Tag: democracy

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Stand with Minnesota – Stand Up to Farage

Regi Pilling Sean Wallis

Regi Pilling and Sean Wallis

We can’t say we’ve not been warned. 

The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ‘Immigration and Customs Enforcement’ (ICE) agents have shocked people across the world. ICE has terrorised communities from LA to Minneapolis and children as young as 2 have been detained. A wave of anti-ICE protests have erupted across the US, but many are understandably scared of standing up against a paramilitary which has been given central Government license to arbitrarily detain, even kill, and placed itself above the law.

Students and university workers at the University of Minnesota have been in the forefront of organising resistance. On January 23, trade unionists and left groups supported a call for a General Strike in Minnesota. Although this was more symbolic than a full general strike, it shows the importance of workers’ organisations and trade unions building a mass movement against Trump. 

The Trump administration’s attack on human rights has been making the pages of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from Day 1. Those who believed that Donald Trump’s second government would behave like the first saw instead a blistering series of attacks on human rights, free speech, the rights of asylum seekers and immigrants, health, environmental and social protections, education, foreign aid and humanitarian assistance, and the rule of law. 

Amnesty observes how Trump’s regime also became a symbol to other right-wing governments. This is celebrated by Nigel Farage and has led to Keir Starmer’s appeasement and copying of racist narratives. 

We have seen Trump attack educators and scientists alike. In the summer one of us (SW) wrote

“Trump’s attacks on Harvard and Columbia are a piece with his purge of the Center of Disease Control, Voice of America, etc., proving the old adage of the indivisibility of freedoms.”

That is why everyone who cares for democracy and human rights celebrates whenever people in the US fight back. It is why millions of people around the world Stand with Minnesota and why Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Minneapolis shot to No.1 in 16 countries in one day.

Democracy is under threat. Trump stood in elections, but his attacks on human rights and trade unions, even states rights, are clearly intended to make the US a more authoritarian society, allowing him and his supporters much more permanent control.

A warning for the UK

Nigel Farage and his far-right ‘Reform UK’ project is modelled on Trump’s project. 

Reform are only the visible tip of a far right campaign. Reform is creating a racist mileu for much more extreme political groupings, including open fascists, to recruit from. The most prominent of these is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who styles himself ‘Tommy Robinson’. A British National Party (BNP) organiser, he has increasingly operated as a social media ‘influencer’, garnering support online, and only breaking out into the public on occasion as he did most recently on September 13 2025, when he managed to bring over 100,000 supporters onto the streets of Central London.

More openly fascist groups like ‘Homeland’ and ‘Patriotic Alternative’ have been active in flag-raising and asylum hotel protests. They have not stopped there. It was only in the summer of 2024 that they attempted to launch race riots across the UK, attacking black people in the street and targeting solicitors firms, mosques and synagogues.

The far right have since attacked trades council meetings. And in Portsmouth, a mob attacked a student hall of residence. Reform’s progress in the polls is emboldening far right violence.

What of Reform itself? As with Trump’s MAGA project, the lines between the old Republican (read: Conservative) party and his camp are blurred, with ostensibly right-wing ‘centre-right’ politicians jumping ship. Electorally, that boosts Farage of course, gaining seats without standing in elections. But it exposes a weakness.

Like Trump and his coterie, Reform has a central contradiction at its heart.

It poses as an anti-establishment party, but is funded by the super-rich. It asks for the support of workers and ex-workers, but it seeks to advance an agenda of increasing exploitation, denial of rights and suppression of resistance. Hence the use of the term “political establishment”, which is part of the language code of the UK far right, like in the MAGA movement.

Across Europe, we’ve seen a rise of the ‘hard right’, including Reform, AfD and other far-right parties, due to austerity after the 2008 subprime crash, regardless of whether the austerity was implemented by Conservative, Labour or their international equivalents.

Figure source: Tony Annett on X.

So the recent batch of defections of right-wing Conservative MPs to Reform UK carries a political risk.

These are the same “establishment” MPs who imposed austerity, cut benefits, oversaw pension raids and wage attacks, suppressed workers’ rights and did nothing while the industrial heartlands of Britain were shut down. These MPs are the enemy of those Reform claims to speak for.

In the face of an obvious contradiction, how does Reform respond?

Simple, it pushes racism.

Scapegoating immigrants has proved a potent method for misdirecting its supporters. 

Although Reform generally maintains an arms-length relationship with actual fascist groups, the more Farage promotes racism, the more he opens the door to fascist-led protests, such as the ones targeting refugee hotels and hostels, as Searchlight and Stand Up to Racism have documented. An undercover reporter in Wales exposed one of the groups for the BBC.

The turn to increasingly open anti-refugee ‘stop the boats’ propaganda began by the Conservatives after Brexit, but Farage was always able to position himself as that bit more extreme. The ‘small boat problem’ is resolvable by ‘safe passage’ measures, but it provides a useful target for right wing newspapers. The numbers are also tiny, whether in comparison with the UK population (69.3 million) or the legal migrants applying for work visas (peaking at around half a million a year in 2023). 

Although the headlines and cruelty are targeted on desperate people in small boats, in reality, it has been overseas workers applying for jobs in the UK who have faced the biggest impact, particularly for those with visas for nursing and social care, leading to condemnation from the RCN. 

Students and staff face deportation

We have seen that international students and staff have faced physical attacks from the far right. But Reform is directly targeting migrants of all kinds.

They are not just making idle threats. In places like Kent and Lincolnshire where they control councils, they are making the lives of migrants harder, and seeking to socially exclude them by cutting funding from ESOL classes. 

Farage boasted last year about his aim to abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain, and deport large numbers of immigrants. This places 3.8 million migrants and their families who have been legally living and working in the UK for less than 5 years at risk of deportation.

But Keir Starmer opened the door. Only a few months earlier, Starmer’s government announced that ILR for some migrants would extend from five to ten years, along with more restrictive visa controls. This was all in the aim of ending ‘Britain’s failed experiment in open borders’ (sic). There should be open borders, but Britain has never attempted this! 

If Farage gets into Downing Street, we know our students and staff will be targeted all over the UK.

As with social care, targeting ILR will be devastating for university staff and the entire sector.

Universities thrive on their international connections. Staff move between countries. Internationalism is fundamental to scientific research. Knowledge knows no borders, research teams are international, as are collaborations between staff in different countries. And we teach what we research.

The scale of the threat is massive. A quarter of university staff and students are personally at risk.

  • Staff: In universities reporting to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, 24.6% of staff were from outside the UK in 2024/25. International staff are concentrated in research-intensive universities and among academic and research staff, and of these, more than half of whom are from outside the EU.
  • Students: HESA data for the period 2020-2025 shows that the proportion of international students studying in the UK fluctuated between 22 and 25%. In 2024/25, over two thirds of all enrollments in Masters and other postgraduate programmes were made up of overseas students – in part, a consequence of more than a decade of home undergraduate student loans.

Keir Starmer’s government has made Reform’s attacks on overseas students appear credible by conceding the idea of an international student levy, on top of the Conservatives’ curbing of international student visa rights the year before.

The stage is set for a major attack on overseas students and staff.

We have to stand up for everyone.

Racism is not just “out there”: it’s on our campuses too

We are also seeing a rise in everyday racism.

We are seeing a growth of an extreme right-wing internet subculture and its impact in the classroom. Union members around the UK are reporting a rise of far-right views expressed by students, ranging from anti-immigration, pro-colonialist and misogynistic ideas, and even open Holocaust denial and swastikas on whiteboards!

Only a few years ago, such instances would be rare. But the growth of the far right internationally, and the weaponisation of AI, means that members are having to challenge students much more frequently.

We must not ignore this offensive. Young people are being influenced by far-right influencers like Andrew Tate. The fascist ‘Tommy Robinson’ and his supporters mostly organise on online forums.

A generation betrayed by politicians are rightly angry – they are likely to be poorer than their parents, will struggle to gain housing, laden with tuition fee debt if they go to university, and face a world that is seemingly falling apart.

The far right is attempting to direct that anger towards those moving to this country, to other workers, to teachers, to scientists – anyone but those responsible.

Our role as educators requires us to robustly challenge racist and other reactionary ideas in the classroom. Lecturers must be able to exercise their judgment and freedom of speech to draw out those ideas and challenge them. This is not always easy. 

What can UCU do about this?

Our union needs to massively increase its campaigning and be open and upfront about the clear and present danger posed by Reform UK. Jo Grady has rightly taken on Richard Tice on Question Time, and UCU has made some public comments about the threat of Reform.

UCU is part of the Together Alliance, and is affiliated to Stand Up to Racism and Hope Not Hate.

But we need to do a lot more.

UCU has also done a lot of good work to support migrant members’ rights. We have a migrant members standing committee, and a wide range of resources.

But this work has often been limited by a legalistic approach. Thus when Congress democratically voted to oppose staff monitoring student attendance to comply with immigration monitoring, union legal advice was that reps should not ask staff to ‘break the law’ or ‘refuse a contractual obligation.’ 

The problem is obvious. If our starting point is to be limited by the law, then any far right government can shackle unions by simply changing the law.

But we also have to keep repeating a basic trade union argument: an injury to one is an injury to all.

Our sister union, the National Education Union (NEU) has publicly labelled Reform a racist party, referring to Nigel Farage as a ‘pound shop Donald Trump.’ This clearly angered Farage, and he has publicly attacked the NEU. But this was inevitable, and has opened up space for union members to engage in serious campaigning backed by their union, both inside the classroom and beyond.

Below we set out some practical proposals.

1. Tackling racism in the classroom

At last year’s FE Sector Conference, one of us (RP) put a motion calling for more support for anti-racist education initiatives led by the union. At Capital City College, we have had Themed Learning Weeks to tackle racist and anti-migrant narratives. 

In Higher Education, a different dynamic is at work. For many years, academics were essentially placed above criticism (which had its good and bad aspects!). But now student complaints are amplified by social media, and they are often selectively quoted by managers. Although the UK has not yet had a Tom Alter case, the harassment of Palestinian academics at KCL by far right and Zionist groups has come close. Palestine remains the test case for free speech.

Student complaints can be taken outside of the university to the Office for the Independent Adjudicator (OfIA), so managers are strongly encouraged to ‘believe’ students over staff. Harassment of staff for political disagreements has become routine, despite recent changes in the law supposedly to support free speech.

In Further Education, this issue is not so stark, but we are seeing an increasing use of student surveys to discipline staff if their ‘scores are below the benchmark.’

Educators have a crucial role to play in the fight against the far right.

Colleges and universities have long been bastions of an inclusive culture. That’s not surprising: it is where young people start to develop their own ideas and sense of self. College is where young people often come out for the first time, which is why LGBTQ+ solidarity is essential.

2. Building solidarity

We need to organise within our colleges and universities to defend and strengthen this necessary culture of solidarity and inclusion, and build out into surrounding cities, towns and communities to challenge Reform and the far right wherever they appear – on the streets or in the ballot box.

That is why the big demonstrations – like the Together demonstration on 28 March – really matter. 

The far right are playing on workers’ lack of confidence, promoting division and trying to direct frustration against immigrants. The best way to combat this is to mobilise members to come together, first against the racists of the far right, but second, to stand up for ourselves as workers, to fight over our pensions, pay, jobs and conditions.

3. Challenging racism among staff

As the far right begin to gain a foothold in society, casual racism creeps back into everyday conversation. Members are raising concerns about colleagues who say they support Reform UK and claim there are ‘too many migrants in this country.’

We need to build the confidence of members to challenge this and answer the argument that there is ‘not enough to go around.’ We have to explain that this is a lie, that the capability of society to give people a decent living is greater than at any point in history.

But also we have to explain the purpose of this lie: it is, to quote Frederick Douglass, to ‘divide both to conquer each.’ Our enemy is not other working class people, black or white – it is that whole layer in society that flourished under Conservatives from Thatcher to Sunak and under Labour from Blair to Starmer: the super-rich and their enablers in government.

UCU should support initiatives for anti-racist education that challenge racist and anti-immigrant narratives in particular, but also misogyny and other forms of prejudice.

4. Let’s get organised!

Finally we need to take ourselves seriously as a trade union, and organise!

We need to hold regional union day schools where reps can share successes and plan new initiatives.

We should have a space on the national website to share resources for different sectors of post-16 education. 

The rise of Farage and Reform is resistable, but to stop them we need to organise. That’s why the Together Alliance National Demonstration on March 28th in Central London has to be our focus in the short term.

Our approach is to fight for mass involvement, and uniting everyone against the far right. We need to explain to members what the far right’s agenda is and where they want to take Britain.

The experience of the US is teaching a new generation the scale of the threat, but also the potential for resistance.

It is time to fight for the future, for each other, and for ‘the strangers in our midst.’

See also

Reblogged from seanwallis.uk

Regi Pilling and Sean Wallis are standing for Vice President (FE) and Vice President (HE) respectively, alongside our other candidates.

Picture of our candidates
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Palestine is still the issue

Sean Wallis

— 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.

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.

Picture of our candidates
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Strategy, democracy and the GS election

UCU General Secretary-incumbent Jo Grady has made a number of claims in her election campaign.

In particular, she says that were she re-elected she would treat her strategy, as outlined in her manifesto, as being ‘endorsed’ by members, and expect all members of the union, including elected members of the NEC, to follow it.

This is profoundly undemocratic for obvious reasons.

Strategy

The first problem with her approach is that the strategy itself cannot work. Any industrial strategy based on a limited industrial action programme set in advance is certain to fail simply because the employers will change their response depending on what the union does! The saying “no plan survives contact with the enemy” is attributed to Moltke the Elder, a German WWI general, but the point is well made.

You don’t need to look very far to see obvious examples. The strength of the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) in 2022 and the early part of 2023 lay in the fact that the employers did not know who was participating and therefore how to respond. On the other hand, the weakness of the MAB in 2023 came from the paralysis at the top of the union as Jo Grady and her supporters left members to hang out to dry over the summer.

Jo Grady herself had to abandon her ‘build now, fight later’ strategy in the summer of 2022 when rising inflation propelled members to support the #ucuRISING campaign.

Changing economic circumstances meant that it was politically unsustainable to advocate such an approach, and instead she had to call for members to vote to take action over pay. But she had no plan to follow through. She bypassed elected negotiations, agreed to stop negotiations over pay with the employers and tried to divert negotiations onto pay-related matters at ACAS.

Despite the rhetoric, Jo Grady has no militant strategy to defend our sectors. But worse, as a top-down leader who sees members’ industrial action as a walk-on-part in stage-managed actions, she struggles to adapt her strategy to face new challenges, such as the current employers’ offensive over jobs and conditions in HE. Moreover, it is profoundly mistaken to see industrial militancy as something which can be turned on and off like a tap. Union members will take action when they are confident they have a union leadership which listens regularly to members and which is capable of following a consistent industrial action strategy. But Jo Grady’s tenure of the General Secretaryship has been marked by stop-start inconsistency and demotivation of members.

Democracy

The second problem with her approach is that it is undemocratic. Trade union democracy is far more developed than Westminster elections: elections take place annually, replacing half of the executive committees each time, and policies made at national union conferences are binding on the executive.

In our union the rule is simple: members make policy decisions, and executive committees carry them out. This rule applies to union branches and to the national executive committee structure of our union. Congress is binding on NEC and HE and FE Sector Conference resolutions are binding on HEC and FEC. Rule 18.1 says

18.1 The National Executive Committee shall be the principal executive committee of the Union, and shall be responsible for the execution of policy and the conduct of the general business of the Union between meetings of National Congress, and shall abide by decisions passed at National Congress, subject to the Rules. The HEC and FEC shall abide by and implement the decisions passed by their respective Sector Conferences.

By contrast, governing parties in Westminster make decisions in cabinet. In some cases, parties impose policies that were never in their manifestos. Famously, in 1997, following a landslide election, Tony Blair introduced £1,000 university tuition fees, in order to begin a process of marketisation of Higher Education, a proposal entirely absent from the Labour Party manifesto. One can point to numerous other examples!

What Jo Grady is demanding is a centralisation of power around her manifesto that is incompatible with the rules of the union. If she and her supporters wished to make her proposals they would be obliged to win a vote in a quorate union branch meeting, put the motion to Congress or Conference, and then win a vote in those meetings. She wants to bypass both members and debate.

The General Secretary has tried to impose her strategy on the union three times already, and whenever it has been put to a vote, she has lost heavily. Now she is trying to wrap it up in the mantle of her GS election campaign.

But a small proportion of members tend to vote in this election, and they do so by choosing between candidates, not detailed strategy documents. Her strategy has no popular support, hence her attempt to present a vote for her as a vote for her strategy.

If you have not voted yet in the elections, please do vote!

What is increasingly at stake in this GS election is not just a vote for different candidates, but a vote for the future of our union as a democratic and effective union..

Do we want a member-led union which builds on the best of our democratic processes, where the General Secretary does what members tell her to do? Or do we want a union where democracy is reversed, and the members are expected to do what the General Secretary wants?

The alternative

We need to face up to the reality of industrial relations in post-16 education. The days of partnership with management and quiet words in the ear of the Head of Personnel have long gone — if they ever existed. Vice Chancellors want to see “blood on the carpet” and a weakening of our union. They have shown they don’t care about students or the quality of their degree teaching or marking. Most Further Education principals don’t implement national pay offers.

Our pay and conditions are under assault by university and college employers thanks to increasing inflation on top of a toxic combination of market competition, division, and a race to the bottom.

We should not underestimate divide and rule. Not every member is made redundant simultaneously. Some may be prepared to take voluntary redundancy if they don’t see a prospect for a fightback. Not every member takes part in industrial action at the moment.

We need to develop a culture in our union which encourages members to meet together, stick together and participate in strikes together.

To defend our jobs and rates of pay, we must organise members at the grassroots of the union and build members’ confidence to take action. Crucially, this means being honest. It means not abandoning them when the chips are down. Our members need a leadership who will support them when they resist. This means following through on decisions when they are made, like reballoting over the summer.

We have to rebuild UK-wide disputes because otherwise we are forced into fighting over what every individual employer tells us they can afford. Our employers will plead poverty. This is a recipe for a Hobson’s Choice between jobs and pay. HE will become more like FE just as our FE colleagues are attempting to get national pay bargaining back on the agenda.

Nothing argued here is “against strategy”: rather UCU Left is opposed to counterposing the idea of a strategy to the task of real-world organising. In fact, a serious industrial strategy means organising to fight on the terrain where the employers are weak and we are strong. It means, for example, preparing the political ground for industrial action, such as targeting professional bodies accrediting courses before a MAB.

But the best way to guarantee members have confidence in an industrial strategy is simply this: they themselves must be part of developing it in practice under the changing conditions of the struggle.

This means increasing democracy. We need members to have democratic control of strike action and MABs, continually day-by-day, week-by-week, through the development of strike committees in branches, and, in national disputes, linked up UK-wide.

The basic principle that members who take action should control that action is unanswerable.

But this is not just a moral imperative. We should never underestimate our strength.

As a group of workers, we are immensely strong. Other people can’t easily teach our courses or mark our students’ work. If we increase participation in our action, we can be more solid and effective still. That is why the HE employers pulled out all the stops to try to break our action last summer, risking their public reputations and their wider employment relations with staff. It is why FE employers pay better levels of pay to members in better organised and more militant branches.

But for members to have confidence in collective action they need to control it.

In a truly member-led union, democracy and strategy go hand in hand.

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What happened to the ‘national’ FE dispute?

Westminster Kingsway picket line 2023

Last week saw UCU members in FE on strike over pay, workload and national binding bargaining (i.e. a pay rise that is paid to every branch). The strikes were well supported with large, vibrant pickets – many members were out for the first time. Billed as a national ‘Respect FE’ campaign members were initially excited to be on the offensive, but the campaign failed to provide this national fightback. What happened?

In March, an aggregated consultative ballot led to a historic result – a 51% turnout with a resounding 87% YES vote for national action. Members were angry. Pay, in real terms, has declined 35% since 2009, staff are increasingly ground down by unmanageable workloads and micro-management. A quarter of teachers leave within their first year, and two thirds of current staff would leave the sector if they could. FE is in crisis and a fightback is more urgent than ever.

For the first time since incorporation in 1993, when colleges severed their links from local government and became individual entities, the threat of national action brought the possibility of regaining national binding bargaining. In the national pay talks in June, the Association of Colleges (the body that represents the FE employers) agreed to ‘exploratory’ talks.

However, this opportunity was squandered. In March nearly 150 branches were balloted, by the statutory ballot in late August only 88 branches were. This ballot was held at a time when FE staff are incredibly busy with the start of term and enrolling students. 13 branches were pulled out during the ballot as they reached below inflation pay deals. By the end of the ballot period, only 32 branches beat the anti-trade union 50% threshold. The national leverage UCU had, was gone.

So how did this ‘national’ campaign start to fall apart?

According to the General Secretary Jo Grady and her team it was for three main reasons. First, the AoC recommendation of 6.5% in September was timed to undermine the vote. Second, that pay was the most important issue for members and that national binding bargaining wasn’t resonating with them. Third, that branches were not ready for strike action. We do not agree with that assessment and instead argue it was due to a lack of leadership and a flawed understanding of how to build a successful national campaign.

At the Respect FE Rally held on the first day of strike action (where no striking worker was on the platform of 7 speakers) the GS argued we needed to win 100% of our members to the arguments and that’s where we now needed to focus our attention. However, rarely is a strike supported by 100% – it only requires a majority of members. Action taken by some can then provide confidence to others.

Moreover, despite publicly supporting the national campaign, almost half of the Further Education Committee didn’t even participate in the ballot. In some of these branches, they had beat the 50% threshold, but still they settled for local deals well below inflation without firing a shot. This sent a clear message that the priority was local branch deals rather than fighting to level up the whole sector and make sure no branch was left behind.

Before the consultative ballot and throughout this campaign, there has been a call by some within the national FE leadership and within some branches to maintain and respect local branch autonomy. They argue that the national union can’t “tell branches what to do.” Of course, the national union can never tell members that they have to strike – but they can provide leadership and solidarity that can give branches the confidence to take action and fight for better deals. We would question, what do they want autonomy from? Do they want autonomy from the national union? If so, it begs the question – why are they in a national union at all? A basic principle of trade unionism is our collective national strength. We are much weaker when we fight on a branch by branch basis. The majority of colleges will not even implement the AoC recommendation leaving the majority of our members with a cost of living pay rise. As a union our power lies with our ability to take national action.

It is not surprising that the AoC outmanoeuvred UCU with their pay offer. The national office made little reference to workloads, an issue that is leading many to leave the sector. And they did even less to raise and popularise the idea of a national binding bargaining. Many members still ask what this is despite the 9-month campaign.

The GS openly stated it had been difficult to popularise national binding bargaining as it wasn’t “sexy”. Well, most things in FE trade unionism aren’t “sexy”! But what are members calling for? Not to be left behind school teachers pay deals, which are based on national binding bargaining. Not to be struggling to pay their bills and struggle to have a good standard of living. Not to be working 12+ hours for free due to gruelling workloads.

We need a radical change in UCU’s national industrial strategy within FE. Otherwise, the sector will continue to be left behind and divided with members left alone fighting their individual employers.

Regi Pilling (FE Women’s Rep NEC & UCU Branch Secretary at Westminster Kingsway College)
Alyson James (UCU Branch Chair at Westminster Kingsway College)
Outcheuma Ezekiel (UCU Branch Rep at City and Islington College)

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What is going on in the HE national negotiations?

Summary

  • These talks concern ending the Marking and Assessment Boycott
  • Pay, casualisation, workload and pay gaps are not on this table: at best, these talks may lead to restarting negotiations
  • Employers are not making an improved pay offer, but have offered a ‘review of sector finances’
  • We need to launch the summer reballot, not just for leverage now, but to keep up pressure in the autumn
  • Democracy is essential: any offer must be put to a Branch Delegate Meeting before going to HEC and an e-ballot

On Friday, members received an email from the General Secretary about the talks with UCEA. A rather cryptic ‘joint statement’ between UCU and UCEA has been published on UCEA’s website.

Members are engaged in a Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) in order to persuade employers to increase their offer on pay and engage in meaningful negotiations over casualisation, workload and pay gaps.

We all know that the MAB has been difficult to carry out. On top of the professional and personal sacrifice, it is extremely stressful for staff. Members are facing up to threats of 100% pay deductions and often prolonged deductions. These threats have already been carried out in many cases, and some members have even received zero pay!

But we are doing this in order to move the employers on the demands of the dispute. The scale of this action and its impact is due to the cumulative anger in the sector of staff who have seen employers hold down pay and continue abusive practices of casualisation and overwork. The MAB is less like a strike and more like an underground organised movement that has included staff who did not take part in strike action in the past.

The joint statement says

Today’s exploratory talks between UCEA, UCU and the other joint unions’ side secretary were constructive, although there is still significant ground to be covered. We have explored obstacles to resuming negotiations and bringing an end to the Marking and Assessment Boycott, with both sides recognising the complexity of the issues. Both sides welcomed the positive tone of the discussion and have identified dates for further urgent talks. Further discussion will also take place with the Joint HE Trade Unions to consider the scope and remit of a review of sector finances.

This statement after the first day of negotiations follows a letter from UCU General Secretary Jo Grady to UCEA two weeks ago. In this letter she set out terms of reference for an ‘interim agreement’ and the following approach to negotiations:

  • Any suspension will require UCEA to recommend an immediate end to punitive pay deductions and a return of deductions to members.
  • Any suspension will require a commitment from employers to recognise staff’s entitlement to leave and to a reasonable workload on their return to normal working.
  • Any interim agreement will be subject to consultation with UCU members.
  • University staff have already rejected the 5% pay award UCEA began imposing in February (2023), and continue to demand that UCEA improve pay to deal with the cost-of-living crisis.

The employers have refused to talk to the unions about pay since they declared the pay offer for August 2023 as ‘final’ in February. They placed preconditions on negotiations on casualisation, workload, pay gaps and ‘the review of the pay spine’ (considering whether to delete and adjust salary points at the lower end of the national pay scale) that ruled out any industrial action by any trade union for the duration of those negotiations.

So why are they talking now, and what does this ‘positive tone’ refer to?

Decoding the statement

In order to decode the statement we have to read the bullet points in Jo Grady’s letter. This sets out UCU negotiators’ brief as to negotiate an end to the MAB.

On the one hand, an agreement to stop and return any deductions made would obviously be welcome. But if the employers wish student work to be marked by staff who set assessments and taught the students in the first place, it will be essential anyway!

With the exception of Queen Mary, which faced significant strike action, and Goldsmiths, which was in a parallel local dispute over redundancies, no deductions were made for MAB participation last year. Although this negotiation is more complicated with 145 institutions at the national table rather than at 30 local ones, the realpolitik is essentially the same.

But what about actual positive movement on the issues of the dispute? What is the substance of the statement?

The final bullet point is unclear. It seems only to ask the employers to note that the unions continue to demand an increased pay offer, but not to commit to it.

The UCEA statement says ‘[f]urther discussion will also take place with the Joint HE Trade Unions to consider the scope and remit of a review of sector finances.’ But ‘a review of sector finances’ means ‘open the books’ at best. It does not put new money on the table. Given the financial speculation and capital overspend that many universities have engaged in over the last decade, this review could easily turn into a platform for the employers to plead poverty. It is likely that many will.

UCU is currently negotiating the end of the MAB without demanding a concrete commitment from the employers to move on the Four Fights – the entire point of the dispute. By contrast, branches in the MAB last year were able to extract concrete commitments from their employers, and in some cases additional payments, as a condition of ending the MAB.

What can we do at this critical point in our dispute?

We have to stop our union giving away our leverage. It is not enough to say ‘hold the line’ if these negotiations will be the end of the line!

The first step is to call a summer reballot and demand that other Sector Conference decisions are respected and implemented, as members have a right to expect. It is possible, within UCU rules, for the relevant officers to trigger the ballot. Of course this should have happened at the last HEC meeting, however, the agenda item which would have triggered the ballot was ‘timed out’ by other business.

The reballot must begin immediately. If the employers are kicking negotiations over pay into next term, we need those talks to begin in the context of a credible threat of industrial action. Other trade unions, including UNISON, are lining up to take strike action next term.

Launching the reballot will also send a strong signal to the employers in the current negotiations that members expect a better deal right now.

The second step is to demand that any offer from the employers is put to an official Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) before an HEC meeting is convened to discuss it. This is the very least we should expect, and has been how UCU has consulted over negotiations since 2018. Yet it seems that sections of the UCU leadership are averse to doing this. Could it be that they worry that branch reps won’t stand for a sell-out?

Calling a BDM is a basic requirement. Local branches negotiating the end to the MAB last year put offers to branch meetings and debated whether the offer was good enough. But there was no official BDM called ahead of the last HEC meeting which voted (by a majority of one) to approach the employers with these conditions.

Democracy is not an added extra. It is essential to our union’s health and strength. Whether one thinks that an ultimate offer is a good or bad one, we must not let our union slide further into undemocratic practices. Nor must we permit the undermining of reps and activists who have led the MAB in the branches, and every single member who is holding the line for their union right now in the face of management intimidation.

Passing motions

An example model motion is the following (passed at KCL on 12 July)

MAB for the win!

This branch believes that

  1. the MAB is currently exerting huge pressure on the employers
  2. now is not the time to offer concessions
  3. the offer of an ‘interim agreement’ sends a dangerous signal that we have no stomach for the fight.

This branch calls for

  1. an urgent BDM to discuss the MAB
  2. the decisions of Sector Conference to be respected and implemented, including the summer reballot, which should begin immediately.

This branch resolves to contact our geographical and UK-wide representatives on HEC to explain the way they voted on the key motions at last Friday’s meeting and under what circumstances they would vote to overturn decisions made by HE Sector Conference.

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In-person Congress returns: democracy, debate and catharsis

For the first time since 2019, UCU came together in-person, in its annual Congress: a three-day union policy conference with delegates from every branch. The meeting included two days of general union policy-making, ‘Congress’, and one day of sector conferences where motions about industrial policy would be heard.

The fact that Congress met in-person after such a period of time is remarkable. Many delegates who attended had not been before. In the dark days of lockdown, many old hands would be forgiven for expecting that a return to an in-person Congress would not be possible. Although we have seen a flourishing of online meetings and conferences since 2020, the return of an in-person conference therefore represented new opportunities and challenges for delegates.

There were sharp disagreements which were generally handled well, but there was also a very large amount of unity across Congress delegates.

Further Education Sector Conference

On Sunday, the Further Education Sector Conference heard the Head of FE launch the campaign in preparation of ballots in the new academic term involving at least 150 branches. He said this would be the biggest and the best resourced campaign that FE had ever seen. 

Delegates voted to outline how the already agreed nationally-coordinated campaign over pay, workload and an England-wide binding bargaining agreement should be conducted. 

They supported calls for a demonstration in London on one of the first days of strike action, an England-wide strike committee, and to prepare for an aggregated ballot of all FE branches from January if the coordinated campaign had not succeeded in moving the employers. 

Delegates also supported a raft of other important motions on maternity/paternity rights, parity with sixth form colleges, the impact of the cost of living crisis on Black members’ mental health, which resolved to campaign for the government to publish data on the disproportionate impact it has had on Black people, and motions in support of trans and non binary people in FE.

The Yorkshire and Humberside motion on attendance monitoring in colleges was well supported after delegates explained the corrosive impact on staff and students on punitive attendance chasing policies, which are rife within the sector.

A late motion brought by Trafford college on the negative impact of Ofsted in the wake of the tragic death of Ruth Perry was unanimously supported.

Higher Education Sector Conference

Meanwhile at the Higher Education Sector Conference, delegates voted for a long reballot over the summer in both the Four Fights and USS disputes. Our existing mandate runs out in September and without the ability to threaten further action in the autumn term the employers will be tempted to harden their stance against the MAB and may renege on promises on pensions. 

HE delegates also voted to encourage branches to call strike committees if they had not done so already, and to call a national strike committee in HE disputes. Such a committee would have a coordinating role to ‘increase members’ involvement and participation in building disputes and [shape] their direction.’ Delegates should be elected from every striking (or MABbing) branch and meet regularly while action is being taken. (The meeting would be advisory, but they should be run by union members rather than officials. A rule change motion which would have created rules and standing orders for a national strike/‘dispute’ committee with decision-making powers was not heard on Saturday due to lack of time.)

The responsibility for calling a national strike committee now falls to the incoming President. Given that the UK-wide MAB is now at an acute point, one should be called urgently in the Four Fights dispute.

Motions calling for further exploration of Conditional Indexation in USS and a ‘student distribution system’ were also passed. UCU Left opposed CI because it risks becoming a way that USS reintroduces stock market uncertainty into members’ pensions just as we are close to a victory. 

We also questioned the wisdom of focusing on balancing student numbers rather than opposing the entire market system, in which Universities UK is lobbying for £12K undergraduate fees in England and next year’s undergraduates are signed up to 40 year RPI-based loans. This is not opposition in principle but concerns the practical implications of such a stance. The risk is that this opens the door to advocates of high tuition fees, dividing members and branches, and staff from students and parents. The motion called for both exploration of student redistribution models and the immediate advocacy of the idea – which seems premature!

Accountability of the General Secretary

One of the most difficult debates also relates to democracy.

On Saturday, Congress voted to censure the General Secretary over her role in the HE dispute. (Censure means formally criticise.) A motion of ‘no confidence’, which is more serious, fell by only 27 votes. Before Congress met, eleven HE branches had submitted motions of either censure or no confidence.

Delegates criticised the continual undermining of the HE disputes through pausing strikes at key moments, ignoring HEC decisions and blocking democratically elected national negotiators from key decisions.

FE delegates shared these concerns. As one put it, ‘We in FE are heading into a dispute on a national level next year. We do not want a long-drawn-out dispute which is paused at key moments when we should be escalating to win.’ 

The General Secretary was allowed a 15-minute right to reply after the debate but before the voting took place. She admitted mistakes had been made and spoke about how we need unity if the union is to move forward to beat the employers. 

At the end of the debate, Congress voted to censure her. The fact that the ‘no confidence’ motion fell indicates that delegates were prepared to give the General Secretary a chance to rectify the way she has handled the disputes. 

Congress has made a decision. It is not one that UCU Left agrees with, but we need to draw a line under this debate and move on to winning the ballots in FE, and pursuing the MAB. We will also need to reballot in HE to maintain our mandate. This raises the prospect that we could see a united post-16 strike over pay and conditions in the autumn. 

But on her part the General Secretary must make good on her promise to learn from the mistakes that have been made. Any recurrence of attempts to undermine democratic decisions will lead to members calling our elected leadership to account again.

Worryingly, on the last day of Congress the outgoing President said that some of the speeches in Saturday’s debate had been misogynistic, i.e., sexist and abusive. This is a surprising claim, firstly because the debate was witnessed by over 300 members, and secondly because if the chair (the President) felt this, she should have intervened at the time! In fact, the debate was characterised by a high level of care by all delegates. Delegates were very careful to focus on the actions of the General Secretary rather than making remarks directed to her personally. 

The debate is not about personalities, but who controls the disputes. Members are putting themselves on the line when they strike or MAB, and they expect their union leadership not to leave them high and dry. 

The best solution is to organise. Members in disputes need to continue to strengthen union democracy, and in particular to organise real, functioning strike committees – regular decision-making meetings open to every striker or MABber – in every institution participating in the dispute. 

What kind of democracy do we need?

The other big debate about democracy, which was reflected in both the HE Conference and the full Congress, concerned e-ballots versus deliberative democracy. 

Some delegates argued that electronic surveys and polls reached more members than branch meetings or strike committees, and therefore were either superior, or should be used in addition to other forms of decision-making. These arguments were voted down, primarily because delegates have witnessed how such e-polls can be misused in the HE disputes. If they run in parallel with branch meetings, how do you integrate possibly different results? If they run as a separate step, do they lead to delay and inaction?

Changes to union rules

Congress 2022 last year had established a committee to review Rule 13, the UCU procedure for dealing with complaints against union members, in response to concerns about the fairness of the procedure. This year, Congress voted to bring in a new procedure, which establishes a new body, the Conduct of Members Committee, to deal with these complaints. This body will be comprised of members elected by Congress, increasing lay member involvement in internal processes that were previously highly centralised. Congress’s wish to democratise union procedures should be seen as part of a more general will to improve democracy and accountability within our union, also seen, for example, in motions such as those to establish strike committees. 

UCU Left supported the proposals from the Rule 13 Commission and opposed an Open University amendment, which was passed, which established a different panel for gender-based violence and bullying which would have only a single UCU member and two external members ‘qualified in survivor-centred complaint investigation and resolution.’ We consider that these are very serious issues, but opposed the creation of a separate procedure. We also believe that UCU needs to be accountable for the behaviour of its members and take responsibility for sanctioning them when required.

Having a separate procedure for gender-based violence raises the issue of separate procedures for racially-motivated violence, and violence against disabled and LGBT+ people. It is also not clear whether any citation of bullying in a complaint would cause this alternative procedure to be selected. This is a debate we will have to return to.

In an historic vote, Congress also agreed to rule changes that permit postgraduate research students (‘PGRs’) to become UCU members on an equal basis to staff, even if they were not employed at the time. Although delegates were made aware of some issues of implementation – primarily, access to legal support and industrial action ballots (like retired members, student members can’t lawfully vote in statutory ballots) – these were not considered insurmountable, and the principle of inclusion was paramount.

Another rule change clarified the role of national negotiators and their reporting responsibilities.

International motions

After a thorough debate, delegates voted for two motions on Ukraine. Both motions took a clear position of opposition to the Russian invasion, demanded Russian troops leave, condemned all manifestations of imperialism, and called for peace. The first motion called for the British government to stop sending arms to Ukraine, opposed NATO expansionism and called on UCU to support demonstrations called by the Stop the War Coalition and CND. The second motion called for UCU to campaign for safe routes for all refugees and asylum speakers, for the cancellation of Ukraine’s national debt, and tasked the UCU with developing programmes of practical solidarity work.

Congress was persuaded by those who argued that the war was escalating in violence and weaponry, with an arms race of ever more high-tech weapons being deployed on both sides, risking prolonging the war, killing tens of thousands of working-class Ukrainians and Russian soldiers, and increasing the likelihood of a nuclear conflagration. 

Congress also voted to support the ‘Right to Boycott’ campaign, a new campaign being set up to oppose Government plans to make Boycott Divestment and Sanctions policies of public bodies illegal. Already this topic has caused the union to become legally defensive, despite the union winning the famous Fraser vs. UCU legal case. Congress voted to reinstate, and then support, an amendment to the motion which reminded members of existing policy towards academic boycott of Israeli institutions and their academic freedom right to decide who to collaborate with.

Along with other motions in support of the Palestinian struggle and in solidarity with the people of Sudan, these motions were overwhelmingly supported.

Equality

In a series of debates, Congress reaffirmed its commitment to trans and non-binary solidarity and LGBT+ rights. It also took forward proposals on sex workers’ rights, and sexual and gender based violence training, including in the internal UCU complaints procedure. A range of motions on disability advocacy and support were passed, including supporting disabled students and campaigning against Cost of Living and cuts in disability entitlements. 

A motion on reparations for slavery that had fallen off the agenda last year was brought forward in the agenda and supported overwhelmingly.

Finally UCU voted to campaign against the various new far right extremist groups who have been given a platform to attack refugees by the Government’s brazen scapegoating. 

Solidarity with UEA and Brighton branches

Congress unanimously passed motions of solidarity with two branches suffering serious redundancy threats at the moment – University of East Anglia and University of Brighton.

Delegates heard that the attack at Brighton University, involving the threat to over 100 academic jobs, was also a deliberate assault on the UCU branch there with the aim of driving through further changes in breach of the post-92 national contract. Four members of the branch committee are on the ‘at risk’ list, including the Chair, who was also recently re-elected to the union’s NEC. 

Congress agreed that the struggle at Brighton should be declared ‘a local dispute of national significance’ and the branch should be provided with the resources it needs to resist this serious attack.

Branches in London and the South East, and some from further afield, committed to sending delegations with their branch banners to the ‘Save Brighton University – No to mass redundancies’ demonstration called by Brighton UCU for Saturday 10th June.

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No more ‘pauses’ – no suspension of action! Strike to win!

Tuesday’s #UCURising reps briefing has caused a huge amount of confusion ahead of our six days of strike action.

No new information about progress in the talks materialised.

All we learned was that there ‘may’ be some progress on USS, and that ‘some agreement’ is close on how the issues of casualisation, pay gaps and workloads might be addressed in the future.

  • Pay: The only pay-related item currently on the table is compression of the pay spine (the result of higher increases on lower spine points reducing pay differentials between them). Correcting this is unlikely to put money in UCU members’ pockets, and may make only a small difference to the lowest paid. There has been no further offer from the employers over headline pay. Members still face a two-year 15% pay cut against inflation.
  • USS: On USS there has been an interim statement with employers agreeing to prioritise benefit restoration ‘if it can be done in a sustainable manner.’ However, there has been no firm commitment to benefit restoration, and a lot could still go wrong.

In other words, there is no offer that represents tangible progress in the disputes, and there is not likely to be one this week.

In spite of this, it seems that branches will be asked to elect delegates in preparation for an ‘emergency’ BDM which may take place as early as this Thursday, and be followed by an ‘emergency’ HEC to take decisions on the action.

Why? The only reason can be that the General Secretary and the President-elect want to call off our strikes. The silence from HQ about these six days of action has been deafening.

Jo Grady has learned, however, that calling off strikes unilaterally produces a negative response from members. Instead, it looks like an emergency BDM will be used as a mechanism to try and bounce the HEC into calling off the action.

Democracy takes time

We are in favour of holding BDMs to update members in the course of disputes and to involve them in decisions about action.

But as of March 15, no-one apart from a select few even knows what is on the table!

A BDM called at no notice to discuss an ‘offer’ which does not yet exist — and which delegates will barely get sight of in advance — is even less democratic than some of the recent BDMs have been.

To be effective and democratic, BDMs need to be preceded by branch meetings at which the issues are discussed, votes are taken and delegates are elected and mandated. This ensures that members can consider the arguments for and against, delegates vote according to branch positions and decisions, and don’t just represent themselves.

This kind of democratic process will be impossible ahead of a BDM on Thursday. Members are mobilised for the strike. Many are attending Budget Day demonstrations on Wednesday and will have no time to meet.

Indeed, the only reason for the rush to do this on Thursday seems to be because the NEC meets on Friday all day!

We have to go forward

What is at stake is not just a few days of strike action but the future of the entire dispute.

We need to insist that no more of our planned strikes are called off. The GS’s ‘pause’ set back our campaign by destroying our momentum and causing confusion among members. We lifted the pressure from the employers at the crucial time, with the inevitable result that the employers imposed a pay award comprising two years’ worth of pay cuts instead of just one.

We have already wasted too much of this six-month mandate to call off more strikes. Every time we do, the employers are emboldened.

Strike. Vote. Win.

Strikes now at the end of term have substantial leverage with the employers because they prevent remedial ‘catch up’ teaching ahead of exams next term (in some universities this is the last week of teaching). Were we to stand down action next week, it would lead to immediate demands on members to catch up with teaching and undermine our own strikes. Of course we are not just a union of lecturers. But teaching is time-constrained, and it is a mistake to think otherwise.

But ultimately the main message will be obvious. Cancelling strikes tells members and employers that the union is not confident of winning. The pressure on employers is immediately lifted. And it will make it harder to win the reballot we need to mount a marking and assessment boycott next term — and harder to carry it out, for fear of a repeat of more start-stop sabotage.

No Capitulation. Unity is Strength.

Build the Pickets. Keep up the Action.

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For action that can win – shut down the campuses!

After weeks of silence and prevarication, the General Secretary has finally announced the decisions on industrial action taken by the Higher Education Committee (HEC).

We welcome the news that the marking and assessment boycott (MAB) is to be notified to start in January. But at the same time Jo Grady has undermined our unity by publicly declaring her opposition to all-out strike action just one hour before negotiations with the employers began!

Why did HEC take the decisions that it did?

HEC voted for an early marking boycott because, as twenty branches proved in the summer, it is a powerful weapon that needs to be used before our ballot mandate expires. At the time, the GS opposed that decision, telling us that the majority for a MAB at the Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) was not big enough. We are glad she has changed her mind.

The decision for all-out indefinite strike action was taken because HEC members understand we are in the fight of our lives. We have taken blocks of action before and the employers have dug their heels in and waited it out. Members have watched the post and rail bosses do the same in response to the CWU’s and RMT’s action. The BDM was not allowed to consider all-out action, but this is how we carry out Jo Grady’s promise to ‘shut down the campuses in Semester 2.’

This is not ‘playing in the hands of our employers,’ but taking action that can win. Pacing ourselves by spreading out the action over months will not work in circumstances where the bosses and the Tories are determined to hold the line. The cost-of-living crisis has raised the stakes. If we fail to break through, our employers will have carte blanche not only to continue cutting our pay, but to impose mass sackings and contract changes. The future of our union is at stake.

Democracy

To win these disputes members need to be in control. They have to know that the union’s leaders are accountable and that the decisions of our elected bodies are not going to be ignored. We need strike committees in every institution with delegates empowered to make decisions on our disputes at a UK-wide level.

UCU Left members were among the majority at HEC that voted for a January marking boycott followed by all-out indefinite action. We were right to do so. We have a powerful mandate for action. We can’t afford to waste it.

If you support action that can win, vote for UCU Left candidates in the forthcoming NEC elections.

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How many times must members be surveyed before they are permitted to fight?

Branch reps in mandated UCU branches were astonished to read yet another email on Monday from HQ asking them whether or not members were ready to launch a marking and assessment boycott. They were asked to respond in 24 hours.

Branches had been told to expect an email of Frequently Asked Questions about the marking boycott. But in this email there was no statement about how the boycott would be actioned and members supported. Nothing about the mechanics of the marking boycott and how strike action might back up ASOS – only that deductions ‘would face the immediate threat of strike action’.

It is not surprising that ordinary branch activists, reps and members feel abandoned. From the very start of this dispute rank and file reps have had to fight to push it forward, and ever since the last ballot mandate, the General Secretary has made it clear she favours not using it. Branches feel surveyed to death!

After delayed SHESCs, branch delegate meetings and HECs, and delays in issuing the mandate so that in many branches marking has mostly been done, members can see that the GS does not want the marking boycott to go ahead.

Democracy in our dispute

Perhaps most shockingly, the message asked reps whether their branch would continue to fight if others dropped out, either because the timing was wrong or members did not feel supported. The email sought to undermine the very premise of trade union collective action in a national dispute. This is a profoundly anti-democratic proposal.

The democratic solution is to call an urgent branch delegate meeting for branch reps with a mandate, to thrash out what the union should do. That is precisely what Motion 6 at both SHESCs called for.

Until such time as branches collectively decide to stand down a marking boycott, it should go ahead. In the meantime, there is no time to lose. No action should be stood down, and HQ should get their FAQs out!

Twinning, solidarity and keeping up the fight

Branches currently without a mandate need to invite reps from branches with a mandate to ‘twin’ and raise funds to support whatever action they decide to take.

Members not taking action should be encouraged to think about serious donations, such as a day’s pay for every week that a branch is boycotting. This way we can ensure members who do face pay docking are supported.

And we need to start preparing the ground now for a long reballot over the summer, to bring as many branches out as possible together at the start of term.

The stakes are extremely high. On the one hand we can all see universities like De Montfort and Wolverhampton attempting to make cuts in Higher Education.

On the other, the employers can be forced to concede over Four Fights, pay and pensions. The employers are exposed over their complicity in making unnecessary USS cuts, and some are prepared to offer huge bribes to staff to break the strike. We can win, but we need to stand together.

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Seize the Time, Don’t Abandon the Fight

We all know we are in the fight of our lives.

But the General Secretary’s ‘new plan of action for the four fights dispute’ is a radical-sounding document that abandons the Four Fights dispute until a year’s time, and pulls back from defending the USS pension scheme at the very moment the employers are cutting it back.

It is unsurprising that union reps are speaking out spontaneously against this plan.

We are told that continuing action at this point would be ‘conservative’, whereas the ‘radical and militant’ response to the greatest attack on our standard of living for 30 years is to… halt the fight for a year! Inflation is hitting 9 percent, but our union’s leadership is telling its members – with a live dispute and mandate – to put up with it, and fight another time!

Reading this document, you wouldn’t have thought that the union had just recorded overwhelming majorities for strike action and ASOS. Reps are lectured on ‘democracy’ after winning votes!

We are told that this is the way we can increase union density, but this flies in the face of our own union’s history. In 2018, pre-92 HE branches grew by 50% in a couple of months as they readied for strikes. That happened because members want to know the union will defend them, individually and collectively. On the other hand, shutting down the national fight against casualisation sends precisely the wrong signal to members on casual contracts.

The General Secretary is counterposing union recruitment to industrial action. Her theory of the ‘supermajority‘ says that the reason why strikes win is because union density is high. But this is not correct. UCU was a third smaller in the pre-92 USS ballot in 2018 than in 2021. And some branches with high membership density – like Goldsmiths – are under remorseless attack.

In fact, industrial action is won by workers when employers recognise that refusing to concede to union demands will be more costly than any perceived benefits. That cost can be economic (e.g. damaging reputations and recruitment, etc), but it can also be political (causing a political crisis for the employers, as in 2018). 

For everyone who has stood on the picket lines in the wind and rain, and spent weeks fighting to get the vote out, the General Secretary’s pre-prepared ruminations will be a massive disappointment.  On the other hand, members who voted for action but failed to take it themselves will read it as a signal that the union is not serious. 

Democracy

Jo Grady was elected after her predecessor, Sally Hunt, sought to abandon the USS fight. She was elected as an expression of UCU members’ will to resist. However her response to the present attacks on UCU members looks little different to Sally Hunt’s.

The latest round of ballots saw members once again vote overwhelmingly for action. Had this ballot taken place before the Tory Anti-Union Law of 2016 was introduced, we would be all able to take strike action. Branches have asked their members whether they support strikes and ASOS. And they have voted Yes!

Even if you are in a union branch that failed to get over the Tory threshold and cannot take action, with very rare exceptions, in branch after branch members have overwhelmingly voted for action. That’s democracy. 

It is wrong to interpret non-votes as no votes. Firstly, it is anti-democractic in principle. This is why quorums for general meetings are low, to ensure that members turn up and participate in debates and vote for and against motions.

Secondly, it is not consistent with the evidence. Members do not vote for a variety of reasons, as anyone who has engaged with a Get the Vote Out (GTVO) campaign can report, from lost papers to house moves and pre-arranged leave. This explains why branches with well-organised GTVO campaigns chasing and nudging members to vote have been repeatedly able to get high turnouts. It is also why Yes vote percentages tend to be remarkably stable even when turnout fluctuates. 

The three-week ballot insisted upon by UCU HQ, at the end of the second term and into the Easter break, left many branches close below the 50 percent threshold. Another week would have brought more branches over the line, and two more weeks, as voted for by HEC, could have changed the picture enormously. 

Some members complained that replacement ballot papers arrived at home on the final Friday, and rep reports show members saying they were voting right up until the end. The ballot deadline combined with the postal voting process cut voters short.

A plan to win

The General Secretary is now trying to lobby union reps and activists over their heads, to persuade branches to stand down the action that members have just voted for. Yet a calibrated plan and a mobilisation of the whole union could win these disputes. 

At the current time, some 40 branches can still take action on exams in Term 3. Everyone knows this action will need the whole union to rally around.

  • A marking boycott organised on a ‘Liverpool basis’ requires a positive outward campaign across the membership to sponsor strikers, fundraise on a massive scale, and ensure that every participant knows the whole union is behind them, practically and financially.
  • Members in non-striking branches would be more than willing to contribute to sponsor colleagues. These branches need to organise too. The USS rank-and-file legal challenge shows the scale of fundraising we need.
  • And a ballot over the summer in the context of a hard-hitting fightback makes sense. It could see us all ready to take on the employers right at the start of the autumn term.

The General Secretary says this is a war. But you don’t win wars by telling the enemy you are too weak to fight, and would they mind if we came back in a year?! The attacks on Goldsmiths colleagues, and the employers’ general intransigence show that they are likely to see such a declaration as a sign of weakness.

We are now told that despite previous attempts to de-couple the USS dispute from Four Fights that it’s OK to keep them coordinated – as long as we fight in a year’s time! But this makes no sense. Why would giving the employers free rein for a year make them more likely to reverse the changes? With the next valuation in 2023, backing off now looks like an invitation to the employers to push for 100% Defined Contribution!

Even USS Limited admit there is no need for ‘Deficit Recovery Contributions’, and that these could be spent on members’ pensions. This represents an open goal – if we fight.

Debating the way forward 

Members deserve a serious strategy. Instead we are told is to ‘keep our powder dry’ while the university employers drive through attacks on staff and students alike. Demobilisation is a recipe for defeat and demoralisation, not union-building.

We cannot allow the work by UCU reps and members to be wasted. We need to stand up for union democracy and stand by the ballot.

Two meetings have been called to debate the way forward:

In our strikes and ballots, members learned to trust each other, not the official union machine.

We are the union, and we need to fight for the future of our sector.