Chris Marks #1 for NUS President

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02/26/2010

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I am standing for President at this year's NUS national conference (Newcastle, 13-15 April) to help student officers and activists build a figh... (More) I am standing for President at this year's NUS national conference (Newcastle, 13-15 April) to help student officers and activists build a fighting alternative to the current leadership of NUS, who have trashed our national union's democracy to protect the Labour government from a serious fight back against cuts and fees.

As New Labour makes hundreds of millions in cuts, anti-cuts and free education campaigns are blossoming across the country, we need an NUS that backs them instead of standing in their way.

I am sabbatical Vice-President (Education) at Hull University Union - elected as a fighting, socialist candidate in a traditionally right-wing union and helping to build an activist culture here over the last two years. I played a central role in organising last year's national demonstration for free education in London.

I have been a socialist, anti-war and anti-fascist activist since I was 16. Before I went to university, I was a UCU activist and branch secretary at Westminster College in London.

I am a member of Education Not for Sale and Workers' Liberty, and Northern co-convenor of the new National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts http://conventionagain...

I stand for the following policies:

- No, cuts are not inevitable: students and workers should not pay for the bosses' crisis. For an NUS that helps organise mass direct action against cuts and fees. Financial, organisational and political support for local anti-cuts campaigns. 100 percent support for workers fighting back, in education and beyond. Struggles like Visteon, Vestas and Tower Hamlets College show the way to win.
- No to higher fees, no to a graduate tax! NUS must demand free education and living grants for all, in FE and HE. Stop the cuts, stop privatisation - tax the rich to fund education and public services. For a first term national demonstration in London.
- Education should be a right, available to all as a public service and controlled by students, workers and communities, not a commodity churned out in education factories to produce a profit and pliant workers for exploitation.
- Support the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts.
- For a mass campaign to unionise students who work. Campaign for a real living wage, without exemptions or age differentials. Fight to scrap the anti-union laws.
- Fighting the Tories does not mean apologising for New Labour. Fight to impose student demands on the Labour government, not New Labour demands on students.
- For a democratic national union. Scrap the new constitution and the plans to merge with NUSSL. No to trustee boards; fight for a longer, sovereign national conference and a national executive that controls the union's operations. Defend the autonomy of the Liberation Campaigns.
- Fight sexism, homophobia, disability discrimination and all forms of racism. Neither Islamophobia nor anti-semitism is acceptable in the student movement, on our campuses or in society. Fight the government's attempts to turn universities into police agencies spying on Muslim students. Stand up to the religious bigots: for a woman's right to choose. Solidarity with asylum-seekers' and migrant workers' struggles - no one is illegal! For socialist policies that fight the fascist BNP and the social decay on which it feeds.
- Student struggles in countries like France and Austria are an inspiration! Build campaigning links with students' and workers' struggles internationally.
- For an outward-looking, political NUS that campaigns on issues from fighting climate change to solidarity with the Palestinians to demanding the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
- For left unity. I am committed to the maximum possible campaigning unity between different sections of the student activist left - including discussions between the different organisations and individuals standing in these elections to make sure there is only one left candidate f (Less)