The NUS-USI conference was held earlier last month, only weeks before NUS National Conference. The conference of NUS’ Northern Irish counterpart symbolised more than an annual get-together, however.
This year, NUS-USI celebrates its 40th birthday – forty years of standing alongside NUS UK to achieve real change for students. And at its conference, NUS-USI once more established itself as a defining organisation in the welfare of students in Northern Ireland for many years to come.
NUS-USI was established in 1972. Prior to its existence, students’ unions affiliated to whichever national union best suited the sectarian and political demographic of their members – either the National Union of Students (NUS) or the Union of Students in Ireland (USI).
However, in what has been widely heralded as a highly progressive move – Anglo-Irish collaboration was hardly de rigeur in Ireland during the 1970s – both NUS and USI decided to organise themselves collectively in Northern Ireland in 1972, and so NUS-USI was formed.
NUS-USI got off to a rocky start, and for a time it seemed as though students’ unions might continue to align themselves along sectarian lines anyway. In 1974, however, a summit between the two national unions was held in Galway, and an agreement was signed between the unions agreeing that the collaboration would attempt to end sectarianism. A campaign was launched with the title: ‘End sectarianism – build the student movement’.
From this point NUS-USI flourished in leaps and bounds. In addition to its campaigns against sectarianism, it was responsible for the organisation and development of student activists in Northern Ireland, who supported the women’s and LGBT movements in the country.
Other issues on its agenda became student housing, student finance, and student support – campaigns which developed into the comprehensive range of services which it provides today for students.
Over the past forty years, NUS-USI has successfully negotiated the many obstacles of representing a diverse student movement, and today continues to enjoy popular support from most Northern Irish students.
It has successfully lobbied the Northern Irish government on many issues. As NUS-USI celebrates its 40th birthday, it can also celebrate forty years of providing wins for students within a politically unstable environment, and within the context of a movement battling its own sectarian demons.