was the founding president of the NUS. He was later the first Director-General of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Origins and early history The NUS was formed on 10 February 1922 at a meeting held at the
University of London. At this meeting, the Inter-Varsity Association and the International Students Bureau (which organised student travel and had been lobbying for a national body) agreed to merge. Founding members included the unions of
University of Birmingham,
Birkbeck, University of London,
London School of Economics,
Imperial College (who first left in 1923 and have subsequently rejoined and left three times, the last time being in June 2008),
King's College London (who supplied the first President,
Sir Ivison Macadam) and the
University of Bristol.
Politicisation and Broad Left, 1968–1982 In the aftermath of the
First World War in its founding constitution, the National Union of Students had adopted from the outset a "non political" clause in its charter in an attempt to distance itself from the reasons that the War had broken out. It had thus concerned itself with student interaction and cheap travel, student grants and student interests. This apolitical consensus was challenged in concert with the international
protests of 1968 and as the Cold War intensified. At the 1969 NUS conference, then president
Trevor Fisk came up against
Jack Straw (then close to
Bert Ramelson of the
Communist Party of Great Britain, but much later Foreign Secretary under the
New Labour government of
Tony Blair) over the issue. Straw supported student protests against US military involvement in the
Vietnam War, while Fisk advocated neutrality; Straw's side won and the "no politics" clause was removed. A new era began for the NUS, where political agitation and protest became institutionalized. Straw was followed up as president by
Digby Jacks, also representing the Radical Student Alliance (formed in 1966 by Fergus Nicholson) and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. According to contemporary British government reports, the RSA was connected to the Trotskyist-led
Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and had close links with the
Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (organising a protest following
Rudi Dutschke's shooting). The government report stated "If they have an ideological bible it consists of the work of Professor
Herbert Marcuse,
One-Dimensional Man." In line with the Marcusian viewpoint of championing politicised
minority groups, throughout the 1970s, the NUS came to support what it called "liberation campaigns", including;
homosexual rights (the first national group to do so in 1973),
radical feminism and
black nationalism. At the same time, the NUS adopted a
No Platform policy; a concept pioneered by the
IMG in 1972; to stifle the campus organisation and speech of nationalistic British groups that it declared to be "racist or fascist". At the time, this was aimed at the
National Front and the
Monday Club (a faction in the
Federation of Conservative Students). The union was also involved in affairs in
Northern Ireland, where most higher education establishments there were members of both the NUS and
Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn (AMLÉ), though this differed from case to case. Indeed, two presidents of the NUS earlier on in the 1960s were from
The Queen's University of Belfast (Queen's or QUB); T. William Savage and T. Geoff Martin. The 1968–69 unrest in Northern Ireland saw the onset of
The Troubles and a sectarian divisiveness come to the fore. After members of the
QUBSU organised a protest against the hardline
Unionist politician
Bill Craig, the then
Minister of Home Affairs, some members such as
Bernadette Devlin,
Eamonn McCann and
Michael Farrell decided to found the
Trotskyist group
People's Democracy in 1968, which played a role in the
Northern Ireland civil rights movement. Following a meeting in
Galway in 1972, to combat divisions, it was agreed that a group called the
NUS-USI would be founded with dual-membership to cover Northern Ireland. One of the NUS' protest campaigns which was of particular significance during the 1970s and the 1980s was the boycott campaign against
National Party governed
South Africa as part of the
Anti-Apartheid Movement. In 1970, NUS vice president Tony Klug visited South Africa and met with
Steve Biko of the
SASO among others. In the 1980s, the NUS played a significant role in getting
Barclay's Bank to divest from South Africa, attacking it as "
Boerclay Bank".
History in the 21st century Fairtrade The campaign has since been extended into Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK), an educational charity responding to the climate emergency and ecological crisis. The Fairtrade Foundation collaborated with the NUS in awarding The Fairtrade Universities and Colleges Award, which started as a pilot in 2017. As of 2020, twelve universities had achieved Fairtrade status.
Education finance Under the leadership of
Wes Streeting the NUS abandoned its long-standing commitment to
free education and backed a
graduate tax as its preferred outcome of the
Browne Review into higher education funding. Before the
2010 General Election, the NUS invited candidates to sign a
pledge not to raise tuition fees, receiving over 1000 signatories from prospective parliamentary candidates. This became a very high-profile campaign when many Liberal Democrat MPs, who all signed individual NUS pledges stating they would vote against any rise in tuition fees if elected, had to abstain or do the opposite as part of their coalition agreement. The NUS, under new leader
Aaron Porter, organised
a national protest attended by thousands in November 2010, demanding an end to education cuts. The march route passed
Whitehall and the
Conservative Party headquarters at
Millbank Tower. As they marched past the building, some protesters diverted in to the courtyard of
Millbank Tower and began an occupation of the building. With an attendance of over 50,000 people, it was the largest British demonstration since the
Iraq War protest. This led to various more demos until the rise in tuition fees was passed. The day before the vote to allow a rise in tuition fees, the
Daily Telegraph reported that they had seen emails that suggested
Aaron Porter had supported, rather than increase
tuition fees, cuts of up to 80% should be made to student support packages including grants and loans. Porter responded to the claims on NUS Connect that "In all of these meetings and communications we stated our firm and clear opposition to cuts" and that the distortion of the discussions was "political desperation from a coalition government losing the arguments on its own policies". On 9 April 2014 the National Union of Students passed policy at its national conference to reverse its position on education funding. The call for a
graduate tax was abandoned in favour of calls for
free education funded through progressive taxation.
Governance review The 2008 Conference in Blackpool was dominated by the governance review debate and vote. The proposals were for a restructuring of the running of the Union but the vote was lost by 25 votes (a two-thirds majority was required). The review was criticised for what was felt by detractors to be an attack on the organisation's democratic accountability. Its supporters however defended the review as providing a more 'innovative' corporate structure which was hoped to make it more credible in negotiating policy, rather than simply 'reactive'. This was not well received by many in the executive with President, Gemma Tumelty, vowing to press ahead with reform. The perceived lack of progress on governance reform also prompted
Imperial College Union to hold a referendum on disaffiliation.
ISIS, Malia Bouattia, and disaffiliations In October 2014, NUS National Executive Committee rejected a motion to condemn the militant group
Islamic State because some executive members "felt that the wording of the motion being presented would unfairly demonise all Muslims rather than solely the group of people it set out to rightfully condemn." NUS received criticism for this stance given its previous condemnation of the
UKIP political party. Despite a statement from NUS confirming that "a new motion will be taken to the next NUS National Executive Committee meeting, which will specifically condemn the politics and methods of ISIS and offer solidarity for the Kurdish people," media coverage of the vote caused some students' union members to speculate that the NUS itself has been infiltrated by extremist sympathisers. At the following executive meeting on 3 December 2014, a similar motion, which condemned ISIS, expressed solidarity with the Kurdish people, and called on NUS to challenge "Islamophobia and all forms of racism being whipped up" was resubmitted and easily passed. At the 2016 NUS conference,
Malia Bouattia was elected president with 50.9% of the vote defeating
Megan Dunn who had sought re-election. Bouattia was soon subject to
several allegations of
antisemitism; an October 2016 report by the House of Commons
Home Affairs Select Committee described her comments as "outright racism", and said that she was not taking issues of antisemitism on university campuses seriously enough. Bouattia was condemned by over 300 Jewish student leaders, the
Union of Jewish Students and
Oxford University Student Union. In response to her election, students at
Durham,
Loughborough,
Hull,
Aberystwyth,
Oxford,
Cambridge,
Manchester,
Essex,
York,
King's College London,
Nottingham,
UWE,
Leicester,
Queen Mary University of London and
Reading University began campaigning to disaffiliate from the NUS.
Newcastle,
Portsmouth,
Hull and
Loughbrough disaffiliated; the remainder maintained affiliation, although NUS reportedly broke campaigning rules at
Oxford,
Cambridge, and
Christ Church. In April 2017, Bouattia was defeated in her re-election by
Shakira Martin, the union's vice-president for further education, who received 56% of the vote. Martin pledged "unity", "pragmatism", and putting "NUS back into the hands of its membership". Moderate groups such as the
Organised Independents and
Union of Jewish Students sought to reform the organisation to prevent further disaffiliations, passing major
democratic reform motions. The changes, developed from "two [years] of consultation with hundreds of students' unions, [as well as] legal and expert advice," were described as "the most comprehensive and wide-ranging structural reforms in NUS history".
Threat of bankruptcy On 2 November 2018, it was reported that the NUS faced bankruptcy. The 2017 reforms had not been delivered, and several years of financial mismanagement had created a significant decline in resources. Martin welcomed the vote, calling it a "momentous decision to endorse reform and deliver the vision of members".
New NUS In 2020, NUS official split into two organisations: NUS UK and NUS Charity. NUS UK focuses on campaigning with students while NUS Charity focuses on supporting students' unions.
Report into institutional antisemitic behaviour In May 2022, the UK Government announced it would sever all ties with the NUS on the basis claiming that it had failed to tackle “antisemitic rot at the heart". Also in May 2022, NUS announced that Rebecca Tuck QC would lead an independent investigation into allegations of antisemitism within NUS. Following her inquiry, Shaima Dallali was dismissed as NUS President in November 2022. The independent investigation found that NUS has failed to sufficiently challenge antisemitism and hostility towards Jews in its own structures. Jewish students have been "subjected to harassment" and NUS policies have been breached. The NUS apologised to Jewish students and said it would implement the report's recommendations. ==Democracy==