08.06.23
Editorial Note
In early May, the Financial Times broke a story about the new legislative agenda of Michael Gove, the British Communities Secretary. Gove is about to propose a law to stop UK councils and public bodies from boycotting Israel. In his view, such public bodies adopt “their own foreign policy” and use their power to exert influence in the Middle East. The bill is now at its final stages. “We’re expecting the green light very soon,” officials said. The Communities Department said, “We are firmly opposed to local boycotts which can damage integration and community cohesion, hinder exports, and harm our economic security. The government remains committed to our manifesto pledge to ban public bodies from imposing their own boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns. We will legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows.” Gove and Oliver Dowden, Deputy Prime Minister, are determined to enact the measure before the next election.
Gove’s action occurs among a severe increase in incidents of antisemitism in Britain, as reported by the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors antisemitism. To recall, on 12 December 2016, the UK Government formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, which considers a certain attack on Israel antisemitic.
In stark contrast, also in May, UK’s University and College Union (UCU) Congress debated twenty motions. Three of these were directly related to Israel and Palestine and called for BDS against Israel. The UCU represents over 120,000 academics and staff in higher education across the UK. The Congress was held on Saturday, 27 May 2023, from 10:45 to 12:30. Worth noting that observant Jews could not attend the Congress because of the Shabbat.
Motion 7, titled “Solidarity with Palestine,” was brought by the UCU Scotland executive committee. It says, “This year commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militia in the establishment of the State of Israel. For 75 years, Israel has denied refugees the right of return, in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 194. UCU notes with concern the continuing escalation of violence and repression against the Palestinians during this year. UCU reaffirms its commitment to policies in support of the Palestinian struggle against settler colonization, including supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, and against the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.” This motion was approved.
Motion 8, titled “Israeli oppression and the right to boycott,” was brought by the University of Brighton, Moulsecoomb, and the London regional committee. The Congress notes: “intensifying and murderous pressure to drive Palestinians from Jerusalem and the West Bank, further colonizing Palestine, and the continuing blockade of Gaza plans to annex the illegally occupied territories conditions of Palestinians caused Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselm and the UN to declare the situation a form of apartheid UK Government’s introduction of an anti-BDS Bill, pursuing its Israel alliance, proscribing boycott unless sanctioned by Government policy.”
The Congress stated it believes “civil society boycotts have an honorable tradition from anti-slavery campaigns through boycotts of Nazi trade to isolation of Apartheid South Africa the anti-BDS Bill, together with bans on environmental protest and anti-union laws, is an attempt to suppress civil solidarity and resistance.” The Congress resolves to “fully support the Right to Boycott campaign.” This motion was approved.
Motion 9, titled “Palestinian solidarity and the threat to critical opinion,” was brought by the Black members standing committee. The Congress notes that “the Tuck report in which the NUS is accused of antisemitism through its pro-Palestine stances; the conflation of support with Palestinians or critique of Israeli policies being described as antisemitism; the current Israeli government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organizations designated as ‘terrorist;’ and the attempts in the UK to close down critique of Israel through Prevent, IHRA and rendering BDS unlawful.” The Congress believes this “compounds systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Palestine and critical academics and students in particular in the UK; the isolation of Palestinian universities and undermining higher education.”
The Congress decided that the National Executive Committee should “report on the moral and political consequences of Israeli policies with regards to the attack on academic freedom; authorize all appropriate action from branches to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people; reaffirm UCU policy on BDS.” This motion was approved.
Motion 9A. was brought by the London retired members’ branch, adding to the Congress protocol “the importance of campaigns like the Big Ride for Palestine both in building Palestinian solidarity and raising funds for children’s sports activities in Palestine.” The Congress resolves: “to support, and encourage UCU members to join or support, the Big Ride for Palestine’s South Wales ride in August 2023.” This motion was approved.
Not all were supportive of the negative approach against Israel. The Welsh Bangor University tried to tone down the motion and requested some changes. It asked to delete: “of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militia in the establishment of the State of Israel. For 75 years, Israel has denied refugees the right of return, in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 194.” It asked to replace it with: “of the 1948 Palestine War, which resulted in 750,000 Palestinians and 260,000 Jews being forced from their homes. For 75 years, Israel and its neighbors have denied refugees the right of return” It also asked to delete: “the continuing escalation of violence and repression against the Palestinians during this year.” It asked to replace it with: “the continuing escalation of violence against both Palestinians and Israelis, the continuing repression of the Palestinians, and the global upsurge in antisemitism.” However, these changes were not approved and were withdrawn from the agenda.
The Jewish Chronicle, which reported on the Congress deliberation, noted that the UCU’s legal counsel had already warned the UCU that the motion could get it into trouble because of the incoming UK Government’s BDS and Sanction Bill, which would ban BDS to prevent further boycotts against Israel.
Most crucially, The UCU motion demonstrates that history can be twisted to match the political agenda of academic activists. Nothing in the motion mentions the fact it was the Palestinians, with their allied Arab states, mounted the war against the nascent Jewish state. The Jews won the war, presenting the Palestinian Arabs with the consequences of their acts. Had they accepted the 1947 UN Partition Proposal, as the Jews did, a war would have been prevented. It was precisely to avoid the bloodshed, that David Ben Gurion and his colleagues decided to go with the Partition Proposal. Although Jews won the war, the cost was high, as the community lost one percent of its population, many of them Holocaust survivors.
Equally worrisome, the Congress opposed the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism. The Congress’s dismissive approach to Palestinian terrorism against Israelis and the loss of Jewish lives while bashing Israel should be construed as antisemitism.
IAM will report on the developments.
References:
Business of the strategy and finance committee (open session)
UCU Congress 2023: Saturday 27 May 2023, 10:45-12:30
Motions have been allocated to a section of the NEC’s report to Congress (UCU2068Opens new window). Paragraph headings refer to paragraphs within this report. CBC has added some new paragraph headings to facilitate the ordering of motions.
Section 2: Business of the strategy and finance committee to be taken in open session
(Starting from Section 7)
7 (EP) Solidarity with Palestine – UCU Scotland executive committee
This year commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militia in the establishment of the State of Israel. For 75 years, Israel has denied refugees the right of return, in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 194.
UCU notes with concern the continuing escalation of violence and repression against the Palestinians during this year.
UCU reaffirms its commitment to policies in support of the Palestinian struggle against settler colonisation, including supporting the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel, and against the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.
CARRIED
7A.1 Bangor University
Delete:
‘of the Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militia in the establishment of the State of Israel. For 75 years, Israel has denied refugees the right of return, in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 194’
Replace with:
‘of the 1948 Palestine War, which resulted in 750,000 Palestinians and 260,000 Jews being forced from their homes. For 75 years, Israel and its neighbours have denied refugees the right of return’
Delete:
‘the continuing escalation of violence and repression against the Palestinians during this year’
Replace with:
‘the continuing escalation of violence against both Palestinians and Israelis, the continuing repression of the Palestinians, and the global upsurge in antisemitism’
WITHDRAWN
8 Israeli oppression and the right to boycott – University of Brighton Moulsecoomb, London regional committee
Congress notes:
- intensifying and murderous pressure to drive Palestinians from Jerusalem and the West Bank, further colonising Palestine, and the continuing blockade of Gaza
- plans to annex the illegally occupied territories
- conditions of Palestinians caused Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselm and the UN to declare the situation a form of apartheid
- UK Government’s introduction of an anti-BDS Bill, pursuing its Israel alliance, proscribing boycott unless sanctioned by Government policy.
Congress believes that:
- civil society boycotts have an honourable tradition from anti-slavery campaigns through boycotts of Nazi trade to isolation of Apartheid South Africa
- the anti-BDS Bill, together with bans on environmental protest and anti-union laws, is an attempt to suppress civil solidarity and resistance.
Congress resolves to:
- fully support the Right to Boycott campaign.
CARRIED
9 (EP) Palestinian solidarity and the threat to critical opinion – Black members standing committee
Congress notes
- the Tuck report in which the NUS is accused of antisemitism through its pro-Palestine stances
- the conflation of support with Palestinians or critique of Israeli policies being described as antisemitism
- the current Israeli government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organisations designated as ‘terrorist’ and the attempts in the UK to close down critique of Israel through Prevent, IHRA and rendering BDS unlawful.
Congress believes this compounds
- systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Palestine and critical academics and students in particular in the UK
- the isolation of Palestinian universities and undermining higher education.
Congress resolves:
- for the NEC to report on the moral and political consequences of Israeli policies with regards to the attack on academic freedom.
- authorise all appropriate action from branches to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people
- reaffirm UCU policy on BDS.
CARRIED AS AMENDED
9A.1 London retired members’ branch
Add to Congress notes:
- the importance of campaigns like the Big Ride for Palestine both in building Palestinian solidarity and raising funds for children’s sports activities in Palestine.
Add to Congress resolves:
- to support, and encourage UCU members to join or support, the Big Ride for Palestine’s South Wales ride in August 2023.
CARRIED
===========================================
https://www.thejc.com/news/news/anti-israel-motion-adopted-by-union-could-be-outlawed-by-new-government-legislation-7kjDMRUgkXvYSsW859xKIuAnti-Israel motion adopted by union could be outlawed by new government legislation
The motion was passed during the UCU’s four-day annual conference
BY RICHARD PERCIVAL
MAY 31, 2023 12:21
An anti-Israel motion adopted by the university and college lecturers union could be outlawed by proposed new government legislation.
Delegates at the University and College Union’s (UCU) congress in Glasgow confirmed their full support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in a right to boycott motion.
The motion was titled “Israel oppression and the right to boycott” and was implies Israel is worthy of boycott because it is comparable to Nazi Germany.
It read: “Congress believes that civil society boycotts have an honourable tradition from anti-slavery campaigns through boycotts of Nazi trade to isolation of Apartheid South Africa.”
However, the UCU’s legal counsel warned it could fall foul of the incoming UK Government’s proposed BDS and Sanction Bill.
The proposed bill would ban BDS to prevent further boycotts against Israel. It also follows a 2019 Conservative Party manifesto commitment to prevent local authorities from “adopting their own approach to international relations”. This move, pro-Palestine activists say, is in place to help businesses profiting from apartheid Israel.
If the proposed bill passed, the motion would be “void” as it would in effect ask members to break the law.
The motion also instructed the UCU national executive to produce a report on what it called “moral and political consequences of Israeli policies with regards to the attack on academic freedom.”
UCU branches were also called on to “authorise all appropriate action to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people.”
The motion also slated “the current Israeli government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organisations as ‘terrorist’ and the attempts in the UK to close down critique of Israel through Prevent, IHRA and rendering BDS unlawful.”
The UCU website said it agreed to “fully support the Right to Boycott campaign” but critics argue the motion featured “grotesque and antisemitic language”.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) told the JC: “UCU’s reputation in the Jewish community is in the gutter.
“By making the grotesque comparison between the Nazis and the Jewish state, UCU is shamefully telling Jews, once again, that they are not welcome.”
UCU general secretary Jo Grady was also one of several figures to make pro-Palestine comments at the conference.
She told delegates: “It’s a touchstone of my politics, and my understanding of socialism, internationalism & trade unionism, to always remember that none of us are free until all of us are free.
“Never is that clearer than when it comes to Palestine.”
A UCU spokesman said: “UCU is proud to stand with the Palestinian people and our congress reaffirmed support for BDS as a peaceful campaigning tactic supported by Palestinian civil society.
“Any attempts by the government to prevent UK citizens, post-16 education staff, students or public bodies taking part are an attack on civil liberties.
“The University and College Union is a proudly inclusive union with a long history of fighting antisemitism and is a welcoming place for Jewish members.”
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https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-university-union-may-be-beyond-redemption/
The university union may be beyond redemption
- 30 May 2023, 12:14pm
Life is not terribly good these days for most university teachers. Colleges, once centres of collegiate administration run on a principle of de facto equality and open expression of opinion, are now top-down managed by a cadre of bosses more interested in spreadsheets than seminars, and image more than erudition, where an injudicious word can cause serious trouble. To add insult to injury, jobs at the lower end, previously fairly safe, are now precarious and pretty wretchedly paid.
You might have thought the lecturers’ union UCU would be an effective counterweight to all this, especially since universities are to all intents and purposes public sector employers, with union representation correspondingly high, at something over 120,000. Unfortunately you would be disappointed. True, UCU is formally demanding big pay rises and more job security, and backing its demands up with widespread, though not very productive, strike action. But its support for academics’ rights is at times curiously limited. Furthermore, it is diluting its efforts, not to mention its support, by all sorts of other posturing.
Recall, for example, the saga of Kathleen Stock, the philosophy professor who resigned from Sussex in 2021 following threatening student demonstrations and demands that she be prevented from expressing her opinion on trans issues, which the administration did little to counteract. What was UCU’s response to the affair, as an organisation set up to defend academics? The Sussex branch urged her employers to ‘take a clear and strong stance against transphobia at Sussex’, a statement later endorsed by UCU nationally. More recently, Edinburgh UCU has published, presumably approvingly, a letter urging the Provost to row back on a free speech protection project in the institution, arguing that it was a threat to academics’ ‘intellectual and personal safety’ and was apt to encourage a ‘rise of colonial nostalgia’. Nor is this new: Selina Todd, the excellent left-wing Oxford history professor who had at one time to lecture with physical protection against student violence because of her views on the trans issue, curtly tweeted three years ago that she had long left UCU ‘over their terrible attitude to women’s rights.’ With friends like that in the union world, which academic needs enemies?
UCU also makes up for its pusillanimity in supporting academics with views it does not like with a keen embrace of matters most people would think were pretty peripheral to its job of safeguarding its members’ interests. It has, for example, long had an obsession with Israel: at its conference last week, it yet again passed overwhelmingly a motion to boycott Israeli academics and ‘authorise all appropriate action to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people.’ So too with environmentalism: in August last year it voted for the shutting down of university careers advice about careers with companies in the mining and fossil fuel industries.
Most recently, and controversially, last Friday it poked an incredibly clumsy finger into the Ukraine pie. To the understandable disgust of large numbers of its ordinary members, a majority of its annual congress supported a motion, backed by members of Stop the War and other fringe factions, which called for an end to the arming of Ukraine on the basis that this was merely a fight between US and Russian imperialism.
One thing is clear: UCU has been gently taken over by activists more interested in revolution than rational thought, and frankly at times rather obtuse. (The unnamed person filmed speaking in support of the Ukraine motion in a clip later uploaded to social media was decidedly more Citizen Smith than Professor Calculus, something that might worry parents concerned at who is teaching their offspring.)
Why this has happened is anyone’s guess. A plausible reason, though, is that while most academics are opinionated, and a great many excellent and respectable ones on principle back UCU’s efforts to improve their position, as a trade union UCU is pretty ineffective and the only people prepared to give up the time to address its interminable meetings are the blindly committed or the slightly dotty.
What next? The Ukrainian debacle has undoubtedly touched a raw nerve, and a fair number of moderately leftish academics fed up with the latest UCU antics may well resign from it. They are probably right: however much some voices urge them to stay and fight for change from the inside, one suspects the union is now beyond redemption.
Unfortunately sidelining UCU is not likely to be easy. A point often forgotten is that its continued existence as the representative of university staff actually suits university management rather well. It is not a very effective organisation, and does not seriously threaten university structures or the bureaucratic machines that run them; indeed, in practice many of its branch representatives fit in very neatly and happily as useful cogs in those very machines.
And, of course, it is worth remembering that extreme political views such as those expressed by UCU are by no means limited to the union side. They equally affect management itself, whether in individual institutions or in umbrella organisations like Advance HE. Academic top brass accepts without much question, and indeed often embraces with reverential wonder, nostrums such as the need to decolonise curriculums, the idea that British society and institutions are structurally racist, and the necessity for universities to tear down privilege and empower the oppressed.
Ideally we would see a new union, rather on the lines of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers set up in 1985 as an alternative to Arthur Scargill’s NUM, to deal with this ungodly exercise in mutual back-scratching. It may be difficult, but if enough people are prepared to point out the UCU emperor’s decided shortage of clothes and walk away it is not impossible. Here’s to hoping, at least.
WRITTEN BY
Andrew Tettenborn
Andrew Tettenborn is a professor of law at Swansea Law School
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/ucu-vote-to-stand-in-solidarity-with-palestinians
UCU vote to stand in solidarity with Palestinians
MATT KERR
SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2023
UNIVERSITIES and Colleges Union (UCU) delegates have voted to stand in solidarity with Palestinians at congress in Glasgow.
UCU congress voted on Saturday to “reaffirm” its position on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on the Isreali state, and instructed its national executive to produce a report on what it called “moral and political consequences of Israeli policies with regards to the attack on academic freedom.”
The motion also called upon branches to “authorise all appropriate action to protect students and staff who find themselves under attack for supporting the cause of the Palestinian people.”
The motion noted what it referred to as the “conflation of support with Palestinians or critique of Israeli policies as being anti-semitic,” a process it stated “compounds systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Palestine and critical academics and students.
It slammed “the current Israeli government’s designation of Palestinian human rights organisations as ‘terrorist’ and the attempts in the UK to close down critique of Israel through Prevent, IHRA and rendering BDS unlawful.”
The motion received overwhelming backing from delegates, despite a warning to congress from legal counsel that it could fall foul of the Tory Party’s proposed BDS and Sanction Bill.
If the law passed, counsel argued, the motion would be “void” as it would in effect ask members to break the law.
One delegate from University College London said: “As a Jewish UCU member, I’m really proud to move a motion against oppression and support the boycott.
“No country should be able exempt from human rights and international law.
“The right to boycott is an important tool.
“The community I belong to has suffered, and it believes in justice, but not just for one people, for all people.
“The attack on the Palestinians must be opposed.”
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