by Casper Hughes – Student Correspondent
In what was a momentous occasion for the left in student politics, Malia Bouattia beat Megan Dunn to become president of the National Union of Students (NUS) in April of this year. Notably for Labour Students and those on the right of the student movement, Dunn became the first incumbent NUS president to fail in an attempt at re-election since 1969, losing 372 votes to 328.
The first woman of colour to lead the NUS, Bouattia’s election is a decisive move away from the status quo. The list of NUS presidents of the last thirty years, the vast majority of them members of, if not backed by, Labour Students is a catalogue of corporate careerism and future ‘moderate’ Labour politicians. In her support of rent strikes, the National Student Survey boycott and a steadfast resistance to the Teaching Excellence Framework, Bouattia has already shown herself to be a president that is willing to resist the logic of marketisation – and with it potentially ruin her chances of passing through the revolving door. The simple fact that she supports free education is a welcome relief from a time where presidents of the National Union of Students would propose a different form of debt (the graduate tax) rather than campaign for an education system that is accessible for all.
Despite, (and sometimes because of this), Bouattia’s election campaign and first few months of presidency have been riven with controversy. During her election campaign she received an open letter from the presidents of fifty university Jewish societies over comments she had made that they deemed to be unsavoury, if not anti-Semitic. This included calling the University of Birmingham a ‘Zionist outpost’ with the ‘largest JSoc in the country whose leadership is dominated by Zionist activists’ in a blog post for the university’s Friends of Palestine society. A week later, the day before the election, The Tab unearthed a video of her at an event organised by the Tricontinental Anti-Imperialism Platform in 2014 in which she made reference to ‘Zionist-led media outlets’.
In regards to Bouattia’s blog post, the Jewish student leaders took umbrage with her alleged insinuation that a large Jewish Society was a problem. Reading the blog post back however, it is obvious that her grievance is not with the size of the JSoc but with the politics of its leadership. Speaking about the comments, she told The Guardian in an interview last month, “This was a few years ago and I was talking about quite a particular context where there were a lot of activists that were very vocally supportive of the state of Israel and its actions. I was part of the Palestine society that, for most of the years that I was involved in it, was just trying to exist as a society let alone actually build solidarity, so it was because of that opposition, the constant tension and having disruptions for events that were taking place … you know, holding solidarity demonstrations and having opposing ones with Israeli flags flying, speakers being heckled. I wasn’t being critical of the number of Jewish students or the size of the Jewish society at Birmingham. It was very much in relation to the opposition to any kind of Palestine solidarity efforts that were taking place.”
Her comment on ‘Zionist-led media outlets’ however, is problematic. Although she later apologised and clarified her comments as to mean a pro-Israeli bias within the mainstream media (which is backed up by many academic studies), her initial clunky phrasing was too easy to misinterpret and worked to reinforce anti-Semitic ‘Zionist conspiracy’ tropes.
Despite her apology (and track record as an anti-racist campaigner), her election victory was met with a wave of discontentment and campaigns to disaffiliate from the NUS. Although many of these campaigns were initially waged on the basis of Malia’s alleged anti-Semitism; when the time came for the referendums at Leicester, Nottingham, York, Warwick, Worcester, Lincoln, Loughborough, Newcastle, Cambridge, Oxford, Exeter and Hull, the issue of anti-Semitism was relatively inconspicuous. In fact, the most vocal leavers were campaigning not on the basis of their hatred of anti-Semitism and racism, but because of a perceived lack of representation. For them, the NUS should be a neutral body representing all 7 million students equally: not just a left-wing clique.
We cannot pretend that the NUS is a perfect organisation. The reason why so many students have voted to disaffiliate in the various referendums is because of the NUS’s absence on issues that are important to students. Campaigning for students to stay in on the basis of perks such as a NUS extra card, as the current Vice President for Union Development Richard Brooks has been doing, is precisely what has led the NUS into its current malaise. It shouldn’t need to be said but unions should not exist to get their members cheaper stuff. It should be building a movement to win demands that are in the interests of students: free education, the reintroduction of maintenance grants, liberated curriculums, democratic universities etc.
As the organisation has done nothing substantial to achieve these things in recent years, in fact expending a lot of energy to block attempts to do so (e.g Megan Dunn ignoring BDS policy, Toni Pearce dropping NUS support of free education demo, Aaron Porter condemning the ‘outrageous and violent’ actions of the Milbank occupiers), it could be argued that there is little for Brooks to champion about the NUS other than the small perks students receive as consumers. For students asked to vote to remain in the NUS there is not much to vote for. But just as there is no particularly compelling argument to stay, there isn’t an obvious benefit to leaving either, other than out of protest. Apathy towards the NUS rather than anger generally captures the mood on campuses across the country. Out of the twelve universities where a referendum took place, Lincoln, Hull, Loughborough and Newcastle voted to leave with Lincoln re-affiliating two weeks ago after students demanded a re-run.
The NUS looks to be weathering the storm. The initial surge of disaffiliations appears to be petering out. However, in order to become relevant to students the leadership needs a clean break from the past: no meek lobbying, no selling students out, more encouragement of campus direct action to counteract rising rents, fees and the marketisation of education. This should be a wakeup call for the NUS. Unless they start helping students to win important demands (e.g cuts to rent), they will undoubtedly slip further into obscurity. In the next referendum, students may not be so forgiving.
Importantly though, Malia Bouattia appears to get the failures of the past. Her support of rent strikes and the NSS boycott is evidence that she is willing to advocate for radical ideas and actions that will materially benefit students. While the hard work will be done at the grassroots, the funding and publicity that the NUS can provide will be vital. Not only is this the only way for the NUS to remain relevant; a student movement that is militant is the only way that it can win. Bouattia appears to understand this: a promising sign for students.
