National Union Of Students (United Kingdom)

The National Union of Students (NUS) is a confederation of student unions in the United Kingdom. Around 600 student unions are affiliated, accounting for more than 95% of all higher and further education unions in the UK. Although the National Union of Students is the central organisation for all affiliated unions in the UK, there are also the devolved national sub-bodies NUS Scotland in Scotland, NUS Wales (''UCM Cymru'') in Wales and NUS-USI in Northern Ireland (the latter being co-administered by the Union of Students in Ireland).

NUS is a member of the European Students' Union.

Membership

* Constituent membership is granted to students' unions by National Conference or National Executive Council by a two-thirds majority vote
* Individual membership is granted automatically to members of students' unions with constituent membership, sabbatical officers of constituent members, members of the National Executive Council and sabbatical conveners of NUS Areas
* Associate membership is granted by a two-thirds majority vote of National Executive Council to:
** ''Student Organisations in Association – ''any national student organisations
** ''Partner Organisations in Association ''- non-student organisations which sympathise with the NUS
** ''Individuals in Association'' – any individual who supports the objects of the NUS
** ''NUS Areas ''- geographically-defined associations of students' unions
* Honorary membership is granted by National Conference to "any person or organisation as it sees fit"
Of these types of membership, only constituent members may vote on or submit policy proposals to the National Conference. Constituent members and associate members are required to pay a subscription fee as a condition of their membership.

History

Origins and early history

The NUS was formed on 10 February 1922 at a meeting held at the University of London. At this meeting, the Inter-Varsity Association and the International Students Bureau (which organised student travel and had been lobbying for a national body) agreed to merge.

Founding members included the unions of University of Birmingham, Birkbeck, University of London, London School of Economics, Imperial College (who first left in 1923 and have subsequently rejoined and left three times, the last time being in June 2008), King's College London (who supplied the first President, Sir Ivison Macadam) and the University of Bristol.

Politicisation and Broad Left, 1968–1982

In the aftermath of the Second World War and with the onset of the Cold War, the National Union of Students had adopted a "no politics" clause in its charter in an attempt to distance itself from its 1930s flirtations with communism. During the 1950s, it had thus concerned itself with collective bargaining over student grants, teaching salaries and education. This apolitical consensus was challenged in concert with the international protests of 1968 and as the Cold War intensified. At the 1969 NUS conference, then president Trevor Fisk came up against Jack Straw (then close to Bert Ramelson of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but much later Foreign Secretary under the New Labour government of Tony Blair) over the issue. Straw supported student protests against US military involvement in the Vietnam War, while Fisk advocated neutrality; Straw's side won and the "no politics" clause was removed.

A new era began for the NUS, where political agitation and protest became institutionalized. Straw was followed up as president by Digby Jacks, also representing the Radical Student Alliance (formed in 1966 by Fergus Nicholson) and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. According to contemporary British government reports, the RSA was connected to the Trotskyist-led Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and had close links with the ''Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund'' (organising a protest following Rudi Dutschke's shooting). The government report stated "If they have an ideological bible it consists of the work of Professor Herbert Marcuse, ''One-Dimensional Man''." In line with the Marcusian viewpoint of championing politicised minority groups, throughout the 1970s, the NUS came to support what it called "liberation campaigns", including; homosexual rights (the first national group to do so in 1973), radical feminism and black nationalism. At the same time, the NUS adopted a No Platform policy; a concept pioneered by the IMG in 1972; to stifle the campus organisation and speech of nationalistic British groups that it declared to be "racist or fascist". At the time, this was aimed at the National Front and the Monday Club (a faction in the Federation of Conservative Students).

The union was also involved in affairs in Northern Ireland, where most higher education establishments there were members of both the NUS and the Union of Students in Ireland, though this differed from case to case. Indeed, two presidents of the NUS earlier on in the 1960s were from Queen's University, Belfast; T. William Savage and T. Geoff Martin. The 1968–69 unrest in Northern Ireland saw the onset of The Troubles and a sectarian divisiveness come to the fore. After members of the QUBSU organised a protest against politician William Craig, some members such as Bernadette Devlin, Eamonn McCann and Michael Farrell decided to found the Trotskyist group People's Democracy in 1968, which played a role in the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. Following a meeting in Galway in 1972, to combat divisions it was agreed that a group called the NUS-USI would be founded with dual-membership to cover Northern Ireland.

One of the NUS' protest campaigns which was of particular significance during the 1970s and the 1980s was the boycott campaign against National Party governed South Africa as part of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. In 1970, NUS vice president Tony Klug visited South Africa and met with Steve Biko of the SASO among others. Members also attempted to disrupt South African rugby and cricket matches in the United Kingdom during the 1970s. In the 1980s, the NUS played a significant role in getting Barclay's Bank to divest from South Africa, attacking it as "Boerclay Bank".

Throughout this period, the NUS presidency was dominated by the Broad Left, within which the Communist Party of Great Britain (where Eurocommunism was most popular among students rather than the pro-Soviet "Tankie" anti-revisionists) predominated and usually supplied the president, but were backed up by Labour and the Liberals. They did so to work as a voting bloc against both the Conservatives and Militant. The first of these Broad Left presidents was Charles Clarke (later a Home Secretary under Blair) who as a member of the Clause Four Group, won the National Organisation of Labour Students back from Militant influence. Other presidents included Sue Slipman (who began on the Eurocommunist wing on the Communist Party of Great Britain but ended up a founding member of the Social Democratic Party by 1981), Trevor Phillips (a Broad Left independent and the first black NUS president, who later led the race relations group the Runnymede Trust) and David Aaronovitch (who was then a Eurocommunist, but later became a journalist aligned to neoconservatism).

Labour Students presidency, 1982–2000

From 1982 with the election of Neil Stewart, until Andrew Pakes stood down in 2000, the presidency of the National Union of Students was controlled by the National Organisation of Labour Students, which shortened its name to Labour Students in 1994. Notable NUS Presidents of this period included Phil Woolas, Maeve Sherlock and Stephen Twigg.

History in the 21st century

Fairtrade

The campaign has since been extended into Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK), an educational charity responding to the climate emergency and ecological crisis.

The Fairtrade Foundation collaborated with the NUS in awarding The Fairtrade Universities and Colleges Award, which started as a pilot in 2017. As of 2020, twelve universities had achieved Fairtrade status.

Education finance

Under the leadership of Wes Streeting the NUS abandoned its long-standing commitment to free education and backed a graduate tax as its preferred outcome of the Browne Review into higher education funding. Before the 2010 General Election, the NUS invited candidates to sign a pledge not to raise tuition fees, receiving over 1000 signatories from prospective parliamentary candidates. This became a very high-profile campaign when many Liberal Democrat MPs, who all signed individual NUS pledges stating they would vote against any rise in tuition fees if elected, had to abstain or do the opposite as part of their coalition agreement.

The NUS, under new leader Aaron Porter, organised a national protest attended by thousands in November 2010, demanding an end to education cuts. The march route passed Whitehall and the Conservative Party headquarters at Millbank Tower. As they marched past the building, some protesters diverted in to the courtyard of Millbank Tower and began an occupation of the building.

With an attendance of over 50,000 people, it was the largest British demonstration since the Iraq War protest. This led to various more demos until the rise in tuition fees was passed.

The day before the vote to allow a rise in tuition fees, the ''Daily Telegraph'' reported that they had seen emails that suggested Aaron Porter had supported, rather than increase tuition fees, cuts of up to 80% should be made to student support packages including grants and loans. Porter responded to the claims on NUS Connect that "In all of these meetings and communications we stated our firm and clear opposition to cuts" and that the distortion of the discussions was "political desperation from a coalition government losing the arguments on its own policies".

On 9 April 2014 the National Union of Students passed policy at its national conference to reverse its position on education funding. The call for a graduate tax was abandoned in favour of calls for free education funded through progressive taxation.

Governance review

The 2008 Conference in Blackpool was dominated by the governance review debate and vote. The proposals were for a restructuring of the running of the Union but the vote was lost by 25 votes (a two-thirds majority was required). The review was criticised for what was felt by detractors to be an attack on the organisation's democratic accountability. Its supporters however defended the review as providing a more 'innovative' corporate structure which was hoped to make it more credible in negotiating policy, rather than simply 'reactive'. This was not well received by many in the executive with President, Gemma Tumelty, vowing to press ahead with reform. The perceived lack of progress on governance reform also prompted Imperial College Union to hold a referendum on disaffiliation.

ISIS, Malia Bouattia, and disaffiliations

In October 2014, NUS National Executive Committee rejected a motion to condemn the militant group Islamic State because some executive members "felt that the wording of the motion being presented would unfairly demonise all Muslims rather than solely the group of people it set out to rightfully condemn." NUS received criticism for this stance given its previous condemnation of the UKIP political party. Despite a statement from NUS confirming that "a new motion will be taken to the next NUS National Executive Committee meeting, which will specifically condemn the politics and methods of ISIS and offer solidarity for the Kurdish people," media coverage of the vote caused some students' union members to speculate that the NUS itself has been infiltrated by extremist sympathisers. At the following executive meeting on 3 December 2014, a similar motion, which condemned ISIS, expressed solidarity with the Kurdish people, and called on NUS to challenge "Islamophobia and all forms of racism being whipped up" was resubmitted and easily passed.

At the 2016 NUS conference, Malia Bouattia

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