Author: uculeft

A Crisis in the Making in Post-92 Higher Education

UCU’s National Executive Committee met last week and voted to reaffirm its support for solidarity with the Palestinian people and call for branches and members to build support for staff student walkouts on the 29^th November. The walkouts are part of the UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, called by Stop the War and CND. 

UCU should never be neutral in the fight against imperialism and oppression. The Palestinian fight for liberation is also important for our own fights. Campaigning for solidarity with the struggle against the apartheid and a genocidal Israeli government not only raises support for those fighting oppression but it solidifies our unity with students in a fight for education.

The NEC also voted to support members facing threats of disciplinary action for voicing support of Palestine. In doing so it will seek to liaise with campaigning legal groups such as the European Legal Support Center (elsc.support) who are acting as a co-ordinating body for students and staff under threat. Further details of the motions can be found at All out for Palestine on 29 November UN Day of Solidarity  – UCU Left

The motions passed at NEC came from the elected members of the committee and highlights the importance of a member-led union to ensure urgent campaigns are championed by our union.

A motion was also brought by UCU Left representatives challenging the decision made by UCU centrally not to allow the elected Black Members Standing Committee to share a joint statement composed by the group on the Palestine situation (statement can be read here). The decision to deny a platform to elected Black members ultimately lies with the General Secretary as the elected head of staff. The motion sought to affirm the right of elected Equality Standing Committees to have statements shared where they are in line with UCU rule and policy. The sharing of elected Equality Standing Committee statements has been common historically but is in this situation being denied due to fears over political sensitivity. We successfully challenged the chair in ruling this motion out of order but were not able to hear it as it fell along with other motions.  

NEC heard a report from the General Secretary highlighting our success in reversing cuts and defending the guaranteed pensions in USS. She also committed the union to oppose the latest anti-union legislation, Minimum Service Levels Act, which seeks to force union members to break strikes. As a union it is increasingly clear that we have to break the anti-union laws rather than find ways around them.

While motions passed by our NEC show how trade unions can be at the centre of social movements when it comes to industrial issues to defend our members the union can however be far slower to respond in developing a national strategy.

The Teachers’ Pension Scheme – and the looming disaster facing post-92 Universities

The UK government policy has set a course of undermining the pension schemes in post-92 institutions. Teachers Pension Schemes (TPSs) exist in all of the constituent countries in the UK. The 2020 valuations of TPS schemes will see increases in costs for employers across all schemes. In England and Wales, the increase in employers’ costs will be 5% of salary and in Northern Ireland a 4% rise has been announced. The expected outcome for Scotland is an increase of 3%.

The model for undermining the scheme is similar to that faced in USS. An arbitrary ‘discount rate’ has been arrived at by the Treasury whose sole aim is to ensure employers’ future benefit costs rise to levels whereby substantial reductions in institutions incomes occur. Unsurprisingly, employers will respond by adopting the rhetoric of unaffordability and threaten job cuts, pension cuts or both. Indeed, the post-92 sector, in which the institutions are smaller organisations than in pre-92, makes bankruptcy for some a distinct possibility.

A crisis manufactured in 11 Downing Street: The money is there

As UCU Left has argued, once the USS dispute was settled, it wouldn’t be long before employers and government turn to the Teachers Pension Schemes. Government has agreed to pay the costs of the additional contributions in schools and FE colleges, as public bodies, but refuses to do so in the post-92 sector – on the basis that they are notionally private sector organisations.

We need a national response to the rising employer costs in TPS, but it won’t come without a clear campaign of how to fund it. The answer is simple. If the government can fund schools and colleges, it can fund universities. Jeremy Hunt MP, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, this week handed tax cuts to business on the basis of a rosy forecast for the economy, but applied a pessimistic forecast to TPS in order to manufacture a crisis. The post-92 sector plays a crucial role in increasing access to university for under-represented student groups. The abolition of tuition fees and re-introduction of direct funding for the institutions would ensure they are removed from the market for education that has failed. Neither the Tory government nor a future Labour government will do so without a national dispute and strike action across the post-92 sector.

While government policy has created the crisis, university managements have also been complicit in destabilising the sector. Mismanagement in the post-92 sector is just as rampant as it is in the pre-92 sector. Rising costs in post-92 have not come from staffing costs, where salaries have fallen by 35% in real terms, but from the same shiny-building vanity-project mentality, inflated management salaries and ludicrous expansion into cities already awash with existing universities. A dozen post-92 universities have racked up huge debts by opening campuses in London. Glasgow Caledonian University even squandered £26m on a New York campus over the course of ten years before announcing its closure!

Strategy to win

There is however one thing missing from UCU, and that is a strategy to fight the cuts. The National Executive Committee of UCU met on Friday as the extent of the abandonment of disputes across all sectors of post-16 education became apparent.

The opportunity to launch the first national strikes in Further Education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as part of the #RespectFE campaign over pay was thrown away as branches were given the ‘choice’ of whether or not to participate in pay strikes in September and October. The encouragement to withdraw from the action not only ensured that activists in branches which did withdraw from the action had the rug pulled from under them, but those in branches that have continued with the strikes are more isolated than before. This was billed as the first national pay dispute in over a decade, but it has ended with local deals where members received deals well below inflation (and well below that could have been won). What happened to the ‘national’ FE dispute? – UCU Left

The plight of the FE dispute echoes the abandonment of the Marking and Assessment Boycott in Higher Education over the summer as part of the UCU Rising campaign where a national dispute was shattered by the UCU bureaucracy undermining branches and failing to call the summer ballot which could have extended the industrial action mandate into the first semester. See What went wrong with the UCU Rising Campaign? – UCU Left. It is not a surprise, therefore, that the aggregated ballot for restarting the pay and conditions dispute failed to get over the anti-union law’s 50% threshold. Nevertheless, over 68% of those who voted still voted for strike action.

A strategy to win can only be built around strike action on a scale management cannot cope with and can’t wait out. This is why indefinite action must be placed central to any industrial action strategy. It is a strategy that underpins the argument for protecting a defined benefit pension scheme and the right to retire with a decent pension. It also means focusing upon the UK-wide responsibility government in Westminster has for resolving the dispute.

None of this has been outlined by UCU. Instead the risk is that members will face the consequences of funding cuts at a local level, case by case in a raft of local disputes.

A Dysfunctional Union Bureaucracy

The UCU leadership is not simply failing to respond to the crisis facing members, it is also causing a crisis within the UCU staff itself. UNITE, the union representing staff in the union, is in dispute with the management of UCU. UNITE’s sole role representing all grades of staff in UCU is under threat, after the management team recognised GMB for the highest-grade staff, including the General Secretary and national officials. It is not uncommon for managements to recognise a second trade union in the hope it will split the workforce. These are strike-breaking approaches that have no place in the trade union movement. UCU Left raised support for UNITE and will continue to demand UNITE’s recognition remains for all staff grades. 

6pm Thursday 30 November
Zoom: /bit.ly/BRICUPSeminar3

This is a timely talk by Rebecca Gould. In the UK, as in the US and across Europe, voices for Palestine are being suppressed. Some of the key sites for this silencing are the campuses of universities and colleges. Student activity is being banned, students are facing threats of disciplinary action, staff are being warned about the content of their social media posts, visiting Professors are having guest lectures cancelled, and academics are having articles rejected because their content criticises Israel. 

In the latest such move, the elected student Rector at the University of St. Andrews has been condemned by her University’s management for describing events in Gaza as a genocide, for describing Israeli control of the land from the Jordan river to the Med as a form of apartheid, and for accusing Israel of war crimes. 

In the Spring, BRICUP will be launching a major national campaign in defence of the Palestinian voice – the right to advocate for Palestinian liberation and to criticise Israeli policy and the ideology of Zionism on campuses, and the right of academic specialists in the history, culture and politics of the conflict to teach and publish free of external or internal political interference. 

In her latest book, Professor Gould addresses the issue of free speech and academic freedom on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and considers what the implications are for the loss of these freedoms.

As is common to all the seminars in the BRICUP series, participants are asked to do some preparatory reading in advance:

1. You will find 16 pages of Professor Gould’s book here: https://bit.ly/GouldChapter
2. You will find a related article by Professor Gould here: https://www.newarab.com/opinion/how-targeting-palestine-solidarity-impacts-our-universities

Weeks of relentless bombing have left more than 14500 dead and tens of thousands injured, while homes, schools, hospitals and basic infrastructure across Gaza have been flattened. Millions around the world are organising to show they reject this mass murder and challenge the complicity of our governments and institutions in the Israeli war machine and the apartheid regime which powers it. 

Our union has a long history of concrete solidarity organising for Palestine. The motions passed by the NEC on 24 November are an important step forward in developing our ability to deliver that solidarity when it is most needed. 

Collectively, they not only reaffirm existing policy but also ensure pro-Palestinian voices are protected and call on activists and branches to accelerate their solidarity with Palestine and working with students to make the walkouts and action called for by student activists and by Stop the War Coalition as big as possible on every campus.

We hope to see branches across the country working with our students, many of whom have led inspiring mass walkouts over recent weeks calling for a ceasefire and an end to university complicity in apartheid, to organise creative forms of action on 29 November. Let’s reach out to other campus unions to build protests, walkouts, teach-ins and meetings across post-16 education. 

Resources for building branch action:

–  National  student walkout coordination https://linktr.ee/palestinewalkouts 

– Stop the War’s day of action call  https://www.stopwar.org.uk/events/ceasefire-now-workplace-day-of-action-for-palestine-2/ 

Campaigning in solidarity with the people of Palestine

NEC notes 

1. Israel’s horrific war on the Palestinian people.
2. The mass movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
3. Whereas three-quarters of all Britons call for a ceasefire, Keir Starmer’s Labour and Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Parties back Israel’s war.
4. Congress motions 8 and 9 supporting BDS and protests against Israeli oppression of Palestinians and motion 13 (2021) against the IHRA anti-Semitism ‘working definition’.

NEC resolves to

1. Call on regions, branches and members to attend national and regional protests organised by the Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, fellow trade unions and others, including tomorrow’s demonstration on 25 November.
2. Support students’ right to walk out, protest and demonstrate, and call on members to act in solidarity with them.
3. Call on branches to organise workplace protests on UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 November, and ask student and campus unions to participate.

Defending members over free speech on Palestine

NEC notes 

1. Since 7 October 2023, members expressing support for Palestine have been targeted publicly and privately for their free speech. 
2. The European Legal Support Centre (ELSC, https://elsc.support) has provided legal advice via their network of pro bono lawyers.
3. Institutional IHRA adoption has encouraged wrongly conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

NEC resolves to urgently:

1. Set up early intervention ‘hotline’ support for members and advertise it widely.
2. Develop and publish focused advice for members on the UCU website.
3. Develop protocols with the ELSC and other firms to avoid unnecessary duplication and to support members remaining eligible for Legal Scheme support should they receive pro bono advice.
4. Organise rep training for free speech cases with a focus on allegations of ‘support for terrorism’ and “anti-semitism”.
5. Write to employers and support branches to ensure members are not ambushed by managers insisting they attend meetings without a rep being present.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week 14 FE colleges will take strike action over pay, workload and national binding bargaining. FE lecturers’ pay has been cut by 30% in real terms over the last decade. At the same time workloads have increased as management pack classrooms to maximise their profits. FE staff have to spend more time chasing attendance, creating meaningless smart targets and filling in data to meet the demands of senior management. FE needs to fight back and gain a new deal on pay and workloads – ensuring that all colleges implement the same pay rise and follow agreed workload guidelines.

On Tuesday (14^th November) UCU will hold a Rally for Respect, 12 – 2pm at the Emmanuel Centre in Central London followed by a lobby of Parliament. This will be an important event to raise the profile of FE and to apply pressure on the government to increase funding for the sector and to challenge the idea that FE is somehow a ‘Cinderella sector’. We urge everyone who can to come along and take part.

This was a national campaign, which led to a historic result for FE as in March e-consultative resulted in an 87% Yes vote for action on a 51% turnout. This was an incredible result that demonstrated the strength of feeling with FE. Unfortunately, this was not built upon. There was a fear amongst some that, still, FE was not ready for a nationally aggregated ballot despite the e-ballot result. The postal ballot was then delayed until late August at a time when FE is busy enrolling and setting up courses. However, 32 branches still managed to beat the anti-trade union 50% threshold. Since then, 15 branches have accepted deals of at least 6.5% pay rises, and some have managed to get some agreement on workloads.

Although this is welcome, we believe that all FE colleges deserve a pay rise that doesn’t fall below inflation. UCU needs to take an industrial strategy that levels up the whole FE sector, rather than the piecemeal approach that leads to lecturer’s being paid vastly different salaries for exactly the same work.

14 branches are still fighting over pay and workloads, and we encourage everyone to go and visit their picket lines to show them solidarity.

• Bath College
• Bolton College
• Capital City College Group
• Craven College
• Croydon College
• Farnborough College of Technology
• Heart of Yorkshire Education Group
• Hugh Baird College
• Loughborough College
• Myerscough College
• Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group
• Runshaw College
• Warrington & Vale Royal College
• Weymouth College

Saturday’s demonstration in solidarity with the Palestinians was the biggest march for Palestine in British history and one of the biggest marches in British history. A million people poured into London to march to the US embassy. The march more than filled the two-and-a-half-mile route all the way from Park Lane to the US Embassy.

Suella Braverman and the government badly miscalculated the mood of the country. They thought they could whip up a right-wing nationalist mood, by using Armistice Day to attack protestors. They thought that they could light up buildings with the Israeli flags, ban marches and demonise those who did protest by denouncing them as ‘hate mobs.’

Their strategy spectacularly failed. People reclaimed the armistice for themselves. When governments call us to remember those who died in wars what they really mean is, ‘remember those who died and prepare to do so again’. The million people who marched under the banner of ‘ceasefire now’ and who carried home-made placards that said “lest we forget – freedom for Palestine’ are marching for those who died in the past and today and do not want it to happen ever again.

The Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament have called for a national workplace day of action on this Wednesday 15^th November.

As Educators we must put ourselves at the front of demanding a ceasefire now.

The Israeli Defence force bombing of Gaza has killed over 10,000 people half of which are children. The constant bombing has led to:

·      258 schools have been destroyed, which represents 51% of schools in the Gaza strip.

·      Around 1.5m individuals have been displaced seeking refuge in UNRWA schools, hospitals and churches.

·      9 out of the 11 universities have been demolished.

·      427 students have been killed and 12 members of staff.

·      The entire educational process in 19 of the higher educational institutions has been disrupted.

·      88,000 students have been deprived of education.

·      Face to face education has been disrupted in all 34 higher education institutions in the West Bank effecting 138,800 students.

Students in Birmingham, Glasgow, York, and Bristol Universities walked out on Friday demanding a ceasefire now.

We are calling all our supporters in universities and colleges to join the workplace day of action. Organise teach outs, walk outs, lunchtime protests or a meeting to discuss the issue of Palestine. Some of the 15 FE colleges that will be taking action on the day over pay and conditions are organising Educationalists for Palestine rallies.

Let us know what you are doing on the day.

Join the Stop the War Coalition Trade Union network. 

Sean Vernell UCU NEC

The Israeli war on the Palestinian people has had an impact across wide areas of civil society far from the Middle East and far from the politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the umbrella body for the UK’s funding councils, has walked head first into a row about its (lack of) independence from government after it failed to defend members of its EDI committee for a couple of tweets. The Conservative Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Michelle Donelan MP, wrote a letter to the UKRI publicly naming two academics who had identified themselves with mainstream criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian people. The tweets were innocuous and boringly normal. But they were too much for the Minister.

Donelan claimed such actions meant they were ‘unfit’ to sit on an Advisory Committee on equality and their appointments brought into question the operation of the UKRI itself. Equality committee members with ideas about equality? Purge them.

UKRI’s response was utterly shameful. In less than 48 hours, CEO Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser announced the suspension of the entire committee “with immediate effect”, ceasing its EDI work and, remarkably, launching an investigation into “UKRI’s procedures for establishing advisory groups, and appointing individuals to serve on them” (Annex, Terms of Reference, letter to Rt Hon Michelle Donelan, 30^th October 2023). 

This has to be one of the fastest capitulations to this bullying government we have seen. UKRI has shown itself fundamentally incapable of defending the academic freedom of researchers.

Academic freedom, and the freedom of expression associated with it, including the right to hold controversial views within the law, is a central foundation of a functioning higher education system. Paradigms are developed, tested, abandoned and overturned by new paradigms in a process in which intellectual inquiry is at its core. To delineate the extent to which this intellectual inquiry can be bound is to undermine the basic idea of ‘intellectual inquiry’ itself. It is for this reason that limits on academic freedom ‘within the law’ are defined in relation to incitement rather than thought itself. The enshrining of academic freedom within legislation such as in Scotland with the 2016 Higher Education is set out like this: 

 “… academic freedom” in relation to relevant persons includes their freedom within the law to do the following things—

(a) hold and express opinions,

(b) question and test established ideas or received wisdom,

(c) develop and advance new ideas or innovative proposals,

(d) present controversial or unpopular points of view.”.

Source: Scottish Government, (2016), Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Act 2016, Part 2, section 26 (4) available at Higher Education Governance (Scotland) Act 2016 (legislation.gov.uk)

Indeed, the ink was barely dry on the Conservative Government’s Free Speech Act 2023 when the Conservative Party was going on the attack over freedom of speech in Higher Education. 

The UK Government’s response to the widespread protest in support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom against an apartheid colonial settler state has been to seek to redefine ‘within the law’ to thought crime.  In response to demands for a unified secular state whereby all religions and none have equal citizenship, encapsulated in the slogan “From the river to the sea: Palestine shall be free”, Home Office Minister Suella Braverman MP has simply proposed changing the law to ban pro-Palestinian phrases.

To suggest the response of UKRI’s CEO was servile would be to state the obvious. More importantly, this response underlies the extent to which the drive towards ‘impact’ and ‘engagement’ with the private sector has reduced research funding in UK Higher Education to little more than a direct instrument of short-term government policy. 

Yet at a time when the UK government is deeply unpopular, and has had to accept the inevitable and to grovel to gain re-entry into the Horizon 2020 international research network, the UK wing of international research bodies might have pushed back and reasserted the importance of protecting academic freedom in research. They might have cited the Government’s own legislation insisting on free speech on campus back at them. 

They might – if they had a spine.

In truth this subservient response highlights still more worrying features of the research funding process in the UK. UKRI say they “acknowledge that its due diligence in appointments has failed”: in short, its blacklisting processes need to be strengthened. 

The blacklisting of political and trade union activists and the extent of surveillance of campaigning groups has a long history. The interconnectedness between and within the secret state, the police, proprietors of global news organisations and government Ministers has been revealed in repeated reports. The 1999 MacPherson Report revealing police collusion protecting the murderers of Stephen Lawrence, the 2011 Leveson Report into collusion between the police and press in permitting illegal phone hacking, and Sir John Mitting’s ongoing ‘Spycops’ Public Inquiry into the activities of undercover policing infiltrating campaigning groups and collaborating with blacklisting organisations all demonstrate the extent to which latter-day McCarthyism is alive and well in the UK. 

Faced with a simple challenge to academic freedom and free speech, UKRI has waved the white flag. They now admit they need to go further in ensuring free speech is more effectively policed within Higher Education.

Resisting McCarthyism

Whether we like it or not, UK Universities are now at the centre of debates over both academic freedom and Palestine. Those at the top of the sector, within the funding bodies or the institutions themselves, have abandoned even the pretence of defending academic freedom. 

Vice Chancellors and senior managers are appeasing this government. They are prepared to accept the further institutionalisation of racism, developed in the Prevent policies and the ridiculous “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance” working definition of antisemitism, and instead of defending academic freedom when it matters, go along with the targeting of pro-Palestinian academics and students.

As a trade union, UCU, with its history of supporting Palestine, must ensure that freedom of speech and academic freedom are defended and debated throughout all levels of the union. We need a national campaign to defend members and students. Academic freedom is central to UCU as the UK trade union for academic related, academic and researcher staff. No-one else will defend it unless we will.

There is much we can do within our branches. Including:

1. Call general meetings to discuss and vote on supporting protests against the bombing of Gaza.
2. Ensure branch delegations, banners and flags attend demonstrations in support of Palestine. Make our collective visible.
3. Organise teach-outs to discuss the twin issues of academic freedom and Palestine.
4. Support student protests and walk-outs on campus and demand University managements, make public statements opposing the conflation of support for Palestine with antisemitism, or support for terrorism.

Register here: bit.ly/BRICUP23_24Seminar2

The remorseless colonisation of the West Bank through illegal settlements, the disaggregation of the territory, continuous pressure to force Palestinians into exile, and the isolation of the Gaza Strip since 2006, have now rendered a two-state solution impossible, if it was ever desirable. Yet the genocidal bombardment of Gaza and the Israeli Government ambition of expelling the population into the Egyptian Sinai, and Israeli state-protected killing of Palestinians and the depopulation of villages in the West Bank, appears to render a one-state solution both infeasible and undesirable. Citing the Palestinian sociologist, Salim Tamari, in her latest book Ghada Karmi observes that many analysts see no constituency on either side for a one-state solution,

… the Israeli state’s established institutions and Zionist consciousness, as well as the material advantages its citizens enjoyed from exploiting Palestinian land and resources, would not be given up lightly; and Palestinians would resist the inevitably inferior position of their community … (and abandoning) their struggle for independence and the end of colonial occupation …

One State! The Only Democratic Future for Palestine-Israel, Pluto Press 2023, p.130

In this seminar, Dr. Karmi will reflect on how recent events in Gaza and the West Bank have affected her argument.

Born in Jerusalem and exiled in the Nakba, Ghada Karmi trained as a medical doctor in the UK before establishing the first British-Palestinian medical charity in 1972. An Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute for International affairs, her previous books include The Palestinian Exodus 1948-99 (Ithica 1999), In Search of Fatima (Verso 2002), Married to Another Man(Pluto 2007), and Return (Verso 2015).

Palestine: Memory, Identity, Resistance

BRICUP Seminar Series 2023-4

All seminars are on-line events, and take place at 18.00-19.30 London time. They consist of a presentation by the guest lecturer, an exchange with a discussant, and then questions and contributions. All participants are expected to read a short extract of the relevant text in advance, around which the discussion will revolve. Advance registration is necessary.

Please see below a message from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine requesting UCU members to consider four suggested actions and also forwarding the request to any colleagues who you think would be sympathetic.

Gaza – four things we can do in less than five minutes for the people in Gaza. Please forward to as many colleagues as possible in your institution, and via your trade union.

1. Respond to the appeal from our colleagues in Bir Zeit University
2. Sign the BRICUP petition to the UK Government
3. Join the Academic Commitment for Palestine
4. Register for the seminar on ‘Israel’s Crisis and Palestinian Resistance’ introduced by the celebrated Israeli historian Ilan Pappé on 26th October (this month).

Appeal from Palestinian academics

Here is an appeal from our colleagues in Bir Zeit University, in Ramallah on the West Bank, on behalf of academic colleagues in Gaza. It is asking scholars internationally to condemn what is a genocidal Israeli assault on the population of Gaza, and to hold Israeli academic institutions to account for their complicity in the decades of ongoing oppression of Palestinians, and the attempt to expel them from their land.

The appeal – read it here:

The BRICUP petition

‘To Stop the Killing, Address the Causes’ – condemn war crimes; end impunity for Israel’s behaviour; stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians; and withdraw the anti-boycott legislation.

Sign it here.

The Academic Commitment for Palestine

The Commitment is the response of concerned UK academics to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and the intolerable human rights violations inflicted on all sections of the Palestinian people, now compounded by the medieval siege, ethnic cleansing, destruction and invasion of Gaza. We will maintain this position until the State of Israel complies with international law, and respects universal principles of human rights.

Join the Commitment here.

The Ilan Pappé Seminar

Register for the seminar here.

See the schedule of 2023-4 seminars here.