From Adam Ozanne and John Kelly

At UCU’s May 2023 annual congress, UCU Left members from City and Islington College (Sean Vernell) and the University of Brighton (Mark Abel) successfully moved an extremely controversial motion that called inter alia for an end to weapons supplies to Ukraine in its ongoing defensive war against the criminal invasion of its territory by Russia.[1] Some union members may feel there is no issue here, that UCU Left activists are open about their views and the rest of us are free to agree or disagree as we like.  This is simply wrong because the members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a small Trotskyist organisation dedicated to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the suppression of parliamentary democracy, who set up and continue to control UCU Left are generally NOT open about their views and wider political positions. Indeed, the UCU Left website is carefully structured in order deliberately to conceal the political views and affiliations of its leading members.

The aim of this piece is to explain the political aims, implicit ideology and practices of the SWP so as to better inform UCU members – especially those who may be attracted by the “Left” label – about the real aims of UCU Left’s Trotskyist leadership and the detrimental influence their opposition to all-member democracy and insistence on perpetual industrial action regardless of the likelihood of success is having on UCU.  For anyone who agrees and wishes to see UCU take a new, genuinely democratic direction consonant with the aims of the Campaign for UCU Democracy, we also outline an alternative strategy for saving the union from Trotskyist ideology.

The focus is on the SWP since it has been the dominant force in UCU for the past five years and mainly responsible – though they deny this and blame betrayal by the General Secretary and UCU “bureaucracy” – for years of costly, unproductive strikes. However, it should be noted that members of other Trotskyist parties of varying degrees of smallness (e.g. Socialist Appeal, Socialist Alternative, Counterfire, the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL), and rs21-Revolutionary Socialism in the 21^st Century) who share the same ideology are also active in UCU. In addition, there are others who claim to be independent of any faction or party but in fact have a record of voting with UCU Left that is not apparent from their election statements.

For example in March 2023, Vicky Blake, a past president of UCU who is standing for election as General Secretary, and other “left independents” on the Higher Education Committee (HEC) joined with UCU Left (and in fact tipped the balance) in voting against a formal consultation of HE members on offers made by UUK and UCEA even though a Branch Delegates Meeting (BDM) and an informal e-survey participated in by over 36,000 members had indicated a strong wish to be consulted.[2] Similarly, although it’s not known for certain how individual HEC members voted, given their subsequent advocacy of “discontinuous” indefinite strikes it appears highly likely that this “independent left” group also tipped the balance in November 2022 when HEC voted for indefinite strike action beginning at the end of January/early February – a decision that was reversed in January after a BDM showed that UCU Left’s position lacked support.[3]  Readers may wish to consider such voting records when filling in their ballot papers for the General Secretary and National Committee elections in 2024.

UCU Left firmly under Socialist Workers Party control

The UCU Left faction, originally founded in 2006 with a website relaunch in 2011, was created and is still controlled today by the SWP, a 3,000 strong Trotskyist, revolutionary organization.[4] Past and/or present SWP members occupy significant positions at branch, regional and national levels of the union and its most vocal and influential advocates include Mark Abel (Brighton), Carlo Morelli (Dundee), Roddy Slorach (Imperial College), Sean Vernell (City and Islington College), Sean Wallis (UCL), David Swanson and Umit Yildiz (Manchester University), Margot Hill (Croydon College), and Saira Weiner (Liverpool John Moores), who is UCU Left’s candidate in the union’s forthcoming General Secretary election.

UCU Left’s executive committee is dominated by SWP members, while the SWP itself is led by a 15-person Central Committee that includes three academics, Alex Callinicos and Camilla Royle (both Kings College London) and Joseph Choonara (Leicester University) as well as SWP full-time employees such as Mark Thomas  (not to be confused with the well-known comedian) who directs the party’s trade union work. Membership of the SWP’s larger, 50-strong National Committee is shrouded in secrecy but is known to include prominent FE activist Sean Vernell, who proposed the UCU Congress motion on Ukraine, as well as other UCU members.

According to the faction’s website, “UCU Left is committed to building a democratic, accountable campaigning union which aims to mobilise and involve members in defending and improving our pay and conditions and defending progressive principles of education”.[5] However, while these aims appear reasonable and uncontentious, in fact they comprise only the surface aims of UCU Left’s leadership; to understand them fully we have to delve into both the stated, public, aims of the SWP and what these mean in practice when applied in the context of a trade union like UCU.

The SWP’s stated aims

The Party’s newspaper, Socialist Worker, provides on page 12 a clear list every week of its main political goals under the heading, “What We Stand For: These are the core politics of the Socialist Workers Party”, which can be summarised as follows:[6]

1. Independent working class action. A socialist society can only be built when the working class seizes control of the means of production.
2. Revolution not reform. The present system cannot be patched up or reformed; it has to be overthrown.
3. There is no parliamentary road. The structures of the present parliament, army, police and judiciary cannot be taken over and used by the working class.
4. Internationalism. The struggle for socialism is part of a worldwide struggle.
5. The revolutionary party. To achieve socialism, the most militant sections of the working class have to be organized into a revolutionary socialist party. Such a party can only be built by activity in the mass organizations of the working class. We have to build a rank and file movement within the unions.

Under point 5, the SWP is also committed to the view that participation in strike activity is a vital mechanism for the development of revolutionary class consciousness. Originating in a throwaway remark in Marx’s, The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), this claim about the strikes-class consciousness link is now a staple feature of SWP publications; and in practice the SWP leadership of UCU Left work from point 5 believing that strikes, whether successful or not, will attract new members to their party moving it closer to their primary goal of socialist revolution at some unspecified time in the future.[7] In fact, failed strikes are, if anything, more helpful to this cause than successful strikes since the latter resolve grievances whereas failure might radicalise disgruntled workers, build class consciousness, and encourage the belief that reform of capitalism is delusional and revolution is the only answer.

This “impossibilism” (i.e. deliberately raising unrealistic hopes so that, when they are dashed, potential recruits become radicalised and join the party) is not however the aim of most UCU members for whom, as with most trade unionists, support for strike action represents the desire to assert collective power against the employer in order to remedy grievances over terms and conditions of employment. When this more limited and pragmatic endeavour succeeds, SWP activists often try to take credit, knowing that there’s little political advantage to be gained by arguing against additional pounds in members’ pockets. But for the SWP leadership the primary motivator for calling ever more strike action – one that that is never made explicit in branch or Congress motions – is to use industrial action to build the SWP, the revolutionary political party.

The implicit ideology of the SWP in UCU Left

The stated aims and principles of the SWP outlined above are necessarily somewhat abstract and therefore have to be translated by its members into practical approaches and political tactics when applied in specific settings, such as a trade union. It is in this domain of specific political practices that SWP activists draw upon what we might call implicit ideological assumptions, many of which are in fact unproven, wrong and/or anti-democratic.

A crude and simplistic model of leadership

The foundation statement of the Fourth International, drafted by Leon Trotsky in 1938, opens with the immortal words, “The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat.” As the largest Trotskyist group in Britain, the SWP act as if they are the nucleus of such a leadership, but what do they understand by the practice of leadership? In common with Trotsky, they draw on the archaic assumptions of the 1930s leadership literature – in particular, the belief that leaders are unusually gifted and far-sighted individuals who issue programmes and statements based on Marxist analyses that purport to reflect the historic interests of the working class in strikes, militancy and, ultimately, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Trade union members are therefore called upon to support SWP policies as laid out in UCU branch and Congress motions. Once passed and turned into resolutions, the SWP leadership then expects and demands that all union members “follow agreed union policy”. However, in contrast to the SWP claim to be “a party of leaders – not a party of leaders and followers”,[8] guiding and directing the less enlightened mass of union members, modern approaches to leadership practices lay far more emphasis on leader-member interaction and dialogue as a process of shared consensus-building.

Take for example, the idea of an indefinite strike in which the union serves notice on the employer that a strike will commence on a specified date and will not be ended until there is a negotiated settlement approved by the membership. The likely duration, costs and uncertainties, as well as membership unfamiliarity with this form of strike action, suggest that a lengthy gestation period is required in order to allow for sustained leader-member dialogue to discuss, argue and think through the pros and cons, logistics and feasibility of such action: in other words, modern leadership theory suggests that’s what’s needed for success is a deep process of consensus building that culminates in a resolution for action.

However, when, in late 2022, it decided to pursue an indefinite strike strategy, rather than building an actual movement in support of such action, the SWP/UCU Left faction instead opted for the elitist approach of pushing a resolution through a committee (in this case UCU’s HEC) without any prior debate in the union whatsoever. There were no motions to branches, regional committees, delegate meetings or conferences, and no discussions in branches or on websites. For the SWP it was sufficient to hold a secret factional meeting, adopt the party line, push it through the union’s HEC, and then demand the union’s 70,000 higher education (HE) members fall into line and implement the resolution.

This, predictably, created consternation amongst UCU members, who had not been told that a vote for industrial action might mean indefinite strikes, with the result that in January a meeting of UCU branch delegates (BDM) voted almost 2:1 to reject this proposal. And yet, despite this proof of an overwhelming lack of support, two days later 16 members of the UCU Left faction on HEC voted for an indefinite strike starting on February 1^st. In other words, undeterred by the expressed views of two-thirds of UCU members, the SWP “leaders” (sic) simply pressed ahead with their policies.[9]

The superior wisdom of the activist elite aka the “rank and file”

It is a well-established finding that attendees at union branch meetings are generally more committed to the union, more active in various ways, more interested in politics and somewhat more militant than the “median” trade union member. It is also well-known that the average attendance at union branch meetings is well below 10% and often much lower (3-4% is quite common). From an organizational perspective in which compliance with branch and national rulebooks is of paramount importance, this may not matter and union branches can often function quite effectively as representative organizations with low meeting turnouts.

However, from the perspective of mobilization for collective action, the absence from branch meetings of 90% of the membership is potentially fatal. Effective collective action normally requires majority participation in order to maximize pressure on the employer, build and maintain membership engagement, and minimize strikebreaking. The logic of mobilization requires outreach to members who rarely, if ever, attend meetings; and this is even more important in a sector like HE where trade union membership density is relatively low: less than 30% of university employees are members of a trade union compared with over 90% in schools, for example.

In stark contrast, the SWP holds an elitist view of union membership, highly valuing the contributions of the small minority of militant activists but disparaging the majority of less active and less engaged members. Needless to say, the SWP never refers to “small minorities” or an “activist elite”, but always describes them as the “rank and file” and insists on “rank and file control of our disputes” as opposed to control by “the bureaucracy”.[10]

The way in which the SWP/UCU Left faction on HEC ignored the views of the January 2023 BDM regarding indefinite strikes is just one example – despite their oft repeated claims to being advocates of democracy and a “member-led” union – of their contempt for the wider membership and belief that only the views of an activist elite really matter. When it becomes clear that the views of the actual rank and file do not concur with those of their self-appointed leaders, the SWP simply ignores them.

This is typical of Trotskyist parties who believe they are the vanguard of the working classes leading the proletariat to socialist revolution. For example, SWP activist and Brighton UCU branch chair Mark Abel declared earlier this year that, “Those who don’t participate in the democratic process cannot expect to have the same input into decisions as those who do. Having won an industrial action ballot, I am not in favour of giving all those who did not vote or who voted against action a second chance at making sure action doesn’t happen or is minimised.”[11]

In reality, UCU, like most unions, comprises at least three sub-groups (not two): a small group of paid officials including the General Secretary; a small group of highly committed and active members and lay office-holders (typically less than 10% of the members); and the overwhelming majority of members whose participation is sporadic and highly issue-specific.

Over the years, a variety of proposals has emerged to try and increase the engagement of the mass of members, including e-consultations, online surveys, and open fora. Every single idea to expand member engagement has been vigorously and repeatedly opposed by the SWP. Their well-grounded fear is that higher levels of membership participation, in ballots on dispute settlements such as the pension strikes of 2018 for example, will hinder the achievement of their over-riding objective, the promotion of continual collective action and through that (whether or not the action results in tangible gains) the building of their revolutionary socialist party. Although the SWP occasionally expresses regret over low branch attendance, the fact is that a poorly-attended branch meeting, dominated by militant activists (the “rank and file”), suits them perfectly well and facilitates the passage of resolutions and statements that, regardless of the views of the wider UCU branch membership, reflect the stated political aims and implicit ideology of the SWP as outlined above.

Collective decision-making at meetings by a show of hands is intrinsically superior to all other forms of decision-making

The Trotskyist views regarding leadership and superiority of the activist elite have implications for union democracy and decision-making processes because, for the SWP/UCU Left, it is an article of faith that a branch meeting, however poorly attended and however unrepresentative of the wider membership, is always the pinnacle of union democracy since it embodies the wishes of the “rank and file”. Hence the assertions that, “The use of ‘e-polls’ and surveys in this dispute has shown that they are less democratic and less accountable than consulting with branches.”[12]; and “Strikes are collective. A show of hands is collective. A debate and a vote is collective. E-polls are not.”[13]

It follows also that only those who actively participate in strikes and picket lines should decide whether industrial actions continue or employers’ offers are accepted. Hence Mark Abel’s comment that those who abstain from strike ballots should be ignored and the recent UCU Left statement, “We need a new kind of trade unionism where those putting themselves on the line actually take the decisions”,[14] which sounds like a plan to disenfranchise the majority of members and move to the elitist form of trade unionism discussed above.

Despite their frequent, and platitudinous, claims regarding democracy, this orientation explains why SWP/UCU Left activists have invariably opposed any and every attempt to engage the mass of UCU members beyond the tiny ranks of the 3-4% who regularly attend branch meeting.[15]

Collective bargaining is an unacceptable “compromise with capitalism”

In February 2023 UCU agreed that strike action would be suspended for two weeks in order to pursue negotiations with UCEA under the auspices of ACAS. The SWP/UCU Left was outraged, declaring that “It is a tactical mistake of the highest order to call action off in order to pursue negotiations.”[16] Similarly, Saira Weiner, the SWP/UCU Left candidate in the 2024 General Secretary election, spoke in April 2022 against a motion to a Special HE Sector Conference on the Four Fights dispute that called for ACAS to be involved in negotiations, arguing that ACAS is not a neutral body but “always sides with employers”.[17] 

Behind this claim is a profound antagonism to collective bargaining in pursuit of collective agreements. A recent SWP booklet on the 2022 strike waves mocks the idea of union officials seeking to negotiate dispute settlements: “a crucial aim for the bureaucracy is to be ‘in the room’, being taken seriously and negotiating.” (Thomas et al., op.cit., 2023: p.30). They complain that union officials “become negotiators, balancing between workers and bosses rather than class fighters looking to end exploitation altogether.” (ibid., p.25). Hence, whereas collective bargaining is the central raison d’être of every trade union movement in the world, who view it as a legitimate method of regulating the employment relationship, for the SWP leaders of UCU Left, it is nothing but a rotten compromise with capitalism.

Workers always want to strike… but the “bureaucrats” always sell them out

According to the founding programme of Trotsky’s Fourth International, workers want to strike and protest: “The multimillioned (sic) masses again and again enter the road of revolution. But each time they are blocked by their own bureaucratic machines” (Trotsky 1938: p.5).[18]  SWP/UCU Left statements repeatedly echo the same sentiment. Irrespective of low or fluctuating rates of strike participation, membership concerns about strike costs, lack of strike effectiveness or dwindling numbers on picket lines, the SWP mantra remains constant and invariant: for example, “Despite everything, members want to continue to fight”[19]; “There is no sign that the action [the Marking and Assessment Boycott or ‘MAB’] is weakening on the ground”[20]; and, “Keep up the strikes!… Activists want to fight.”[21] Where evidence is produced in support of this claim, it invariably emerges from poorly attended and probably unrepresentative branch meetings that are simply ignored by the vast majority of the union’s members.

From time to time, even the SWP has to register the fact that branch representatives at Branch Delegate Meetings (BDMs) report a lack of membership enthusiasm for a new round of strike dates or for some other form of action. But these observations are invariably explained away as the products of bureaucratic treachery and cowardice along with the assertion that if only the leadership would provide a militant strategy, such as an indefinite strike, then the members would respond and show their fighting mettle: for example, “The GS wishes to bury the MAB and our dispute”[22]; and, “Jo Grady, the General Secretary, and the HEC majority who follow her, have failed to match the commitment of our members… We could have won our dispute months ago if the HEC decision to move towards indefinite strike action earlier this year had been implemented rather than sabotaged.”[23] The idea that members think for themselves and make their own calculations, about the futility of a particular programme of strike action or about the benefits of a compromise collective agreement, is literally unthinkable within the worldview of the SWP.

If workers are united and militant, they will win

Strike action is a power struggle in which the withdrawal of labour aims to impose costs on the employers through the cancellation of their normal business: teaching, grading, supervision, committee meetings, graduation, Open Days etc. In private companies the key cost of a strike is the disruption of revenue streams and therefore profits, offset to some extent by the savings on wages no longer being paid to striking staff. In HE and FE, however, there is typically no disruption of revenue streams and the main costs fall on students through disruption to teaching.

As the Financial Times put it in a recent article comparing the failed UCU pay campaign with the recent success in the USA of the United Auto Workers, whose limited and targeted strikes have won their members a 25% pay rise over four years, “There is a miserable example in British universities, where lecturers have been staging on-off industrial action for over five years over pay and conditions, losing money for members and depriving students of some teaching on degree course, all without making universities back down… The UCU’s weakness was that its strikes did not hit university revenues because students kept enrolling.”[24]

Whether or not industrial actions impose significant costs on employers, and are therefore evidence of worker power, is a difficult and contentious issue – though not, apparently for the SWP which adheres to an extraordinarily naïve view of power based on nothing more than slogans: “unity is strength”[25], “you only build a union in struggle”[26], “No capitulation. Unity is strength.”[27] There is simply no recognition that power is a relational concept, in other words the decisive factor in any dispute is the balance of power between workers and employers – the union members’ ability to impose costs compared to the employers’ capacity to withstand them. Ignoring the balance of power and the actual impact of strike action leaves the SWP free to promote claims about dispute outcomes that are disconnected from reality. Hence, according to a recent post, the past few years of strike action and MAB “have driven a coach and horses through the Government and VC’s HE market system.”[28]

There is an alternative, and it’s not right-wing

The SWP and other Trotskyist groups (of which more below) likes to portray anyone who disagrees with their politics as being “right wing”. A fairer and more accurate description would be to say that when it comes to voting on union policy and for officers of the union and National Executive Committee (NEC) members, the choice is between the extreme left and the mainstream left – between those who adhere to the stated aims and implicit ideology of the SWP and those, of many political persuasions, who look to their trade union to protect their jobs and improve their pay, pensions, and conditions of employment through collective bargaining, including where necessary the threat and, when there is a good chance of success, actual use of industrial action.

And there is such an alternative, both in terms of industrial strategy and when choosing how and by whom the union is led. Regarding strategy this includes:

1. Rejecting the SWP’s simplistic top-down model of leadership and widening membership engagement beyond the activist-elite by mobilising from the bottom-up beyond the <10% who attend meetings. The first steps here could be (i) truly embrace rather than pay lip service to democracy by maximising use, at both branch and UK-wide levels, of e-surveys and e-ballots to both inform and engage the wider membership in key decision making, and (ii) a campaign to increase membership density from the current level of <30% of eligible employees.
2. Rejecting the Trotskyist view that negotiating with employers is a “compromise with capitalism” and instead vigorously pursue collective bargaining, both locally and nationally. As well as making use of ACAS when negotiations break down, this could involve seeking new ways of dividing and putting pressure on employers through identifying weaknesses (e.g. where strong finances mean there is no excuse for not improving pay or dealing with inexcusable pay gaps) and distinguishing between better and worse employer practices (e.g. on casualisation, where Oxbridge, who top university league tables for research, would come near the bottom).
3. Be wary of UCU Left’s constant calls for performative strikes – or, worse still, the indefinite strike action UCU does not currently meet the conditions for. Instead, recognise that to be successful industrial strategy must take account of the prevailing balance of power between employers and trade unions. This does not mean we, the General Secretary, or any UCU “bureaucracy”, are against strike action (as the SWP will accuse us of) but rather that we want action that has a good chance of winning tangible gains for members. Even before this summer’s MAB, five years of Four Fights strikes from 2019 to 2023 cost many members up to 67 days in pay with nothing substantial to show for it in terms of pay. UCU members should not be used as Trotskyist cannon fodder by the SWP to build the socialist revolutionary party.

For anyone who agrees with this alternative strategy, the way to get it implemented is to break the SWP stranglehold over the union’s policy-making annual Congress and committees. Next year, members will have an opportunity to vote for candidates standing in the NEC and General Secretary elections, and we will be voting for candidates whose record shows they support the above strategy and the aims of the Campaign for UCU Democracy.

Conclusions: SWP/UCU Left as political deception

The SWP/UCU Left likes to present itself as a democratic organization of militant, “rank and file” trade union members, angry about casualization, low pay, and pension cuts and keen to engage in industrial action to push back against onerous and unacceptable employer demands. Often articulated as part of a critique of the broader processes of marketization in HE and the high salaries of VCs, SWP/UCU Left policies have often garnered support from a layer of activists at conferences and delegate meetings well beyond the UCU Left core membership.

In fact, the SWP/UCU Left narrative is a carefully orchestrated exercise in political deception whose prime purpose is to downplay, if not obscure, its Trotskyist, revolutionary socialist credentials. The central, strategic goal of the SWP leadership in UCU Left is to build the Socialist Workers Party; everything else is secondary. In pursuit of this goal, they seek to promote and maintain strike action wherever and whenever possible as the principal mechanism for the development of political class consciousness. That in turn entails a preference for complete victory in disputes and the repudiation of compromise collective agreements, mediation, or other third-party involvement. It also entails the empowerment of the small, activist elite in the union (misnamed as the “rank and file”) in order to prevent the more moderate positions of the average union member obstructing the SWP’s ceaseless drive for strike action. Finally, in order to help build the class consciousness that will help turn the SWP into a mass, revolutionary party, it is occasionally necessary to reveal elements of its Trotskyist thinking. Hence the motion to UCU Congress in May 2023 opposing arms shipments to Ukraine as part of the so-called struggle against Western imperialism, a theme reiterated in its acclamation for the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023: “Rejoice as Palestinian resistance humiliates racist Israel” (Socialist Worker, 11 October 2023, p.4).[29]

Readers may wish to consider all of these issues when completing their ballot papers in 2024 and ask themselves whether it is time to hold to account those, in UCU Left and the “left independent” group, who have been responsible (far more than the current General Secretary or head office staff who, despite UCU Left’s frequent accusations of betrayal, have much less say on policy) for the union’s failed and costly strategy of almost permanent strike action of recent years. Please watch out for a forthcoming companion piece about the GS and NEC elections.

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Notes:

(UCU Left and other websites referred to accessed on 11 or 12 November 2023.)

[1] The UCU Left Ukraine motion was the cause of much criticism on social media, including on UCU Left’s own website where a blog defending the motion attracted 19 online comments, all of them censorious with several announcing the outraged writer’s intention to resign from UCU, and a Byline Times blog by Tom Scott, “The lecturers union and the betrayal of the intellectuals”. An SWP/Stop the War petition supporting the motion attracted around 250 signatures, but dishonestly failed to mention any of its controversial points (the ending of arms supplies to Ukraine, repetition of Putin’s anti-semitic slur of Volodymyr Zelensky, and claim that NATO’s aim is to create an Israel-style armed outpost on the borders of Russia), while another petition critical of the motion attracted double that number of signatures.

[2] On 17 March 2023, HEC was asked whether UUK and UCEA proposals relating to the USS and Four Fights should be put to HE members. A BDM and an informal e-survey participated in by over 36,000 members had both indicated strong preferences for a formal consultation. However, the HEC vote was 22 Against and 19 For with no abstentions: see minute 4.1 in https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/13829/HEC-minutes-17.03.23/pdf/HEC_minutes_17.03.23.pdf and Campaign for UCU Democracy, 21 March 2023, “Does HEC listen to UCU members?” for how individual HEC members voted. Vicky Blake subsequently wrote a blog explaining her vote following a backlash on social media from members outraged that their democratically expressed preferences had been ignored: https://vickyblakeucu.uk/2023/03/20/whats-going-on-and-why-did-hec-vote-against-consultation-on-the-disputes/

[3] At its meeting on 3 Nov 2022, an HEC motion calling for “All out, indefinite strike action” beginning in the last week in January/first week in February was carried by 22 votes For and 18 Against with no abstentions, it being also noted that members had not been consulted on this strategy: see minute 3.17 in https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/13489/HEC-minutes-03.11.22/pdf/HEC_minutes_03.11.22.pdf. Vicky Blake and her collaborators subsequently amended their position to advocate a strategy of “discontinuous” indefinite strike action: https://medium.com/@discontinuous_indefinite/striking-options-on-discontinuous-indefinite-action-4d9c8188a7b8

[4] For more on how the SWP created and controls UCU Left, see “UCU Left, the Socialist Workers Party, and National Executive Committee Elections”, and “The Real Democratic Deficit in UCU”.

[5] UCU Left website home page: https://uculeft.org/.

[6] See for example the 27 September edition of Socialist Worker, which also contains an article accusing Jo Grady and UCU’s leadership of trying to sabotage higher education strikes.

[7] See for example, Choonara and Kimber (2011), Arguments for Revolution, Bookmarks Publications, and Thomas, Walsh and Kimber (2023), The Revival of Resistance, Bookmarks Publications.

[8] Choonara and Kimber, op.cit., p.82.

[9] Some of the arguments made for and against indefinite strike action following the HEC meeting in November 2022 may be found here:

https://uculeft.org/for-action-that-can-win-shut-down-the-campuses/;
https://uculeft.org/gs-proposal-or-escalate-to-win/;
https://notesfrombelow.org/article/how-stop-university;
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/is-it-time-ucu-members-go-indefinite-strike;
https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/13471/ucuRISING—winning-the-dispute-2023/pdf/2023__Winning_the_dispute_-_v3.pdf;
https://campaignforucudemocracy.com/2023/02/10/when-do-indefinite-strikes-succeed/.

[10] UCU Left, 6 October 2023, https://uculeft.org/uss-victory-but-a-world-left-to-win-rebuilding-the-fightback/. As well as calling for control of UCU disputes by the “rank and file”, this post also invited attendance at the UCU Left AGM. No other faction within UCU has its own AGMs, officers, committee, and separate membership subscriptions.

[11] Campaign for UCU Democracy, 6 February 2023, “UCU Elections Candidate Survey: E-ballots and Voting Transparency”, https://campaignforucudemocracy.com/2023/02/06/opinion-ucu-elections-candidate-survey-e-ballots-and-voting-transparency/

[12] UCU Left, 6 Sept 2023, https://uculeft.org/the-mab-is-ending-but-the-fight-goes-on/.

[13] UCU Left, 16 Sept 2023, https://uculeft.org/keep-the-strikes-on-and-keep-them-uk-wide/.

[14] UCU Left, 29 October 2023, https://uculeft.org/ucu-left-nec-gs-vp-election-statement/. This post also announces the decision by the UCU Left AGM to support Saira Weiner first and Vicky Blake second for General Secretary and Peter Evans for Vice-President in the forthcoming UCU elections.

[15] An email survey of candidates standing in UCU’s 2023 National Executive Committee elections revealed that all but two of the UCU Left candidates were opposed to using e-ballots to consult UCU members on key questions such as the timing and duration of industrial action. See https://campaignforucudemocracy.com/2023/02/06/opinion-ucu-elections-candidate-survey-e-ballots-and-voting-transparency/

[16] UCU Left, 17 February 2023, https://uculeft.org/stop-the-sell-out-no-to-a-pause/.

[17] ACAS, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, is an independent public body funded by the government. Its history goes back to the Conciliation Act 1896, its twelve-member governing council includes four trade unionists, and its purpose is to help resolve and if possible avoid workplace disputes between employers and employees. See https://www.acas.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acas.

[18] Leon Trotsky, 1938, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International: The Transitional Program, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970.

[19] UCU Left, 26 August 2023, https://uculeft.org/keep-the-mab-on/.

[20] UCU Left, 2 July 2023, https://uculeft.org/dont-suspend-the-mab-keep-up-the-pressure-wheres-our-ballot/.

[21] UCU Left, 25 Sept 2023, https://uculeft.org/keep-up-the-strikes/.

[22] UCU Left, 28 July 2023, https://uculeft.org/ucu-a-union-without-a-leadership/.

[23] UCU Left, 6 Sept 2023, https://uculeft.org/the-mab-is-ending-but-the-fight-goes-on/.

[24] John Gapper, “The United Auto Workers teach university lecturers how to strike: US car workers have been cleverer with industrial action than the UK’s University and College Union”, Financial Times, 3 Nov 2023.

[25] UCU Left, 16 Sept 2023, https://uculeft.org/keep-the-strikes-on-and-keep-them-uk-wide/.

[26] UCU Left, 6 Sept 2023, https://uculeft.org/the-mab-is-ending-but-the-fight-goes-on/.

[27] UCU Left, 15 March 2023, https://uculeft.org/no-more-pauses-no-suspension-of-action-strike-to-win/.

[28] UCU Left, 25 Sept 2023, https://uculeft.org/keep-up-the-strikes/.

[29] https://socialistworker.co.uk/international/rejoice-as-palestinian-resistance-humiliates-racist-israel/.