Workers' Liberty

The boycott issue in the lecturer’s union, UCU can be seen are composed of two dominant sides, both of which are highly problematic: on the one, the UCU Left and its SWP core that implicitly pushes forth a boycott agenda; on the other, the anti-boycott lobby Engage that has been vigorously pursuing a legal campaign to clampdown on any political discussion on the matter.

Our intervention and contribution was and remains critical. We are democrats who condemn the reliance on a bourgeois agency to stop discussion about pertinent international issues in the union. We are democrats who believe in a just and fair two nations, two states solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and who condemn those on the left who refuse to recognise Israel as a nation-state. No peace in the Middle East is possible without an alliance between Palestinian and Israeli workers against both their ruling classes.

An academic boycott of Israel — which singles out Israeli workers for some kind of political litmus test not expected of any other group of workers internationally — is politically detrimental to the Palestinian plight.

The motion passed at UCU Congress last month suggests that no criticism of Israel is anti-semitic, notes the apparent complicity of Israeli academia in the repression of the Palestinians, and encourages individual academics in this country to re-consider their ties with their counterparts in Israel. This serves to benefit the right-wing in Israel, to reduce the long-term prospects of resolution to the conflict and to fuel a rise of effective left anti-semitism.

Like last year, a significant layer of delegates voted for the motion with reservation but also with a desire to “just do something”. This makes the class-based alternative that we pose to a boycott all the more critical. AWL comrades in UCU are committed to a campaign of “Links Not Boycotts” — to practical solidarity work that forges links with the labour movements in both Palestine and Israel. Join us!