Our new BULS women’s office, Katherine Rowlands, attended her first national Labour Students event this weekend. In her first blog she here gives her take on the events at National Council, from the perspective of a first time attendee…
Firstly and foremost I am quite inexperienced in student politics, I don’t fully understand the inner workings of the institutions that run our student politics, however after Labour Students National Council last weekend I gained a better insight to the inner workings of the National Labour Students, and instead of feeling enlightened and engaged I felt disheartened and angry.
The whole weekend appeared to be a complete sham. Instead of being an event where Labour Students from across the country can meet to discuss policy it is a weekend in which the outcomes are decided long before we reached London.
National Committee members, who as far as I could understand we didn’t have much choice in electing, dominate the National Labour Students Conference. There were eleven motions to be voted on, yet the only one with any direct relevance to the working of this body, Representative Voting, ended up way down the list of priorities. Why was this?
We lost the chance to discuss Representative Voting on the National Committee because the motion proposed before on CLPs was held up, quite obviously by those not wishing to discuss the following motion. A huge amount of the CLP motion were proposed to be taken out which would clearly cause controversy and several arguments for and against. As Brigid already mentioned in the previous blog this was completely unnecessary and the motion was left with very little substance, yet their underlying motive had been achieved, to waste time and avoid discussing the Representative Voting Motion.
The division in the room was key to the order of the motions and the decisions made on them. It became more and more apparent to me, who voted in which way, and whatever the arguments were made; the result had already been determined. Another frustrating element of the motion debating process was that the National Committee always had the final say. The National Committee do not just quietly indicate their position on a motion on the paper in front of you, instead they get an allocated time slot for a speech just before it goes to the vote. Explain to me how this is not biased? Surely they should only be able to express whether they support or reject a motion and if they insist on having a speech then surely there should be one last chance for an opposing speech?
My final grievance comes over the caucus elections, which I assume are the same across the board. I myself attended the women’s caucus, and although we were presented with a very good candidate in Katy Curtis it was annoying not to have another choice. You have two options to support or reject the candidate on the paper. What kind of choice is that? Of course you are going to support the candidate on the paper because the only other option is R.O.N and what does he offer you?
The weekend left me with a sense that things need to change to make the National Labour Students more democratic. There needs to better representation throughout the Council and the set up needs to be altered so elections are fairer and people are more likely to vote for what is right then to just tow the party line. The question is how do we make this change when those who have the real power to change are the ones in power?
Katherine Rowlands is the BULS women’s officer.
Theres a bit of Guild Council in there.
Hello!
I get Google Alerts for Labour Students and having read the post I thought I’d respond to some of the points raised. I’ll also add a caveat from the outset and say that I wasn’t there on Sunday so can’t comment too much on what went on then.
“National Committee members, who as far as I could understand we didn’t have much choice in electing, dominate the National Labour Students Conference.”
All members of National Committee are elected, either by all Labour Students at our annual conference or by individual caucuses. I have the smallest electorate as NUS Group Leader as I’m elected just by the NUS Group, but then I don’t get a vote so it doesn’t matter too much!
“There were eleven motions to be voted on, yet the only one with any direct relevance to the working of this body, Representative Voting, ended up way down the list of priorities. Why was this?”
Why should a motion about internal structures be any higher? As you point out at the beginning of your blog, the purpose of the Council is to discuss and debate policy. I’ve been to many democratic events for various organisations where the whole time is spent on procedural wrangling.
Also, the priority of motions is decided by a ballot of Labour Clubs.
As I said, I wasn’t there on Sunday? Did someone move a procedural motion to move to a vote on the CLP motion? That’s usually a good way to speed things up!
“It became more and more apparent to me, who voted in which way, and whatever the arguments were made; the result had already been determined.”
That’s a bit harsh on other Labour Clubs and their delegates…
“The National Committee do not just quietly indicate their position on a motion on the paper in front of you, instead they get an allocated time slot for a speech just before it goes to the vote. Explain to me how this is not biased?”
Couldn’t agree with you more on this one!!! The reason this happens is because (as you might expect) our procedures are modelled on the Party’s. At Party Conference, the NEC always have the right to reply to the debate and set out the NEC position, so it’s an overhang from that. People can ignore the National Committee position, but I agree with you that it annoys people!
Finally on the NUS nominations front – that’s the only time we do elections like that. That’s because it’s not formally an election. It’s a selection. It’s a bit like going before the panel to stand to be a parliamentary candidate. All Labour Clubs are being asked is whether they’d accept or reject individuals being a candidate for Labour Students in NUS. In many cases over the past few years, nominated candidates do not end up on the NUS ballot because of negotiations with other political groups in NUS or because we’ve decided there is a stronger candidate to support.
Maybe the explanatory documents for National events need to be improved to explain all of this stuff and not just rely on people either knowing or expecting their fellow delegates to know.
From my experience (and I’ve been attending national events for 3 years now) things have got a lot lot better in terms of internal democracy and vigorous debate! On Saturday I noticed lots of people getting up to speak who hadn’t spoken before and the No Platform debate in particular was very lively and healthy.
I agree with some of the points made. It is a shame that only one candidate stood for that position, but in fairness, no one would have beaten Katy Curtis for the nomination so no one would have wanted to stand against her – she’s worked incredibly hard and I’ve heard nothing but good things about her – not just in Labour circles.
The same thing happened at conference last year when electing our sabbaticals, I’m confident that the same thing will happen again this year.
One question I do have though, is where is our constitution? Why is it notoriously difficult to get a copy of it? Just a thought.
Thought I’d wade into the debate here (it’s great to see one going!
), to reply to two of the points Wes picked up on.
“National Committee members, who as far as I could understand we didn’t have much choice in electing, dominate the National Labour Students Conference.”
I think the “not much choice in electing” comment was referring to the fact that all three sabbs were elected unopposed, as were all but one of the non-liberation portfolio positions. The issue here is not the quality of the candidates or officers, but the level of endorsement given to each by the previous committee members and the ambiguous nature of the nominations procedure. A lot of the ambiguity lies in the fact that, as Tom pointed out, it is incredibly difficult to get hold of the Labour Students Constitution.
You may recall that at the last Labour Students conference a motion to clarify the procedure and make sure all members were given the opportunity to stand by being made aware of open and close of nominations was discussed, and after lengthy debate and OPPOSITION FROM THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE fell. I cannot think why anyone could possibly oppose such mundane democratic procedure! My memory fails me when it comes to the content of the speeches against or who took them, could anyone who was less hungover at the time elaborate?
“There were eleven motions to be voted on, yet the only one with any direct relevance to the working of this body, Representative Voting, ended up way down the list of priorities. Why was this?”
I agree that it is terribly frustrating to get bogged down with internal procedure and that it is good to make policy, but internal affairs must be dealt with at some point- and this was only one short motion on a list of eleven. I am not a raving bureaucrat, all I want is for the open and close of nominations to be advertised to all members, and for all candidates to receive an equal level of support from the existing Committee, the same as any other democratic organisation would!
I think a few of us were surprised it came so far down the priority ballot as this motion had attracted an awful lot of interest and support from a number of clubs who had supported the aforementioned earlier motion to conference. It was more than a little frustrating to see another attempt to bring the democracy of Labour Students up to normal modern standards fall flat on its face!
This whole issue could be settled swiftly and easily if a short uncontroversial motion effecting open democratic procedure to be enshrined in our constitution were to pass at conference. Third time lucky? It would not take long! Wes, I am sure you would lend your support?
x
I’ve decided to write a whole blog of my own on this, simply because there is too much to say. I think my views on this are well known, considering I was so keen on seeing the governance motion pass at conference in January. It fell by a few votes.
I know many, many, members are keen to see radical governance reform (I’m not necessarily sure what I want to see is so radical), but what might surprise many, is that I know Wes and others on the National Committee are equally keen to see some form of governance reform. We may have differing views about the extent to which that needs to go, but I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised when they learn there is a general consensus that “Something Needs to be Done.” As I say in my blog, let’s stop digging ourselves into pointless arguments, driving away new members, seeing good clubs disaffiliate, when we could just sort it out with a good discussion. Once all that is out of the way, we can get back to what we’ve always been good at – strong and effective campaigning. Only then, with an inclusive, engaged and broadly supportive membership.
The issue with the GST is that it does iucordnte complexity and cost into the system, while it is of dubious merit on the revenue slide. As mentioned above it’s also a slippery slope – after veges why not books (to prop up a dying industry perhaps) and so forth. We get even more credit than Australia for our GST system, as we rightly should. It’s a policy that sounds good at first, but dies in the details.
yaFhKf zeefxruotaag