Campaign Update 15
21st September 2007
Thank you for signing up to support the Stop The Boycott campaign.
UCU members campaign for boycott ballot
- Members of the University and College Union (UCU) have launched a campaign to hold a ballot of all members on the issue of an academic boycott of Israel.
- The new UCU Members for a Ballot campaign was launched by Jimmy Donaghey (Queens University, Belfast UCU) and Jon Pike (Open University UCU).
- 'UCU Left', a political grouping inside the Union, opposes a ballot and many of its prominent members support a boycott.
- UCU Members for a Ballot aims to ensure that the whole UCU membership is consulted before the union institutes a boycott.
- UCU Members for a Ballot are running a petition for UCU members only to call on their leadership to hold a membership ballot.
- Their website is at http://ucu-ballot.org
ACTION:
- If you are a UCU member, sign the petition on http://ucu-ballot.org right now.
- If you are not a UCU member, help raise awareness of the new initiative by emailing any academics, FE teachers and students to tell them about the petition for a ballot, and encourage them to pass it on too.
The vast majority of UCU members - upwards of 80% - believe that a ballot of all members is the best way to settle the boycott debate. Help inform them how to make it happen.
Universities Minister at Stop the Boycott Labour fringe.
- Bill Rammell MP, Minister for Higher Education and Universities strongly condemned moves inside the UCU to boycott Israeli academics as "politically self-indulgent", explaining that peace in the Middle East will be achieved by "the politics of engagement, not the politics of isolation".
- He was speaking at a fringe meeting at Labour Party Conference, entitled "Academic Boycott: a Flawed Approach".
- The event was jointly organised by the Jewish Labour Movement and the Stop the Boycott Campaign. The Labour Arab group also participated in the meeting.
- Mr Rammell announced a forthcoming visit by UK University Vice Chancellors to Israel.
Professor Drummond Bone, Vice Chancellor of Liverpool University and outgoing Chair of Universities UK, noted that there was a "sinister edge" to the boycott movement, and felt that the boycott would fail whatever the UCU decides. - Agreeing, Jeremy Newmark, Chief Executive of the Jewish Leadership Council (speaking for Stop the Boycott) stressed that the lack of implementation "doesn't let UCU off the hook. If they support a boycott they will have a discriminatory policy".
- Lorna Fitzsimons, Chief Executive of BICOM (speaking for Stop the Boycott) rejected analogies between apartheid South Africa and Israel/Palestine.
- Israeli Labour party MK Ophir Pines-Paz MK and Wes Streeting of the National Union of Students expressed support from the audience.
