GUILD ELECTIONS

Student RESPECT stood a number of candidates for positions in the Guild elections.

John Cooper stood for President, gaining 370 votes, with the incumbent, Darran Martin, winning with 1002 votes. This was a good performance, as we gained over one third of the incumbent's vote, who was standing effectively on a slate which had huge support. Given the fact that we stood for this position on a political platform too, this was an encouraging result.

Ayisha Khan deserves special congratulations and thanks for her fantastic result for Campaigns: she got 417 votes against the winner's 552. Again, this is highly encouraging, and shows that students are interested in campaigns around issues like the occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan, Islamophobia, and the marketisation of student life under New Labour.

Both of our candidates for NUS have been delegated: Marcia Banasko and John Cooper. It is vital that NUS becomes a fighting national union that is opposed im practice to war and the neoliberal attacks that we face.

Read on below for more information about Student RESPECT's intervention at NUS.

NUS NEWS

Student Respect is launching a challenge to the stagnant leadership of the National Union of Students.

This is set to change the face of student politics.

At last year's national conference, Student Respect shocked the NUS leadership when Suzie Wylie was elected to the part-time executive with the fourth highest vote out of twelve positions – ahead of the traditionally dominant "Labour students" candidates.

This year an even bigger shock could be in store with Student Respect candidates contesting four of the six full time positions in the national leadership at the forthcoming annual conference (to be held in Blackpool on 27-29 March 2007). Rob Owen, Assed Baig, Clare Solomon and Siobhan Brown will form the spearhead of a challenge that aims to drive real, radical, activist politics into the heart of the NUS.

Assed is a Muslim activist who made the national news last year after being expelled from his FE college for political campaigning.

This is the start of the battle against the NUS leadership to win an anti-war, anti-racist national union, committed to the fight against Islamophobia and for free education.

"For far too long the National Union of Students leadership has been less a general staff for the student movement and more a nursery for New Labour careerists – those days are drawing to a close," says Respect MP George Galloway.

"The thirst among students for radical politics is evident from the huge meetings the anti-war movement and Respect have had this academic year – in many colleges the biggest political meetings anyone can remember.

"That spirit is, via little noticed elections for delegates to the NUS conference, reaching into the parched recesses of the official student movement.

"Those who try to sell bankrupt Blairite policies to a generation who are rejecting them are heading for a major upset, just as the author of those policies visibly fades by the hour."

It's time to stand up. It's time to fight back. It's time to start winning.

VOTE Student Respect – Peace, Justice, Equality AT NUS CONFERENCE 2007!

[from www.respectcoalition.org]