A few people have expressed disdain at my decision to lend a helping hand to the Conservative Future Society on campus. You will know that they faced de-recognition in the Guild. A week has passed and hopefully tempers have calmed down a little, so I wanted to set out exactly why I did what I did. Just to put at rest the minds of club members, this was a personal decision, and in no way does it affect how the club operates. ie: we’re not becoming the Tory society.
There are three fundamental reasons;
Firstly, I believe it is essential that the Guild represents a political plurality, a cross-section of opinion on matters relating to the students we represent. Anyone who argues against that is not fit for reasoned democratic discussion. Surely, we make much stronger policy by listening and taking into account all sides of the argument. When I argue, on these pages or in person, with the Tories I find my own beliefs become much more asserted. What they stand for is exactly what I try to fight against. That kind of zest from a debate is what I would like all our members to experience.
Secondly, I believe, from what I’ve been told, that BUCF has been let down consistently by the Guild and their own past committees. I’m confident that the current chair will do all he can to ensure that his successors continue a close working relationship in the Guild for the benefit of the whole society. The blame does not rest on one person, or one organisation, but now BUCF have been given a final chance to make amends and I believe they will try and do that.
Thirdly, losing the Tories does BULS no favours. At the moment, many people believe Labour own the Guild, a view I find ridiculous. But if we had stood by and let BUCF slip away then that view would have been further cemented.
BUCF, represent a special case, a strong and active society that has been left to drop out of the Guild inner-sanctum. I would have done the same for other societies, had I known the details of their circumstances and had they been like BUCF’s. But I didn’t, and like I said this was a purely personal decision. Ofcourse, I informed our committee and let them aware of what I was planning, but this was in no way a BULS effort to rescue the Tories. So members of our club fear not, it’ll be a long time yet before I seek to sign BULS up to the Thatcher doctrine, or allow BULS to be part of the Cameron Marketing Department.
To be honest I was a bit upset with how BUCF were treated at last GC. It was waaay too full on for someone who’d come to GC to argue their corner. There was a point where it stopped being constructive and I really wish we’d stopped questioning a good 5 mins before we did. Yes, there were questions to answer and failures to own up to but still…. I don’t know what other course I’d suggest but I wasn’t fond of the way we used that forum.
That sort of thing should never go to gc anyway, it should be sorted out somewhere else
I am glad you have decided to comment on this issue tom. I was, and remain, grateful for the support that yourself and a number of your committee showed us at GC. As Alex indicates I was disappointed with the tone of questioning from some members however I think the result showed a clear majority in line with OUR way of thinking tom.
I was and remain more than willing to acknowledge the failures of previous (and current) BUCF administrations and am equally committed to correcting these however I do believe, given the tone of some of the questions, that some people really didnt care too mucha bout what we had done wrong they just wanted to ‘stick it to the tories’ which is a sad realisation. Having said this I am confident that we can rise above it.
As many of your own members who have contacted me have indictated at this age politics sshould not be so entrenched. You firmly believe in your way, I firmly believe in mine. There is a time and place for ‘rigorous party politics’ and it is not now. Some people at GC need to remember that. Whatever my personal reservations about guild politics (which are well documented) I was determined to do what was right for our society and am glad that a clear majority of GC agreed with me.
I have to disagree that it was ‘sticking it to the tories’. All the folks I would have reckoned would have been tempted to question aggressively on that basis were fairly tacit. The view I got was it was a lot of people involved in socities saying, ‘we do this, why can’t you?’ and maybe getting a little self-indulgent with it when they should have recognised that you were trying to achieve the same as them.
TONY TONY TONY!!
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Who’s Tony, and what was the comment!?