IN PROBABLY the most significant policy change on any issue in over a decade, the National Union of Students conference has voted to support a motion calling for unconditional British withdrawal from Ireland.
Ireland student officer Previous policy had explicitly supported the British presence and branded all those resisting it as criminals. The last time Ireland was debated was in 1981. Prison conditions in the H-blocks and Armagh were described as the best in the UK and NUS was committed to supporting Thatcher's intransigent refusal to concede the five demands of the hunger strikers: that is, it said political dissident prisoners in a colonial regime should be treated no different from rapists.
The motion passed this time recognised the "inadequacy of previous policy' in failing to address the root cause of the conflict, partition and the British occupation. It declared that Britain had no progressive role to play in Ireland and supported the right of the Irish people, as a whole, to determine their own future. The Hillsborough Accord was rejected as yet another British-imposed solution and NUS was given a mandate to campaign against all repressive measures used to uphold partition including plastic bullets and strip-searching. Labour Committee on we are strong!"