and trade unionists.
There was a time when the NUS Conference played the role of a reassuring week of self-congratulation for the Broad Left leadership.
All good things come to an end, however, and not even NUS can be spared the blows of the capitalist crisis. Colleges up and down the country face closure; the value of the grant has reached an all-time low; long-term unemployment faces increasing numbers of school and college leavers; the Government has launched a racist attack on overtionate increase in fees; already inadequate creche facilities are being closed down - in fact, the list is endless.
Downturn The seeming inability of the NUS leadership to react to these attacks in anything but a token fashion has le:! to demoralisation and a downturn in student activism. This has been demonstrated graphically by the spate of disaffiliations from NUS, including former Broad Left strongholds such as Strathclyde University.
The most disturbing feature of these developments is the growing success of the right wing in exploitHundreds of delegates from all over Britain will be gathering this week at the National Union of Students Conference in Llandudno. They will have to elect their leadership for the next year and decide what attitude NUS will take to the attacks of the Labour Government on students. In particular, delegates will be discussing the White Paper on Public Expenditure, which has already provoked mass protest strikes by workers in Dundee and Glasgow.
The NUS Conference is the first in the round of the summer union conferences and despite the weakness of students in launching a fight against the policies of the Government, it will be of significance to both students part of the education.system, the universities.
It would be a great mistake for socialists to underestimate the attrac tion of the right for many students, particularly as the issue on which they launched their offensive ocracy in NUS - is one on which the Broad Left is particularly vulnerable. Because the right want to use the postal ballot and referenda to atomise students in order to prevent any possibility of building a student/worker alliance to defeat the attacks of the Government, the Broad Left's answer of maintaining the status quo is worse than useless. Only a fight to extend the principle of mass meetings as the bastion of decision making in the student unions will expose the right wing campaign for democracy as a recipe for passivity.
The main debate at the conference will be on the cuts in education and grants. But Government economic policy, which came high on the list of priority motions for the conference has not been put on the order paper. IMG delegates will be arguing that this question is indivisible from the attacks on education, and that they should be debated together. a guaranteed job for all; a sliding scale of grants.
order to develop a plan to defend important step in overcoming the - dem bly against Unemployment point to the growth of a fighting movement against the policies of the ents must link their struggles.
Overseas es in overseas students' fees is not along racist lines, preventing the unity essential at this time - it is also a method of introducing further education cuts by the back door. bers of overseas students will lead the sacking of staff.
paign of direct action to block the implementation of this policy at a (PE Student unions taking this as a starting point will be arguing for the restoration of all cuts in the social services, and the protection of spending from inflation; a crash programme of socially useful public works; a sliding scale of wages and benefits;
Their amendment also poses the need for the opening of the college and local authority books to committees of workers and students in education. It further argues that an isolation of students from the workers movement would be the affiliation of NUS as a mass organisation to the Labour Party. The strikes in Dundee and Glasgow and the huge attendence at the National AssemLabour Government to which studThe other main debate will be on the attacks launched by this Government on overseas students. The proposal to implement huge increasonly an attempt to divide students WE NEED , 8» OUR ING WEL OUK MONEY, NO TE IN CUT