Workers' Liberty

Recently Jon Pike, chair of Engage (a group set up to defeat a boycott of Israeli academia), posted a critique of the University and Colleges Union (UCU) to its activist list. Jon is also a member of the UCU NEC. In this critique he assesses the union’s democratic credentials, its ability to stand up for academic freedom, and its willingness to fight all discrimination.

Conclusion one: the union does not fair well. Conclusion two: a number of its Jewish members are resigning. What, of course, is missing is a third conclusion: members who oppose the boycott should instead stay and fight. In this absence, Jon (and more generally Engage) does a disservice to the labour movement.

Jon criticises UCU for its lack of democracy on the issue of the academic boycott of Israel. Any decision on the matter should go directly to its members, he insists, not to an elite group of revolutionary activists. Jon is right to point out a lack of democracy, but for him this can be corrected by a ballot over a single issue.

There’s also a degree of hypocrisy here too, for Engage have come to rely far too often on trying to ban debate over an academic boycott of Israel. For sure, they are right to complain about the oft one-sidedness of the platform, but their response should be to intervene harder and better, and for a political alternative to an academic boycott.

For the AWL, the democracy question is a political one: to reinvigorate the labour movement and win working-class representation. AWL comrades in UCU have argued consistently that a healthy, democratic union can only be realised by galvanising the rank-and-file, which is achievable only through the hard, day-to-day, week-to-week, slog of building and politicising local branches. The SWP-initiated UCU Left (and its committee) simply reflects a loose collective of union hacks who have made fetishised careers out of the union. So what we also argue for is an alternative kind of left in the union - based solidly on a rejuvenated rank-and-file.

Jon’s point on academic freedom is to highlight the unwillingness of UCU to uphold this ‘thing’ for Israeli academics. In spelling out the political misguidedness of an academic boycott of Israel, the call to defend ‘academic freedom’ is actually a weak one (albeit not altogether incorrect). A pro-boycott supporter would argue: what about academic freedom for someone under siege in the Occupied Territories, spending hours every day trying to get through checkpoint after checkpoint? AWL comrades in UCU are primarily against an academic boycott of Israel because, in effect, it serves to further hamper the plight of the Palestinians.

Why? Because it cuts against the prospect of working class unity between Palestinians and Israelis against both of their ruling classes, and thus also cuts against a long-term resolution to the conflict. A boycott would play into the hands of the right-wing Israeli government; it would be counter-productive. The UCU should be oriented to a campaign of ‘links not boycott’. Concrete solidarity is our alternative to liberal appeals to academic freedom.

Finally, on the matter of the UCU fighting discrimination, Jon states that union is seriously failing to fight against the discrimination faced by its Jewish members, which has spurred dozens of resignations.

On this, he has a point. The UCU has within it a Left which, at best, singles out the Israeli working class for a political litmus test not demanded of any other working class globally and, at worst, doesn’t even think this class is even worthy of that, and should be outright politically dismissed. It has a Left that thinks of a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict not in terms of a consistently democratic and workable solution — two states for two natins — but through the establishment of ‘justice and redress’, of one democratic secular Palestinian state, effectively meaning the dissolution of Israel. But here’s the crux: the SWP-initiated UCU Left wins support by appealing to a far broader layer of leftists that quite simply, on the issue of the longstanding, brutal repression of the Palestinians, have of the good instinct of wanting to ‘do something’.

Our job is to offer them the better political alternative. Our job is to expose the climate of hostility that has long existed on the revolutionary Left towards both Israel and any Jew refusing to denounce Israel - hostility which fuels anti-semitism.

Jon ends his posting by asserting that it is not the job of UCU to educate its members on the struggle against imperialism or on the moral responsibilities we hold as academics. Who is he appealing to here? Not the broad layer of decent left activists, a majority of whom we want to (and can) win over to a rank-and-file Left in the UCU.

Instead he is appealing to those who (ironically) are not even inclined to be on the union’s activist list that he’s emailed! Engage is bottling out of a serious political fight in UCU over its single issue of the academic boycott of Israel. It’s totally lost its bearings and morale, and it no longer recognises itself in any loose sense whatsoever as on the Left (probably because it never was). So, a final plea: to the Jewish and other members of UCU who are thinking of resigning, or have resigned, join us in an effort to build a serious, rank-and-file Left in the union! Join us in a campaign of ‘links not boycott’!