'Majestic impartiality'

Back in May, Britain’s University and College Union (UCU) conference decided to hold a series of discussions among members about the call by Palestinian unions for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions. UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt opposed the motion and immediately distanced herself from conference’s decision.

Now, a UCU press release dated yesterday reveals

the union’s ‘strategy and finance committee unanimously accepted a recommendation from UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, that the union should immediately inform branches and members that:

· A boycott call would be unlawful and cannot be implemented

· UCU members' opinions cannot be tested at local meetings

· The proposed regional tour cannot go ahead under current arrangements and is therefore suspended.

While writing this, I note that Mark Elf has already reported this over at Jews sans frontières.

The union’s legal advisors opine,

'It would be beyond the union's powers and 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 institutions; and that the use of union funds directly or indirectly to further such a boycott would also be unlawful…to ensure that the union acts lawfully, meetings should not be used to ascertain the level of support for such a boycott.'

This backdown is troubling for a couple of reasons.

First of all, my suspicion is that the basis of the legal advice is the Race relations act (1976). I also suspect that the interpretation, whether of the Race relations act or whatever, relied upon the tendentious legal reasoning of such eminent luminaries as Harvard Professor of Torture, Alan M Dershowitz. It would be bad enough if the union accepted such a bogus interpretation, and I sincerely hope that UCU members will challenge this decision on the part of the bureaucracy. The refusal even to cite the legislation they base their advice on suggests a lack of confidence. But what’s really frightening is that they could be right. Even though the arguments Dershowitz and Julius present that hold all Jews responsible for Israel’s crimes are themselves antisemitic, they are meeting with broader and broader acceptance. The EU Monitoring Commission’s ‘Working definition’ of anti-Semitism makes precisely the same anti-Semitic assumptions. While it has no legal standing as yet, it appears to be increasingly influential and could be part of the basis for a judgement, even if it is not yet formally adopted. Indeed, such judgements could lead to formal adoption. That would expose virtually any proPalestinian or antiZionist activity to the risk of prosecution. Note that it is not just carrying out the proposed boycott, nor even just calling for it or furthering it, that the UCU’s legal team have determined would be illegal. They reckon it would put the union on the wrong side of the law just to ‘ascertain the level of support’ for the boycott.

The other thing is that the union bureaucrats had no compunction about publicly overturning a conference decision without reference to the members. Doubtless the officials have a responsibility to advise the members of the probable consequences of any action they decide to take. But in a democratic union, where the officials are accountable to the members they are supposed to represent, it would be up to the members whether to accept the risk.

Apart from that, it signals an unnerving proclivity on the part of the officials, widely observed among union bureaucrats everywhere, to want to ‘play by the rules’. ‘The law’s the law’, after all. But in reality, the law comprises the rules that the ruling class prefers. Whenever industrial struggle slackens, the bosses hurry to claw back any gains we’ve made in the past. Nor are they ever satisfied. Whenever the government enacts or amends legislation to reduce or threaten our employment, our conditions, or our pay, the employers call for more ‘certainty’ that they can sack us at will and the like. So when our officials tell us we can’t take such and such an action because we have to be ‘smart’ and ‘beat them at their own game’, all it really means is that they are content to lose. The important thing for them is to restrain any rank and file action or initiative that could challenge their credibility as intermediaries. So unless members stand up for their decisions, suspect legal advice will continue to trump them.

To paraphrase Anatole France, The law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the bosses along with the workers to organise in the workplace, mount industrial action, or discuss an academic boycott of Israel in union branch meetings.

(Thanks to John E Richardson of JAZ for the link to the UCU media release.)