Students around the country have set up encampments, occupations, and rallies, demanding that their universities disclose their ties with and divest from the Israeli war machine.
Trade unions who organise campus workers must respond to this call, and mobilise their members to end the university bosses’ complicity with genocide.
Student action
The encampment movement started in the United States, where students bravely resisted brutal police repression. Following this, the movement has spread like wildfire throughout the world, with students at British universities following suit.
There are now around 30 encampments in universities across the UK. Students have no trust in university bosses to carry out their demands for full disclosure and divestment, nor in the British establishment to put an end to the war. They are taking matters into their own hands.
Many have drawn the conclusion that in order to put a stop to the slaughter, a resolute struggle must be waged against the enemy at home: Rishi Sunak and his Tory government, Keir Starmer’s Labour, and the gang of imperialist scoundrels whose interests they defend.
Senior management are also complicit in the genocide in Gaza. And they have so far refused to listen to students’ demands to end their institutions’ support for Israel and the arms industry. It’s clear they won’t give in unless we make ourselves impossible to ignore.
Unite and fight
There are already inspiring examples of campus workers joining students in this struggle.
At the University of California in the US, workers voted to authorise the local branch of the UAW (United Auto Workers) – which represents 48,000 academic staff on that campus – to call a strike at any time. This is a product of the widespread indignation at the repression against the student protests.
At Columbia University, where the encampments movement started, professors passed a no-confidence resolution against the university’s President, accusing her of “an unprecedented assault on students’ rights”.
In Britain, individual UCU branches have issued statements in support of the students’ demands, such as in Oxford and Cambridge.
And in many other places, lecturers and staff members have attended campus rallies and encampments, such as at Imperial College on Nakba Day, and at Queen Mary University of London.
But despite this initiative from rank-and-file members, the leaders of the trade unions organising campus workers are lagging far behind.
The UCU national leadership, for example, issued a statement of support for the protests. While this is welcome, it hasn’t been followed by any concrete action.
And unfortunately, the leaders of Unite and UNISON have been completely silent on this question. In fact, Sharon Graham and the Unite leadership have actively discouraged members from attending Palestine solidarity activities.
Mass action
Whilst refusing to break its links with warmongering profiteers, university bosses are charging students extortionate tuition fees and sky-high rents. At the same time, they tell workers that there is no money to keep their pay in-line with inflation.
But of course, there is always enough money to shovel into arms companies and big banks like Barclays, and for the bosses’ eye-watering six-figure salaries!
All of this is a consequence of the marketisation of higher education, which has meant that universities are managed like private businesses.
We should have no trust in the university bosses to carry out our demands, or solve any of the problems faced by students and staff. It is precisely the bosses who are lining their pockets at our expense.
After all, university management has clamped down on free speech and the right to organise Palestine solidarity protests, while welcoming weapons manufacturers and companies that are destroying the environment onto our campuses. And in some places, they imposed 100% pay deductions on UCU members during a marking and assessment boycott last year.
Workers and students – if united – have the power to shut down campuses, and thereby force their institutions to cut all their ties with the Israeli war machine.
At the rank-and-file level, workers should begin campaigning for their union branches to support the struggle, using the model motion below. Delegations should be sent to local encampments, in order to forge links with the students.
Mass democratic assemblies of students and workers should be organised, to decide upon demands and plans for joint action. Student-staff action committees should be elected to coordinate campaigns on a local level.
Research and support staff could organise workers’ boycotts against the imperialist war machine, by refusing to work on projects that have links to arms companies like BAE Systems.
Alongside this, we should build towards mass walk-outs of staff and students around the country, as well as other forms of mass action.
Not only would this force university management to concede to our demands, it would also give students and workers a sense of their real strength!
If necessary, the UCU, Unite, and UNISON should be prepared to ballot their members to take strike action over universities’ involvement and complicity with genocide, and also to defend the right to free speech on campus – which has come under attack in the last seven months.
Kick imperialism off campus!
The demand to disclose and divest should draw in as many students and workers as possible. And it should be linked to the demand for democratic control over this process by elected student-staff committees.
This should form the basis for a mass movement around the demand for democratic management and control over all aspects of the way universities are run.
Such a movement would have the power to exact a complete break with the hawks in Westminster. It should be part of a broader campaign to kick imperialism off our campuses, and to kick capitalism out of education.
Students and workers should also reach out beyond the universities, to the wider community and to workers in other fields and industries, calling for mass mobilisation against the massacre that has been unleashed upon the Palestinian people.
This should be linked to a programme for escalating the struggle against British imperialism, and ultimately to overthrow it.
Join our national meeting on Thursday 23 May on how to build the movement in the coming months.
Free Palestine! Kick imperialism off campus!
Model motion: Staff and students – unite! Kick imperialism off campus!
This branch / union notes that:
- A student movement in solidarity with Palestine, beginning in the USA, has now spread to Britain and other countries. These protests, primarily involving encampments, are taking place on dozens of UK university campuses.
- The main demands of the encampments are for universities to ‘disclose’ and ‘divest’: for universities to provide full transparency about the financial links and partnerships that they have with arms companies and other firms that are complicit with the Israeli state’s war on Gaza; and for higher education institutions to cut any ties or investments that they have with such businesses.
- Collectively, UK universities have investments and deals in the arms industry worth over £1 billion. And they have around £430 million of investments in companies that are involved in the Israeli state’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
- Other demands raised include the protection of democratic rights and freedoms for students and staff: the right to protest; academic freedoms; and freedom of speech. All of these have come under threat on campuses since 7 October, with the state and university authorities clamping down on efforts to show support and solidarity for Palestine.
This branch / union believes that:
- UK universities, along with the British government and the entire British establishment, are complicit in the genocidal massacre being inflicted upon the Palestinian people.
- The demands being raised by the student encampment movement are relevant to university workers also. And these should form the basis for a joint campaign between students and campus unions.
- The marketisation of higher education is responsible for university funds being invested in the arms trade, and for bringing arms manufacturers onto campuses; it is responsible for sky-high tuition fees and student rents, and for the erosion of teaching and learning conditions; and it is behind the continual attacks that staff have faced over the years to jobs, pay, and conditions.
- Workers and students – united – have the power to shut down campuses and thereby force universities to end their involvement in the imperialists’ war machine.
- To end the marketisation that lies at the root of the problems facing staff and students, such a movement should go further and raise demands to: put universities under the democratic control of staff and students; kick imperialism off campus; and kick capitalism out of education.
This branch / union resolves to:
- Send a delegation to any local encampment, in order to deliver a message of solidarity and support, and to forge links between students and workers on campus.
- Organise a mass democratic assembly alongside student protestors and other unions, in order to formulate demands aimed at ending the university’s ties with the Israeli state and the arms industry.
- To launch a united student-worker campaign to ‘kick imperialism off campus’, based around these demands.
- Elect a joint student-staff action committee, made up of representatives from the campus unions and student body, that can coordinate such a campaign locally.
- Build towards a mass student-staff walkout as part of this campaign, alongside other forms of mass action and united struggle.
- Call on our union’s national leadership to support such local campaigns, and to work alongside other trade unions and the NUS to organise a national campaign to ‘kick imperialism off campus’ based on the same aims and demands.
