Love and Rage proposal for National Broadleft.
2.7.99
Before putting forward a proposal platform for the National Broadleft, there
are some points that we believe it would be beneficial for the Broadleft to
agree on:
1. The main role of the broadleft is to discuss the lefts
participation/intervention in student unions and the like.
We think that the broadleft should aim to not overlap with existing ‘united
fronts’/campaign bodies. This said, to provide direction for Office Bearers
and the like, and also in the face of campaigns which don’t yet have an
existing campaign body (eg around the bombing of Serbia), the broadleft will
need to and should discuss the direction of campaigns, but in this context.
2. The broadleft should primarily be formed on a united platform for action,
and this platform needs to contain a significantly higher degree of detail
than previous broadlefts (such as LA, NAL or the various recent Resistance
proposals).
(For instance, lowering OB wages and Student Union fees, supporting
militant, grassroots action,
We believe that this is important for two main reasons:
1. without common agreement early on, the group is likely to split once it
faces concrete questions. (This has happened in the past)
2. Left/activist student bureaucrats have to a very large extent emulated
the problems of Labour left (NOLS) bureaucrats when they have taken
positions of power. The formulation of this platform (the debate,
discussion, etc) could act as an important step in improving and clarifying
the politics of the left (outside of the manic weeks preceding NUS
Conferences which are hardly conducive to this).
3. It could help us avoid many of the problems of the left in the past,
including the simplistic factionalism.
This said, the platform of the broadleft cannot be so narrow as that it
fails to unite a group of people who should be working under the one banner.
How vauge or detailed the platform is something for discussion.
We also think that this discussion will take time. The proposal so far put
forward by Nick H is only draft and very rough, and primarily done out of a
desire to prompt debate and thought on the issue. We believe that we need a
level of patience and vision for the broadleft – we don’t think that it will
be bad if the broadleft doesn’t finalise its vision/platform until around
FemX (mid second semester).
3. It is important for us to acknowledge that‘taking power’ of NUS and
student organisations and/or‘restructuring’ them to make them more
democratic, participatory or representative is not the primary mechanism by
which student unions will become more active, or democratic or participatory
– this will need to come from the everyday work of organisation, education,
and basic grassroots activism (the type of which we will talk about later).
Ideologically ‘left’ Office Bearers without movements are likey to, and have
in the past, faced the same problems and posed virtually similar solutions
to much more ‘conservative’ OBs, and we have to admit that the democratic or
participatory nature of student union constitutions have been relatively
minor factors in the success or failure of movements on campus.
4. The question of a new left faction or not (put forward by Resistance) at
this stage is putting the cart before the horse – it assumes common visions
which needs to be debated out and discussed. It also implies a level of
trust between individuals and organisations that needs to be developed. That
said, we are not hostile to the formation of a faction of some form if this
common ground can be reached.
5. The major threat to the union at the moment is not NOLS (Labor left)
control. While the politics of NOLS are a problem, and they do at various
points make activism more difficult, the major threat is the right coalition
of ALP Right, International Students, right wing independents and Liberal
students. These groups have the numbers on NUS National Executive, and
control two of the four major metropolitan campuses in NSW, as well as the
majority of state branches.
----------------------------------------
We haven’t actually finished working in these various points into the draft
proposal put forward by Nick H at the NSW Broadleft. Instead, we would like
to outline some of the changes we suggest making to it.
1. Office Bearers - $10-12,000/yr, accountable and recallable to student
body at anytime, through an accessible mechanism.
2. Under "2. Fighting Union" we suggest:
i. concrete demands should be cutdown and worked out.
ii. That we be clear that the way to achieve the changes we talk about isn’t
through action by representatives, but through mass, militant action by
large numbers of students, and it will be by students getting active and
fight for their conditions and their vision of society which will bring it
about – left student unions and OBs can help facilitate this, but it will be
action by students that will change things.
3. Should be more clear in the "Progressive Social change" and "part of the
community" that it is strategically important to link up with trade unions
as they have the power to affect social change, and they are the traditional
bastions of defence of the basic standard of living of ordinary people and
against the neoliberal onslaught.
4. "8. Universities for Human Beings" something on democratising the
university and the importance of students and staff controlling the
university.
5. "Taxing Students" should include that student union fees should be
differentiated on the basis of income, and their payment not tied to
enrolment.
6. Incorporate references to ‘economic rationalism’ into an introduction
which talks about the worsening conditions which students and the general
population are surrounded by (privitisation, attacks on welfare, health,
education, unemployment), and the necessity for us to fightback and get
organised to defend many of the things we have and do take for granted. We
should also make reference to it as both economic rationalism and
neoliberalism (the international consensus for the process)
7. Generally replacing the references to ‘humane’ or such which could imply
a ‘human nature’
------------------------------
Attachment: Draft Broadleft Platform put forward by Nick H.
1. A Participatory Union
Democracy is about more than voting once per year. While the Broadleft
believes that formal power over student unions should lie in the hands of
representatives elected by ballot of the whole student body once per year,
we think that student unions commitment to democracy and participation needs
to run a lot more deeply than this. We believe that Student Unions should
build and actively support collectives of active students who campaign to
achieve the progressive social change.
We believe that student union Office Bearers should have to debate out their
politics and strategies in these collectives, and all Broadleft officer
bearers will take direction from these collectives.
We are general opposed to the creation of numerous committees and
sub-committees of student councils, since they often form the base for a new
student elite, and students have enough of a job fighting the powers that be
without having to fight a new class of student bureaucrats.
2. A Fighting Union
We believe that student unions should be the site of continual agitation,
providing the resources and the spaces for ordinary students to become
involved in the campaigns to defend and extend their basic conditions of
study, as well as fight for a more humane and egalitarian society.
The strength of any fighting student union is the level of organisation and
activity of it members - the activism of students on campus. Lobbying,
senate submissions, and mass media sound bites from ‘student
representatives’ gain any power they have from the mass and active support
of students. For this reason, in any campaigns we run, the organising and
activating of students on campus will be a the central platform of our
strategy .
A broadleft union will campaign for:
* Abolition of tuition fees * A liveable income for all – YA independence at
16 years, and a rate which is above the poverty line * To maintain all
existing subjects and courses from closure, especially the opposing the
closure of those subjects which are not seen as ‘profitable’ by university
managers, but which fulfil an important community need. * To oppose staff
redundancies, to maintain staff numbers, and to increase the number of staff
so that quality education can be ensured. * One tutorial per week for all
subjects, and a maximum of 15 people per tutorial. * Adequate lab time and
resources for students who’s study’s require it. * Increased Government
funding from the Federal Government to make up for funding cuts over the
last 3 years, and to ensure that a quality and diverse education system can
be restored and extended. * Libraries –decent funding, more books, no fines
* [other stuff]
3. Bringing the union back to campus.
At the moment, the National Union of Students in structured in such a way
that it’s state branch office bearers each face the impossible task of
trying to facilitate activism on more than 25 campuses at once, the most
distant of which are nearly 1,500 km away from each other. This has meant
that to a large extent the Union has become removed from campuses. We plan
to restructure NUS so as to regionalise many of its office bearing
responsibilities - basically breaking up cross campus work into smaller
regions, so that each OB may be responsible for a maximum of 3 or 4
campuses. By doing this we believe that we will create a more active and
relevent National Union of Students.
4. Progressive Social Change.
We believe that student unions should resources and support struggles for
progressive social change. A broadleft student union would devote resources
to campaigns to protect our environment, to defend workers, women, migrants,
gays, lesbians and queer people and also to support solidarity work with
oppressed peoples in other countries.
The broadleft will resource these campaigns primarily because we see these
struggles as important in themselves. Secondly we support these struggles
because all though we are all students most of us are also women, workers,
migrants or the children of migrants and/or gay, lesbian or queer. By
supporting these struggles we are supporting ourselves. We also see these
social movements as our natural allies in the struggle against economic
rationalism and for a more just society, which provides real democracy, real
power for ordinary people.
5. Making the University and Student Unions part of the community
The general perception of students as selfish and self interested needs to
be actively broken down. Student Unions should actively support their local
communities, as well as broader community campaigns.
A broadleft student union would pressure university admins to open up
universities to the local community. In many European and Latin American
countries, universities are deeply integrated into the local and national
community through such things as providing free space on weekend and
evenings for meetings, plays, movies… and also by holding free or very cheap
evening courses in subjects which are relevent to the community… A broadleft
student union would also actively attempt to create links with and even lead
campaigns against attacks on the whole community. In campaigns against such
things as the GST, student unions have been able to forge links with unions
and community groups to show that students are far from parochial, and that
by working together we are all stronger.
6. Student Control of Student Affairs - Getting Uni Management and
Government out of Student Union Affairs.
On many campuses across the country supposedly ‘student unions’ aren’t
controlled by students, but rather by appointees of university management.
Over the last 50 years and especially the last 10, many university admins
have been gradually underming student control of student unions - usually
through increasing the number of university admin representatives on student
union boards, but sometimes through the outright theft of student fund and
assets. We will initiate a campaign to ensure that all compulsorily
collected student fees are controlled by students themselves.
7. Student Unions shouldn’t tax student for things which Uni Admins and
Government should a can provide.
Over the last 100 years their has been a tacit agreement between University
Admins and some student beurocrats, which has seen them both benefit at the
expense of students - University Admins have allowed student unions to
increase their fees on students, in return for student unions have agreed to
use the fees to fund food and service outlets for students.
We believe that this was a betrayal of students - decent food outlets on
campus are as much of a necessity on campus as class rooms or a library, and
for this reason they should be funded by university administrations from
government grants.
Student Unions should first take up the fight to get university admins and
the government to provide for the needs of students, and if this fails, then
they should use student union resources to look after students. A perfect
case of where this is appropriate is childcare subsidies. At the moment,
however, the reverse is happening, in the recent VSU debate, some student
unions sold themselves to the university and the government precisely
because they tax students for services the government or university admins
would otherwise have to pay for.
We stand for the reduction of student union fees across the country to
between $50 and $100 per student, and pass on to university management and
governments responsibility for funding necessary student services. We do
however recognise that this is a project that will take more than one or two
years to fully achieve.
8. Universities for Human Beings.
Universities should be places for human being. They are not just training
grounds. We believe that Universities should: - Provide space for student to
meet, both formally and informal, including meeting rooms, lounges and
lawns, as well as larger meeting spaces for mass meetings. - Common lunch
hours for the whole university, so that not only sporting, social, cultural
and political clubs are able to meet… - Democratically moderated access to
university e-mail lists, so that it is simply the Vice-Chancellor who can
voice their opinions on the whole university. - Democratically controlled
university publications. - Free e-mail and internet access (including remote
access) for all students, and enough computers so that students can properly
complete their study and extra-ciricular activities, without queuing for
hours, or having to log-on at midnight.
9. Opposing Economic Rationalism
Putting forward an alternative vision For the last 20 years governments and
corporations have been trying to implement their ‘economic rationalist’
visions on the people of the world. Through privitisation, deregulation, the
dismanteling of basic social welfare and attacking the rights of workers and
unions, they have succeeded in driving down the standards of living of the
majority of people, while making the top 10%, especially the top 1%,
enormously wealthy.
Students have not escaped this economic rationalist agenda: 11 years ago
higher education was free to all people who gained entry. Today the average
Law student ends up with a $25,000 debt by graduation. Similarly, Austudy
and now the Youth Allowance are at all time low levels, and funding cuts
have ment that any courses which are not ‘profitable’ have been abolished or
downsized. The specture of unemployment hangs over every student, making us
choose a career, not an education.
The Broadleft believes that these ‘economic rationalist’ attacks (or ‘third
way’ or whatever name they give it) will continue unless we fight back, and
unless we fightback, students will soon find themselves living in a country
similar to many third world countries – without the right to basic
healthcare, without the right to basic social security, to aged care, to a
university education or to decent housing.
We think that student unions need to be part of the fightback against this
‘economic rationalist’ agenda. We believe that they need to clearly
articulate an alternative vision for a humane society, and that they need to
lead the fight to achieve it.
[END]