Britain: Marxists Make their Mark in Student Elections

The month of March is the season for student union elections in Britain. Thanks to the setting up of Marxist societies, and as a result of the tremendous student movements of recent years, Socialist Appeal are now present on many campuses across the country, and a solid base of young Marxists now exists in several universities. Socialist Appeal comrades stood in two student union elections recently: Ben Gliniecki and Arsalan Ghani stood for President of the Students Union and President of the Graduate Union in Cambridge University; Nico Baldion and Paul Bolton stood for the positions of President and Education Officer respectively at the University of Arts London.

Cambridge University Student Union

Ben Gliniecki, a member of Socialist Appeal and the Cambridge Marxist Discussion Group, stood for President of the Cambridge University Student Union (CUSU), with a campaign slogan of "For a fighting student union". Ben consistently argued the case for socialism, explaining that cuts and austerity were causing severe damage to our university and to the non-academic services we use in Cambridge in our day to day lives, and pointing out that these cuts are not motivated by an ideological hatred of the welfare state or public services, but that they are the material result of a crisis of capitalism.

Throughout the campaign, and in all election material, Ben argued that the only way in which to fight these cuts is to link up with other organisations, such as trade unions, and together put forward a genuine socialist alternative to austerity. Ben also linked the election campaign to the “week of action” and “national walkout” that the NUS (National Union of Students) had called. (Since calling for this action, the NUS and many local student union leaderships have tried to put a lid on anything actually happening. (See link).

During the course of the campaign, we received thousands of hits on our website, www.gliniecki.com. The blog on our website was an important tool which we used to flesh out some of our ideas and which allowed us to reach students through the social media. A joint meeting between the University Labour Club and the Marxist Discussion Group on the topic of “Where next for the labour movement?” gave us a chance to put forward our view (and the basis of the campaign) that the student movement and the labour movement are intertwined and must work together to defeat the cuts.

The final results gave Ben 20% of the vote, out of around 3500 votes cast; that is to say that over 700 people chose to vote for a candidate who openly declared that he is a Marxist and who advocated the case for socialism. And this is in Cambridge University – hardly Petrograd in 1917! Whilst this was not enough to guarantee victory, it is a very encouraging result. In addition, Ben was elected as one-of-five delegates from Cambridge University to the NUS National Conference.

The winning candidate for the position of CUSU President put forward a programme typical of many student union candidates – a vague and abstract manifesto with inoffensive platitudes and no mention of trying to fight against fees or cuts. This candidate was backed by the all layers of the bureaucracy, such as the student press and the current student union leadership, who wanted to ensure that Cambridge would remain a “peaceful place”, free of any militant leadership that would actually help to build a mass movement to fight the cuts.

It was suggested by others on the left that perhaps we may have won the election if we had not been so open about our politics. If we had “toned down” our demands or refused to use the word “socialism” then perhaps we could have won the support of many more students.

However, while this method may be a shortcut to power, it is nothing but a dead end for the movement. How can we hope to build a serious mass movement against austerity if we do not have a coherent picture of how we must fight and what we are fighting for? It is not enough to call for an end to the cuts without understanding why they are being made in the first place and what we can offer as the only alternative. As Marxists, we know that these cuts are the product of a crisis of capitalism, and only by replacing the rotten capitalist system with a healthy socialist one can we hope for progress. This was the position we put forward in the campaign and we have proved that there is a substantial base of support for these ideas amongst students.

The campaign by Arsalan Ghani, also a member of Socialist Appeal and the Cambridge Marxist Discussion Group, for the position of President of the Graduate Union saw him achieve a win, with 52% of the vote. Arsalan argued the case for free education, pointing out that the cuts to higher education were part of a wider austerity programme both in Britain and internationally, and promising to use the position of Graduate Union President to campaign alongside trade unions and the NUS against fees and education cuts. Whilst not as high a profile role as the President of CUSU, the President of the Graduate Union is still an important figure for students in Cambridge University, which has several thousand graduate students from Britain and across the world.

We should be encouraged by the campaign in Cambridge and by the extent of the influence of Marxist ideas among students there. In the face of a student leadership that is passive at best and hostile at worst, it is clear that the task of rebuilding the student movement is a difficult one. But the response to our campaign in Cambridge has shown that the student movement of 2010 and the continued attacks by the government on education have left their marks on the consciousness of students.  Beneath an apparently indifferent or defeatist surface lies real revolutionary spirit.

University of the Arts London

The University of the Arts London student union (SUarts) just held elections in which we ran two candidates; one for SU president and the other for Education Officer. We ran on the basis of the fact that we have been building a Marxist Society in developing a layer of young Marxists here for the past 2 years. We are now the only political society of any kind at the university and have attracted much interest, being featured in the Student paper twice in the past few months, and having been instrumental in building for student support for the strike on November 30th.
The situation in the university is an odd one; it caters for 19000 students of which 40% are international, in 6 unconnected colleges spread all over London with 17 different campuses.

As a result SUarts has recently been a bit of a non-organisation. There is no branch meeting or way to raise resolutions at the SU apart from calling a referendum. Indeed through the process of the campaign we discovered that many people were not aware there was a student’s union or what it was. A reflection of this meant that the only coverage of the election in the student newspaper was a short article of 100 words. Indeed the current SU leadership encourages ignorance of the SU and is responsible for the ‘apathy’ of the student body towards their own organisation.

The majority of our comrades go to Chelsea art college in Pimlico where we hold our Marxist society meetings. It is a small college of 1500 students. The others go to London College of Communication and the London College of Fashion.

As a purely arts university there tends to be a low level of student activism and political awareness. Again we must stress that the SU leadership bears much responsibility for maintaining such a situation, and we are the only society working to raise political consciousness and activism. However as a purely art university it is also facing the complete withdrawal of funding from the government.

We ran openly as Marxists and helped raise the profile of the Marxist society in the university. We ran with the slogan of “For a fighting students union”. We spoke of austerity and how it was affecting us as art students. With the unacceptable rising of fees not sufficient to cover the withdrawal of all funding from the central government’s teaching budget meaning that staff are losing their jobs, the quality is being lowered and the university is being run more and more as a business.

We pointed out that this was caused by the crisis of the capitalist system and that we were being made to pay for the crisis of the bankers. Often people would agree but then say ‘what can you do about it?’

We said we must build SUarts into a fighting students union, so the struggle will last longer than the just a year of having us as lefties in charge. An all-out militant campaign involving the broadest possible mass of students is the only way to fight the cuts. Our election campaign itself was part of just such a militant campaign, our aim at every step was to tell the truth to students, to get them involved in our campaign and raise their consciousness; that way if we won on such a basis, we could transform the student union from top to bottom. If we were elected on the basis of watering down and obscuring our politics, and discouraging students from getting involved, asking only for their votes, we could not transform the student union in the way that is needed; we would be prisoners of the bureaucracy.

We explained the need to link up with the staff unions and wider labour movement in order to stand a real chance of defending the standards at the university, but explained that even this was not a solution by itself. Ultimately a political solution was necessary and that in our opinion that solution was socialism.

We also showed we were serious in building a fighting student union by launching a petition in support of, and calling on SUarts to organise for, the March 14th action. The SU sabbatical had previously refused to organise any anti cuts campaign with the excuse that their budget was cut and therefore they didn’t have the money and besides the students are apathetic, but best of luck to us. We collected 100 names and emails as part of this.

Generally the response to our campaign was positive, especially in LCC which has already seen a load of course closures, and almost everyone we spoke to was sympathetic to our views. Many spoke of how their course was closing or how one of their technicians or tutors was being made redundant, although most people weren’t used to talking politics. In this way we were breaking new ground at the university by doing this work.

That said our competitors ran on a campaign of having a beard (literally) or dressed up in wolf suits so there wasn’t much of an argument challenging us from them. In our opinion such an attitude from activists (or rather careerists) is criminal. It is no wonder students are ‘apathetic’ from student politics, for them it is a circus. The contempt for student intelligence and interests is also displayed, not only in the tiny article about the campaign in the student paper, but also in the fact that there was no hustings or debate organised whatsoever.

The other candidates had to their advantage an aggressive attitude to campaigning, bribing people with sweets is quicker than convincing them.

In the end all the positions were taken by the incumbent sabbatical team. In our opinion this shows that they were able to use to advantage the ‘networks’ available to them after 1 year in office, rather than support for their policies (or lack thereof!).

We achieved 19% of the vote. We think that is an excellent result, considering the objective difficulties and lack of a platform to raise our ideas. Around 500 students voted for us on the basis of a clear socialist programme and honesty. We understood from the beginning that the main aim of the campaign, the first such one we have run, was not to win, but to raise our ideas, meet people, and to start building a political, socialist movement amongst the students here. We can proudly say that has been achieved.