By: Ben Ramanauskas
At this year’s NUS Annual Conference, the outgoing NUS
President Megan Dunn, claimed that it was the ‘world’s largest democratic
student gathering.’ Given that she was elected by a few hundred delegates, who
were in turn elected by a tiny proportion of their elected student bodies, it
is difficult to understand how she could make such a claim. The NUS Annual
Conference is about as democratic and narrow minded as the National Congress of
the Communist Party of China. At the Conference, a motion for a ‘one member,
one vote’ system was defeated by the NUS politburo. The NUS does not care about
democracy or ensuring that every student’s voice is heard, they are only
interested in furthering the warped ideology of its leaders.
Not only is the NUS undemocratic, the Conference further
demonstrated just how out of touch and irrelevant the NUS has become. The
delegates this year called for the banning of the social media apps because
some people were using them to say hurtful things. More disturbingly, however,
were the calls from some delegates to scrap Holocaust Memorial Day as it is not
inclusive.
To top it all off, the delegate this year elected as their
President, Malia Bouattia. As a result, the NUS now has as its leader somebody
who refused to condemn ISIS, but is more than happy yo brand the University of
Birmingham as a ‘Zionist outpost’ due to its large number of jewish students.
The fact that the NUS is now led by somebody who has
expressed anti-semitic views should come as no surprise. For the past few
years, the NUS has been led by coterie of out of touch, illiberal who regard
anyone who does not agree with them as a bigot. For example, in a bizarre move
several months ago, the LGBT office of the National Union of Students, Fran
Cowling, refused to attend a panel debate at Canterbury Christ Church
University. The bewildering reasoning behind her decision was that Peter
Tatchell was also going to be part of the debate- a man whom she believes is a
racist and not an ally of the LGBT community.
So, what is that caused Fran Cowling to cast such aspersions
upon Peter Tatchell’s character? Surely he must have renounced his life’s work,
recanted his views, tattooed a swastika on his forehead, and been filmed
burning the rainbow flag? Whatever it was, it must surely have been unsparingly
vile and bigoted to have deserved such odium from the LGBT officer of the NUS?
Actually, the reason why Miss Cowling and her NUS cronies launched such a
defamatory attack on Peter Tatchell was because he signed a letter.
Tatchell, along with 130 others, signed a letter warning
about “a worrying pattern of intimidation and silencing of individuals whose
views are deemed ‘transphobic’”. This was enough for a representative of the
NUS to brand Tatchell as a bigot. As a result of the incident, Tatchell and one
of his cosignatories- Cambridge Classics Professor, Mary Beard- were subjects
of a vitriolic twitter attack. Supporters of Miss Cowling- and others within
the anti-free speech movement- called Professor Beard ‘an unrepentant bigot’
and Tatchell a ‘parasite’.
Miss Cowling has refused to debate with Tatchell as she
disagrees with some of his views. One would have thought that it would not be
necessary to point out to one of the leaders of an organisation as large and
well funded as the NUS that a debate with somebody who agrees with you about
absolutely everything is not really a debate, more like a smug, self-satisfied
rant. However, I suspect that Miss Cowling does not care for reasoned, grown up
discussion as she is part of a powerful and petulant clique with the NUS who
crush free speech and brand anyone who does not agree with them as a bigot.
They do not like, and they are unaccustomed to, debate. They have spent far too
long in their echo chamber and are so disconnected from the real world that
they genuinely believe that anybody outside of their inward-looking bubble is
dangerous and must be silenced.
Fran Cowling’s refusal to share a platform with Peter
Tatchell perfectly illustrates the view of some student union leaders that if
you support free speech on campus and do not share the views that are currently
in vogue with the NUS elite, then you must be a bigot and banned from campus.
Peter Tatchell is just the latest victim of the McCarthy style witch hunt that
is currently crushing free speech on campus. For example, and in another ironic
twist, the feminist Germaine Greer was recently accused of being a misogynist
and was banned from attending an event at Cardiff University by student union
leaders.
Tatchell and Greer- in many ways the parents (or possibly
grandparents)- of the identity politics revolution on which the NUS base most
of its actions, now find themselves the victims of it. They stand accused by
these new Jacobins of being counter-revolutionary. In a movement that insists
on doctrinal purity, even the slightest whiff of disagreement or independent
thought must be considered heresy and quickly stamped out. Despite their
contributions to the movement, Tatchell and Greer are now accused of betraying
it and of standing in the way of progress for simply questioning the actions of
the student union leaders. One can just imagine the NUS officers justifying
their actions by quoting Robespierre, “softness to traitors will destroy us all”.
Welcome to the Kafkaesque nightmare that is the NUS. The NUS
and student union leaders are supposed to represent the views of all the
students on their campus and in the entire country. However, they are
increasingly run by apparatchiks determined to promote their own views and
squander their students’ money in order to further their own agenda. For
example, we have seen student unions cancel debates on abortion, and ban
certain magazines and songs. They also decide to adopt certain stances on
various issues such as abortion or the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
These are contentious issues and so student unions should be recognising that
their students have different views on such topics and so should not have their
money spent on promoting a position with which they vehemently disagree. The
most recent example of this was the attempt of the student union at Oxford to
remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College because some of the
students found it to be offensive.
Student leaders squandered the money of the students who they claimed to
represent in an ill-conceived attempt to rewrite history. The students who
spoke out against the injudicious attempt to airbrush history by defacing an
historic building were simply shouted down and accused of supporting
colonialism. Furthermore, in a disturbingly Orwellian move, there have been
suggestions by the Student Union at the LSE that the Free Speech Society should
be banned.
Student union leaders claim to represent all students but
they operate in an environment with all the cultic fervour and diversity of
thought of a Nuremberg Rally. They have stifled and crushed free speech and,
rather than engage in reasoned debate, they simply ban speakers with whom they
disagree and brand them as bigots. These student union leaders use the money
that they receive from students to promote
and enforce their own opinions. If anyone were to have the audacity to question or challenge this new orthodoxy,
then the leaders like Miss Cowling- whip their supporters into a frenzy of
slurs and vitriol resembling Salem in 1692.
It’s time for students to leave the NUS and for them to
establish a truly democratic organisation which actually represents the issues
and concerns of its students instead of a body which only represents the in
vogue views of a tiny left wing clique. The NUS is out of touch and irrelevant,
it’s time to ditch it.
It's time to ditch the NUS
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