alex Andrews on January 27, 2011 at 5:37 pm
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