Palestine – UCU Left

2 March 20262 March 2026

Stop the Bombing of Iran: This is ‘Regime Change,’ Not Liberation

US and Israel’s decision to bomb Iran has put the world in a very dangerous place. Trump’s initial address, informing the world that military action had started, claimed that this was an attack to ‘liberate the people of Iran.’ Nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead this action could very easily spiral into a wider conflagration, not just in the Middle East but across the world.

The brave mass movement in Iran against Khamenei’s rule only two months ago left the regime vulnerable. Trump and Netanyahu saw an opportunity to rid the Middle East of a state they see as the major obstacle to their control of the oil fields — and their political domination of the region.

The excuse for the attack was the apparent failure of Iran to commit to not producing its own nuclear capability. The arms race and the fear of nuclear annihilation is a real one. But the main driver of the potential of nuclear Armageddon is not Iran but the US and Israel. The US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons, and Israel is the sole nuclear power in the Middle East. The recent actions of the Israeli government in carrying out a genocide of the Palestinian people show it would not flinch from using even more barbaric means to further Israeli state interests.

History repeats itself

Trump framed the rationale for the attacks in his speech historically. He referenced 1979, when a revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran, the US-backed dictator. But this war is not about the liberation of Iranian people today. It is much more motivated by revenge for the loss of US interests in the region nearly 50 years ago.

The real aim of this war is regime change. The US have a long history of such attempts to further US interests in the region. In 1953, backed by the UK, the democratically-elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup. The US replaced him with the pro-US absolute monarch, the Shah of Iran, who ruled as a dictator until 1979 with the support of the US and Britain.

In 1979, a workers revolution ousted the West’s puppet. But the main beneficiary of the revolution was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who ushered in an Islamic state.

It is this history that Trump is trying to reverse, to make Iran once again the playground of American corporations and US interests.

Does anyone seriously believe if the people of Iran took Trump’s word and rose up and took matters into their own hands and re-established the shuras (workers councils, the democratic working class organisations that sprang up out of the revolution in 1979), he would welcome them?

We only have to see how he is trying to deal with working class opposition in the US to get the answer to this question!

Liberation does not come from dropping bombs at 30,000 feet. It only can come from Iranian workers themselves. In fact, the bombing will make it far more difficult for real democratic working class forces to emerge to take control over their own lives.

Trump’s ‘forever wars’ are a sign of his weakness

Whilst Trump’s primary reason for the attack on Iran is the ‘America First’ doctrine of reshaping the global world order in US interests, his weaknesses at home are a secondary but not insignificant factor.

Last September, Trump delivered a speech to his top military stating that the United States was facing an ‘invasion from within’, and that the military must prepare to fight this enemy at home, rather than engaging in wars abroad. Instead US troops would be deployed to sort out the ongoing problems confronted by ‘ordinary’ Americans.

This speech was a recognition that that the US could not continue with the failures of the ‘forever wars’. From Vietnam to Iran, from Afghanistan to the occupation of Iraq, the US has shown it is not invincible. In fact these military adventures revealed the weakness of the US’s ability to police the globe in the way it once could.

This reflected the line that Trump has given to his MAGA base about ending ‘forever wars’ and an attempt to reassure this base that these promises were being kept, especially in light of growing criticism about the Epstein files.

Fast forward a few months from this speech, and we have seen threats to annex Greenland, the kidnapping of the Venezuelan President and his wife, and now an attempt at regime change in Iran backed by enormous military firepower.

So why the turnaround? In part, the action in Venezuela and threats to Greenland represent an attempt to halt long term US economic decline by asserting control over resources and trade in the US’s backyard, what Trump has labelled the ‘Western hemisphere’. This strategy was outlined in the US National Security strategy in November 2025.

The action in Iran in part reflects Trump’s willingness, emboldened by his ‘success’ in Venzuela (and egged on by Netanyahu), to seize advantage of an opportunity to take back control of a country seen as key to America’s interests in the Middle East. This opportunity was created by Israel’s wiping out of the Hamas leadership, weakening of Hezbollah and Houthi rebels, and the genocide of the Palestinian people. The bloody suppression of the mass uprising in Iran then provided the excuse.

The attack on Iran is also a response to the growing unrest in the US itself to Trump. The magnificent resistance to ICE across the US has thrown Trump on the back foot. The ongoing scandal about the Epstein files has meant that a war abroad is seen by Trump as an opportunity to unite his base, providing a distraction from his growing domestic problems.

This is a dangerous gamble for Trump. In his speech informing the world of the war on Iran he warned that American lives will be lost for this ‘noble’ cause. Even before body bags start to arrive back on US soil, many Americans are asking what is the justification for another ‘forever war’, and ‘why is it our kids and not yours that are going to die for this ‘noble’ cause?’

Working class Americans will pay for this war in an increase in petrol and food prices and cuts in their wages.

Trump’s realignment of the world order is working in one important sense. Trump gains confidence to continue his ‘forever wars’ because every time he invades another country (breaking international laws and agreements), he faces no real opposition from other Western leaders. NATO countries have increased their arms spending, enabling Trump’s New World Order. Mainstream political leaders may complain, some may utter some words of criticism, but most have gone along with him.

Keir Starmer has allowed Trump to attack Iran from British bases ‘defensively’, targeting Iranian missile sites. This will mean more atrocities like the bombing of a school in Minab in Southern Iran, because Iran will move missile launchers and bombs will go astray. It will also mean that British bases like Akrotiri become targets.

We must build a movement that demands of our government that Starmer opposes Trump’s ‘forever wars’. We must demand a stop to the bombing of Iran now.

We should organise local protests and emergency branch meetings to pass motions calling on our government to not assist with Trump’s wars and call for an end to the bombing now.

– Sean Vernell, UCU

Palestine is still the issue

— Sean Wallis, University College London

Reblogged from seanwallis.uk

The treatment of the Palestinian people is the defining question of the decade.

Where you stand on the deliberate brutal suppression of the Palestinians defines where you stand on the basic question of universal human rights.

Universality is not an abstract question: the alternative is selectivity.

Citizens of the UK have been forced into a position of horrified bystanders to one of the greatest crimes of our generation. In a world of social media and multi-channel international television, we cannot pretend we do not know a genocide is going on.

Our government has been complicit, which means that we are forced to contend with the democratic question: how do we hold our elected government accountable?

Standing with Palestine does not mean turning a blind eye to anti-semitism. On the contrary. We must be vigilant and condemn racism of all kinds, whether against Jews or Palestinians. Racism is the enemy of people everywhere. It is a weapon of divide and rule.

You don’t have to be ‘left wing’ to think like this. You don’t even need to be a liberal.

You only need to think, this could happen to you.

This is not just rhetoric. Around the world, Donald Trump’s New World Order is indeed being directed at people from the Lebanon to Venezuela and Greenland… and Minneapolis.

This is why the demonstrations for Palestine are massive, with a very broad demographic.

When all are counted, the movement for Palestine solidarity is comparable in size (possibly bigger), and is more sustained than, the two million plus who marched over Iraq in 2003 — up to that point, the biggest mass movement in British history.

The Iraq war protests had three, possibly four truly mass demonstrations: one in September 2002 of 450,000, the famous 15 February 2003 demo (two million in the UK with 1.5 million in London), and then a demonstration of 750,000 when the war started. A second demonstration during the war brought some 400,000 onto the streets.

By contrast, the recent Palestine protests may never have had a single ‘February 15th moment’, but the movement has sustained mobilisations in the hundreds of thousands over two whole years. After more than 20 national demonstrations, the movement sees no sign of abating.

It is also notable that this is a movement built in the teeth of grotesque misrepresentation from establishment figures and supporters of the slaughter in Gaza.

Perhaps the most disgraceful chapter was when Suella Braverman, then Home Secretary, libeled the movement as a ‘hate march’, while simultaneously allowing an anti-semitic fascist mob to descend on the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day 2023. This was too much even for the Metropolitan Police. In response, 750,000 marched on the US Embassy — and then Rishi Sunak sacked her.

This overall pattern was reflected in other attempts, such as when the Conservatives asserted that the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea’ was anti-semitic. This is nonsense. But it was defeated by mass defiance and public condemnation.

One might think that the collapse of the Conservatives and the election of a Labour government would have led to a change in tone. But if anything, attempts at repression of pro-Palestinian voices have escalated, in wider society and on our campuses.

Repression on campus

A lot of attention in recent months has (rightly) been on the Government ban on Palestine Action. I think it is absolutely right for this to be challenged, and the ban should be overturned.

When Parliament debated the Terrorism Act 2000, there was no suggestion that the law would be used to proscribe non-violent direct action campaigns. Indeed the legal language was expressed in terms of ‘violent extremism’, literally: a political ideology that intrinsically involved violence.

The ban on Palestine Action raises many questions for UCU members. Can colleagues teach about social movements, theories of non-violent direct action, or contemporary politics without risking being accused of ‘supporting’ terrorism?

The safe solution: Don’t Mention the War. The chilling effect is real.

This ban also directs the criminal law against members of the group like Qesser Zuhrah, a UCL student who was arrested and detained, and began a hunger strike to protest at her prison conditions.

British courts are supposed to uphold a principle of innocence until proven guilty. But Qesser and her colleagues have been detained without bail or trial (‘on remand’) for a year. The Government’s refusal to engage with the hunger strikers is itself a scandal, as Michael Mansfield KC has observed.

Repression does not work. Curtailing free speech does not make society safer, as we learned in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. On 7/7 2005, among other incidents, London was hit by multiple terrorist bombs, including in Bloomsbury. Then, on Christmas Day in 2009, an ex-UCL student attempted to bring a bomb onto an aircraft in his underpants. The university commissioned a thorough independent review into the student’s time at UCL. The Caldicott Review found no evidence that this man was radicalised while a student, or that intervention by the university authorities might have changed the outcome. The proposals for future action are extremely modest.

Yet, returning to the present day, without any evidence of violent disorder by the anti-war and pro-Palestine movement, campaigners, students and staff are being put under a spotlight.

Long-established parameters of freedom of speech are openly challenged by politicians, not for reasons of public safety, but in order to suppress the pro-Palestine movement. Arabic words like intifada, which literally means ‘jumping up’ and ‘shaking off’ (so that’s Taylor Swift banned) are allegedly a call to violence.

But here’s the thing: the 1987 Palestinian intifada was expressly recognised by the United Nations, who condemned and warned Israel for their acts of suppression. It says something about how far to the right sections of the British political establishment has lurched that they are seeking to retrospectively condemn the use of a word referring to an event that the UN ruled was legitimate resistance to oppression. Indeed, in 2023, recognising the way the term was being misrepresented by anti-Palestinian lobbyists, academics in University College London jointly explored the meaning of ‘intifada’.

University authorities have attempted to bring their share of repression onto campus. Far from acting, as required by their Charters and the law of the land, to protect academic freedom and freedom of speech, the University of London and the University of Cambridge separately brought pre-emptive civil injunctions banning student encampments and protests on their grounds.

Speech is free — if we agree with it. (George Orwell would be so proud.)

New anti-protest policies have followed suit, not just at these universities, seeking to limit protest.

This repression impacts directly on campus trade unions, like Birkbeck UNISON, who were initially told they had to get express permission from the University of London to assemble outside the university entrance to protest at their Board of Governors meeting!

Or SOAS UNISON and UCU, who were prevented from picketing their own entrances.

Student societies have been banned. But the targeting of individuals has been worse. Students and staff have been suspended and expelled from universities by little more than kangaroo courts. Once expelled, overseas students can lose their visa sponsorship, and are in line to be deported.

What can UCU do?

UCU, like all trade unions cannot remain neutral in such a situation.

We must be prepared to take a stand.

Since 2023, in my role as London Region Secretary, I have helped organise and facilitate training for UCU reps on freedom of speech law, working with the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC). As UCL branch secretary, I have advised, represented and supported many individual union members. I have also advised students — because what happens to them may happen to us. And, as an NEC member, I carried a motion to ensure that if members receive initial legal advice from the ELSC they are not prevented from accessing union legal support.

The law is clear: freedom of expression is considered one of the principal freedoms by the courts, because if someone cannot speak freely they cannot defend themselves. Like all freedoms, it is not unrestricted (see Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights). But any restrictions on that freedom must be proportionate, and carried out by a proper and competent authority. (Politicians like Nigel Farage who denounce the European Convention wish to strip us of all our Human Rights, including freedom of expression.)

The Office for Students (OfS) has issued regulatory guidance which shows just how far the Universities have already overstepped the legal boundaries the Government officially expects.

May universities issue pre-emptive injunctions against Palestine encampments? The OfS says No, this is disproportionate, and thus likely to be a breach of the positive duty to secure freedom of speech (Example 13: encampment disrupting ordinary activities).

The law is on our side, at least for now.

Trade unions are mass organisations of workers. We have to stand up for basic principles of defending the rights of members, and an injury to one is an injury to all.

Solidarity and internationalism are our watchwords. Our members are of many races and religions. That means we cannot be neutral: we oppose all forms of racism and prejudice.

There are important principled limits on free speech: fascists spreading racism and violence (and organising thugs to do so) must be opposed, not defended. But a ‘no platform for fascists’ principle requires very great care in clarifying precisely where that line lies.

We need to be resolute in our convictions, debate and work through disagreements, and be prepared to defend each other in the face of an increasingly hostile political establishment that seeks to divide us.

We all face a basic test of solidarity. We must rise to it.

Palestine is still the issue.

Book Launch: Why Boycott Israeli Universities?

The British Campaign for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), to which UCU is affiliated, has called a public meeting to launch the newly-revised Second Edition of the pamphlet, Why Boycott Israeli Universities, at the NEU Headquarters, Hamilton House in Camden on the evening of 21 October.

The meeting will also discuss how to build support for the Academic Commitment for Palestine.

Please register for this event on EventBrite using the link below, and pass this email to your branch committee for onward circulation to members.

This event is supported by London Region UCU.

22 May 202522 May 2025

Organising for Palestine on campus: from repression to resistance

Anne Alexander, comms officer for Cambridge UCU and a member of
University and College Workers for Palestine and BRICUP

The past year has seen a significant escalation in repressive tactics by universities against protest for Palestine on UK campuses, mainly targeting students. Many UCU branches and activists have played an important role in building solidarity campaigns to protect student activists and the ability to collectively protest, but more needs to be done at a national level to organise a fightback.

Back in August 2024, University and College Workers for Palestine documented a wide set of repressive tactics deployed by university managements working in collaboration with security companies and sometimes the police. Although at a much lower level than the repression of pro-Palestine protests in other countries, such as the US and Germany, these
attempts to discipline and criminalise student protesters is deeply worrying.

Examples include violent arrests of students in Newcastle, Oxford and SOAS; victimisation of student activists at Birmingham, Essex, SOAS and LSE through long-running disciplinary cases, where some were banned from campus and threatened with expulsion. Even though legal charges have often been dropped later, or no disciplinary action taken after the
investigation – the impact on individuals targeted has been immense.

In two recent cases, University of London and Cambridge University used High Court injunctions in an attempt to pre-emptively ban protests on or near university-owned land. Breaching a court order puts students, staff and members of the public at risk of fines or even imprisonment.

The increasing legal threats to protest rights for students and staff on campus should concern every trade unionist and activist. The injunction obtained by the University of Cambridge targets all types of protest, not only solidarity action for Palestine. It affects a location in the centre of the city which has been used for decades as a rallying point by trade unions and local campaigns.

It comes alongside other attacks on the right to protest and speak about Palestine, such as the prosecution of leading figures in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition after police restrictions and mass arrests on the 18 January demonstration, the arrest of Youth Demand activists in a Quaker Meeting House and the use of counter-terrorism laws to try and silence people speaking out against genocide, such as Cardiff activist Kwabena Devonish who faces trial in August. None of this can be separated from examples of authoritarian policing, such as the intervention to stop picketing by striking bin workers in Birmingham and the harsh sentencing of climate activists on charges of “conspiracy” for taking part in a zoom call.

Yet repression is only half the picture – many of these cases galvanised greater solidarity and organising by staff and students to push back. When the University of Leicester brought police to arrest students occupying a university building in November, the UCU branch put out a strong statement pointing out that student occupations played a key role in the campaigns against the Vietnam War and South African Apartheid.

University of London took three student activists to the High Court to obtain an injunction against them organising BDS protests on part of its land. UCU, Unison and IWGB branches from across the UoL’s Bloomsbury colleges helped to co-organise a major rally condemning the injunction on the workplace day of action for Palestine, 28 November.

In Cambridge, the University’s rush to obtain a High Court injunction targeting pro-Palestinian protests in February spurred staff and students to work together on a public and legal campaign contesting this repressive move online, in the streets and in court. The University was forced to retreat on several aspects of its original request to the court, including targeting the student-led campaign, Cambridge for Palestine, by name. National
and international pressure played an important role through open letters condemning the University from Gina Romero, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and UCU General Secretary Jo Grady.

Battles over the right to protest shouldn’t obscure the scale of the audience for Palestine solidarity organising – and how this audience continues to grow and develop. University and College Workers for Palestine and BRICUP worked with UCU nationally to organise a highly successful tour, implementing a resolution at UCU congress in 2024.

Between October 28 and November 6, the Campus Voices for Palestine tour visited 8 cities across the UK with a message of solidarity against scholasticide and amplifying the calls by staff and students from Palestinian universities for BDS. Sundos Hammad from the ‘Right to Education’ campaign from Birzeit University and Ahmed Shaban of the Emergency
Committee for the Universities of Gaza were able to connect with activists across the UK which also boosted local organising.

Workplace days of action have continued to bring staff and students together to highlight institutional complicity in genocide and war crimes. Initiatives like these are taking on a significance beyond the question of Palestine, with the current tilt towards militarism from governments worldwide. Labour’s appalling decision to steal money from disabled people in Britain in order to boost the profits of arms companies creating weapons to kill and maim
people in Palestine and around the world has rightly enraged activists across the country.

In the coming year, we should be looking to build as many links as possible between the Palestine movement and wider campaigns challenging the drive to war.
• Donate to the legal campaign over the University of London and Cambridge injunctions here .
• Resources from the Campus Voices for Palestine tour here
• Download BRICUP’s pamphlet on BDS, sign the Academic Commitment for Palestine and find other resources here.

4 March 20244 March 2024

Britain, Ireland and Palestine in the Wake of the First World War

Professor Rashid Khalidi – Colombia University NY
6pm 7 March 2024
Register: https://bit.ly/BricupS6

British Committee for the Universities of Palestine
Seminar Series 2023-4
Palestine: Memory, Identity, Resistance

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.

Two years after the end of the First World War, Britain’s control of Palestine was legitimised by the Mandate granted by the League of Nations. That Mandate lasted until Britain withdrew in 1948, the year of the Nakba – the expulsion of the majority of Palestinians from their land by Zionist forces, and the formation of Israel as a state recognised by the United Nations. In the Balfour declaration of 1917, Britain had promised such a ‘national home for the Jews’ in Palestine, and during the mandate period over 100,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine.

In Ireland, a year after the end of the First World War, Irish Republicans won the election of 1918. In the face of British intransigence, the Irish War of Independence against British rule began in 1919, and lasted until ended by the Treaty of 1921. At the insistence of the British, however, this Treaty carved out of Ulster’s nine counties the six which had a Protestant majority, and were thus likely to remain loyal to the British Empire. Acceptance of the Treaty by the majority of deputies in the Irish Parliament (the Dáil Éireann) divided Irish Republicans, and led to a civil war that lasted until 1923.

Professor Khalidi will consider what can be learned from a comparison between Britain’s Imperial policy in Palestine and its Imperial designs in the case of Ireland.

Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Colombia University, New York. He is the joint editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was the sole editor from 2002-2020.

Professor Khalidi is the author, inter alia, of The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Metropolitan, 2020), Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (Beacon, 2013), Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East (Beacon, 2009), The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Beacon, 2006), Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (Beacon, 2004), and Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (Colombia, 1993). Closely related to his work on British policy towards Ireland and Palestine after the First World War, is one of his earlier books, British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (Ithaca, 1980).

Category: Palestine