Cambridge Students Union Trustee Board to hold referendum on breaking off from the NUS over Gaza

This article was updated at 1pm on Thursday 30 October at to reflect an error and some changes. The article previously stated that it was Cambridge Students’ Union that called the referendum. This was not accurate – it was called by the Students’ Union Trustee Board. The Canary also failed to offer a right of reply to the ‘No campaign’ and other interested parties. We have since done this and will update the article in due course.

The Cambridge Students’ Union (Cambridge SU) Trustee Board is holding a referendum on whether to disaffiliate from the National Union of Students (NUS). Regardless of the outcome, the move signals a turning point in the growing rebellion among universities over the institutional handling of the genocide in Gaza.

NUS cause rift on Gaza genocide

If passed, the motion would see Cambridge SU end its membership of the NUS by 31 December 2026. The vote comes after months of mounting anger at the NUS stance on Gaza and wider allegations of Islamophobia and political suppression.

The YES campaign told the Canary that the NUS has abandoned its founding principles and failed to stand by students:

The YES campaign believes that NUS UK no longer serves students’ interests, and instead panders to politicians and follows its own agenda. From their decreased influence in Westminster, to their silence during the largest student mobilisation in decades, NUS UK is no longer fit for purpose. This is particularly felt in Cambridge, where we have had seven student encampments, and five High Court injunctions levelled against our students, with no support from the NUS.

The NUS has a historic legacy of activism but, the campaign argues, its recent silence shows us how far the NUS has moved from its legacy of student solidarity.

The YES Campaign said:

The NUS used to be at the forefront of campaigning for good, leading the charge against South African apartheid, but they have abandoned this legacy, ignoring nationwide calls from students asking them to act on Palestine. They have failed to defend students faced with disciplinaries for protesting, failed to act on growing Islamophobia, and offer poor value for money and minimal national campaigning impact.

Rebellion over NUS failure to act on genocide in Gaza

The NUS’s failure to take a clear position on Gaza triggered an unprecedented rebellion. Over 200 sabbatical officers and student groups from 55 campuses signed an open letter by demanding that the NUS “take a stand on Gaza or face mass disaffiliation.”

The letter accused the organisation of “adopting a posture of neutrality that sanitises mass atrocities” and of betraying its own anti-racist values. It also called for the NUS to rescind its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which wrongly equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism and is used to stifle Palestine solidarity on campuses, and prevent any criticism of the Israeli occupation’s many crimes against Palestinians..

Instead of engaging with the signatories of the letter, the NUS’s leadership wrote to universities demanding that student officers withdraw their names or face sanctions – including exclusion from future events and potential referral to the Charity Commission.

‘They smeared them all as antisemites’

One of the organisers of Not My NUS, a campaign which grew out of this letter and aims to raise awareness of the NUS’s complicity, told us the NUS’s actions have alienated much of its own membership:

We said if you don’t action our demands, we will table disaffiliation, and instead of taking the calls of the 200 plus groups and representatives seriously, they smeared them all as antisemites, and banned them from NUS events, and now they’re facing, rightly, repercussions for that. They ignored the Muslim student body, they ignored the Muslim Council of Britain, the British Palestine Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The Not My NUS campaign is demanding fundamental reform of the organisation. Its aims include rescinding the IHRA definition, confronting Islamophobia, defending student protest, and leading a national divestment movement against companies complicit in the Israeli regime’s occupation of the Palestinian territory.

Institutionalised Islamophobia in education

The Not My NUS organiser, who wished to remain anonymous, linked the current crisis to the 2022 removal of former NUS President Shaima Dallali, which many described as a ‘witch hunt’:

What we’ve seen over the last two years is an extension of what they did to Shaima. And what they did to Shaima institutionalised effectively the repression which has become so normalised.

Dallali, a Muslim woman, faced multiple Islamophobic and racist attacks since being elected as President of the NUS. She was dismissed following accusations of antisemitism, based on a tweet she posted 10 years previously – accusations her supporters maintain were politically motivated and rooted in anti-Palestinian bias. Her removal was widely condemned, including by Muslim and anti-racist groups.

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) said in a statement at the time that the NUS had failed to address ‘institutionalised Islamophobia’ in both Higher and Further Education. It said:

This active targeting of Muslim students through a systematic pattern of over-scrutiny, bad faith allegations and being subject to a disproportionate level of disciplinaries using Islamophobic tropes reflects prejudice and endemic bigotry that spans the entire educational journey of Muslim students. What Shaima is experiencing is a clear extension of institutional Islamophobia within the education sector and it is apparent that NUS’ attitude towards Shaima is a manifestation of this oppression.

Zionism is a racist ideology, yet its definition of antisemitism is widely adopted by UK institutions

The anonymous Not My NUS campaign organiser accused the NUS of capitulating to political pressure by adopting a “Zionist version of antisemitism.” They explained, that it was a version which led to the NUS review finding “numerous instances” of antisemitism in the union over the last decade. This review, which was commissioned in the wake of Dallali’s removal, reflects institutional Zionist bias and fails to address growing Islamophobia within the NUS. And, as a result of the findings, the NUS said it would work with the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) to develop an action plan to tackle this ‘antisemitism’.

The campaign organiser says:

The NUS is scared that the government will do what they did to Shaima. This whole independent antisemitism review they did in 2023- all of that is underpinned by a Zionist version of antisemitism  [IHRA definition]. So NUS has fully laid out the carpet for our institutions [Zionist lobby groups]. They should be the voice of students, but they are now jumping on the bandwagon of Zionism, and it’s really isolated the principled anti-racist activists in the sector. It’s scary how they get away with it…They keep saying they want a non- antisemitic pro Palestine movement, but if you’ve got that IHRA definition by default and you call Israel out as a racist endeavour, we are all antisemitic according to them. They dictate the acceptable forms of solidarity, and the acceptable forms of expression when you’re advocating for Palestine.

The same organiser also described how the NUS’s silence had left students without protection, and how they had “been trying to raise the alarm about the NUS, especially during the uni encampments,” arguing that the national union should have been the first line of defence for student protesters:

You see the encampments targeting the university instead of the union, which should be their voice. I argue that if you tackle the National Union, you’ve got an opportunity to more easily challenge universities, because if your national voice is advocating for you, it’s a lot harder for them to reject you. But NUS has taken a bit of an establishment line- and their leaders are cushty with Labour- so what we’ve seen is that NUS absence over the past two years has made students like me, and other anti-Zionists really vulnerable.

Cambridge at the centre of a national shift

For the Cambridge SU Yes Campaign, these national failures are part of why local disaffiliation is not just a symbolic move, but a necessary one. They argue that the NUS’s credibility crisis has eroded its ability to represent students, and that Student Unions are increasingly capable of acting independently. There is also the problem of wasted resources.

The YES Campaign told me:

We estimate that our 2026–2027 membership fee to NUS UK will be about £20,000. We believe this to be an obscene amount of money to spend on an organisation that does not support us, and urge our students to vote in favour of disaffiliation.

It added that the NUS has responded by cancelling commitments at other student unions to come to Cambridge and campaign:

But as this is a student members only referendum, should they tell students which way to vote, this would be in violation of our referendum rules.

The Cambridge referendum encapsulates a defining question for the UK student movement: Can the NUS still claim to represent students who believe it has abandoned anti-racist and anti-imperialist principles?

If the NUS refuses to stand with students in their struggle for justice during a genocide, it cannot claim to represent them. With other unions considering similar moves, the result in Cambridge could set a precedent for a new, independent movement- one built outside traditional national structures.

Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Cambridge University Students’ Union