The April conference of the National Union of Students was held in Birmingham between 10th and 14th April to the sound of the hammer blows of the ongoing State offensive against students unions and militant students.. At this most crucial of conferences the communist dominated executive failed to pose, let alone solve, the key problems facing NUS and its constituent organisations. Instead they managed to reverse even the small beginnings of a correct policy which had been forced through at the special conference in January. But this ostrich like approach didn't this time go unamswered Although not yer finding support smoot the majority of delegates the Liaison Commi tee for the Defence of Students Unions (LC DSU) brought to the fore the concerns of those students in the colleges facing the real brunt of the State's attack.
REFORMISM AND UTOPIA The essential theme of the conference was that of complacency. The stage was set by Digby Jacks, the C.P. President, in his opening remarks. We have forced the Government to retreat on the question of student union autonomy,opined Jacks, now the NUS must go on to bigger and better things-grants, the binary system, Vietnam, etc. must now be taken up by the student "movement". The complete lack of understanding as to the nature of the attack on students unions and the complementary soggy tokenism on important Digby Jacks, NUS President. extra-student issues couldn't have been more clearly revealed than by these remarks. While Jacks was pontificating in this utopian fashion Vice-Chancellor Carter at the University of Lancaster was in full flight against radical staff and students alike. Students at Portsmouth Poly were sharing with Lancaster students an assault by the Courts, and other bubbling struggles at Northern Poly, Thames, L.S.E and so on were simply enjoying an enforced vacational truce. In direct contra-distinction to the executive opinion that the attack has been thwarted, or even that there is a lull. these struggles indicate that the attack is intensifying. It is not mere executive dishonesty or even its bureaucratisation that leads them to this completely wrong assessment of what is going on. It essentially flows from their reformist politics.
If one starts from the view that the State or any of its parts is neutral in the class struggle: if one starts from the view that there is not a fundamental identity of interests between all the agencies of the State; if one starts from the view that one arm of the State can be used against another; if one starts from the view that democracy under capitalism is anything other than bourgeois democracy; then one gets executive and CP conclusions. In this way the limits of the struggle are determined by the enemy, the State. Any attempt to go beyond their fiats or their law, any attempt to defy their constitutions and their Courts is ruled out from the beginning. In this situation all that can be offered is the utopia of democratic control, of participation in effecting those transformations which oppress us.
THE EXECUTIVE PRESCRIPTION The action of the executive in the confereno und the rese ng 'policy" for the NUS 1o back any nasty Tory proposals, it insisted, in reversing a LCDSU amendment, that college authorities were potential allies in fighting these antediluvian elements. In line with this Seat without, as previously. conference explaining its reaOn the question of so-called public accountargued in another amendment that this could be effected through democratic channels and the government be allowed to 'specify the purposes for which the finance could be used". But it is important to ask, what do these democratic channels amount to? A system of workers councils representing the class which produces the wealth of this society? Not a bit of it. It is exactly those State agencies which are the instigators of the attack in the first place. In other words, the executive would have it that the very force which we are fighting should be allowed to call us to account at will. Public accountability cannot be other than State accountability.
One might have hoped that the emergency motions, on the situation in Lancaster (and one, not discussed, on the situation in Portsmouth Poly) would at least have brought into question the role ascribed to college authorities by the CP. In the event, however, the executive went one stage further in the opposite direction. Not content with confusing the issue in relation to that arm of the State which college authorities represent, they went on to make an analogous mistake in relation to the Courts and bourgeois law. The Courts had made an order to forcibly evict from occupation the students at Portsmouth Poly, the Director of Pubbe Prosecutions had indicted nine students at the University of Lancaster. Rather than initiating a campaign of resolute exposure of the paraphernalia of bourgeois law, its content and function, they were content to accept these as the limits of the struggle and simply call for a fight for 'academic freedom' which in the contest means so much hot air. The nearest they got to suggesting anything was to offer to black' the University of Lancaster with all the historical success that that sort of tactic has had # Horscy and elsewhere.
THE LCDSU: A SOLID BASE IN THE COLLEGE Throughout all this, the LCDSU was of course sounting its opposition. The LCDSU had been established at the previous November conferor on the initiative of the IMG after it had beclear what sort of fight the executive was ng to mount. Since then it has attracted other forces around it, including 1.S. At this confetence, it felt itself sufficiently strong to offer an oppositional slate to that proposed by the CP. Of course there were no illusions that the LCDSU ticket would actually win the elections. In the event, the average 25 per cent support gained by the LCDSU slate showed that it had won significant support up and down the country. All the forces round the LCDSU had got the most basic question right: that the Thatcher proposals were only one element of the U.S. Department of State on a visit to the of students unions. There has been, however, no clearly agreed programme for fighting the offensive. Or, rather, the particular platform on which the LCDSU was established has remained rather abstract. A certain amount of confusion was revealed at this conference which needs to be cleared up if the LCDSU is going to be capable of leading the struggle. WHAT SORT OF LEADERSHIP IS REQUIRED?
Leadership is not essentially telling people what to do. It is not the issuing of "calls to action". Leadership is in fact offering a perspective for struggle. What certain comrades, particularly in the IS, tended to suggest was that the answer to most problems was that of more militancy. But this is to be very confused. It is not that the CP and the present executive just refuse to make a call for mass occupations of the colleges, or for mass demos on the streets. The latter, they have in fact done. The point is that, in principle, they cannot offer a perspective for struggle in the colleges which has a chance of success because, as we have explained above, their politics exclude it.
What the LCDSU needs to do is not to make the call to mass occupations its sole reply to all questions. It is to clarify for students the nature of the enemy, why he is fighting autonomy and all questions of that sort whilst delineating the forces at the disposal of students, their potential allies and so on. In other words to provide answers to all the questions which will arise: What is the State? What is the relation of college authorities to it? What is the nature of law and the courts ete. in capitalist society? How can we fight against them? So too with student worker solidarity. What sort of links are possible with workers? What is the social nature of students? Is NUS a trade union? And so on and so forth.
It is the clarifying of these questions and the working out of a policy based on it which is what the April Council of the NUS should have done. It didn't do this. This is why the LCDSU has called a conference provisionally for May 13th to do precisely these things. It is vital that all militants attend and sort out these questions so that we are armed in this vital struggle against the State.
-J. R. Clynes.
For any information about registration for the LCDSU conference, material already submitted, ete. or any information about LCDSU write c/o Students Union, Northern Poly.
Holloway Road, London, N.I.