UCU Congress, NEC, and Solidarity with Ukraine
Last weekend UCU held its UK Congress in Glasgow, and I went along to spend a sunny bank holiday weekend in a concrete box arguing with people. Some of it was fun, especially getting to meet fellow delegates face-to-face, but some of it was downright depressing. I’ll likely write about it again over the next few days and weeks, but one of the real lowlights was the vote to pass Motion 5 “Stop the War in Ukraine — peace now”, proposed by two branches dominated by UCU Left members.
It’s an ugly motion, calling on UCU to campaign “for the government to stop arming Ukraine” (and has an unhealthy dollop of antisemitism thrown in for good measure). Its passage has led to protest at all levels of the union, from ordinary members all the way to up the NEC and the General Secretary. But the motion has passed, and we now need to find a way of undoing the damage that it has caused.
I hope that the events of the past weekend will cause UCU members to think about the future structures of the union. Congress makes bad decisions all the time; Saying this will lead to the inevitable screams of outrage, but it is true. Members are often unaware of it because our democratic structures are arcane and lacking in transparency nd accountability - and also because some UCU members spend most of their time blaming the General Secretary for every bad decision, knowing that some of the mud that they throw sticks.
So in the medium term, I hope that the Ukraine motion motivates UCU members to demand fundamental reforms of our democratic structures, so that the decisions taken are properly reflective of their views. But in the short term we have the problem of this motion, which is putting the stink on UCU at the worst possible time. So what’s the quick and simple way of dealing with this?
I’ve just been elected to the UCU National Executive Committee (NEC), which is the body tasked with “the execution of policy and the conduct of the general business of the Union between meetings of National Congress”. The NEC doesn’t have the power to make policy from scratch, as its role is implement the policies made by Congress. But I do think that NEC could take quick, simple and decisive steps to help resolve the issue.
Congress makes a hell of a lot of policy each year. Have a look at the agenda being debated this past weekend, and you’ll see that there were 82 motions up for debate. Not all of these were passed, but a great deal of them were, or were sent back to the NEC for further discussion (“remitted”, in the language of the union). These don’t replace the motions passed in every previous year, but are instead added to them. UCU has literally hundreds of policies on all kinds of issues, going back years.
There is no way in the world that the NEC can implement every policy passed by Congress. The work of NEC necessarily involves making decisions about what to prioritise, and conversly what to de-prioritise. So here’s an idea: Congress passed two motions on Ukraine, one of which (the excellent Motion 6) was written in consultation with the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, one of which (the awful Motion 5) wasn’t.
I think that the NEC can make a simple decision at its next meeting. It can throw its full support behind Motion 6, and decide to engage in full with the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. It can also explicitly, publicly distance itself from Motion 5, by deciding that it will allocate no resources to its implementation.
This is a far from perfect solution, I know. Motion 5 will remain union policy until we get an opportunity to overturn it at the next Congress. But I think that it will send a clear message to Ukrainian members, and to those who stand in solidarity with Ukraine, that at least one part of the union’s democratic structures is standing up for their interests.
I look forward to the responses to this idea, particularly from other members of NEC.
