“I don’t do facts and figures,” Shakira Martin warns me from across the boardroom table of her new offices at the National Union of Students (NUS). “I am the facts and the figures. When I talk I just say it as it is.”

Martin’s straight-talking swagger might go some way to explaining her unlikely rise through the ranks of the NUS – where she was recently elected vice-president of further education. The antidote to the white, middle-class, aspiring Labour MPs who traditionally lead the organisation, 27-year-old Martin was one of nine siblings raised in Lewisham by Jamaican parents, and admits that the first time she ran in an election, she didn’t even know what one was.



“I’ve always been the person who stands up to bullies on the playground,” she says. “Children from a Jamacian background are meant to be seen not heard, so I was often told I was rude or disrespectful when I disagreed with adults.”

She tells me that a close family member suffered with drug addiction, and she left home at 16 to live alone. “At secondary school, I thought I was the only person with a dysfunctional family. Issues like that just weren’t spoken about.”

After Martin left school, she enrolled at a local sixth-form college to study business, but dropped out after three months (“It was boring – I blamed it on the bad weather”). She started, and promptly gave up on a legal secretary course, and then a social work course – twice.



Struggling to connect with traditional education, Martin says she learned her first employability skills from a more unconventional source.



“Where I grew up was a deprived area, where a lot of people either sell drugs or take drugs. When I left home, I needed money. I was only receiving £44.50 as income support. A friend called one day and said she had a little job for me.”

She pauses to check with the public relations officer, who has warned me that the new intake of officers don’t get their media training until tomorrow.

“Can I say this?”



“It’s up to you,” says the PR.



Martin barely waits for the reply. “I’m gonna say it. Coz it’s the truth.

“I was basically selling drugs. But I wasn’t selling. I was like, a courier.

“I did it for about a month, but gave it up because I found it wasn’t for me. I was too emotionally attached to the customers.

“What I did realise was that the skills behind doing it were business skills. There was confidentiality, there was data protection, there was maths, there was customer service.

“Two weeks after I stopped, everyone else got caught, and I got an admin job in a doctors’ surgery. I loved my job, and it was the first time I paid my own rent. To me, that felt pretty middle class!”

But three years into the job, Martin tells me, she was forced to leave after a new practice manager started. “He would come into work and say things like ‘Bend down and touch your toes so I can see up your arsehole.’ Or tell me racist jokes, that I didn’t realise were racist until I would go home and repeat them to my mum.

Shakira campaigning to save Lewisham Southwark college. Photograph: NUS

“I didn’t know it was called harassment at that time but after a few months of that I left and went to tribunal for constructive dismissal, and represented myself. I knew then that if he could do ‘management’ without any people skills, I could do it much better.”



Soon after, Martin gave birth to her first daughter, and enrolled at Lewisham College on a leadership and management course (“I thought management was something you could freestyle, but I realise now you can’t.”). She completed the course and went on to complete the level 5 qualification – just as she unexpectedly fell pregnant with her second daughter.



Martin says she had finally discovered her lust for learning, and began training as a teacher. But on top of balancing two children and a course, she says she also had to contend with a violent relationship.



“I was in an abusive relationship, but I didn’t know I was. I thought domestic abuse was like Ike and Tina Turner, whereas I gave as good as I got.

“I realised that I was both a victim and a survivor. I wanted to empower other women within my community, where domestic abuse is quite prominent. That’s when I saw a poster for women’s officer at my college. I ran for the position and won, and went to my first NUS conference in Manchester 2013.

Politics isn’t ready for me. People think Jeremy Corbyn is radical! Shakira Martin

“When I got there, I found that the people didn’t speak like me. What they were saying wasn’t where I was coming from.



Martin has a perfect record when it comes to winning elections (“black officer, women’s committee... every election I ran in, I won”). Earlier this year she ran for vice-president of further education at the NUS conference in Liverpool, and won comfortably with 141 votes — 86 more than her nearest rival.

She tells me that her main priorities will be fight further education funding cuts, including a planned 24% reduction in the adults’ skills budget, and to campaign for an increase in the apprenticeship minimum wage, “so it isn’t an excuse for cheap labour.”

Why are young people rallying behind Jeremy Corbyn? Link to video

I ask if she can see herself continuing in politics after her stint at the NUS, noting that the organisation has been something of a training ground for MPs.



“Definitely. Life is politics. Every day I wake up and there’s a new battle for me to fight,” Martin says.

“But,” she warns, “politics isn’t ready for me. People think Jeremy Corbyn is radical!”

I nod, but wonder if actually, a young black, working-class, single mother is exactly what politics is ready for. We’ve been talking for some time, and I suggest this might be a good point to wrap it up.



“Hold on!” she says. “I’ve got some more things I want to say.”

She picks up her phone and finds some notes. And then she’s off; making sure I take down her slogan (free education, further education for everyone), and waxing lyrical on everything from austerity (“It sounds like a nice word. Call it debt.”) to the importance of representing further education students in the NUS (they make up more than 4 million of the 7 million NUS membership).

“My message, which I would like you to quote, is: further education has given me 10 years worth of chances to be where I am today. If it wasn’t for the 8th and 9th chance, I wouldn’t be here.

“Many of us go to college or university (make sure you say college first) to get our qualifications, but by overcoming adversity, you gain your lifetime qualification. It’s not easy to do, but you can either wallow in adversity, or use it to help someone else.



“That’s it,” she says, smiling and rising from her seat. “I’ve finished now.”

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