NUS leaders out of touch

IF YOU judged the atmosphere on student campuses by the policy that got passed at National Union of Students (NUS) conference, you wouldn't have known that there have been occupations and protests against the Israeli invasion of Gaza or that many universities are facing savage spending cuts. But with a NUS leadership that believes a 200 strong lobby of parliament is better than a near 1,000 strong march through London to do something about the crippling debt students face, this was hardly unexpected.

Despite the depressing nature of the conference, Socialist Students managed to make several good interventions, including contributions from conference floor, a rousing 'Bloc of 15' (elected reps of part-time students) election speech and discussions with student delegates about our ideas.

Our mood was kept up by the news of Visteon car workers occupying their plants over redundancies and the fantastic 2 April Youth Fight for Jobs march, which inspired us to do a short lunchtime stall in Blackpool town centre. The conclusion that the Socialist Students delegates to the conference drew was that the leadership of NUS is incapable of leading the struggles of students which will unfold in the coming year.