The following letter appeared in the Independent last week:

I wonder whether it is just possible that those members of the University and College Union (UCU) who, for many years, have campaigned for the academic boycott of Israel – the only democratic country in the Middle East – are prepared to think seriously about the implications of the Gaddafi-LSE affair and the acceptance by several UK Universities of huge amounts of money in order to set up Oriental Institutes and Islamic and Middle Eastern studies centres whose academic appointments and courses of study are strongly influenced by their patrons. Will those members of UCU who call for the boycott of Israeli universities remain silent about the acceptance of funding with strings attached from the despotic rulers of countries such as Libya, Saudi Arabia or Qatar?

Henry Ettinghausen
Emeritus Professor of Spanish
University of Southampton

HT: modernity

The Times Higher reports that senior UCU figures have admitted what we’ve been saying for years – that their union is being controlled by the Socialist Workers’ Party to promote their own narrow sectarian interests.

Invasion of the union snatchers?

By John Morgan

Senior members of the University and College Union have accused the Socialist Workers Party and a lecturers’ Left group of seeking to “take over” the union while using its members and resources as “cannon fodder”.

In an email to branch officials, the union’s treasurer and two members of the national executive committee (NEC) argue that the actions of “SWP/UCU Left” have “undermined our credibility with our members and strengthened the hand of the employers”.

The union, which has about 65,000 members in the academy, is holding five strike ballots across further and higher education this month over jobs, pay and pensions.

Supporters of the UCU Left, an increasingly influential force on the NEC, say the email is counterproductive at a crucial time for the union.

They criticise “red scare” tactics, saying UCU Left members are independent and come from a range of political backgrounds.

The email comes after Sally Hunt, the UCU’s general secretary, warned the NEC that union strategy was being “directed by bodies outside UCU rather than our own members”.

Divisions have hardened after the UCU Left successfully pressed for the union to support a protest by left-wing student groups in London on 29 January, against fees and cuts.

This angered opponents – including Ms Hunt – who noted the violence of previous marches and warned of damage to the UCU’s relationship with the National Union of Students.

In the email, the three members of the “independent broad left group” of the NEC – Alan Carr, the union treasurer, John McCormack and Angela Roger – appeal for support for a Reclaim the Union campaign.

They criticise “the sectarian behaviour of the Socialist Workers Party, which dominates and controls…’UCU Left’”, and say the groups “are seeking to take over our union”.

The email blames them for the “much ridiculed 8 per cent pay claim in higher education in 2009″.

Previous criticisms of the UCU Left have focused on the proposed boycott of Israeli universities.

“The SWP/UCU Left seems determined to use members and the union’s resources as cannon fodder, and the only winners from this folly will be the employers and the government,” they say.

“While we seek the support of local NUS students for our own disputes, the NEC has created an alliance with student organisations (that) publicly attack NUS.”

UCU Left supporters said that the three signatories supported earlier versions of motions backing the London protest and asked why they “went along” with such motions if they believed there was an “SWP plot”.

An SWP spokesman said it was “hardly a secret” that party members are active in the UCU, “but the idea that there is an attempt at a ‘palace coup’ by a group of socialists to take over the union is frankly crazy”.

This is a guest-post from Stop the Boycott

• UCU Congress begins this weekend, running from 30th May – 1st June, in Manchester
• This year, UCU Congress will debate three motions that relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

• The first of these, SFC14, encourages the Union to build links with Palestinian academics and unions

• The second motion, SFC15, is called “Palestinian Solidarity, BDS, and Histadrut”
• It reaffirms UCU’s support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel “within legal constraints”
• It forces UCU to establish and fund a “research centre into complicity with Israeli breaches”, a BDS website, and an annual pro-boycott conference
• It demands UCU severs all ties with the Histadrut, the Israeli TUC
• An amendment to this motion would refer the decision on Histadrut to a special committee

• The third motion, SFC16 “Ariel and West Bank Colonisation”, formally starts the procedure to institute an academic boycott against Ariel College

• Additionally, a motion SFC17, called “UCU invitation to Bongani Masuku of South Africa”, comes from Oxford University’s UCU branch
• It was submitted in response to UCU’s invitation of Bongani Masuku to a UCU boycott conference this winter
• It dissociates UCU from his views and actions, and formally censures those who invited Masuku to the conference

• Stop the Boycott’s 2007 polling showed that the Union’s membership is largely moderate and neutral on the Middle East
• However, UCU Congress is always unrepresentatively hostile to Israel and has a record of supporting discriminatory policies

• If the motion “Palestinian Solidarity, BDS, and Histadrut” passes, UCU will be converting itself from a Trade Union into am organisation focused on promoting division and discrimination
• Sally Hunt holds the international portfolio on the Trades Union Congress’ General Council
• She cannot hold this position, which requires her to work closely with the Histadrut, while her Union is undermining these ties

Donate Here to support Stop the Boycott.

This piece by Jak Codd is cross-posted from Engage

On March 31st UNISON, one of the UK’s largest trade unions, announced their support for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s effort to end the sale of Israeli settlement produce in Britain. On the face of it this is hardly a controversial position – the settlements established from 1967 onwards are widely considered illegal and a barrier to the peace process.

However, a closer look at the ideology and discourse of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign show that all is not as it seems. The PSC have an interesting article on their website entitled 62 Years of Nakba in which they state the following:

The United Nations had proposed a partition plan giving 55% of ancient Palestine for a Jewish state but the Zionists – who had targeted the whole of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish State long before the Nazi atrocities – took 78% of the land by terrorist tactics and military force.

The clear implication here is that it is not the land taken in the 1967 war by Israel that is occupied, but rather much of the land that Israel controlled after the 1948 War of Independence. Under this thinking, the cities such as Ashdod, Beersheva and Jaffa are considered occupied Palestinian land. Does the PSC consider produce from these areas as ‘settlement goods’ that should be boycotted?

The PSC’s ‘Settlements – The Fact’ briefing sheet again reiterates this position :

In 1947, the UN partitioned Palestine (whose population was 70% Palestinian Arab) and decreed that 55% of the land would be used to create Israel. In 1948, Zionist forces seized more land, razing about 500 Palestinian villages to the ground and driving 750,000 Palestinians abroad as refugees. More than 13,000 Palestinians were killed.

The PSC is deliberately blurring the line between the lands occupied in 1967, and the State of Israel as established in 1948. The TUC, UNISON, and other trade unions that sign up to the PSC campaign to boycott settlement goods should clearly distance themselves from any attempt to conflate the two. Failure to do so could result in a full scale boycott of Israeli goods, which would be a barrier to peace and significantly damage Israeli and Palestinian trade unionists and workers on the ground. Opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank should be accompanied by solidarity with grassroots activists in the Histadrut and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. It is the workers on the ground that want to see a just and long lasting peace for Israel and Palestinian – and it is groups like the PSC that seek to undermine them at every turn.

A UCU activist and former National Executive Committee member was concerned about her Union inviting Bongani Masuku. She wrote to the Activists List:

Sent: 08 December 2009 18:50
To: UCU activists e-group
Subject: [activists] speakers at UCU meetings

I believe that UCU does genuinely try to put equality at the heart of everything it does, which does not mean that mistakes do not occasionally happen. In general, everyone to whom we provide a platform as part of a UCU event should have a positive record on equality issues or at least not be guilty of making prejudiced or otherwise hate-motivated public statements. I am not suggesting that we vet speakers. However, when information about speakers becomes available we should evaluate it to determine both its reliability and seriousness. With regards to the reliability of the information its source is particularly important.

In this case of Mr Masuku, an invitation to the international secretary of a Congress of Trade Unions should not have been problematical. However, when further information became available from the South African Human Rights Commission we should have acted on this, unless we felt that there had been a miscarriage of justice or that the SAHRC is not a reputable body. I am assuming it is, though willing to be corrected on this. When a speaker who had made homophobic comments was invited to a stop the war conference that we were involved with, we and other trade unions very rightly made representations to stop the war and the speaker was withdrawn.

Her queries are well-made. We would answer some of her comments:

• Mr Masuku’s remarks were publicly available all over the Internet and reported in the South African media. In a Google-search for “Bongani Masuku”, the first result is a report of these remarks, dated March.
• Mr Masuku was proactively invited by UCU to attend the private boycott conference. This was not a situation where UCU simply failed to do its research; it must have done some research on Mr Masuku, otherwise why invite him in the first place?
• Mr Masuku has not denied making the comments in question. He can’t, as some of them are in writing and some of them were recorded at the time.
• The South African Human Rights Commission is a respected body in South Africa, run by veteran anti-apartheid campaigners and human rights lawyers. It is a key part of the post-apartheid settlement in South Africa.

Gavin Reid is a pro-boycott campaigner and UCU activist who chaired the BRICUP event in Leeds last night. Mr Masuku was originally supposed to speak at the event but he didn’t turn up. Gavin Reid answered the UCU Activist above as follows:

Gavin Reid
To: UCU activists e-group
Subject: RE: [activists] speakers at UCU meetings

I chaired a meeting tonight in Leeds ‘Israel, the Palestinians and Apartheid’. Around 200 people attended from the Yorkshire region to listen to speakers from ANC, Cosatu, War on Want and the Palestinian campaign for BDS. I can assure the list that everybody at the meeting contributed with respect for each other’s positions, indeed I made it a requirement of their continuing presence at the meeting. In case the question arises, Leeds UCU did not contribute any funds to the meeting and a collection was taken to cover costs.

Mr Masuku was not present as he has since returned to South Africa via Botswana at the weekend. I understand that he categorically denies any accusations of racism and that Cosatu has issued a statement relating to this in SA today. It goes without saying, I hope, that UCU would not share any platform with any known racist. I certainly would not do so either.

I further understand that the position adopted by the SA Human Rights Commission was apparently taken without Mr Masuku being allowed to refute the ‘charges’ and is, therefore, likely to be subject to legal action in SA. Certainly there will need to be a more careful analysis than that currently being presented as fact by others.

The Pro-Israel lobby tried unsuccessfully to have the meeting banned on the basis of the reports of Mr Masuku’s position. The University of Leeds has a protocol on Freedom of Expression that has provided a strong framework for ‘controversial’ meetings to take place, despite making an almost prohibitively expensive charge for the use of the room!

Mr Reid’s response gives a misleading impression. He says (above):

“I further understand that the position adopted by the SA Human Rights Commission was apparently taken without Mr Masuku being allowed to refute the ‘charges’”

Note the scare-quotes around the word ‘charges’. But the SAHRC Ruling, available online since Friday and in the possession of UCU, speaks clearly in paragraphs 23 and 25 about:

“[Masuku's] response to the allegations put to him by the South African Human Rights Commission”

He also says (above)

“I understand that he categorically denies any accusations of racism”

Mr Masuku does not deny making the comments, comments found by the SAHRC to be Hate Speech. Does UCU believe that someone accused of racist Hate Speech has to actually admit that his comments were racist before it will take action?