‘Labour Students is back- and believe it or not, it’s more united than ever’

There’s an expectation that student politics is bound to be pointless and doomed to be toxic. But since Labour Students was rebuilt a year ago, with a committee drawn from every wing of the party, a large majority of us have worked to emphasise not what divides us but what unites us. And thanks to that work, occasional disagreements notwithstanding, from the perspective of those within it, the student movement has never been so united.  Committee members from every wing of the party alike have worked incredibly hard in that year to build bridges of trust, and the success of our recent summit in Edinburgh with students from across the country was a result of that ever-strengthening sense of common purpose.

The summit reflected the desire to put aside factionalism in the face of a coming general election. National Labour Students (NLS) conference 2023 was a success precisely because committee members from across the party are more determined than ever to work together. Our chair Ben McGowan emphasised from the beginning that the main focus should be on what we have in common, especially on anti-racism and restoring morality to public life. Student members from all factions welcomed Luciana Berger back into the party with a standing ovation and warmly received Anas Sarwar and Douglas Alexander. Luciana’s speech was a particular highlight, and she emphasised how at its best, Labour Students can be a ‘crucial campaigning force’. It was a privilege to hear her first keynote speech since returning to the party and it represented a broader step away from the toxicity, and the tolerance of racist harassment, that pervaded the party before Keir Starmer: as she put it, ‘the party has turned a corner’. 

NLS 2023 showed a growing consensus on priorities as well as principles. Despite some claims that immediate tuition fee abolition is universally supported by members, Labour Club representatives nominated a motion to ‘wholeheartedly support Keir Starmer, Bridget Phillipson, and Matt Western’ on higher education, while the motion on tuition fee abolition received fewer votes. Though many would like to return to a world without tuition fees, those clubs represent a quiet consensus within the student movement which is realistic about what is achievable and is clear-sighted about the order of priorities for the next government. Fundamentally, as the motion stressed, students know that ‘any solution to the decline of our higher education requires the end of Conservative government’. That’s why students are increasingly united that getting Tories and the SNP out is the priority, far before policy specifics. That’s why we spent far more time canvassing than arguing over semantics, with over 100 attendees from every wing of the party out canvassing for Douglas Alexander in East Lothian. 

Indeed, most of what Labour Students do each week is far removed from the stereotypes of committee rooms and splitting hairs over the wording of motions. The first year of the new Labour Students has seen us spend far more time campaigning up and down the country: in Stevenage, Bassetlaw, Finchley and Golders Green, Filton and Bradley Stoke, Medway, Birmingham Northfield, and now Uxbridge, Selby, Mid Bedfordshire, and Rutherglen, to name just a handful of the dozens of seats Labour Students have campaigned in in the last three months.

The point of a student wing must not be about egos and statements. It should be to deliver the Labour government that our generation has been deprived of for so long, the Labour government which will secure a better future for students. Above all else, Labour Students has become a body for organising the vast numbers of Labour-voting students into a mobile campaigning force that transcends faction. And we can build consensus where none seems to exist by focusing on action rather than words, because time is on the side of consensus. 

I was eight when we lost in 2010, and I’m older than most of the attendees who came to NLS 2023. Most have never not known a Tory government, and many now no longer remember the Corbyn era clearly, let alone are still polarised by it. The wonderful thing about the student movement is that it constantly reinvents itself and throws off the past with each annual cycle of matriculation and graduation. Short institutional memories are a blessing as much as they are a curse.

That’s why the new Labour Students is so forthright in emphasising action, not words. The brevity of the student experience makes us focused on the immediate future rather than relitigating a past that didn’t belong to us. Above all else, NLS 2023 turned towards the future rather than faction, and if even Labour Students can do that, the rest of the party certainly can.