— Sean Wallis, University College London
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.
See also
This article was written before the High Court ruled that the ban on Palestine Action was unlawful. Now Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said she wants to appeal the judgement. The police are still investigating people for alleged offences. This persecution of protestors opposing genocide has to stop. Send a letter today
Sean Wallis is standing for Vice President from HE, alongside our other UCU Left candidates.
The Government has been forced on the back foot after