Revo motions to NCAFC conference

 Below are the motions that Revolution members will be submitting to NCAFC Conference 2012.

All out 1st March

The UCU have called a strike for 1st March, which can act as a beacon for all workers, students, young unemployed, pensioners – everyone suffering from the Tory government’s austerity agenda to fight back. We call for demonstrations in every town and city, with the aim of drawing in not just students and lecturers on the campuses, but the broader working class and anticuts movement. NCAFC is committed to working with all other students, workers and anticuts organisations in open grassroots local forums to build the widest possible support for action on this day. We will approach EAN and Progressive Students with this goal in mind.

John, Manchester Met

Broaden out the struggle

The rise in tuition fees, cuts to EMA, and high youth unemployment have led to increasing hardship for youth in Britain. This will only be exacerbated if the government’s changes to pension schemes for workers are allowed to happen. The student struggle is no longer simply over issues such as fees and privatisation, but part of a wider discontentment, as seen in the August riots and #Occupy movement, and we need to reflect the demands of workers in struggle, the young unemployed and the poor in the actions we plan and in the slogans we raise.

John, Manchester Met

Unite the movement

The recent debate over the NUS Left Slate has demonstrated a broader problem within the student movement in the UK. Members of the NCAFC National Committee have responded to the annual problem of assembling a left slate from the myriad of different progressive student campaigns by proposing a slate composed entirely of NCAFC leaders, which they argue can be amended and voted on at the NCAFC conference with the aim of giving NCAFC a policy in entering into discussions with the other groups.

The student movement is larger than just NCAFC and any slate running for leadership of the NUS needs to reflect that fact. The NCAFC conference is not the most appropriate forum to vote on a left slate as it will, by definition, marginalise those activists who are not supporters of this campaign.

It is difficult to see how any arrangement could be seen as satisfactory by all the anti-cuts campaigns and left-wing groups when there is a culture of hostility and suspicion between these different organisations.

One of the problems was the student movement of 2010/11 was the disunity that existed between left-wing groups, which was reflected in the anti-cuts movement. Demonstrations, conferences and assemblies had to organise between a number of different campaigns, and local groups were forced to pick which national organisation they’d affiliate to, and to choose between national events to mobilise for.

This is not a trend which should be allowed to continue, where work is duplicated by different national campaigns all competing with one another. To overcome this, the incoming NCAFC NC will propose a unity conference to be co hosted by NCAFC, EAN, SBL, PS, and all others interested in finding unity in action, to be held in the summer.

Sally, Sheffield Uni