I wrote this article about my time in Durham Tenants’ Union for Palatinate, Durham Universities student newspaper. The article is quite short, due to the length requirements for Palatinate comment pieces, and as such I didn’t get to fully explore all of the issues and discussions I wanted to. However, the points I made do provide stepping stones and ‘food-for-thought’ for bigger discussions about my experience of student politics at Durham and my time running Durham Tenants’ Union, which I might one day write about at greater length if the mood ever strikes me.
The original can be read here.
I was the President of Durham Tenants’ Union, a student society that aims to educate and provide support to student renters on housing issues, from 2021-2024. During my tenure as President, we organised housing protests, helped countless students with queries about renting, hosted dozens of information events, saved our members £2000+ in compensation from landlords, and started the Durham housing co-op campaign, among other things. This work was deeply rewarding. However, I do have regrets on how I ran things, and also a lot of thoughts regarding the society more generally within the context of student politics at Durham. I think the Tenants’ Union is a good case study for some open-ended discussions that I think anyone who is involved in a similar ‘student politics’ society in the future should be asking themselves.
I am, for the most part, not discussing societies affiliated to political parties or major ideologies, since they have a lot of implicit advantages that override a lot of these problems. It should also be noted that when I am discussing a ‘society’ that exists at Durham to engage in making political change either locally or against the University, I am not necessarily saying it has to be an SU affiliated society.
This itself as an important question for any students wishing to take action as a group. Affiliation to the SU provides structure, external accountability, access to finances and room bookings, and reach to students via fresher’s fairs and SU communication. However, it also provides a lot of bureaucratic restriction, and especially so for taking more radical action. If you are worried about growing and having access to resources, SU affiliation is something to consider, but if you want independence to take any kind of action you want, then independence is probably the answer.
However, regardless of structure, the biggest issue I found with The Tenants’ Union was getting students involved. Our executive team provided support and organised campaigns. Unfortunately, by presenting ourselves so strongly as only providing support, students tended to only seek advice from us. We would get countless emails and have large attendances for our talks, but when it came to helping us provide that support or our campaigns, we rarely had anyone show up. This limited us to only patching an issue instead of putting all our efforts into solutions. I am happy that we helped a lot of people, but I would advise political societies to be careful of their framing and focus, to ensure they do not fall into the trap of only being used for support, instead of being used as catalysts to win real change.
Student politics is built upon ‘the spirit of initiative’, as is most political action outside of electoral structures. Simply put, it means you need to be the one that takes the leap to do things. That initial stage of getting someone involved is the biggest barrier a society must overcome. At Durham, it was by far my biggest challenge. This challenge is conceivably understandable, when choosing between societies that help with future careers, do sports or fun socials, someone paying over £9,000 a year will perhaps naturally be more drawn to these more personally fulfilling tasks, rather than political action which may only materialise results long after they have graduated. Obviously, this is another way the marketisation of education continues to erode solidarity and education generally. Other issues are involved, such as the collegiate system, which saps student energy into college activities, which are usually much less about making University wide change on big issues, and much more about inter-college activity (with some exceptions I admit). Regardless, societies must think about how this spirit of initiative can be ignited into students.
However, this spirit cannot be allowed to be individualistic in tone, because this paralyses radical action that has the ability to make real change. A group needs to have enough reach and, above all, accessibility to prevent people merely pursuing things on their own or making their own group for the exact same issues. Political societies and groups need to create an environment that fosters and allows for those with the will to get involved and do something to do so in the collective environment, which fundamentally allows for greater reach, better resource usage, and allows for more pressure to be applied. We are stronger together and knowing how to ensure students unite instead of striking it out alone is vital.
This all leads to one of the most important things for any student political group, and that is longevity. Issues related to housing, divestment, or climate change, will take years to solve. Therefore, ensuring new students find your group accessible, welcoming, and educating is crucial so they can replace graduating students who have laid the groundwork for real change. Without this, it can be difficult to consistently push for change. This is especially true when it is so easy for the University to ignore student concerns unless radical direct action is taken.
I joined the Durham Tenants’ Union during the pandemic, and it shaped my university experience a lot more than my degree ever did. My closest friends and connections I made at university are all partly thanks to doing work via this group. With the issues that the Tenants’ Union and many other societies organise around still as prevalent as ever, it is vitally important that these societies ask themselves the right questions, to ensure they can be as effective as possible in making change.
Don Brookes - Writings 