STUDENT ACTIVISTS worldwide met a gigantic wall of confusion head on at 50 mph yesterday writes Carlos Hussein. The discovery of secret documents kept by the National Union of Students came as an incredible shock to the global student community as realisation dawned that the NUS was indeed capable of something.
The dossier reveals that in order to prevent student apathy and actually create a reason for the Union to exist, the NUS orchestrated nearly every major cause of student protest since the civil disobedience riots against H-bombs in the 1960s. Confidential memos to the NUS president highlight the extent to which the group went in order to incite Bertrand Russell, the-nuclear disarmament campaigner. One female NUS officer, pretending to be Jackie Kennedy, cold called Russell and told him that she thought logical atomism was ‘gay’.
Transcripts, photos and recordings all document the shady influence which NUS presidents, past and present, have had on global events. It now emerges that the Vietnam war was stemming off when the NUS stepped in, offering to fund the US Army directly, even demanding that chemistry students at Oxford develop a more effective form of napalm. The ruse clearly worked: huge protests erupted across London in 1966 and 1968, opposing the United States’ role in the war.
Throughout the 1970s, the NUS began stockpiling arms and then selling them during prominent conflicts. It is uncertain as to whether a 10% discount was given to anyone on production of an NUS card. The illicit arms trade allowed the Union to gain unrivalled financial clout, some of which was then used to ensure the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. This same financial muscle enabled the creation of a formidable share portfolio: majority shares in Shell, Nestle, Lockheed Martin, Coca Cola, McDonald’s and Nike meant the NUS was able to back all kinds of unethical businesses. Indeed a memo of 1985 from then NUS president Phil Woolas to Phil Knight, CEO of Nike, reminded him to “Ensure the brown kids get paid as little as possible.”
Little expense was spared by the NUS in order to incite anger amongst students. In the early 1990s, a secret council was held to help form a crack team of the best physics undergraduates available. Their mission was to build a time travelling device so that NUS officers could twist the past to their own ends. Operation Chronos, as it was then known, had a list of formidable objectives, including making the Earth flat, buying shares in a German dye trust known as I.G. Farben and even editing major religious texts. Thousands of copies of altered Bibles were discovered after a raid on NUS offices in Mandela Street, London. One of the numerous revisions of the original included a specific passage in the Book of John [on the woman caught in adultery:] “They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what say-est thou? And He said unto them, No, let us take her in turn and do with her as we please, for her metaphorical traffic light is green for ‘go’.”
With the revelations contained within the NUS documents spreading faster than AIDS in Los Angeles, the future for the union looks increasingly uncertain. Arrest warrants have been issued for NUS Officers old and new whilst current NUS President Kat Fletcher is due for a hearing at the European Court of Justice in The Hague today. She is expected to cite staff-student protocol in a bid to avoid responsibility for absolutely anything ever [Sounds familiar - Ed.]