The success of the ENS Women group (linked to Education Not for Sale) at this year's NUS Women’s Conference (13-15 March) in passing radical left-wing policy and mobilising a significant number of conference delegates around socialist feminist politics, is testimony to the hard work of our activists both within NUS and outside it with Feminist Fightback over the last two and a half years.
So is the result of the election held at the conference for NUS National Women's Officer.
Our recent activity had focused on grassroots campaigning work (including the 300-strong second Feminist Fightback conference at University of East London, an anti-capitalist contingent on the Million Women Rise march, a picket of Serco in solidarity with women imprisoned in Yarl's Wood immigration prison and our upcoming reproductive freedoms dayschool) and not on NUS electioneering. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, our candidate Sofie Buckland very nearly won the election, getting 29 votes against 33 for Labour Students' Katie Curtis.
Sofie's passionate and inspiring hustings speeches and activist record persuaded a number of first-time delegates not only to vote for her, but to sign up to get involved in ENS Women and Feminist Fightback's campaigns. Cat Smith, a third, soft-left candidate, supported by the Socialist Action front "Student Broad Left", got 15 votes and did not to get through to the second round. After Cat failed to call for a second preference vote for Sofie, only 8 of her supporters transferred their votes - perhaps unsurprisingly given Student Broad Left's virulent sectarianism towards ENS Women. Had they not taken this disappointingly sectarian approach, Sofie would have won. (In a similar display of sectarianism, Student Respect, who in the event had no delegates to the conference, refused to endorse Sofie.)
As always, the most important reason for attending the conference was to argue for our politics, make contacts and persuade others of the necessity of a socialist feminism based on anti-capitalism and class-struggle. We successfully proposed policy committing NUS Women’s campaign to a No Borders position and mandating the committee to organise another picket of Serco, as well as donate £100 to both the All African Women's Group and the Trade Union and Community Conference Against Immigration Controls. This was a significant achievement when you consider that in 2006 we were laughed down by members of Labour Students for even daring to raise the idea of No Borders. We also voted to support asylum-seeker and nursing student Flores Sukula in her struggle for access to education.
In another indicator of the shifting political terrain in the campaign, we won recognition of the right of sex workers to organise, that sex work is labour, and that criminalisation harms sex workers. Current NUS Women’s Officer Kat Stark is now mandated to sign the Safety First petition against the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which seeks to further criminalise street workers, and to support the International Union of Sex Workers and the English Collective of Prostitutes. Our campaigning around this issue over the last year meant that women’s conference held two workshops prior to the motions debate in order to discuss and clarify the issues. As a result, the debate was informed and intelligent, with much less hysteria about allegedly whitewashing prostitution.
We also passed policy against privatisation in FE, and in favour of further direct action initiatives on reproductive freedoms to complement the parliamentary lobbying carried out by the Abortion Rights campaign. Unfortunately, Bryony Shanks from Student Broad Left and Cat Smith spoke against holding a national demonstration for abortion rights this year. Yet again they repeated the platitude that "the time is not right" and that if we hold a march now we will risk looking weak. Given that, in the same breath, they also declared that this year we had faced the worst attacks on abortion rights since 1967 and that 83% of the population are pro-choice, neither of their arguments seemed to make much sense. For me, this was the low point of the conference, when they very people we should look to as our natural supporters in pro-choice campaigning sought to block any pro-active and grassroots initiative.
The right wing around Labour Students also managed to narrowly hold on on two other key issues. By a few votes, they managed to defeat our proposals to campaign for a living, non-means-tested grant for every student and to oppose the the NUS leadership's democracy-destroying Governance Review. Although last year's policy for universal grants still stands and the campaign has no official policy on the Governance Review, these narrow defeats were disappointing.
The campaign's budget was a cause for concern for all of us interested in accountability and democracy. Kat Stark openly admitted that the budget report we were provided at the very last minute was unintelligible; she herself was unable to explain it and in fact had only just read it for the first time. At last year's conference, she took parts on the amount of money to be donated to various campaigns that we proposed motions to support. She claimed that this was so she could go and investigate the amount of money available. ENS Women opposed her on the grounds that the conference is the most democratic forum in which to decide, but most people took Kat at her word. When questioned during the budget report as to why at least one organisation had contacted her about the money they were owed but never heard back, Kat claimed that she had removed parts at last year’s conference on the basis that no money at all would be given to campaigns. We will be checking the minutes of last year's conference to follow this up.
Another important issue that came up: "violence against women" was a much-used phrase at the conference and many motions were passed on this theme, particularly with an internationalist perspective. ENS Women are in favour of an internationalist feminism which makes solidarity with women fighting for their rights all over the world. We successfully passed a motion at this year’s conference to make solidarity with the Iranian left, including feminist activists. However, some of us were concerned that a VAW-centred perspective, combined with an emphasis on women’s rights abuses in developing countries, can at times lead to conceptualising women as eternal victims, and can perpetuate racist or pro-imperialist ideas amongst western feminists. In particular, a film showed by the guest speaker from Oxfam about anti-domestic violence initiatives was very patronising and did not focus on empowerment of women ourselves. We want to continue further discussions on this.
ENS Women also held a thirty-strong fringe meeting on "Is women's liberation possible under capitalism?", with a lead off from Teodora Todorova followed by lively discussion and debate. As a result of the meeting and our other activities at the conference, a number of activists expressed an interest in getting involved in ENS Women and Feminist Fightback.
Myself and Gemma Short were elected to NUS Women's Committee as a job-share for one of the six Open Place positions (receiving the highest number of votes); Sofie was elected as Bisexual Women's Rep, and Evangeline Holland-Ramsay as FE Rep, together with a number of non-aligned left-wing women. Both at the grassroots and in the structures of the campaign, therefore, we are well placed to continue the fight.
