This is by Michael Chessum, NCAFC NC and NUS NEC. It doesn’t constitute an organisational response.
At NUS conference in 2013, delegates will be debating changes to the way that NUS is run. These are on nothing like the scale of the Governance Review, which over the period of 2007-9 was voted down by a leftwing opposition at Annual Conference, only to be rammed through anyway. It created a supreme Board of Trustees, with unelected non-students sitting on it; scrapped funding for the Block of 15 (then 12); and dramatically cut down on NUS democracy, especially the length and size of conference. Much of this was driven by a will of the factions who then controlled the leadership (i.e. Labour Students) to fortify their dominance on conference floor.
The new proposals can be found by clicking here, and they make for interesting reading. It has to be said that not all of what is proposed is bad: a lot of it, especially the gender quotas for women in delegations and on NEC, is something that would find a lot of support among NCAFC activists. However, some of it is very dangerous indeed, and we will fight hard to block attacks on democracy at conference.
The proposals are split into a number of different sections.
1. Zones and Zone Conferences
Zone Conferences (one each for Higher Education, Further Education, Society and Citizenship, Union Development and Welfare) take place every autumn, and they are a product of the 2008-9 Governance Review. They each elect a Zone Committee and one NEC member, who work with Zone’s VP. Although it may be useful to allow networking early in the year, these conferences are completely stitched up by whoever is organising them: they are one-union-one-vote, with no real debates, and the only people who come are sabbatical officers.
These changes propose the following:
A. The expansion of the Zone Committee to 8. There is nothing in principle wrong with this – in general bigger committees are better for democracy.
B. The gender balancing of the Zone Committees. This is a positively good thing.
C. A change in name from “Society and Citizenship” to simply “Citizenship”. While this isn’t terrible, it is a bit weird: ‘citizenship’ is the least accessible and strange part of that title – it has the ring of something coming out of Blair’s education policies or the French Third Republic. In any case, what is “citizenship”? What ideological assumptions are we being asked to agree?
The proposal also contains a number of other points, none of which will have a direct effect.
The criticism here is not necessarily about that the proposals are bad, though one of them is strange: it’s that they aren’t fundamental enough. Zone Conferences need to work out what they’re for: if they are a piss-up and networking opportunity for Sabbs with little or no debate or decision-making, then fine, but why should members subsidise this, and why should the Zones get an NEC member? And if they are a democratic event, then great – but give a delegate entitlement and a proper democratic process, and call it a Winter Conference.
The classic argument in support of Zone Conferences is that they provide a space “for informal consultation and decision making” which “isn’t so rigid”. Again, fine: but the underlying motive for this is that the leadership don’t like being told what to do in a formal way by the members, especially when the members order them to believe in free education and to organise waves of direct action (they ignore this anyway most of the time). The reality of Zone Conferences is that they serve as a means of sucking away sovereignty from National Conference in April, and allowing Officers to “prioritise” (read: ignore) democratic mandates – all from a nice hotel with free food and no actual students in it.
2. The size and structure of NEC and the Trustee Board
Among other technocratic things, this proposes:
A. A generalised review of the Block of 15, with no immediate changes. The proposals try to give Block some more policy responsibility, which is good but not far enough, and hint at maybe reintroducing financial independence, which is great but not fast enough.
B. The gender balancing of VPs and the Zone NEC member. This is good in itself, but I think we should be arguing against the existence of Zone NEC members given how undemocratic Zone Conferences are.
C. The gender balancing of Nation and Liberation Campaign NEC members. This is difficult to argue with.
D. The gender balancing of the Block of 15. This is good, but it will be interesting to see how the count is done now that there are multiple quotas.
E. A formalisation of the sub-committees of the NEC.
Again, many of the changes proposed here are positive: but why not go further? Instead of balancing Zone NEC seats, scrap them and elect a Block of 20 with 10 guaranteed placed for women. Instead of “improving” the “quality of candidates” for Trustee Board, why not remove voting powers from unelected non-students and give Liberation Campaigns automatic representation on the Board? Or, even further, why not scrap the Board entirely?
3. Changes to how National Conference is run.
This is by far the worst section of the proposals. It proposes:
A. To put statements from delegates to the bottom of the agenda under ‘Any other Business’. This will seriously inhibit the ability of delegates to say things about access, about candidate withdrawals, etc.
B. To make it impossible to raise a procedural motion without the support of a third of the room (you currently need 100 delegates). This is an absolutely terrible idea, and we should oppose it tooth and nail: it will make it almost impossible to challenge the chair or the way that debates are being run. And who appoints the chair? Oh yes, the President.
C. To make it almost impossible to challenge the guillotine. This is being done by the same mechanism of needing a third of the room to even have a debate, but also by requiring a two thirds majority to get it agreed. The fact is that some zones are more controversial than others some years, and when so much of the agenda is being taken up with fluffy consensual proposals, delegates should have the ability to decide what they want to discuss.
D. Gender balancing of delegations. This is a good thing. The only slight complication that may be that, unlike other gender balancings, this is something that is required of member unions, rather than being an internal change.
E. To reduce the total text that member unions can submit, and the number of headings that it can go under. Firstly, the maximum number is 3: this is stupid, and it means that it will be impossible for unions to have text in every zone (which zone is it that their members don’t exist in?!). Secondly, this is backwards thinking: the problem isn’t that members have too many ideas and opinions, it is that conference isn’t long enough.
Despite being largely unaccountable to its membership and not having control over what Officers actually do, NUS conference, in comparison to many trade union conferences, still permits a breadth of opinion and gives delegates power over the order of debate. These proposals threaten that, and they lack imagination. We need a longer conference, not less ideas; we need to stop Zone Committees from filling the agenda with consensual fluff, not to tell member unions to stop submitting motions; we need for delegates to have sovereignty over the debate, not the chair and the President.
4. Student Sections
This proposes:
A. To split the governance of Sections into 2 conferences per year. This seems odd at first sight, and will surely lead to smaller and less democratic conference at both ends.
B. To strip votes away from any attendee who isn’t in the Section’s membership: at present, anyone can attend as a delegate and vote, regardless of whether or not they actually are for instance, a Postgraduate. This measure seems sensible, but how it is implemented will be interesting.
C. To put student union staff onto the committees. As long as these staff are there to serve the committee and not to order it around, then fine – but why not use NUS staff?
These proposals are very sparse and don’t do a great deal. We’ll publish something by more involved NCAFC activists soon.
5. London Governance
This proposes:
A. Consultation towards London-wide representation.
Yep, that’s basically it. For the third year in a row.
6. NUS Services
A lot of this isn’t about democracy per se, and we’ll take some more time to digest it.
7. Legal risk
This is basically technocratic and is about motions not being illegal. It’s a problem if this is abused by the Democratic Procedures Committee in order rule out good motions, but this seems unlikely at this stage.
Interesting post. I’d make some points and counter-points. I would question the validity of the Rules Review, I counted that it had received representations from only 20 member Unions, which would be 3.5% of the total NUS membership!
First off I think your opposition to Trustee Boards in NUS is misguided. External Trustees are actually very useful people and make managers stop and think and explain things through. They add experience that many students just don’t have. It’s just not true to say the NUS Trustees are supreme, the Articles are written expressly the opposite way. I called out on this in the ratification debate at last year’s conference. In fact the Trustees have such little job security I would actually question whether they can do their job properly (scrutinising the organisation and being unafraid to express unpopular opinions). Love him or hate him, Ed Bauer found this out quite quickly at November’s NEC.
Zone Committees/Conferences
On the whole Zone Committees *are* just a forum for informal discussion and drafting of consensus policies. I’m yet to see them doing anything their VP couldn’t do alone. I think they’re useful although with no minutes published it’s hard to see the policy-making process. Zone Conferences are as you say a Sabb piss-up and networking event.
The plus side of this is it encourages inter-union conversations and keeps costs down (imagine how much a winter conference would cost to run). I think it also tends to make the event much more accessible and less sectarian than National Conference. There were a similar number of candidates for the 6 member HE Zone Committee than there were for the 15 member Block in 2012. They also tend to be more gender balanced (see below). The non-policymaking aspect I think makes it more attractive to Sabbs, democratic events like NUS Conference attract proportionately more hacks and politicos.
The downside is that most students don’t know these events exist and wouldn’t know where to start. I think many Sabbs view the event as Sabbs-only. As for one-union-one-vote this is normal practice across many of the smaller conferences so it’s not a major gripe for me.
I don’t accept the logic that Zones suck away sovereignty from Conference or allow the leadership excuses to ignore conference mandates. All proposed policies have to go through Conference anyway, and it’s not a rubber-stamping exercise. Witness the postgraduate rebellion over commercial loans or the addition of the national demo at Conference 2012.
The reason Officers don’t do anything on free education is because the policies on this that do get passed are as clear as dishwater in their intent and their lack of specific instructions. And then Conference doesn’t elect pro-free education officers. Do the sums!
NEC
I agree with you about the Block funding. The proposal is pathetic. Block members should have a budget and be able to enact their agenda. This is how Conference seems to view things going on how the winning candidate manifestos are written. Moving an amendment to the Estimates in the AGM to change this is tempting.
I’ve never heard anything from a Block Member, nor have I been able to let our Council do anything to discuss NEC affairs. I think the view is “I’ve been elected, that’s all I need to do” or “I’ve emailed a few Sabbs, that’s enough consultation”. Which is frankly rubbish, and only serves to further detach the NEC from the views of actual students.
Conference
Statements: a waste of time, and manipulated by elites or the been-around-for-years group. If there’s an access problem, that’s the Chair’s responsibility to sort out. Hearing statements is banned by the Articles; DPC making time on the margins is a sop to soften the transition. The less statements the better, the whole “there’s a statement – do I see 100 delegates to hear the statement – case for the statement – case against the statement – the statement” rigmarole takes up so much time it’s absurd.
Particularly statements from candidates about why they’ve decided to withdraw make me want to rip up my reports document (no mean feat!). You’re not running so I don’t care, if I want to know why you’ve withdrawn I’ll ask you! Demanding precious conference minutes to explain this is the height of narcissism.
Procedural motions are a huge time thief. To go through the motions (no pun intended) takes about 5 minutes, with two or three PMs you’re going to see as much as 25% of debate time wasted on bureaucracy. I would argue that PMs are the tool of political hacks to manipulate the agenda. (Waste time on PMs, run out of time for motions you dislike, then refer business you do want to the NEC) All these calls for pet motions to be moved up the agenda when they’re been kicked to the bottom by the priority ballot are risible; they are obviously not going to get 2/3rds so why should we waste time on them. So on the whole weighing it up I think moving to 1/3rds requirement is a good thing.
A tactic that could be implemented under current rules as a time saver would be to move to suspend the rules and pass without debate or vote consensus proposals. However the problem with this is that it’s impossible in an organisation as broad as NUS to predict what are consensus proposals.
I’d agree with you that extending Conference by an extra day would be a good use of money. And the bit about reducing words and headings that can be submitted by conference is ridiculous.
I also think that despite its flaws, NUS Conference is one of the most democratic organisations I’ve been in. So maybe a little less of the anti-NUS rhetoric?
London
Frankly my view on this is that if the London SUs want to combine some sort of governance they should get together and set up a proper NUS Area, the rules for this are still on the books. The NEC would have to approve it but it seems better than endless waiting around. Although the diversity of London SUs might make this an exercise in herding cats.
Legal risk
My suggestion would be that Conference should be able to overrule DPC on its rulings. We have a similarly powerful Steering Committee for our Student Council (if the stakes were a bit higher we might have to reconsider that setup). The Steering Committee can veto stuff like DPC but any of its decisions (not just its report) can be overruled by a 2/3rds vote of Council. Something similar as a democratic check should apply to NUS. After all, in parliamentary theory a motion submitted to a body is the property of the body as a whole.
Gender Balancing
I have grave reservations about these proposals. I’m sure this won’t make me the most popular person with many delegates but I don’t think the current approach is sensible.
The first issue is that for many of the democratic processes, they’re already gender balanced. Although the variation on Zone Committees can be stark, I calculated the gender balance over the last 3 years for ZCs was an average of 52% men 48% women. Which is hardly scandalous. For the NEC Zone places it’s 60% women on average of the last 3 years.
I haven’t calculated the balance for Sections/Nations/Liberation but I would be surprised if it were starkly different. Also as a point of principle I think questions of this sort should be determined by the Section/Nation/Liberation Conference.
The big problem is currently the Block election. Over the last three years an average of only 38% women have been elected (not as bad as FTSE company boards, but still). The problem I think is not however the misogyny of conference delegates but the lack of women candidates. There have never been more than 10 women candidates over the last 3 years! You currently couldn’t have filled the block with all women, because there haven’t been 15 candidates! In 2010 with a 50% quota all but one of the women would have been elected because only 8 stood.
The problem is one of encouraging diversity in the block elections. Perhaps I might suggest the heavy factionalising, early nominations deadline and intimidating conference atmosphere is putting more candidates off, perhaps in a gender unbalancing fashion? To me at least dealing with the fundamental problem seems a better idea than putting thumbs on the scale to achieve an artificial emulation of equality.
As for the idea of gender balancing delegations, I think this is an outrage process-wise. The idea that NUS can dictate elections rules or constitutional provisions for individual member unions is one that should be vigorously opposed. By all means, campaign union-by-union to bring this in but to institute this top down from the centre is an appalling trashing of democratic self-determination. NUS isn’t a federal government. I mean, what if a union elects more men than women in violation of the quota? Is Conference going to tell the Union to go hang? That’s the sort of logic that ends up causing rapid de-affiliation.
There’s also an aspect of intersectionality. In our delegate elections the top 3 candidates were all men. But two are BAME international students and the other (me) is a gay man. To meet the 50% quota (depending on implementation) it is possible one of these would have to be excluded, to be replaced with a white straight woman. Why should we prioritise her over the others? Particularly as all men won at least 30% more votes than her? The whole point of intersectionality is acknowledging that everyone can be oppressed by everyone else. Surely the ideal electoral system is one that is blind to your background and elects you on your merits (in the eyes of Conference)?
I mean seriously have you considered how accountability on the block is going to work with 7 women reserved places? That would prioritise an obscure faction’s female candidate over a more mainstream male. If the (brand spanking new) Tory faction ran a Block candidate, the best chance of getting her elected under the quota is to make that candidate a female. There’s of course nothing wrong with that, but with more quotas the less connected the overall result becomes to the views of Conference, particularly on the grounds of ideology, competence and track record.
If you take the DPC argument to extremes, why isn’t a reserved place for postgraduates, international students, two (open/women) for LGBT students, one for welsh students, one for scottish students, one for irish students on the Block and Zones, and so on?
I say all this as a delegate from a Union which is majority women on its Trustee Board (58%), majority women on its 62 person Student Council (59%), majority women on its Sabb team (83%) and exactly equal on its 32 strong officer team – and is sending a balanced delegation.
All of which was achieved without the single use of a quota.
Anyhow long post, so I’ll shut up now.