KCL UCU Racism Statement

KCL UCU sends its solidarity and support to Unite UCU members, the Black Members Standing Committee (BMSC), and Black UCU members who over the past few months have revealed the realities of institutional racism in UCU. Even as members have spent countless days on picket lines striking to create a more racially just education sector – institutional racism has not been confronted in-house. Now UCU faces the prospect of its own workers going on strike during its annual Congress and Sector Conferences – at the very moment UK higher education is being brutally restructured. Enough is Enough.

The abolition of institutional racism in UCU will not be achieved through plans handed down from the very structures riddled with racism – but through the active participation, funding and backing of those who are experiencing racism in the highlighting and implementing of the necessary changes within the union. We demand that the UCU General Secretary and UCU management negotiate with our colleagues and fully meet their demands.

We also send our support to the BMSC who have been internally censored on the issue of Palestine. The issue of racism cannot be domesticated or separated from imperialism – racism discriminates in the workplace but it also kills at the border, in police stations and within occupied territories. Not only should we expect that Black members be able to speak freely in UCU – but the BMSC highlighting how the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the fight against anti-Palestinian racism transform our own labour struggles cannot and will not be silenced.

The Palestine solidarity movement is not just an isolated moment of international solidarity with the oppressed and union comrades but is a movement built on ongoing engagement with the connections between racism, imperialism and capitalism. There simply can be no serious anti-racism within UCU – even with just pay and working conditions – if our pensions and employers are directly, or indirectly, funding, supporting, or legitimating the killing of people under racist apartheid abroad.

It was disheartening to see the UCU General Secretary endorse measures that would regulate the speech and potentially victimize UCU members seeking Palestinian liberation. We should have no truck with antisemitism, Islamophobia or any other form of racism in UCU – we should also refuse to play different forms of racism off against each other or create a hierarchy of racisms.

We call on UCU to get its anti-racism act together now! This should be through rejuvenating anti-racism within its own structures and amongst its own members and supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns in relation to our education sector’s links with murderous imperialism, settler colonialism and racism in Palestine.

KCL UCU Statement of Solidarity with the KCL student encampment

This week King’s students have set up a Palestine solidarity encampment at King’s Strand campus. They are part of a global student uprising against Israel’s war on Gaza and demand that our universities end their complicity with genocide, occupation and apartheid. In line with our union’s position, our Branch stands in solidarity with the King’s encampment and with the global student movement organising against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The students at the King’s encampment have resolved to continue their action until  five key demands are met by King’s management:
1. KCL must condemn Israeli war crimes in Palestine
2. KCL must boycott all Israeli academic institutions implicated in apartheid, occupation and genocide
3. KCL must divest from all corporations and arms manufacturers complicit in Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide
4. KCL must pledge to assist the rebuilding of Gaza’s destroyed education sector, establish ties with Palestinian universities and expand scholarships for Palestinian students
5. KCL must safeguard the freedom of speech of students, staff and other allies acting in solidarity with Palestine

We share the students’ position and have raised  similar demands with management, including in the last negotiating meeting last Wednesday.

As Israel’s attack on Gaza intensifies, King’s staff and students got together on Nakba Day (15 May) to raise our common demands and support the encampment at a lunchtime rally at the Strand. Staff and students came out in large numbers to support the student encampment and the Palestinian people.

We called this rally in solidarity with the encampment and in response to the call to action made by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (Gaza), the Stop the War Coalition and an international staff-student assembly with students involved in encampments all over the world.

In the meantime, please offer your support to the students by going to the encampment and coordinate as needed with the students, offering support that may include (but is not limited to):

  • Support with teach-ins and other events planned within the encampment
  • Donate to the students’ encampment here
  • Support by providing de-escalation support

We call on King’s management to take immediate action in response to the demands of staff and students to end its  documented investments in, and collaborative research and procurement contracts with, companies and academic institutions funding and supplying weapons to the Israeli military or enabling Israel’s violations of international law through the crimes of apartheid and genocide.

We also urgently call on King’s management to meet with members of the encampment to discuss their demands.

In solidarity
KCL UCU