Disaffiliation is contrary to our principles of collectivism

By Dannie Grufferty

Labour students, like the dear old party we all keep close to our hearts, has its faults.

Being the student wing of the Labour Party, it exists to offer both a network and support to clubs up and down the country; like Young Labour is the wing representing and working for youth.

I’m not sure we have seen in our party’s century-or-so old history, such a crucial time in which we can shape our party’s future. As one of my all-time faves Jon Cruddas said to Cambridge Labour Club on Thursday; “This isn’t about being nostalgic, this isn’t about being sentimental about the past”. And as he also said, it’s not about selecting hand-picked individuals to feed into policy reviews for the party.

It’s about going back to our heart, the place and people upon which our party was founded; and thereby attempting to find our unified ideology. The policy comes only after we have achieved that.

Disaffiliating from Labour Students, is frankly contrary to our principles of collectivism. My argument may be age-old, but it stands true – if you don’t like it, why not try to influence it from the inside and work to change it?

Sure, uncontested elections bother me, and I mean really bother me. At the Young Labour/Labour Students conference in Glasgow, I had a long chat with Nottingham Labour Students who had challenged the full-time candidates in the election hustings over the lack of contested positions. There’s not really any excuse for it, and it’s not right. We are a ‘democratic socialist’ party as our card states.

Yet what do our members want – students to be asked nicely to stand? Why not just stand? There’s no complicated process in putting yourself forward, you just need a couple of Labour clubs to nominate you, and your name’s on the ballot.

The discussions are the same every year, and in actual fact, it is so much more transparent as an organisation than it has ever been in its history. It’s been accused of cliquey-ness, and even bullying, but steps have been taken to combat this. Procedures to complain are transparent, and complaints are taken very seriously. I really do believe that this has made a world of difference. Members who in the past resigned over feeling excluded, have since re-joined the organisation and I think actions such as these speak for itself.

Furthermore, Labour Students allows members into election counts; and informs members in a transparent way of elections in both Labour Students; as well as the opportunities open for students to put themselves forward as Labour students candidate in NUS.

Of course more can, and should be done in elections. Engaging liberation and under-represented groups is nowhere near good enough. Liv Bailey, who was elected chair at the weekend is our first openly gay woman chair. I’m pretty sure we’ve never had a BME chair. We also need more diverse clubs on the ground, still many to me appear to be nothing but gentlemen’s drinking clubs, who as I said in my NUS candidacy election speech ‘welcome ministers off planes’ rather than actually go out campaigning.

The Labour Party is not like that. As Liv said in her election speech, Labour Students needs to move beyond its cliquey – and often – bullying past. We are not a stamp-of-approval for the party – we are there to engage and challenge them in policy and practice.

We’re a student organisation, not a social society; a plural movement helping to support the leaders of the future (and no I’m not referring to careerist politicians….)

Let’s have a conversation with the clubs choosing to disaffiliate, work to re-engage them, and the hundreds of angry, disengaged student activists whose true home should be in the Labour Party. We can build a mass movement against the cuts, and Labour Students must be part of that movement.

A longer version of this article can be read at the Red Letter Blog – where this article was originally published.