Student unionism in the United Kingdom
In universities in the United Kingdom students' unions are constituted under Section 2 of the Education Act 1994. The ultimate purpose of students' unions is to democratically represent the interests of their members. Students who resign their membership may still use union social facilities provided (often the main or only such facilities available) since they are for the benefit of the "students" of the institution, not just union members. The vast majority of UK students' unions are affiliated with the National Union of Students (NUS). History. The first students' union in the UK was  the Student Representative Council formed at the University of Edinburgh in 1884. The Universities (Scotland) Act 1889 secured the existence of students' representative councils (SRCs) at the four Scottish universities then in existence and their right to make representations to the university courts. In England, primarily social "union societies" came into existence earlier, such as the Cambridge Union (1815) and the Oxford Union (1823), but these were not representative bodies. The first students' union to develop in England was the Liverpool Guild of Students in 1892, although the UCL Student Union was the first to receive official recognition, in 1893 . In some cases, the union society transformed into the students' union, e.g. at King's College London where the Union Society of King's College London (established in 1873) became the King's College London Students' Union in 1908, while in others an entirely new body was established alongside the existing society, e.g. at Durham University where the Durham Colleges Students' Representative Council was established in 1899 separately from the Durham Union Society. The National Union of Students was established in 1922. Britain's first students' union building was built at the University of Liverpool in 1910–1913. This was again  predated by buildings built for union societies, including the Oxford Union in 1857, the Cambridge Union in 1866, and the Edinburgh University Union's Teviot Row House in 1889. Terminology. Although "students' union" is by far the most common name adopted by these organisations in the UK, seven (including Exeter, Liverpool and Birmingham) are named 'guilds' of students while the term 'students' association' is also used at some institutions, particularly in Scotland, where the ancient universities used to have a pair of segregated student unions for men and women and/or had separate "unions" for social activities and "students' representative councils