Some may not vote lib dem because of your liberal attitudes towards crime.

One thing which I would find personally difficult is working with Labour Students or the Jewish society in our own student union elections but running against them for NUS elections. We all agree on local student issues, that there should be a 24 hour library during exam time, for example or that student issues need to be prioritised, but nationally there is a lot more than Manchester’s library opening hours to discuss.

The money we give NUS at the moment does not seem to bear itself out with tangible benefits for students at Manchester. Perhaps that is an issue of awareness, but it needs to change somehow. There is no reason why some of the money spent lobbying bus companies to improve disabled access could not come from a campaign run by our union.

We should be sceptical of large organisations and query where our money is going. Reform is a good idea, certainly, but I have to wonder - at the end of the day, we as Manchester are still spending £40,000 annually and tuition fees have increased since 1997, not decreased.

If student unions played a more active role in local politics, making students aware that current MPs for the areas they lived in voted for tuition fees, and that local councillors support them, perhaps that would achieve a better end result. This is something which worked well for Stephen Williams Bristol West, but Gerald Kaufman (Manchester Gorton) has consistently voted in favour of tuition fees despite having almost all halls of residence in the constituency.

Chris

I wouldn’t agree that it is not listened to by government, for example. Whilst NUS has suffered key defeats in recent years, perhaps especially on tutition fees and top-up fees, there is much work done in the organisation that is valuable.

Also, bear in mind that NUS has been run by card carrying Labour activists for a long long time, if not as labour students then as ‘independents’ who ‘just happen’ to be labour party members. If that was to change, I predict a much healthier NUS.

For example, the Disabled Students’ campaign (for which I am the elected officer) has recently won millions of pounds of investment into buses in Manchester to make them accessible to disabled students travelling up and down Oxford Rd. We did this pretty much as a lone lobbying voice, but were effecive in making real change for disabled students across Manchester.

We’ve also won reform on Disabled Students’ allowance which was initially a Tory cock up, followed by a Labour means testing nightmare.

These might, at first glace, seem pretty small victories, but they represent the work of one campaign in NUS, one of the four liberation campaigns in this instance.

I totally agree that NUS is not representative of the average student, but surely that in itself is enough to engage and try and change.

On turnout, again I agree that there is a huge problem with convincing students of the relevance of SU elecions, along with NUS politics. But a quick look here:

http://www.manchester.gov.uk/elections/types/local/2006.htm

tells me that, whilst clearly SU elections aren’t great, the problem with voter apathy stretches way outside of the student movement. In the last Manchester City Centre council elections, the turnout was a pathetic 16 per cent.

NUS is what we have, and it is affiliated to by the vast majority of SUs. As Lib Dems, if we don’t like it, I think we have to engage to change it. Apart from anything else, I truly believe in NUS as a vehicle for the wider interests of the party - and I think we’d be failing as Lib Dem activists if we didn’t engage with the student movement as we have it in an attempt to widen the Lib Dem student vote.