UCU will debate Ukraine and Gaza

The college lecturers’ union UCU meets on 29-31 May against a background of acute cuts in higher education (HE) and continuing underfunding of further education (FE).

On 17 May a UCU special HE sector conference discussed job cuts — over sixty universities are affected. At Sheffield Hallam, where the UCU branch has recently voted to take industrial action, 400 job cuts are threatened.

That conference resolved to build up organisational infrastructure, to run political campaigns for free education and the abolition of tuition fees, and to defend creative arts, modern languages, arts and humanities.

Many motions pointed to the need for an industrial strategy, but only Brighton UCU’s motion gave a clear programme: a return to UK-wide action next year, and effective linking up of branches in dispute to deliver maximum solidarity.

A motion which would have committed to a multi-year industrial strategy based on union-wide consultation (i.e. the unambitious organising model of the leadership around Jo Grady which derailed effective action in the last two years) was defeated.

Motions to the main conference reprise these themes and more, including encouraging “dual carding” with Unison, EIS and other HE unions — a step towards necessary industrial unionism in the sector?

However, those motions won’t be heard, as sector conferences will be stopped by a strike by the UCU’s staff union branch of Unite. Unite are striking over race discrimination in internal procedures; in the background is the shameful systemic undermining of collective agreements.

A comprehensive motion of solidarity with Ukrainian self-determination will be heard. If passed it will clarify the union’s policy. Last year, a similar solidarity motion and a contradictory one from Stop the War, which effectively called for the disarming of Ukrainians, was passed.

There are several solidarity motions on Gaza — a mixed bag. A motion arguing for building academic links with Palestinian universities and academics is better than a blanket academic boycott line. Others, rightly, defend freedom of speech for Palestinian-solidarity activism.

But another from Tower Hamlets College is both proscriptive and bad, if at least more honest. It recommits UCU to both BDS (“boycott, divestment, and sanctions”) and a one-state solution to the conflict in Israel-Palestine.