Federation of Conservative Students

The Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) was the student organisation of the British Conservative Party from the late 1940s to 1986. It was created to act as a bridge between the student movement and the Conservative Party. In its final years it became known colloquially as "Maggie's Militant Tendency", in reference to then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and to Militant, an entryist group active in the Labour Party at the time. The FCS was then broken up by the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Norman Tebbit, after one of its members had accused previous former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of war crimes in extraditing Cossacks to the Soviet Union. The FCS was replaced by the Conservative Collegiate Forum.

The organisation was created in the late 1940s to act as a bridge between the student movement and the Conservative Party, It was initially named the Federation of University Conservative and Unionists Associations (FUCUA). By the late 1970s the organisation had moved considerably left of the Conservative party.

The policies of Margaret Thatcher had a polarising effect on British politics and the student left moved towards radicalism in their response to them. Many students' unions would pass motions instituting a policy of "No Platform for Racists or Fascists". Starting in the early 1980s, the organisation adopted a more confrontational approach toward the left-leaning National Union of Students. Leaders, most notably from Scotland, started advocating "voluntary students' unions". They organised campaigns aimed at disaffiliating individual students' unions from the NUS to weaken the so-called block vote, and deprive it of taxpayers' money which the NUS used for various causes. Posters and other publicity material became much more provocative and hard-hitting.

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