hannah webb#1for necI am a socialist feminist and member of NCAFC, and I’m running for NEC because I want to see an NUS that backs activists on the ground and builds a sustainable mass movement for free, democratic and public education. I’m currently on my year abroad in Budapest, having spent a year as UCL union’s External Affairs and Campaigns Officer.

1. Fight racism for open borders

Our members face daily harassment and threats of deportation, not just from the far-right, but from the state and border officials. Despite a lot of talk, much of the student movement is still doing very little to challenge this. We should be leading the fight against the racism of mainstream politics and the far right, but more than that, we need practical action and solidarity with students and migrants facing deportation and harassment.

2. a national housing campaigndecent, affordable housing for allWe are facing a housing crisis that is driving us into poverty and out of education. NUS has had policy on its books for years to organise tenants’ unions, but it has never been implemented. If elected to the NEC, I will fight for NUS to build a national housing campaign, and for the creation of tenants’ unions.But we need to do more than this – because housing is a social crisis facing everyone, and we badly need to fight more broadly for social housing and rent caps. As an activist and a union officer, I have fought alongside local residents who successfully defeated plans to demolish their estate to make way for a new UCL campus, and I played a role in supporting the Focus E15 campaign in east London. We need to link up with campaigns like these, and use NUS’s resources to generalise them.

3.democratic unionsnot the national union of sabbs

NUS is supposed to represent 7 million people – but in practice it is responsive to a tiny number of people. At present, our national union spends most of its time helping sabbatical officers to network and telling them that they’re really special.Our strength doesn’t come from playing nice with managers; but from our ability to persuade and disrupt. We need occupations, blockades, rent strikes and marches to be part of the every day vocabulary of student unionism – and to get that, we need democratic unions, which are run by students not external trustees or high-power general managers. I will fight for NUS to give proper guidance to unions, because being a good union involves taking risks and getting into fights with management.

4.hold the leadership to accountget serious about free educationWith or without NUS’s permission, there will be a movement for free education, democratisation of campuses and living grants. We need to be honest about what that means: it means years and years of mass mobilisations, national demos and campus-by-campus organising. A vote for me is a vote for an NUS which doesn’t back out of the fight, or pull support from demos.

@hannah_webb_