UC H SUPPORT. EGA Red Weekly 8 April 1976 CENTRAL LONDON COMMITTEE UG-I SAY facing them.
APR Mystified delegates at the National Union of Students conference currently in session at Llandudno heard Charles Clarke, their President, deliver a speech on Monday which papered over all the main problems Clarke, a member of the Communist Party-backed Broad Left grouping, made no mention of the deep crisis in the NUS. Not a hint was given that the right had campaigned successfully for the disaffiliation of a number of students DEMOCRACY The Broad Left has no intention ,of fighting to extend and deepen democracy in the NUS based on the sovereignty of mass meetings In addition, to take up the 'splitters" would have involved a full-blooded attack on the activities of the right wing in the unions; and it was Clarke who personally led a campaign for a joint statement between the Broad Left, the Federation of Conservative Students, and the Labour and Liberal student organThis statement pretended that the disaffiliation campaign was the work of a few right-wing 'extremBy linking their star with the FCS, the Broad Left hide the fact that the FCS are aiming not for the break-up of the NUS, but for an NUS which fully takes the responsibility for the crisis of educanon and puts it on the back of those who study and work within Such tactics are strongly reminiscent of the period when the Broad Left tried to convince students that in order to win higher grants they had to ally with 'progressive Vice-Chancellors - the same people who while declaring their devotion to education were actually starting to implement the cuts and college closures which students face today. NHS/Students 5 leaves the student membership with no clear line of advance.
The main priority for the student movement as soon as the conference is over will be linking its opposition to the cuts in action with the strike call for 26 May against the Labour Government's mass unemployment policies. Clarke did recognise the importance of the National Assembly on Unemployment and coupled this with a call for the defence of the 44 arrested Right to Work marchers. What he failed to mention was that the majority of the Executive had roundly condemned the Right to Work March initiative, refused to support it in any way, and came within an inch of circulating all student unions with a specific recommendation to boycott it.
IMG delegates at the conference have been campaigning for the NUS to call and organise for strike action in the colleges in cooperation with the trade unions on 26 May.
REVEAL Conference resolutions put by the IMG and accepted by student unions also call for a campaign to open the books of the college authorities to reveal all plans for cutbacks, and on this basis to plan out a fight against their implementation through the formation of action committees in every locality to build a student-worker alliance in practice. In this way students can link their fight against education cuts to the movement beginning to develop Inside Cne working class against Labour's cutbacks.
The resolutions insist that in ord er to guard student grants and social expenditure as a whole against the ravages of inflation, automatic compensation for inflation should be built in to increased cash levels.
The conference will also have before it resolutions to commit the NUS leadership to join the campaig for recall Labour Party and TUC conferences, to break with the policies of the Government and to put