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Originally Posted by keithwalton
Just a few quick comments from me,
Theres a thing go on around here (not exactly sure what only vagely read the posters) about the bnp must be stopped there terrorists. (of which terrorists seem to be the flavour of the year). That in myself made me abit angry, we live in a land of free speach and people should vote for what they want and everyones opinion should be represented in some way or form.
All though majority rule in some cases can be dangerous when turnout is low.
Last year at my students union agm a motion was proposed by the islamic society to ban all clubs and societies from recieving sponsorship from 'arms companies' such as BAE systems and the navy (they produced a whole list of them i cant remember them all) on the grounds that its imorral. The motion itself in somepart got through because there supporters turned up and the rest didnt. They then proceedid to 'hijack' the meeting and get through motions that favoured them.
In a way there actions anoyied me, surely its upto the members of the club who they accept money from and if some members dont like that they can object to it within the club. The bit that angered me was, what gave them the right to tell me what i can and cant do, surely thats upto only one person, Me.
K
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That's just a classic case of student apathy coming back to bite everyone on the bum. I can't fault the Islamic society at your University for using the correct, oh-so-right-on democratic procedures of your SU to pursue their interests. If a few more of the students at your place did the same, the motions might not have been carried. As a Christian at university (and a member of the Christian Union exec) I was often accused by 'Union Hacks' of weilding a 'Christian Block-Vote', which really goes to show how little your average amateur student politician really knows about politics, unionism and voting. Nevertheless, one year during Christian Aid Week the president of the Methodist Society successfully pushed through a motion which banned the Student Union from accepting sponsorship from 'unethical' sources - I forget how it was worded now as it was 12 years ago, but one of the immediate consequences was that the SU had to move its bank account from Barclays to the Co-Op. To get it through he lobbied everyone on campus with even a mild hint of sympathy towards Christianity. This meant that the issue became unfairly polarised on religious lines, even though the debate could have functioned perfectly well without reference to any religion, and when we eventually got it through, the 'Christian Block Vote' was blamed - the President of the CU was basically accused of ordering people to vote in a certain way. (Not true, of course).
The fact is, all we managed to do was:
1. Identify an issue that was important to us;
2. Promote that issue to those we felt would be our 'natural allies';
3. Get a little help from voter apathy to ensure that if we could get enough supportive people to attend who would not normally go to a SU OGM at all, we would be pretty much guaranteed to get a result.
This is not dissimilar to what the BNP is now doing. The only democratic way of combating it is to promote positively the alternatives and to 'get the vote out'. The BNP can only flourish if its motivted minority support is met by apathy on the part of supporters of the other parties.