After the Cambridge Student Union (SU) voted to disaffiliate from the National Union of Students (NUS) last month, Oxford University students should be left with questions about whether the NUS is equipped to live up to the political moment, especially after years of watering down their radicalism.
The official case for the motion to disaffiliate claimed that the NUS has “ignored calls from students nationwide, and a motion passed at their own highest democratic decision making body, to campaign for Palestine”. This is not the first time that the NUS has been challenged in recent years, especially over what Amnesty International has described as the apartheid and genocide in Palestine. In the last three years, SUs at the Universities of Warwick and York have tabled disaffiliation motions, citing Islamophobia, antisemitism, and anti-Palestinian racism in the organisation. Cardiff SU voted against renewing their NUS affiliation just last week. However, there is a much longer history here that Oxford students should consider: that of a once-vital student organisation slowly fading from relevance, of one we desperately need back. If Oxford disaffiliating could serve as a step towards an effective and principled NUS, it is one we should seriously consider.
The disaffiliation vote at Cambridge came after more than 200 student leaders and societies signed an open letter to the NUS criticising the organisation for “failing to defend” pro-Palestinian student protesters facing a “wave of repression” on university campuses. This should ring true for Oxford students more than anyone; the demonstration at Wellington Square on 23rd May 2024 saw heavy police repression of peaceful demonstrators. The University accused student protesters of violence and failed to back these claims up. The NUS, however, was silent.
The issues raised in the open letter were serious, and merited appropriate engagement. Unfortunately, NUS leadership did not see it that way. According to Not My NUS, the group that organised the open letter, the NUS issued a letter to the CEOs of all student unions that signed, pressuring them to unsign or be banned from NUS events.
Though in recent months the NUS has made concessions to student pressure, supporting the campaign to evacuate Gazan students with places at UK universities, it has not done enough. Delegates walked out of the NUS conference last week after NUS president Amira Campbell refused to state, when asked, that the NUS was willing to be anti-Zionist. The invitation of Palestinian ambassador Husam Zomlot to the conference rang a little hollow, given Campbell’s refusal to stand against the ethno-nationalist ideology which guided the settlers who expelled Zomlot’s parents from their home in 1948.
This equivocation over Palestine draws a sharp contrast with the key role the NUS has played in fighting apartheid in the past. The NUS’ “Boycott Barclays” campaign was critical in forcing the bank to pull out of apartheid South Africa in 1986, putting its institutional power behind a campaign which had originated in the student movement and university occupations of the 1960s.
Yet some argue that the case for disaffiliation ignores the important work that the NUS does on issues that affect UK students more directly. The Cambridge Labour Club highlighted the work of the NUS in “campaigning to save the graduate route visa or defending trans rights”. This argument sets up a false opposition, however, between taking a principled stand on global politics and effectively defending student interests. It was in 1971, just as the NUS embraced its ability to campaign against apartheid, that it mobilised British students against government proposals to reorganise the finances of student unions. An institution which can fight for the just treatment of its own members is one which can stand up for justice everywhere. It is here that the NUS is now failing.
In 2000, journalist Gary Younge said that over the previous fifteen years the NUS had been transformed “from a mass campaigning organisation to little more than a provider of cheap booze and a crèche for would-be parliamentarians”; a dramatic change that occurred under the dominance of the Labour faction in the NUS. The detrimental effect of the monopolisation of NUS leadership by its Labour supporters reached its most depressingly illustrative moment in 2007, when the NUS dropped their opposition to tuition fees under then-President, now-Health Secretary Wes Streeting. In 2010, while demonstrators filled the streets of central London in protest against the trebling of fees, NUS leaders were telling Liberal Democrat MPs that if fees were doubled, the organisation would only “go through the motions” of opposition.
The NUS has changed, and for the worse. Over the last three decades – especially during the tenure of New Labour – it has become a springboard for ambitious would-be Westminster apparatchiks rather than a purposeful organ to represent students and uphold progressive values. It no longer fights power. It is a path to power.
This is such a waste. Having a nationwide organising structure for students to use is vital. Whether challenging universities on complicity in genocide or fighting for the freedom of international students to study in the UK, there are so many things that the institution can do, and has done. As student debts continue to climb, and student movements against apartheid and genocide face consistent repression, the NUS needs to change if it has a chance of fighting on both fronts. Dramatic actions like disaffiliation cannot be off the table, if they can force the NUS into becoming the institution students so desperately need.
Spokesperson at NUS UK said: “The student movement is at its strongest when we stand together. Through NUS, students at Oxford are represented across the country, in Parliament and wider afield. We have been, and are committed to continuing, working alongside your Sabbatical officer team to work on your priorities based on the issues your SU has raised with us. NUS staunchly defends the right to protest on campus. Additionally, we are committed to ensuring that Palestinian students can access higher education here in the UK. We have been working with the Universities Minister on that, and Oxford students should be integral to these important conversations. We hope to continue working with Oxford SU, and remain open to constructive conversations.”
