NATIONAL CONFERENCE 2012

Over the weekend some members contacted us with concerns regarding National Council 2012. We have taken on board these concerns and want to outline the action we have taken to address them.  

Throughout this year the team have made improving engagement in the organisation a priority and we take all members concerns seriously. We are always at the end of the phone, or on email, if you ever want to discuss anything with us.

Date and venue of conference

Due to circumstances out of our control, we unfortunately weren’t able to secure a date and venue for National Conference before the Christmas break - but have stuck to our aim of always giving at least six weeks notice for an event.

We planned to email all members with a date and location for conference early this week. We are pleased to be able to let you know now that Conference will be held 25/26 February in Manchester. Conference will start at 11 on Saturday and finish by 4 on the Sunday.

Throughout the year we have announced venues as soon as possible and have introduced a travel fund to help tackle costs. The travel fund will again be in place for conference to help those who need it. Please do get in touch to find out more.

Election Timetable

Although we weren’t able to confirm a date before Christmas we did know that we wanted to hold our conference on one of the last two weekends in February. Because of the tight time frame, we felt we should set down a timetable of deadlines as early as possible to enable clubs to begin to make plans over Christmas.

The deadline for declaration of intention to stand for the three full time Labour Students positions is the only deadline to have passed so far. The reason this was set at the 6th January was to enable us to organise hustings across the UK for the full time candidates, with as much notice as possible, and also to give clubs sufficient time to consider which candidates they would like to nominate before the close of nominations. We felt that one month was the minimum amount of time it would take to complete this process properly.

Communication about elections

On the 19 December we emailed all of our members. This email contained reference to the initial timeline for conference and explicitly said that those interested in standing for positions at conference should click the link to read the full article which included the deadlines. The newsletter can be read online here - labourstudents.org.uk/newsletters.

Since that email went out, there has also been an article about National Conference 2012, including the deadlines, on the events page of our website – which is regularly updated with information about our events and elections at events. This page also included full job descriptions for the three full time officer positions. Although our website was new at the start of the academic year, it is now widely used by our members as a place to visit for information and news about Labour Students.

Since we emailed all members in December, we have received a high number of declarations for positions up for election at conference. We have also received a large number of suggestions for conference via the suggestions box on the webpage. We were also aware that Labour clubs were circulating information about the deadline before the deadline.

However, we do take on board the criticism levelled at us over the weekend that we did not use social media to publicise the deadline ourselves. This was an oversight on our parts and we will ensure that in future we facebook and tweet deadlines as a matter of course.  

What next

We want to ensure that every club feels that they have had sufficient notice of the deadline for declaration of intention to stand for full time positions in Labour Students.

After concerns raised, we understand there is a worry that some members may not have been aware of the deadline. We therefore had a discussion with our national committee on Sunday evening to discuss steps that could be taken to remedy this.

After this discussion we have decided to move the deadlines for full time positions back Monday 16th January at 5pm and to move the deadline for nominations from clubs back as well. As stated earlier, we will be sending an all member email shortly where we will make this amended deadline clear to all members.

If you would like to stand, we encourage you to do so. Please feel free to get in touch with us if you have any questions about any of the roles, full time or part time. Labour Students is a great organisation to get involved in - so do consider standing!

Building a bigger movement

When we started our year in office, our primary aim was to increase involvement and engagement with Labour Students.

We had a contested election for our NUS block candidates at National Council. A record number of candidates contested the Labour Students policy forum election. We had a record number of motions submitted by Labour Clubs, and more time at Council than ever before to discuss them. Our new website, and our new monthly newsletters have enabled more members than ever to engage with our campaigns.

In addition our Living Wage campaign has seen Labour Students campaigning effectively on Campus for something that will make a real difference to people’s lives.  

We are a membership organisation – we want you to get involved! Please stand for positions, submit policy for discussion at conference and get involved in the Living Wage campaign.

If you ever have any questions or concerns, please do just get in touch.