Grassroots Left

The Grassroots Left is a small political grouping operating within the Australian National Union of Students and the Australian student movement.
The grouping is a small network of left-wing student activists. Grassroots Left has distinguished itself from the other left-wing factions of NUS by arguing that it should take direction from social movements which exist, such as the Australian Student Environment Network (ASEN).
Additionally, Grassroots Left is repulsed by what it sees as "sectarian and machinist" politics of the Laborfactions and what it claims is the antidemocratic behaviour of Socialist Alternative. Members of the network include anarchists, members of the Greens, environmental activists, queer activists and members of smaller socialist groups (particularly Resistance).
Grassroots Left and their predecessors have a traditional rivalry with Student Unity and are known for their disdain for the processes of NUS, which sets them apart from all other anti-VSU groups within NUS.
Grassroots Left are strongest in New South Wales, as well as having a presence in other Eastern states, and the ACT. The 2005 NUS Environment Officer Anna Rose and Female Queer Officer Claire English were both involved with Grassroots Left, and Grassroots Left activists were elected as Environment Officer and Female Queer Officer at the 2005 NUS National Conference.
At the 2006 NUS National Conference, Grassroots Left won a seat on NUS National Executive and the following Office Bearer positions:
*Queer Officer (female): Hayley Conway
*Small & Regional Students Officer: Kobie Howe (who later joined National Labor Students)
*Women's Officer: Lucy Honan
At the 2007 National Conference, members of Grassroots Left were elected to the positions of Women's Officer (Claire Tatyzo) and woman-identifying Queer Officer (Bree Ahrens).
The Grassroots Left were completely locked out of the National Union at the 2008 National Conference, which saw the Union almost completely dominated by NLS and Student Unity (apart from two Socialist Alternative Queer Officers, two Independent National Executive members, and an indepenent Indigenous Officer). Dany Boulos, a Grassroots Left member but preselected by the Australian Student Environment Network, was elected as National Environment Officer although the Labor factions abstained from voting for that position. None of the other positions were won by candidates preselected by their relevant network.
At the 2008 Conference, the National Environment Officer was completely defunded, via a wedge proposal which sought to fund the position of National Indigenous Officer while defunding the National Environment Officer, although the elected National Indigenous Officer supported funding the Environment Officer position. The Grassroots Left sought to elect candidates for Women's and Queer Officers who were active in their relevant networks, but instead they were offered a deal whereby they would vote for Labor national executive members in exchange for two positions for which the Grassroots Left had no appropriate candidate (Small and Regional Officer and Ethno-Cultural Officer). The Grassroots Left refused and voted for Independent National Executive members while voting for all the other positions on principle.
Creation of the Grassroots Left
The predecessors of the Grassroots Left sat as part of the National Broad Left (NBL) up until the 2004 NUS National Conference, although divisions in the NBL had foreseen for years.
The final breakdown of the NBL unofficially occurred after NUS national conference 2004, where the faction appeared to be spilt into three groupings: Socialist Alternative, Solidarity+Socialist Action Group (former SA split) and the non-aligned, non socialist left.
The emergence of the Grassroots Left occurred during the second half of 2005, particularly surrounding the dispute within NUS over ASEN. Members of ASEN, including NUS National Environment Officer Anna Rose, proposed the replacement of the NUS Environment Department, with ASEN taking over the role as the official voice of NUS on environmental issues, and the ASEN Convenor taking over the responsibilities of the Environment Officer. This proposal was met with concern amongst a number of parts of the student movement, but the response of Socialist Alternative, the other major grouping within the NBL, was seen by ASEN members as particularly vitriolic. Socialist Alternative attacked ASEN members as not even being committed to the most basic politics of unionism, argued that in the context of VSU, ASEN's proposal to set up a separate structure to NUS was akin to scabbing on the VSU campaign and the national union. The response of ASEN members was that it was quite possible for a representative student organisation such as NUS to exist alongside a grassroots activist network such as ASEN, and that many such activist networks had long existed. The only thing that differentiated ASEN from these previous networks, they argued, was ASEN's higher level of organisation, independent funding, and formal structure.
NOLS were also opposed to ASEN's proposal.
In conjunction with this proposal from ASEN, a group calling itself "Green Bloc" was formed, predominantly consisting of environmental activists, who planned to operate independently of the NBL to achieve positive results for environmental activism within NUS at the 2005 Conference. While the ASEN proposal was later discarded, Green Bloc evolved into the Grassroots Left. It took in other activists who were outside of environment movement, and who were unhappy with the direction of the NUS, believing that NUS and its officials should be supporting social movement which involve students instead of furthering their own political careers, particularly with the Australian Labor Party.

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