Birmingham University Labour Students

2010 General Election & beyond!

BULS has campaigned extensively throughout Birmingham and the West Midlands, most recently in the 2010 General Election. Our campaigning helped to keep our local Labour MP’s in Edgbaston and Selly Oak. We are now campaigning in our local wards for the city council elections in May 2011. We are proud to support former BULS secretary Brigid Jones in Selly Oak ward. If anyone would like to get involved with our campaigning, or to work with one of our local MP’s in their constiuency, please contact committee@bulsonline.org

Local Elections 2008

Tom Guise, club secretary and chair-elect, stood for election to Birmingham City Council in Bartley Green. The club spent time campaigning for him and Caroline Badley in neighbouring ward Quinton, also Dacid Williams in Sely Oak. Sadly despite huge efforts, all three candidates were unsuccessful.

Past Campaigns

Labour Students is at the forefront of political campaigning on Birmingham University campus. We campaign actively in both parliamentary elections and on issues affecting both students and the wider community. We are autonomous from the Labour Party, and campaign against government policy when necessary. See below for details of some of our campaigns, and feel free to make comments on any areas where you feel we should be campaigning.

Local Elections 2007

Members of BULS campaigned across Birmingham and beyond in 2007. John Ritchie, the club chair, stood in Bartley Green and polled the most votes for a Labour candidate in 10 years! Peter Mason stood in his home seat in Leicester as did Tom Hyner in Whistable. Other members campaigned as far a field as Erdington, Stoke, Sandwell and Wrexham.

It was pleasing to see that although Labour are no longer the biggest party on Birmingham City Council that our vote held up in crucial seats areas like Quinton and Bartley Green. It was also encouraging to see the BNP fail to secure anymore notable gains with the Labour candidate Ray Howes getting re-elected in their target seat Prince’s End.

By expanding the activist base that BULS has established we hope to be able to play a key role in holding on to the marginal seats of Edgbaston and Selly Oak at the next General Election.

Below are a few pics taken during the campaign.

Make Child Poverty History

In association with the Child Poverty Action Group, we campaign for the groups main aims, including raising awareness of the extent, nature and impact of poverty; bring about positive income policy changes for families with children in poverty; and enable those eligible for benefits and tax credits to have access to their full entitlement. Our recent campaigns have included calling on the Chancellor to equalise child benefit for second and subsequent children to that for the first child – the “Make Child Benefit Count” campaign. See our events section for details of the events we organised to promote the campaign, including a “Let’s Talk Child Poverty” event with Ed Balls MP, and a Labour Students and Young Labour vs Conservative Future football game, which we won 8-0! Adequate proof that the Tories cannot put up a show either in politics or in football!

A fairer minimum wage

At its introduction, the Tories described the National Minimum Wage (NMW) as a disaster for small business, with Michael Heseltine suggesting it was fine for people to work for less than £1.50 an hour. Ten years on, the NMW has been a major success and is a major stepping stone towards correcting some of the disgraceful social disparities created by the last Conservative government. Having campaigned for the NMW in the first place, and then for a NMW for 16-18 year-olds, we are now campaigning for the extension of an equal minimum wage for all workers, regardless of age.

Sex, Lives and Politics

We campaigned actively throughout 2006 to call for a reduction in the VAT rate on condoms from 17.5% to 5%, establishing and promoting an Early Day Motion in Parliament to acknowledge that sexual health is a necessity, not a luxury. This campaign came to a successful conclusion on the announcement by Gordon Brown of a reduction in VAT on contraceptives from 17.5% to 5%.

This achievement showed that the government are committed to making sexual health a real priority – another area sadly neglected by the Tories. To take the campaign further, we are still campaigning to secure the commitments made in the Choosing Health white paper – including a maximum waiting time of 48 hours for sexual health clinics.