The following article was written in early October 2007, after UCU overturned their boycott policy.
After months of internal debate and external condemnation, the UK's University and College Union (UCU) eventually sent a message to their branches and the world: a boycott of Israeli academic institutions would breach anti-discrimination legislation and is illegal. This was a major success for Stop the Boycott, British Jewry's biggest political campaign in recent years.
A small but powerful committee inside UCU voted to accept legal advice that the boycott was discriminatory and therefore illegal. The key line in the ruling is: "It would be ... unlawful for the Union, directly or indirectly to call for or to implement a boycott by the Union and its members of any kind of Israeli universities and other academic institution."
Unexpectedly, the advice stated that a ballot on the boycott was also illegal, as it would be a ballot on whether or not UCU should unlawfully discriminate against Israelis.
The UCU committee that accepted the legal advice is controlled by a far-Left coalition, itself dominated by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), an anti-Zionist organisation that opposes the existence of Israel and supported a boycott. It was the SWP that led the campaign to ban ‘Zionist' Jewish student societies in the 1980s, and is the force behind much of the left-wing antisemitism in the UK.
Revolutionary socialists are not the types to be cowed by legal advice. A number of factors led the far Left to vote to accept the legal ruling:
A week before the vote, grassroots UCU members led by Jon Pike of Engage launched a "UCU Members for a Ballot" petition. This was a response to the turmoil UCU has been in since the boycott vote at Congress. Members were signing a petition to the UCU leadership, calling on it to hold a ballot to definitively settle the boycott issue. This new campaign caused a stir when it was launched. The SWP opposed a ballot, but realised the problem in arguing this in the wider Union, or even to its own faction members!
It became quickly clear why the SWP tried to avoid a ballot: they knew they would lose. Days before the UCU U-turn, the SWP's official newspaper argued that Sally Hunt will "attempt to move quickly to mount a ballot with the aim, not simply of throwing out the boycott, but also of isolating the left within UCU" and that any such ballot, "the boycott would almost certainly be heavily defeated." The article concludes: "we do not intend to propose an actual boycott of any Israeli academic institutions".
It should be no surprise that they were so willing to back down; However much the far left pretend to care about a boycott - or the Palestinians or Iraqis or whatever cause is fashionable this week - their real concern is hanging on to any tiny glimmer of power. This is also the story of the RESPECT party, the SWP's uneasy political alliance with hard-line Islamists.
Also key was the impact of external pressure led by the Stop the Boycott campaign, which provided constant mood music to the debate inside the UCU. There was criticism from the UK Government, the Universities themselves and the National Union of Students of the boycott moves. Added to these voices were every major newspaper, a hundred members of Parliament, foreign universities and unions, lecturers, Jewish students and Jewish organisations at home and abroad. The sheer weight of this pressure made it increasingly difficult for UCU to function as a normal trade union.
So what happens now? Inside UCU this is a major defeat for the boycott. The issue has become a political albatross of the SWP, who have dumped it. The few hard-core boycott activists like Sue Blackwell and Stephen Rose have lost their foot-soldiers.
There may still be individual lecturers who decide to implement their own boycotts. But they are now on notice that such action will probably lead to legal action against them by the people they are boycotting.
But the victory has implications beyond the confines of the UCU. The same anti-discrimination laws that protect academia are likely to apply in fields such as sport or the arts, making it much more difficult for boycotts to gain official sanction in those areas. Other types of boycott may still emerge and we will be ready for them.
This was an important moment for UK Jewry. Our community ran a large-scale, focused, staffed and resourced campaign, and won. Led by BICOM and the Jewish Leadership Council, the major Jewish organisations worked together, and built alliances with NGOs and Government. We conducted research on how to best communicate to the UCU membership. Internationally respected pollster and communication expert Frank Luntz praised the campaign's "smart strategy, effective messaging and organizational cooperation"
The British Jewish community is sometimes accused of being scared to campaign, preferring to lobby behind the scenes. Sometimes the quiet approach is both more effective and appropriate. But Stop the Boycott has proved that when a campaign is the right solution, we are ready and able to take the fight into the public domain and win.
