One member’s guide to the rather complicated NEC elections, factions, slates etc.

Hopefully, you have received your ballot papers to vote in the UCU’s NEC elections, which will have a list of names of many people who you have probably never heard of. There will also be election statements, but these might not help a great deal unless you’re already keenly aware of candidates’ positions and the internal politics of the union.

It’s something of an open secret that the ‘democratic’ element of UCU is influenced by a series of factions and a handful of ‘independents’. Trying to make sense of these different political groupings in the UCU is difficult – even for members who have been part of the union for years. For new members, it may be nigh on impossible.

There are guides to help you choose, however, often published as slates of candidates that one of other faction is backing.

Here’s one member’s take on the choices facing members when they open their ballot papers. We hope it helps…

The main factions are:

• UCU Commons (UCUC)
• UCU Left (UCUL)
• UCU Agenda / Independent Broad Left (IBL)
• ‘Independents’…

UCU Commons

The UCU Commons (UCUC) voting slate is HERE.

The UCUC faction grew out of the campaign supporting the current General Secretary (GS), in 2020. Critics like to emphasise this point, dressing the faction up as essentially a fan club for the GS. UCUC members protest that the faction has developed beyond these origins, with many members who had no involvement with her campaign; and indeed, UCUC’s recent proposal over industrial action strategy departed from that advocated by the GS.

Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be totally unfair to characterise this faction broadly as “supporters of Jo Grady’s agenda” (including her recent controversial decision to break from union conventions by openly opposing HEC decisions and counterpoising her own alternative strategy).

Generally, this agenda means backing a strategy of building up the density and capacity of local branches as the primary goal before launching strike ballots, and aiming to secure ‘super-majorities’ with high turnouts rather than ‘scraping over the line’. This approach builds from Jane McAlevey’s approach to industrial ‘organising for power’, but thus far the GS has failed to win support for the approach within the democratic structures of the union.

UCUC emphasises its support for trans rights, which it sees as non-negotiable. UCUC are now broadly in an alliance with the Independent Broad Left (IBL)/UCU Agenda grouping (see below) over industrial relations policy and appear on the latter’s voting recommendations but even with this the two groups have a (combined) minority of HEC votes.

So, if you opposed the policy of indefinite strike action and tend to support the General Secretary’s arguments, look at UCUC and maybe vote for their list.

Again, a list of UCUC’s candidates to vote for is HERE.

UCU Left

UCU Left (UCUL) voting slate is HERE.

UCUL is a true faction, with its own AGM, committee, and membership fees. They frame themselves as the ‘Left-wing’ of UCU – every other faction would disagree and are generally annoyed they ‘stole’ the label.

The prominence of members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) within the faction is a repeated source of controversy, which its supporters dismiss as “red baiting”.

Major differences between UCUL and other factions are:

• their strong support for maximum use of strike action, believing the union’s failures are explained by a lack of militancy; and
• an aversion to the use of consultative e-ballots of all members, preferring that decisions be made by local meetings and their elected branch delegates (UCUL claims such an approach maximises the opportunity for democratic discussion and debate, while their critics point out such meetings tend to be poorly attended and over-represent the views of activists while wilfully ignoring the view of the wider membership).

UCUL typically contest GS Jo Grady’s approach in acrimonious ways. Her calls for wider consultation of UCU’s members are often met with disdain by UCUL, with its website accusing her of rigging member consultation. Many in the faction give the impression that Grady, and to some extent the union’s bureaucrats more broadly, are hurdles to get over; to bystanders in national union meetings, the feeling certainly looks mutual.

While they have a minority of seats on HEC, UCUL can currently secure majorities for its agenda. UCUL members of HEC proposed and voted for indefinite all out strike action – a policy they secured initially with supporting votes from some ‘independents’, and which they and their supporters continued to advocate for in spite of the Branch Delegate Meeting (BDM) vote 2:1 in favour of the GS’s alternative strategy.

So, if you support the policy of indefinite strike action, believe that UCU needs to adopt such policies moving forward, then look at UCUL and maybe vote for their list.

UCU Agenda / Independent Broad Left

A voting recommendation, albeit not identified as such, is HERE.

When is a faction not a faction? When it is UCU Agenda/Independent Broad Left (IBL)! The IBL group was set up after the merger of the AUT and NATFE forming UCU in reaction to UCUL’s then domination of NEC and had little organisation outside of NEC (mostly an email list that members came on to and off as and when successful in elections). Officially, the IBL no longer exists and UCU Agenda was silent for well over a year until this recent blog post laying out UCUL/SWP links. They do not produce a ‘slate’ per se and don’t label themselves as part of a faction in elections. Hence the ‘independent’ and the ‘broad’ are signifiers. So, who are they?

UCUL call them ‘the Right’, which upsets most if not all of them. Members have belonged to the Labour Party, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), the Scottish National Party (SNP), Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats, and no party at all (the Greens were welcome but never came forward), and generally regard themselves as of the Left –  their preferred labels would be ‘progressive’, ‘sensible’, ‘reasonable’ or ‘pragmatic’ (critics describe them as ‘depressed and defeated’) – while they regard UCU Left with its SWP and other Trotskyist leadership as ultra- or hard left. They are advocates for a strategic approach – typically targeted or escalatory as opposed to indefinite – to industrial action and call for greater surveying of the full membership by e-ballots before decisions are made by HEC on industrial policy (e.g. HERE) as a way of informing and mobilising members as well as eliciting their views and appetite for action.  

As noted, IBL/Agenda is essentially now working with UCUC in an alliance on issues of industrial action policy – on which they are relatively close – and to prevent UCUL’s agenda dominating HEC.

The voting recommendations of members in this tendency are HERE and you’ll notice there is overlap with UCUC at points. This really is the ‘vote exactly like this to minimise UCUL members on HEC’ list. 

‘The Independents’

As the ‘I’ in IBL indicates, candidates from this pseudo- or non-faction run as independents, but can be generally identified by voting recommendations such as the one above.

Generally, however, it is incredibly difficult to get elected to HEC if you are not in a faction and don’t appear on any lists; but there are people running without a faction backing them. Many of these are members of the influential ‘Rank and File Revolution’ WhatsApp group, and insofar as a tendency exists you might see here their ‘indefinite discontinuous’ strike strategy.

But you’ll also find some independents endorsed on the UCUL voting list (indicating their ‘vibes’ as ‘UCUL-adjacent’) and the “stop UCUL” voting list, but the others have to be discovered by reading their actual personal statements and making a judgement on whether you like the sound or not.