Over 170 delegates participated throughout the day in the various workshops and debates. The overwhelming feeling of delegates was that we need an urgent response to the crisis in our education system. The NUS is not going to act to mobilise students so we need to fill that gap and start to rebuild the student movement from below. In this spirit the conference passed the founding statement and three amendments focused on action. Below are the initiatives called by the conference and the results of the committee elections.
Emergency Demonstration - 3pm on Friday the 14th of November
Assemble outside Westminster Cathedral, Victoria Street (5 minutes from Victoria station)
Tax the rich to fund…
- FREE EDUCATION & LIVING GRANTS FOR ALL
- £200 million “missing” from the governments budget for higher education but Billions in bail outs for the bankers
We have seen year-on-year attacks on our right for an education. The latest are cuts to thousands of student grants after a £200 million short-fall from the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills. This comes only a few weeks after the government promised to bail out bankers with billions of tax payer’s money.
(Publicity will be out in the next few days)
For a National Student Demonstration (25th of Feburary)
The existing calls for a national demonstration are positive and need to be turned into real activity on the ground. The conference agreed to call the demonstration for Wednesday the 25th of February assembling at ULU. The demonstration will then be in run up to the government announcing its new budget.
The conference also committed itself to organising an open meeting to discuss the demonstration and take the organisation of it to the next level. The steering committee will meet soon to put together an event where we can both launch the demonstration and draw together as many activists as possible to organise mobilising for it.
A National Tour
The conference noted that many high profile figures support our call to build a student movement for free education. The steering committee will organise contact speakers to organise meetings across the country to discuss what is happening to our education and organise action to defend it.
Election Results:
The following committee was elected:
Chair: Damiani Sourmaidou
Secretary: Yousuf Joondan
Convener: Dominic Kavakeb
Treasurer: Jenny Jones
Communications: Rob Owen
Block of ten:
Tom Wills (Sussex)
Bonolo Woracker (Coventry)
Zakeera Suffee (Essex)
Mpegwa Mwakang'ata (SOAS)
James Norrie (Oxford)
Alison Smith (Plymouth)
Siobhan Brown (Manchester)
James Foley (Glasgow)
Ben Sellers (SOAS)
Matt Vicary (Sheffield Hallam)
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