Weekly Worker 662 Thursday March 1 2007 Subscribe to the Weekly Worker

Fountains and fireworks

David Sabbagh and Laurie McCauley report from the University of Sheffield student union elections, where five members of Communist Students are standing for office

Communist Students stood five candidates for the University of Sheffield student union council sabbatical elections, which end this week. They were Ben Lewis, who stood for union president, David Sabbagh (welfare), Laurie McCauley (finance), Jamie Tedord (activities) and Carey Davies (education). We did not contest three posts and gave critical support to the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s Louise Gold, who stood for women’s officer.

The decision to run was made some time ago, but before we did so we invited other left student groups to join CS and stand on a united, openly revolutionary platform. Unfortunately they all rejected this invitation out of hand - not even the most basic of discussion as to what would be included in such a platform was held.

Our aims in standing were twofold: firstly to raise class-consciousness within the general student population; and secondly to highlight the failings of the current student left - in short putting the politics back into ‘student politics’, which for too long has harboured bureaucratic careerists and featured freak shows at election time.

Regarding class-consciousness, this was always going to be an uphill struggle - rather obviously many of the attitudes found in student communities mirror those in the rest of society. Clearly, given the conditions that we are currently operating under, it would be no easy task for us to promote revolutionary ideas. Nevertheless, we had a good reception at both hustings events and found that those disillusioned with the pseudo-democracy of the union council and the National Union of Students were receptive to our ideas. Significantly we noted that young muslim women were particularly open to what we had to say.

As was to be expected though, we were subjected to a good deal of political slander. This ranged from being called Stalinist and lectured that “communism doesn’t work - look at Russia”, to being dismissed as insane - didn’t we know communism is irrelevant to student issues? The zenith of this was reached when returning officer David White referred to “lining up and shooting people” after comrade Lewis’s speech went down very well with the hustings audience. Quite rightly, he was booed and jeered for this act of spineless political bias.

Despite all this, CS managed to make a considerable impact on campus. We distributed over 5,000 leaflets - and were at the receiving end of an anti-communist poster counter-campaign (one strangely suggested that we wanted to “suck Billy Bragg’s cock”). And we certainly succeeded in engaging with students, and at least managed to get people thinking (sometimes this took place in a very simplistic manner - witness the graffiti daubed on a toilet wall: “CS would fuck the NUS and start a class war, so I am voting for them”).

Our fellow candidates, on the other hand, were running on the usual minimalist and localist platforms that not only steer clear of real politics, but in fact are incapable of making much of a difference even within Sheffield University. True, there were plenty of vague ‘ethical’ policies and environmental quick fixes for Sheffield students on offer. But concrete promises from candidates running under such slogans as “your welfare princess” and “splat Matt” included a bonfire night firework display and an ice cream parlour on campus. A candidate for finance officer claimed the introduction of barbecue sauce in the union takeaway had been a great victory for democracy. And yet CS comrades were the ones treated as the joke candidates in some quarters.

Apart from comrade Gold of the AWL, Sam Durk of the Socialist Workers Party and Student Respect stood for activities officer against Jamie Tedford. While we knew comrade Gold was going to stand and decided to give her critical support, the nomination of comrade Durk came as a surprise to CS members.

After reading her platform several CS members began to have second thoughts about giving comrade Gold even critical support. Her ‘socialism’ seemed like an add-on to her platform - the commitment to free education came after such promises as water fountains in the female toilets. Not only this, but she did not stand as AWL or even Education Not For Sale - she was apparently a No Sweat candidate (by contrast, Ben Lewis, the only CS candidate who is a member of the CPGB, stated this prominently in his manifesto).

Comrade Durk did stand on a more political platform. He was representing Respect, not the SWP and his campaign centred on the call to fund education, not war. Whilst this slogan demonstrated a more serious political commitment than the demand for water fountains, it was more or less the beginning and end of what he had to say - apart from a sentence in his election address on climate change.

Two other candidates were members of Student Broad Left, but did not declare this in their election material - but, to be honest, their policies were largely indistinguishable from the non-political candidates in any case.

Comrades from the Socialist Party did not stand, saying that their student base was not large enough. We were told by one SP comrades that even debating with us was a waste of time, let alone agreeing to a principled campaign to put before students.

The first hustings was especially well attended. Each candidate had only a minute in which to make their case, followed by two questions, cherry-picked by the current president, replies to which were also limited to a minute. Each of our comrades gave a description of a particular aspect of our politics and delivered calm, if necessarily brief answers to the questions. We had to field some jocular and deliberately obscure questions, such as “Do you believe in historical materialism?” - rather like asking an astronomer if they believe in their telescope.

Our speeches were warmly received from a good section of the audience - not only from some well known leftwingers, including Labour comrades, but also from individuals not linked to any group. Special mention must go to our presidential candidate, Ben Lewis, whose barnstorming speech got prolonged applause and was interrupted by cheering at one point. He indicted the National Union of Students leadership on counts of bureaucracy and apolitical stagnation. Comrade Lewis also committed all the CS candidates to giving £4,000 of their officer’s salary back into union projects if elected.

Our presence did seem to genuinely worry the other candidates, prompting one to argue that his own policies are “realistic, not idealistic”. Little did he realise that this is an apt slogan for Communist Students: we are, after all, materialists, and our demands are set realistically - at the level of what students actually need!

The fact that the other candidates were forced to adapt their own responses to what we said shows that despite their disparaging remarks they themselves considered us a credible alternative. Hopefully we have convinced more than a few of the university’s students of this.

Read on: Youth and students Weekly Worker archive

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