THIS TERM'S NUS conference comes at an explosive time in the student movement. In the Labour Left Liaison. A more spectacular form of the same contradiction faces the 'Democratic Left' leadership of the National which controls the NUS.
Students the forefront many ulU" gressive struggles in Britain: we were the largest single contngent on tne ivovem Mov ement demonstthiod 1985 Anti-Apartheid during term time; student opposition to the ÚS bombing o1 Libya was widespread; the recent visit by Sinn rein councillors to Britain saw more meetings in colleges than with local councils.
TeOl withdrawal ion COT port given Greenham DUD UIL objectives the Anti-Apartheid Organisation of Labour Students, Britain, especially for comprehensive mandatory sanctions. However concrete action on this has come from individual colleges rather than from the NUS nationally.
NUS London executive On paper NUS supports self-defence by the black communities against racist police harassment and calls for the scrapping of immigration controls.
Most of these policies nave beeno onor lade the NUS by NOLS. But to WOK al ae camoas ld have been waged by the NUS under NOLS's leadership you wouldn't think it.
Instead of taking these policies to their logical conclusion, and waging a conSolcn canbae orniet in the movement and in society as a whole the leadership of NOLS and therefore of the NUS has put its support behind Kinnock. But Kinnock stands against all of these It has become especially clear since the last Labour with the dropping of nationalisation policy, the call for more 'law order' instead defence of the black communities against the racism of the police and the courts, and the wholesale retreat by the Labour leadership in the face of Tory cuts and attacks that a leadership waichnerene Lne TeaC tionary politics fought for by Kinnock at Labour Party conference is incapable of being a leadership of the NUS.
election of the next Labour government to the exclusion of all other struggles.
Despite the majority in the NUS for support for so many or lne suuggies or tne working class and the op pressed both in Britain and internationally_ the NUS does noi implement this support. The _pressure to implement it, furthermore, has not been organised.
The problem in organising this support has been the total lac of platform in the NUS for the campaigning left in the Labour Party ie the Campaign Group of Labour MPs and Labour Left Liaison. This gaping noie nas meant that the op position to the strategy of the NOLS leadershi ha. been organised by a current which has pretences to be ing on the left but in fact bends imperialism precisely the issues on which the greatest victories have been won in the NUS.
'Socialist Students in NOLS' (SSiN) has DUSEtions in favour of a federal united before Bntish withdrawal. and fot the formation of a workers Jalty South Africa against building solidarity with the African National Congress. This opposition is no alternative to the preforms of political organisa tion are banned. Childrer regularly get months detention for throwing stones at military vehicles There are over 120 Israel settlement on expropriatec Palestinian land There currently somewhere between 120,000 200,000 Palestinians the occupied territories who come into the territories work They are treated in exactly une same way as South African migrant workers they are not allowed to stay overnight. They not paid unemployment bene fim opesocial seneil. They are paid roughly a third as much as the average salary of an Israeli worker. They are without doubt used as dispensible, ill paid, effec sent NOLS leadership. These positions are in fact to the right of present NUS policy.
adoption by the NUS of SSiN's formula of a two-state solution in Palestine against the call of the Palestine Liberation Organisation for democratic, secular stale would have disastrous consequences for Palestinians be great step backwards tor NUS
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Party the 'soft left' is pulled between allying with Kinnock or with the campaigning left in the Labour