Update 20 April: The NUS did not hold the vote due to lack of time – its National Executive Committee will decide on the re-selection motion instead.
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Original article:
Marxist cells in British universities are readying a plan to purge the Labour Party of MPs opposed to Jeremy Corbyn, Heat Street has learned.
Corbyn-supporting students have drafted a motion to rally the National Union of Students to move against moderate MPs in the Labour party who are frustrating many of their leader’s aims.
The text – based around a policy attacking tuition fees – includes a clause demanding that the NUS press for measures which could see long-standing Labour MPs booted out of the party.
It will ask the NUS to support mandatory re-selection of candidates, meaning that local parties would have to subject sitting MPs to a primary-style vote before every election.
The move prompted a furious response from one of the MPs it is targeting, who branded the proposers a “nursery of divisive and aggressive politics” of the militant Left.
The policy has against the backdrop of the pro-Corbyn Momentum pressure flooding local parties with members who are often openly hostile to their serving MP.
A Momentum spokesman said the group has nothing to do with today’s motion.
Student delegates will vote on the policy today at the NUS national conference in Brighton.
Joe Attard, who is speaking in favour at the conference, told Heat Street: “If the NUS is going to make free education a reality, it means backing politicians who are proposing what they support in principle.
“I’ll put up the strongest case I possibly can. It is a serious political case – I see no good reason why it shouldn’t pass, and I think other trade unions would follow suit.
“And if I can achieve anything resembling upsetting the likes of John Woodcock, Jamie Reed and Chuka Umunna, I will consider it a very good day’s work”.
They hope their call will work its way up to the Labour party’s National Executive Committee, which could make the rule a reality.
The policy would allow the new wave of activists to field their own candidates against sitting MPs who have earned their ire by endorsing Government austerity plans and backing military intervention in the Middle East.
The proposers of the motion, from Marxist groups at King’s College London and Belfast Metropolitan College, blame tuition fees on a “cosy right-wing consensus”.
They say the only way to achieve their dream of free education is to kick out large numbers of Labour MPs and replace them with people who will press for the policy.
The NUS would be the first union to take an explicit stance on mandatory re-selection. But the motion’s proposers hope that other big unions would follow, piling pressure on Labour top brass.
John Woodcock MP, a vocal Corbyn critic, told Heat Street: ““This just shows that the notorious hard left of the student movement is now established as a nursery for the divisive and aggressive politics practiced by many in Momentum and the new militant cells of Red Labour.
“I am sure that the overwhelming majority of students would prefer to have their union concentrating on bread and butter further and higher education issues.”
