Thursday 07-11-2019 - 13:01

Gary Hughes, Durham SU Chief Executive
 

At Durham SU, we’re proud of our political and causes groups. They put on great social events, lectures from guest politicians, and campaigns to make our community, University and SU better. They get students thinking about the world around them, and their part in making it better.

The SU’s student groups are all morally, legally, and practically part of Durham SU. We’ve spent the past year working with our groups to clarify what that means in practice. For example: when a society signs a contract, the SU is the legal party entering into the contract; when a society runs an event, the SU is the body which insures the event; when a society says ‘vote for a particular party or candidate’, part of the SU is saying ‘vote for that party or candidate’. And charity law is really clear that students’ unions can be part of educating students to cast a well-informed vote and mobilising students to get to the ballot box, but we can’t influence students to cast their vote for a particular party or candidate.

Members of our political and causes groups can – of course – canvass, organise, and campaign as much as they like. We’re certain many private group chats up and down the country are organising sessions to do just that. And many of our members have chosen to take part in this way. But when Durham students ask us if we, including our many diverse political and causes groups, want a particular candidate to win in the upcoming election in the City of Durham, we need to make really clear that we don’t, because the law says we can’t. 

Durham University Labour Club (DULC) have been briefed many times about their responsibilities as a Durham SU student group regarding the upcoming election. After this guidance, the group chose to produce publicity which wasn’t okay. We’ve asked them to help us understand what happened, so that we can help them to stay on the right side of the regulations. DULC continues to help Durham students experience and think critically about politics.

We absolutely want students to register to vote, to think critically about how they’ll vote, and then go out and vote – and we’re doing loads of work to support this. But we will never influence our students towards voting for any particular candidate or party.