Students face struggle We have 1 to build real links with the labour movement'

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NUS deputy president SARAH VEALE spoke to JANE ASHWORTH SARAH Veale was elected Deputy President (Welfare) of the National Union of Studenta last Easter despite a split in the Labour students' vote. Instead of supporting Sarah, a longstanding Labour Party member with a consistent record of opposing the right wing bureaucratic Communist Party domination of NUS executives over the WHAT'S irritated me about NUS in the last few years is that it's played this awful game of being respectable: we can now meet the DES [Department of Education and Science] for hours on end, and they'll listen to us, but what bloody use is that?

They may well listen to us, chat politely about grants, and lament that the cuts are being made, but that's not what it's all about.

There's a desperate need in NUS for strong leadership. Some of us have to be seen making a major stand with the students behind us. We've got to change the way students see themselves. We have to build a feeling of competence -convince students that if we do stick together as a union and speak out, we can get somewhere.

We've got to start building real links •with the past few years, the National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) leadership backed the candidate of the CP/Liberal Left Alliance, Trevor Gill. Labour students refused to vote for more of the same, rejected the NOLS line, and voted in Sarah on the i Socialist Students' Alliance slate.

Sarah Veale labour movement.

In each college there are usually just as many people working there as students. Students have got to see themselves as part of the whole fight against the government, and it'd be a, start if the Exec knew that.

Take the NHS, for instance. I had a bloody great fight to get NUS to do anything about it. They - and "Students have got to see the against the government" this includes the NOLS people - wanted to chuck out a few briefing papers, maybe a poster or two, and leave it at that. INION something about this.

The national event of the week will probably be a demonstration leading to a festival in Jubilee Gardens - in sight of the DES -with bands, stalls and speakers. I want the theme to be access to education for all, so we'll involve school students too.

It'll be yet another battle on the Exec to convince them that the festival should have an anti-government focus, with speakers and stalls from labour movement campaigns. People won't come if it's just going to be seen as a gang of students having 8 fun day out at a carnival in London. It's got to be pontical.

We've got to make sure that the grants week is a success. The Education Alliance week of action is a good place to start. [The Education Alliance, organised by the TUC to unite campus unions with the NUS, is calling a week of action against cuts on October 11-16).

If local preparations are going well, then new students will have been drawn in right from the start with the idea that student unions have to work with trade unions. There hasn't been much central planning from the TUC, but the demonstration on the Wednesday should be a big one.

here's a lot going or no all ot it demands w work with the trade unions and get serious about building real links with the union rank and file. And the NOLS leadership of NUS isn't equipped to do this.

We've got to get out to the campus unions, mobilise our own members, and do something about the disgraceful politics of the NOLS leadership.

HARINGEY Socialist Organiser: fortnightly meetings at Brabant Rd trade union centre. For details phone 802 0771 or 348 5941.

SPARTACIST Truth Kit. New pamphiet on the polit ics and practice of the Spartacist League, by Johr Lister. 70 pages, £1 plus 26p postage, from WSL, PO Box 135, London N1.

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